In one case last year, there wasn’t enough evidence to prosecute the alleged perpetrators. In the other, the victim suddenly refused to speak to investigators. “That doesn’t mean that we’re not still looking and we’re not still aware,” he says. “One of the unfortunate parts of police work is, though we try our best to be proactive and see crime and crush it, if you will, the fact of the matter is, the kind of child human trafficking we’re typically talking about is sex trade. That’s not something people talk about.” In the past three years, the Washington Anti-Trafficking Response Network’s six community partners around the state (one of which is Lutheran Community Services) identified 250 victims of human trafficking, according to Kathleen Morris, the network’s program manager. “But I strongly, strongly feel that that does not even scratch the surface,” Morris says. “Whether they’re immigrants or vulnerable adults or children engaged in commercial sex work, there’s a distrust of law enforcement, a distrust of systems in general, if there even is a way to access those things that can help protect them.” Victims of trafficking often face language barriers that prevent them from seeking help, or their traffickers threaten them and their families to keep them from speaking out. They’re isolated, unaware of their rights and afraid that their actions will result in further abuse.
“People hear ‘human trafficking,’ they think of slavery, immigration, undocumented people who are coming in.” “It is very hidden,” says Bridget Cannon, who runs Crosswalk, Voice of America’s emergency teen shelter. The kids she meets are often too ashamed to talk about it until much later, when they’re older and have moved on. “People hear ‘human trafficking,’ they think of slavery, immigration, undocumented people who are coming in,” Cannon says. “It looks a lot different for this population.” Cannon prefers the phrase “survival sex.” Without a place to stay, food to eat, or clean clothes to wear, young people — often homeless or runaways — will exchange sex for basic necessities. Young girls and boys are recruited, or “groomed” as Cannon puts it, to develop trusting relationships with predators who later exploit them. “They just want to feel loved and feel like they have a place to belong, and these guys know how to do that, take them in, give them a sense of belonging, a sense of worth, and then turn around and pimp them out and use them for themselves,” she says. “I think this is a lot more prevalent than what is ever reported, that’s for darn sure.”
Bartender's
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Dr. Thomas has been a licensed, practicing veterinarian for over 30 years. For more than a decade he has focused on alternative modalities to address pet health care.
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NOVEMBER 14, 2013 INLANDER 19