Former cheerleader charged for sex trafficking teammate

By Eye Heart World on April 9, 2014

• Human Trafficking
• sex trafficking

Helping to end slavery and human trafficking

By Eye Heart World on March 28, 2014

Originally posted by March 22, 2014 on http://www.examiner.com

Slavery is an evil often manifested in the practices of bonded labor, forced labor or human trafficking. Although forced labor was abolished in the United States of America nearly one hundred and fifty years ago, slavery has become more prevalent today than at any time in human history. Some estimates indicate that nearly 27 million people in 161 countries today are living in slavery.

On Thursday March 20th, 2014, the members of a mission group from Joppa, Missouri stood on various intersections along South Dale Mabry between Gandy Boulevard and InterBay. These individuals wore T-shirts with red Xs and held up signs to alert passing motorists that “Slavery still exists” and advocate their call to “End IT!”

The heralds from Joppa handed out pamphlets entitled “BE IN IT TO END IT” to further explain the message of the national organization they were representing.

“We want every man, woman and child to know that there are 27 million men, women and children, just like them, living in the shadows, working as slaves in 161 countries; including their own. We can be the generation to END IT. We are here to shine a light on slavery. No more bondage. No more sex trafficking. No more child laborers. No more, starting now.”

More information about this national movement can be found at ENDITMOVEMENT.COM

One of the advocates indicated that their group had chosen Tampa Bay because:

• “Florida is one of the highest destination states for women and children trafficked into the United States. In the past five years, law enforcement and social service providers have identified multiple cases of human trafficking in the Clearwater, Pinellas County and the greater Tampa Bay area.”

• “Labor trafficking is the most prevalent type occurring in Florida with victims showing up in the agricultural, tourism and hospitality industries. The domestic sex trafficking of minors is the second most prevalent type and yet the most under reported and under prosecuted human trafficking offense in Florida.”

The relevant importance of awareness efforts by such groups can be seen in recent news articles. Less than two months ago, the Tampa Bay Times article “Man convicted of human trafficking gets 34 years” documented events surrounding the arrest of a Lutz, FL man who was using “force, fraud and coercion” to lure young women into a prostitution ring he was operating from his home.

Fortunately for community residents there is a growing awareness of human trafficking in Tampa, Hillsborough County and the State of Florida. In addition to recent strengthening of legislation for a more effective prosecution of trafficking, there are at least a half dozen local NGO non-profit organizations trying to make an impact in the lives of persons who are at risk or are currently in bondage related to human trafficking.

One such organization is The HeartDance Foundation under the direction of Dottie Grover- Skipper. Dottie says that HeartDance’s mission is “to provide hope and help to hurting women in Tampa Bay” by, “helping women and children reclaim HOPE and human spirit by shining the love of Christ, especially in the darkest of places in our city.”

HeartDance’s web-site provides the following guidance regarding possible signs that someone may be the victim of human trafficking:

What Does Human Trafficking Look Like?

Victims of human trafficking may look like many of the people you see every day. Look for the following clues:

• Evidence of being controlled by another person
• Evidence of inability to move or leave their job
• Bruises or other signs of physical abuse
• Fear or depression
• Not speaking on their own behalf and/or non-English speaking
• No passport or other forms of identification

• Human Trafficking
• modern slavery
• sex trafficking

Worth the struggle: How President Obama can curtail human trafficking

By Eye Heart World on March 27, 2014

Originally posted by Jesse Eaves on https://www.devex.com

• Human Trafficking
• modern slavery
• sex trafficking

How to End Modern Slavery

By Eye Heart World on March 26, 2014

Originally posted by Somaly Mam on https://www.devex.com

As a survivor of sex slavery, I have dedicated my life’s work to ending it. To many people, the issue of slavery seems like a clear case of right and wrong. The reality is much more complicated. There are many root causes and serious challenges. But these challenges do not stop me from continuing to find solutions to eradicate slavery and empower its survivors as part of the solution.

A significant number of people believe that slavery ended in 1863, when in fact, modern slavery exists in every corner of the globe. Not just in remote parts of Southeast Asia, but in your hometown, in your backyard. In America, there are 60,000 men, women and children enslaved at this very moment.

