Rethink Trafficking
▲ Photos by Susie Johnson.
Editor’s Note: This is one article in a series of reflections on the United Methodist Women-organized seminar, “Hands that Heal: Human Trafficking Training of Trainers” in August 2009.
By Brenda Lopez*
This training, co-sponsored by the Women’s Division, General Board of Global Ministries of the United Methodist Church and World Hope International, was phenomenal. I can honestly say that I learned so much more about human trafficking by having the privilege of attending this “Training of Trainers.”
When we hear the term, human trafficking or trafficking in persons (TIPs), we think of foreign nationals, taken by force, threat, coercion or fraud from their country to another country for forced labor or in the brothels of the sex trade industry, in domestic servitude or other work that is most often unpaid. We may think of debt bondage.
Learning new facts about human trafficking, it is time for us rethink the phrase trafficking in persons and the interchangeable phrase, human trafficking. We have a huge problem here in the United States with Domestic Human Trafficking. This was one of the educable moments for me during the training. I found the numbers astounding: 200,000 children born in the USA are trafficked annually. These youth are primarily taken for commercial sexual exploitation. Eighty percent of people trafficked are women and girls and half are minors, under the age of 13.
The federal laws, The Trafficking Victims Protection Act of 2000 (TVPA) and its 2003, 2005 and 2008 reauthorizations, seek to combat human trafficking; but unless you have been involved with the growing number of groups and individuals that are working to combat this scourge, you know almost nothing about human trafficking let alone the laws. I learned that a person under age 18, who performs a sex act, is considered a victim of human trafficking, even if there is no force, coercion or fraud. How many law enforcement agencies are aware and recognize that a teenaged prostitute is to be viewed as a victim and offered services rather a jail cell and their actions criminalized?
To learn more about the definitions of human trafficking, how to recognize trafficking and to find resources and Bible studies, click here. Contact your social action coordinator to find out how you can organize a training program in your community. |
I learned, or maybe felt, so much that I am having difficulty putting it to words. Sister Dorothy, a nun with the Sisters of Providence, first introduced me to the very real problem of trafficking about six years ago. Since that time, I have attended trainings in Baltimore, Maryland and in Natick and Springfield, Massachussetts. I began subscribing to an online newsletter, Stop Trafficking, and began inserting information and facts about trafficking into my trainings. When I started to go to the healthcare clinic for the homeless, I met a woman who is a victim of sexual exploitation trafficking. I have been doing work to combat human trafficking for several years now and I am still amazed that this takes place in front of us and we don’t notice it. I am more amazed at how much we don’t know and how information is not accessible to the average person.
The training hosted by the Women’s Division was very intensive and the presenters and trainers had a wealth of information. They were from different fields, with a common goal of combating human trafficking. In Atlanta, they have formed a multidisciplinary task force. The task force members keep their agencies informed so that law enforcement, social service providers, the medical community and federal agencies are all sharing pertinent information to help the victims of trafficking. Atlanta police officer and member of the task force, Sgt. Ernest Britton of the Child Exploitation Unit, shared that in one year of operation, over 50 girls under the age of 18 have been rescued from prostitution within Metro Atlanta. I learned that there are only 37 beds for girls in the state of GA and none for boys.
Eighty-five percent of prostitution takes place on the internet. Melba Robinson of the Juvenile Justice Fund, CEASE Program, (Center to End Adolescent Sexual Exploitation), who works with rescued girls, explained the process to us in no uncertain terms. It was difficult to hear that 90 percent of the teens come into the program with at least two sexually transmitted diseases (STDs). Many suffer from Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) and most have numbed their pain with alcohol and other substances. Many of the girls are branded on their neck, arms/hands, breast and backsides. This brand is to let other pimps know to whom she belongs. The pimps put a money quota on each girl that she has to bring in or stay out in the streets until she has made her quota.
Lisa Williams, Executive Director and Founder of Living Water for Girls, an organization she began with a group, Circle of Friends (COF), that she founded in 1999 inspired us with her work and her passion, compassion, advocacy and activism for those yet to be rescued from commercial sexual exploitation (CSE). In September, COF will open a residential and therapeutic program for girls aged 12 – 17 who are victims of CSE.
Inspired, I thought about how to bring this message home with me and to be able to use the biblical reflections, passages and examples given as part of the training. I will continue many of the things that I currently do but I want to be a change agent for women and girls caught in the terror that is CSE, Human Trafficking or TIP. I want United Methodist Women to join in this struggle for life.
I will tell you all something, when we hear the words that are in this article, when we read about the lives that it touches, we, women of faith, lift them up in prayer as our compassionate hearts go out to those who have become market commodities. From the moment I reached Atlanta for this training, I knew that God has called us by name. United Methodist Women, we will heed this call from God. We as women in mission can do no less than to take this mission message forward to all of our people and to find a way in which you can help: writing letters to legislators, speaking with friends and family members, being and staying in prayer, preaching a sermon, leading a group discussion, making a quilt or throw for a girl in crisis, and so many other ways. I ask that you heed the call. I will. God has called me by name, and as a United Methodist Women member, I will answer. Join your hands with so many others that are practicing to have “Hands That Heal.”
To learn more about the “Hands that Heal” conference and United Methodist Women’s work on ending all forms of human trafficking, click here.