Human Trafficking – The Picture Does Not Tell the Whole Story
When people think of human trafficking, the images that come to mind are of cowering, scared and restrained bodies, involuntary victims who have been exploited and enslaved. Our reaction to these terrible images: we have to save these people.
Campaigns defining human trafficking in this way have been extremely effective in raising public awareness and inspiring legislative reform, but they only capture a small part of the human trafficking spectrum. They also create an unreasonable expectation about what constitutes a human trafficking victim.
The reality is that the vast majority of human trafficking victims in the United States are not young foreign children held in captivity: rather, they are troubled runaway teenagers, home-grown American citizens who have been manipulated by pimps and other predators. These children are damaged and vulnerable – according to the Children’s Assessment Center, nearly 90 percent of human trafficking victims suffered prior child abuse. Often these children don’t know that people having sex with them whenever they want is wrong much less illegal.
These are “messy” kids, which makes it less likely that society will protect them. This vulnerability makes them easy prey for predators, who select the weakest and most damaged children.
While successful at raising awareness, the human trafficking campaign has actually made convicting human traffickers much more difficult. At trial, jurors expect to hear a story of rescue and redemption, but often instead find themselves listening to an overly-sexualized child with a false sense of control, who maintain, “I chose this life. I am not a victim.”
This is not true. These girls (and boys) are victims who need our help, even if they are not asking you for it.
Their misplaced loyalty is understandable in context. Vulnerable, damaged and yearning for attention, they are groomed by their exploiters with promises of love, and often refer to their pimp as their “daddy” or “boyfriend,” ceding control over their lives in exchange for affection and security. It can take years to break these bonds.
There is little incentive for traffickers not to exploit these children. According to the Texas Human Trafficking Prevention Task Force, many pimps have gotten out of selling drugs and into selling humans. Unlike a drug, you can sell the same human over and over and over again.
The children pose little threat to them because effective placement and counseling resources are limited and because they deny the abuse. Children commonly escape back to the streets and refuse to attend court proceedings.
Since creating the Human Trafficking Section in 2013, the Harris County District Attorney’s Office has identified over six hundred cases related to human trafficking. Each of these cases requires extensive and careful police investigation and long-term counseling and rehabilitation for the victim.
This requires money, time, and commitment. To get there, we have to define human trafficking beyond the sad and shocking images we see in campaigns. We have to be just as ready to welcome home and protect our most vulnerable and compromised children, no matter how unsympathetic they appear to be. After all, a person cannot be redeemed without first having been given the chance to be redeemed.
Posted by on 28 Jan 2016