Global human trafficking is the second largest and fastest-growing organized crime in the world. There are an estimated 21 million people enslaved today, 4.5 million of which are in the sex industry. Estimates for revenues in all forms of exploitation and slavery total upward of $32 billion a year, and profits from sex slavery amount to nearly $10 billion.

In June 2013, the U.S. State Department issued the most up-to-date Trafficking in Persons report, a global overview of the origins and scope of trafficking. In my country of Cambodia, a country that is still recovering from the trauma of the Khmer Rouge genocide, the trafficking of women and girls continues to be widespread. Due to multiple factors including poverty, corruption, gender inequality and oppressive cultural norms, Cambodia has yet to tackle this problem head on. In 2013, Cambodia fell to the Tier 2 watch list, the report’s second-lowest rank, for failing to “demonstrate evidence of overall increasing efforts to address human trafficking over the previous year.”

The subordination of Cambodian women is not only the result of too few resources or a broken civil society, but also of belief system handed down from generation to generation. Even today, women and girls are often taught to be subordinate, lack access to education and are more likely to suffer from the effects of poverty. Many Cambodian males perpetuate domestic violence as their primary tactic for conflict resolution and crime as their primary source of income.

This must end. My goal is to help to empower these women and girls, to provide them with solutions, to give them a voice and a choice in their lives — and to ultimately end slavery and exploitation. Some of these solutions include, education, skills training and social enterprise through partnerships.

On Oct. 11, the International Day of the Girl, we proudly celebrated the opening of the Somaly Mam Beauty Salon, a social enterprise developed in partnership with The Estée Lauder Cos. and our on-the-ground partner AFESIP Cambodia, to implement a suite of education and training courses for survivors.

Since 1996, AFESIP Cambodia, an organization that I cofounded, has combated sexual slavery by rescuing victims of trafficking and sexual exploitation and providing recovery and skills training to help foster economic empowerment. AFESIP’s Center for Recovery and Skills Training in Siem Reap, Cambodia, offers a beauty-training and small business management program to equip survivors with the education that can boost their position in the community, remove stigmas and encourage gender equality.

Based on AFESIP’s model, the Somaly Mam Beauty Salon provides survivors with courses in hair styling, makeup application and nail care, as well as training in customer service and small business management. This basic education and vocational training can enable survivors to generate enough income to support themselves and avoid the vulnerabilities that allow for exploitation and abuse in the sex trade. The Estée Lauder Cos. will fund the salon’s first three years of operations, with the goal of being financially self-sustaining by 2016 and creating a replicable model.

In September at the Clinton Global Initiative meeting, SMF pledged our commitment to action through the salon project, in partnership with The Estée Lauder Cos. Investing in women’s employment through skills training and entrepreneurship is crucial to encouraging women to take their place as empowered agents of change in Cambodia’s rapidly growing economy.

We also recently partnered with the Nike Foundation on the Girl Declaration, a call to action to put girls at the heart of the post-2015 international development agenda. Along with 61 other individuals and organizations, the Somaly Mam Foundation was one of the founding signatories to this commitment to end global poverty. This declaration was presented to the United Nations on the behalf of girls worldwide.

For many years, these kinds of partnerships were my dream, and now they are a reality. Projects developed in collaboration with dedicated corporate and nonprofit partners, gives me hope for the future, where we can create impactful next-generation change and a society that says no more to the oppression of women and girls.

This article is part of a series of op-eds from key speakers and delegates participating in this year’s Social Innovation Summit, which took place on November 19th and 20th at Stanford Business School. View the full series here.

• Human Trafficking
• modern slavery
• sex trafficking

Coast-to-coast walk brings attention to human trafficking victims

By Eye Heart World on March 25, 2014

Originally posted by Chance Horner on http://www.wfaa.com

COLLEGE STATION, Texas — Traveling coast-to-coast takes a couple hours by plane, and a few days by car.

It takes much longer on foot.

“Out of about the last 200 days I’ve been walking, I’ve had about two or three [times when] I’ve been out in the middle of nowhere, my calves are burning and I thought, ‘What am I doing out here?’” Chance Stephens said.

He embarked on a cross-country walk to raise awareness about human trafficking — an issue that hits close to home.

“I have three friends that were sexually abused as children and this is my way to fight back,” Stephens said.

He’s walking to Palm Bay, Florida and then on to Virginia Beach, Virginia after starting his journey in Santa Monica, California in September 2013. Stephens is sometimes offered a place to sleep by friends or supporters, but most nights are spent along the side of a road.

“Things need to change,” Stephens said. “For me to save up a little cash and walk across America to speak out against human trafficking, no big deal.”

Along the way, he suffered a hip injury. A supporter who heard him speak at her church offered to let him stay her house until he was well enough to continue. That is where he met the man that would partner with him in his journey.

“Their son Jacob was like, ‘I want to go with you,’” Stephens said. “And I said, ‘Pack your bags, man!’”

Jacob Leonard recently dropped out of college and was living at home. When he heard about Stephens’ story, he felt inspired to go with him.

“This is my calling to go do something like this,” Leonard said. “This is my go. This is what I need to be doing.”

What was once a solitary journey is now a shared experience.

“A lot of people have to go through something difficult before they would prevent it from happening again,” Stephens said. “But if I can be one of the people to stand up right now, maybe I can get more people like Jacob to join in.”

Stephens and Leonard are raising money for Tiny Hands International, a non-profit organization that helps victims of the sex trafficking industry.

“I want people to stand up and say, ‘I don’t agree with trafficking,’ and ‘I don’t agree with women and little girls and boys being exploited sexually. Just so one man can get rich’” Stephens said. “Why can’t we just stand up? Why can’t we just tell them it’s wrong?”

You can find out more about Walk America and see an updated map of Stephens’ progress at http://achancefor.com.

• Human Trafficking
• sex trafficking

Want to fight human trafficking? Check out VFF’s holistic model

By Eye Heart World on

Originally posted by Sharmila Parmanand on https://www.devex.com

The word “slavery” evokes images of toiling laborers in agricultural plantations, a tragedy many would consider a thing of the past after having been abolished throughout the world.

In reality, human trafficking — the modern form of slavery — is one of the fastest growing criminal industries, with up to $30 billion in profits and more than 27 million global victims. These are made to work as sex slaves or forced into domestic servitude, agricultural labor, sweatshop factory labor, begging, and other dangerous and demeaning occupations.

“There is no silver bullet in the fight against trafficking,” Cecile Flores-Oebanda, founder and executive director of the Visayan Forum Foundation, a multiawarded Philippine nongovernmental organization established in 1991 to protect, liberate and empower marginalized migrants, especially women and children.

The U.S. State Department’s 2013 Trafficking in Persons report noted that not one government has done enough to fight human trafficking. Further, of the 188 countries and territories that were assessed in the report, more than 20 — including Mauritania — are classified as countries whose governments have not made significant efforts to combat the problem. Mauritania, which has a long history of hereditary slavery, only criminalized slavery in 2007.

With 12 million of its 90 million citizens working overseas, the Philippines is a top recruitment hub for traffickers. Organized crime syndicates and corrupt public officials collude to prey poverty and desperation, and use a combination of fraud, coercion and deception to enslave about 150,000 Filipinos at any given time.

Flores-Oebanda emphasized that only a holistic model can realistically address the problem, and any group that seeks to combat human trafficking will have to navigate through complex and interconnected cultural, political and economic factors. On top of that, anti-trafficking advocacy is also dangerous territory — traffickers and their powerful backers will stop at nothing to protect their profits. So how to move forward?

The head of VFF shared with Devex six best practices learned during the organization’s relatively successful campaign against human trafficking, which has helped more than 70,000 trafficking victims or potential victims over the past two decades:

1. Build partnerships.

NGOs do not have law enforcement power or deep pockets, while traffickers are highly organized, have considerable resources and use networks effectively. The only way to make headway is through strong partnerships.

“When more people and organizations get involved, we hit them where it hurts and their risk versus profit equation changes,” Flores-Oebanda said. In many human trafficking hubs, like the Philippines, victims are not only trafficked overseas but also internally, usually from rural to urban areas. After studying common trafficking routes, VFF initiated its most celebrated innovation: a multisectoral intervention in ports, airports and other transit areas.

VFF entered into agreements with shipping companies to integrate human trafficking awareness into their operations. This involved training the staff of shipping companies to identify potential victims. To improve detection, shipping companies created a special lane for child passengers with no adult companions. Companies also committed to safeguarding potential victims until they could be endorsed to waiting social workers in destination areas. In the nation’s main ports, the organization helped create task forces with representatives from the coast guard, maritime police, stevedoring workers’ groups and transport companies to profile and intercept potential victims and apprehend suspected traffickers.

2. Pop culture is a powerful mobilization tool.

Existing data is inconclusive because of the clandestine nature of human trafficking, but most experts agree that women and the youth are the most at-risk demographics. “A large, socially engaged movement is integral to the solution,” Flores-Oebanda said.

Capitalizing on the popularity of iPhones, VFF started a youth mobilization campaign called iFight. The campaign, with 5,000 members and growing, is being launched in academic institutions all over the Philippines and focuses on enlisting young “fighters” to serve as anti-trafficking ambassadors and provide preventive information to their peers, families and churches, including reporting mechanisms in cases of suspected trafficking.

Flores-Oebanda also persuaded world boxing icon and local congressman Manny Pacquiao to use his “star power” against human trafficking. Pacquiao, posing in red boxing gloves and vowing to “knock out” human trafficking, helped challenge the culture of acceptance around trafficking in a way VFF would not have been able to on their own. His speeches to legislators and civil society groups on the need for a bigger budget for agencies tasked to combat trafficking also received massive media mileage.

3. Prevention is the best defense.

While rescues and convictions are highly visible and easily measurable success markers, they need to be buttressed by preventive measures. Flores-Oebanda mentioned the case of potential victims who were intercepted in Manila and set free, but once again intercepted, two months later, under different names in the southern Philippine island of Mindanao.

“Many victims of trafficking have nowhere to go. And they live in fear of retaliation from traffickers. Unless these problems are addressed, the cycle is repeated,” she emphasized.

Survivors and potential victims are not only provided protection, counseling, and medical and legal support at safe houses and halfway houses, they also receive livelihood and skills training to reduce their vulnerability to re-trafficking upon their return to communities.

For example, out of the 42,000 beneficiaries of VFF’s STEP-UP project with Microsoft, a community-based information technology training program, 43 percent found jobs and 36 percent went back to school. Community watch groups supported by VFF also provide women and youth with opportunities to for microenterprise development.

4. Get off the bandwagon and innovate.

Flores-Oebanda explained that VFF’s goal is to develop successful interventions, get these practices institutionalized in public and private firms, then move on to the next challenge. The organization’s latest research reveals that indigenous people and disaster-hit areas are among the most vulnerable to trafficking, so the organization is working on ensuring anti-trafficking measures are mainstreamed into disaster management mechanisms and into services offered to indigenous peoples.

When reports emerged of Philippine parents being complicit in the exploitation of their children, VFF partnered with the Catholic Bishops’ Conference of the Philippines to reach more than 90 parishes and use the Church’s moral authority to build on the value of family unity and the duty of parents toward their children.

Being forward-looking is also essential. When most advocacy groups reacted to a recent exposè linking Philippine embassy officials to the abuse of Filipino overseas workers in Kuwait was to call for the sacking of public officials, VFF, on the other hand, focused on lobbying for structural reforms such as safer shelters for overseas workers, a consolidated database and monitoring system for repatriated workers, and weeding out unscrupulous recruitment agencies.

5. Know the law and practice due diligence.

Flores-Oebanda and her organization are no strangers to threats and harassment from traffickers and critics eager to put a stop to their operations. Apart from a healthy dose of courage and a strong record of results, VFF’s most valuable weapon is its well-trained staff.

In a highly charged rescue situation, especially for a crime as difficult to prove as human trafficking, a single misstep could result in the case being dismissed, or the victims sent back into the same set of risky circumstances.

VFF’s social workers are well-versed in the law and stay calm in the face of bribery and intimidation from suspected traffickers. They carefully gather evidence, coordinate with counterparts in government, and follow all official procedures to gain temporary custody over potential victims. Many times, they have been charged with “illegal detention” — a common harassment tactic — but no case has prospered because all bases were covered.

6. Diversify your donor base.

Bilateral donors are valuable, but there is an emerging group of nontraditional donors, both private and public, whose program requirements may be more flexible and tailored toward local NGOs. Some of these organizations have a specific focus on the anti-human trafficking sector, which ensures funding sustainability. Recently, VFF has been funded by a wide pool of donors like Anti-Slavery International, Katie Ford Foundation, Freedom for All, Walk Free, Skoll Foundation and the Wholistic Transformation Resource Center.

Want to learn more? Check out She Builds and tweet us using #SheBuilds.

About the author

• Human Trafficking
• sex trafficking
• VFF
• Visayan Forum Foundation

Groups fight human trafficking through awareness

By Eye Heart World on March 19, 2014

Originally posted March 18, 2014 by Kelsey Davis on http://www.wafb.com

BATON ROUGE, LA (WAFB) - Human trafficking is a $32 billion criminal industry in the US and abroad, but one group in south Louisiana is hoping to stamp it out.

Statistics show it is a crime that sucks one child into its cycle every 30 seconds.

“As the mother of two small little girls, there’s no issue that’s more important than protecting children from a life of sex trafficking,” said Melissa Landry.

Trafficking Hope started in 2007 to raise awareness and provide ways to rescue victims of human sex trafficking in the Baton Rouge area. The group partnered with another organization for an event this week aimed at shedding more light on this growing problem.

“When a girl’s being trafficked, they’re not getting the finances for that; that’s going to their trafficker,” said Tiffany Dupree with Trafficking Hope. “Yes, girls are in prostitution and that’s their choice. But really, the majority of them are in it by force and manipulation. It really is so cruel to what these girls have to experience.”

Trafficking Hope and the Junior League of Baton Rouge are hosting a screening of the documentary Nefarious: Merchant of Souls. It takes viewers on a journey around the globe and around the US, opening people’s eyes to the world of human sex trafficking.

Dupree added Louisiana is on the cutting edge when it comes to laws against trafficking. Gov. Bobby Jindal recently asked for legislation for tougher punishment for traffickers and johns and making it easier for victims to get help. Dupree said the changes have helped the state’s rating go from a C, as far as anti-trafficking laws are concerned, to an A-minus.

• Human Trafficking
• sex trafficking

US Lawmakers Explore Efforts to Stop Child Sex Trafficking

By Eye Heart World on March 12, 2014

Originally posted March 05, 2014 by Pamela Dockins on http://www.voanews.com

WASHINGTON — U.S. lawmakers are exploring ways to combat child sex trafficking, a crime that child safety advocates estimate is affecting several hundred thousand American children each year.

Law enforcement officials, child safety groups and a victim shared their views on the problem with members of a House Appropriations subcommittee at a recent hearing.

Lawmakers heard from Stephanie Vu, a human trafficking survivor who now works with the Shared Hope International and Youth for Tomorrow anti-trafficking groups.

Vu told lawmakers that at the age of 12, she was “chosen.”

She said an older boy that she met at a party lured her away from her family and into a life that included stripping at a club.

Vu said that later, the boy threw her out of his house on a bitterly cold night after she refused his demand to “sell herself for sex.” She said she spent several hours outdoors shivering and pacing the streets before finally deciding to climb into a “buyer’s” car.

“That moment changed my life forever,” said Vu. “There were three men that night and at the end of it, I couldn’t stop vomiting,” she said.

The Polaris Project, a Washington-based group that fights global human trafficking, said U.S. sex trafficking has been found in a wide variety of venues, including residential brothels, fake massage businesses and online escort services.

In a statement, the group said the average entry age into the commercial sex industry is between 12 and 14. It said children who become victims of sex trafficking sometimes encounter challenges that include isolation, criminalization and a lack of social services to help them recover from their trauma.

Cindy McCain co-chairs the Arizona Governor’s Task Force on Human Trafficking. She cited figures from the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children as she told lawmakers that child sex trafficking is a “low risk,” “high reward” enterprise.

“NCMEC also estimates that a pimp can make between $150,000 and $200,000 per child per year,” said McCain. “The average pimp has four to six little girls,” she said.

The perception of the prostitute walking the streets persists. However, Fairfax County, Virginia police detective William Woolf told lawmakers more and more child sex traffickers are actually using online tools.

“They commonly exploit social media sites such as Facebook, Twitter and things of that nature to be able to target their recruitment efforts, making them a lot more effective and efficient,” he said.

Woolf also said his department has seen an increase in trafficking activity, largely because of the Internet.

“We see other Internet-based companies, like Backpage.com, that is openly and, in some senses, legally advertising commercial sex,” said Woolf. “It gives these traffickers opportunities to advertise to the general public, these sexual services and to advertise, essentially, our children online,” he said.

However, Backpage said it cooperates with law enforcement efforts to find child sex traffickers. In a VOA interview, Backpage Attorney Elizabeth McDougall said the website is not the root of the problem with child sex trafficking.

“If Backpage shut down, the content wouldn’t go away. It would go to an underground or offshore website,” she said.

Urban Institute Research Associate Colleen Owens said law enforcement officers have had some success in curbing online trafficking by moving to shut down websites and, in some cases, by posing as potential clients to catch traffickers.

But she said in a VOA interview that a broader approach is needed to fully address the problem.

“To really tackle this issue, it involves a lot more than just using online sites to further investigate tactics,” said Owens. “I think really trafficking requires a more comprehensive multi-disciplinary approach than maybe some other forms of crime or similar to some other forms of crime,” she said.

Dr. Lois Lee is president of Children of the Night, a California-based organization that helps youth who have been victims of sex trafficking. She said law enforcement efforts alone won’t resolve these problems.

“We need people to really do something, to develop programs. Homes for kids. Schools for kids,” said Lee.

Lee also said there should be more emphasis on helping young children in unstable homes, a problem that she said could make them more vulnerable to trafficking as they get older.

 

• Human Trafficking
• sex trafficking

Texting to Reach Human Trafficking Victims

By Eye Heart World on March 6, 2014

Originally posted March 05, 2014 by Eun Yang and Alana Wise on http://www.nbcwashington.com

As the world’s technology becomes more sophisticated, so does the battle against human trafficking. The Polaris Project, a text hotline, has joined this fight and offers a quiet alternative for victims to seek help.

Texting has become the latest outlet for victims of human trafficking to alert authorities and get information on how to escape.

The Polaris Project allows victims of human trafficking to report tips and connect with anti-trafficking services in the area. It helps survivors learn how to cope with the trauma of the experience.

The service differs from other hotlines as it does not require the victim to hold any audible conversation with operators, in case they are in a position where their trafficker is in earshot of them.

Alden Pinkham, a Polaris hotline trainer, says the fear of having their pleas for help overheard by their trafficker is a common threat for victims.

Last year, Polaris launched “Be Free,” a service that allows victims to text BeFree (233733) to reach the hotline and take advantage of the system.

“We just want them to know that they can reach out to us again, as many times as they want,” Pinkham said.

That process has challenges. Despite being offered help, many victims have only a limited amount of time where they can text, and some have difficulties finding the trust to forge new relationships given their circumstances.

“There’s a trust barrier where you kind of have to do some relationship building first before you could just start diving in and asking questions,” Pinkham said.

Also adding to the difficulty on reaching human traffickers is as organizations like Polaris begin to utilize texting to stop human trafficking, it’s only a matter of time before traffickers begin to use it as well.

“Traffickers are nimble, they’re dynamic, they’re fluid,” said Brad Myles, of Polaris. “It’s a question of who really outsmarts the other.”

Despite these hurdles, Polaris continues to try to reach victims.

The Polaris Project is non-governmental, so they do not have the power to make arrests or deportations. They can, however, put victims in touch with authorities who can.

To reach the Project, call 1-888-373-7888 or text BeFree (233733) if you or someone you know is a victim of human trafficking. The hotline is available 24 hours a day, seven days a week.

 

• Human Trafficking
• Polaris Project

We must end human trafficking

By Eye Heart World on February 27, 2014

Originally posted February 27, 2014 by Jillian Correira on http://dailycollegian.com

In the beginning of February, law enforcement officers arrested 45 people in connection with human sex trafficking and related offenses in New York. On Feb. 21, a man and his wife were found guilty on charges of running a sex-trafficking operation out of their home in the Boston area. The next day, the Associated Press reported thatLouisiana local law enforcement and FBI officials had arrested 30 people “in connection with sex trafficking during the NBA All-Star weekend in New Orleans.”

And that’s just in the United States—in one month.

Human trafficking is a big, lucrative business involving 161 countries, with traffickers making an estimated $32 billion annually. While the most common form of human trafficking is sexual exploitation, it also involves “forced labor, domestic servitude, child begging or the removal of their organs,” according to the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime. According to an FBI bulletin, human sex trafficking is “the most common form of modern-day slavery,” with estimates of its international and domestic victims well into the millions, mostly women and children.

I once did a report on human trafficking in Thailand for a journalism course. It was the first time I had ever researched the topic, and it both terrified and sickened me. And in the process of learning about this worldwide crisis, it became clear to me that human trafficking doesn’t just exist on the opposite side of the globe. It is easy for us to believe that such reprehensible crimes only happen thousands of miles away. But the reality is that depravity doesn’t discriminate by country, and the United States isn’t an exception.

The New York, Boston and New Orleans examples are just a few in the ongoing string of human trafficking activity in the U.S. From Dec. 7, 2007 to Dec. 31, 2012, the National Human Trafficking Resource Center received over 72,000 interactions (including emails, phone calls and online tips) from all 50 states and Washington, D.C., that resulted in “reports of 9,298 unique cases of human trafficking,” according to a Polaris Project study.

That number doesn’t reflect the actual number of human trafficking instances in the United States, but it indicates that the scope is much larger. As many as 100,000 children might be trafficked in the United States each year, signifying that the total number of victims (a difficult statistic to research due to under-reporting and the concealed nature of the crime) most likely reaches well into the hundreds of thousands. Somewhere between 14,500 and 17,500 people are trafficked into the United States each year as well.

Human trafficking doesn’t solely exist in underground lairs on the outskirts of society; it happens in hotels, bars, restaurants, nail salons, and even in people’s homes. Perpetrators often groom their victims, especially the youngest and/or most vulnerable, by drawing them in and gaining their trust, creating a sense of dependency. Traffickers might lure victims by way of false promises to improve their lives and their families’ lives. Though this type of emotional manipulation is common, traffickers will also resort to physical and psychological abuse to gain control over their victims.

The problem of human trafficking might be overwhelming in scale, but with global awareness and action, it can be stopped in our lifetime. The U.S. Department of State offers a list of ways you can help fight human trafficking, including learning the red flags that might signify human trafficking, and being a “conscientious consumer” by encouraging companies to “eliminate slavery and human trafficking in their supply chains.” The list suggests good ways for students, parents, professors, business owners and law-enforcement officials to take steps toward creating awareness and, subsequently, a society well-prepared for action.

And every effort counts. At the Freedom Cafe, which opened just across from Totman Gym in Amherst in March 2013, donations are collected in lieu of mandated prices for products. These proceeds are used to fund the construction of vocational centers in India where survivors of human trafficking, largely women and children, will be taught job skills.

According to the most recent Polaris Project report, 39 states have passed updated anti-human trafficking laws, 32 of them in the “top-tier” of fighting human trafficking. Massachusetts is one of them. But the abolishment of this organized crime that is estimated to have enslaved more people than at the height of the trans-Atlantic slave trade requires cooperation from all 50 states and from countries around the world. Slavery still exists, and the obligation to end it falls on us all.

• Human Trafficking