The National Trends and Services Facet of The New Haven Chapter of The Links Incorporated submitted this article.
Though January as National Human Trafficking Prevention Month might have passed unnoticed by many Americans who are not aware of the severity of the problem, President Joe Biden has reaffirmed the federal government’s commitment to stop human trafficking in all its forms wherever it occurs. That is a good thing for a scourge that is equivalent to modern-day slavery, forcing those caught in its snares into extremely exploitative situations, such as grifting, hiding, transporting, or taking a person for sex, labor, or organ harvesting.
As members of the New Haven (CT) Chapter of the Links Incorporated, one of the nation’s oldest and largest women’s volunteer service organizations dedicated to enriching, sustaining, and ensuring the culture and economic survival of African Americans and other persons of African ancestry, we are deeply concerned about the impact of human trafficking on our families and community.
We are business and civic leaders, educators, doctors, health care providers, lawyers, elected officials, and activists. More importantly, we are women, mothers, aunties, and as Black women, often the moral compass of this country. We seek to abolish this modern-day slavery and ask that you become abolitionists, too. We all have the moral obligation to prevent human trafficking. We need to support individuals who have experienced it and hold individuals and systems engaged in this heinous practice accountable. And, we have evidence-based ideas to tackle this public health problem.
Human trafficking is a hidden crime, often going unnoticed. It might be shocking to some that 24.9 million people worldwide are trafficked at any given time, and 10,583 cases of human trafficking in the United States were reported to the National Human Trafficking Hotline in 2020, and that’s likely a major underestimate. That is because human trafficking usually relies more on psychological than physical violence or abuse. For that reason, it is harder to detect, but no less harmful. The truth is human trafficking often has devastating serious mental and physical health effects.
Human trafficking is one of the fastest growing and lucrative criminal enterprises in the world. Using popular online platforms, such as Fortnite, Snapchat, Facebook, TikTok, and Instagram, unsuspecting and defenseless children and adults are lured in. Predators capitalize on children’s unstable personal situations, promising them a better life and non-existent employment. Traffickers have particularly prospered during Covid-19 due to an increased online presence of children and financial uncertainty, as well as forcing victims to remain in the household with their traffickers.
The most vulnerable prey are our children. According to Connecticut’s Human Anti-Trafficking Response Team, between 2016 and 2018, approximately 208 Connecticut youths were trafficked — 90% were girls between ages two and 18 years.
Human trafficking does not discriminate based on economic status or race and ethnicity. In Connecticut, African American children represent 21 percent of victims (with rates rising), Caucasian children 31 percent Hispanic/Latino/a/Latinx children approximately 37 percent, with the remaining 9 percent of victims multiracial.
Preventing human trafficking requires education and can start with school and community programs, dispelling myths for children and their parents and training in online safety. Such programs can teach children the importance of healthy relationships, safe dating education, coping skills as well as how to safely report suspicions of trafficking.
No organization can eradicate child trafficking alone. Our lack of a coordinated response across communities, educational settings and health care systems has allowed this form of slavery to thrive. We need to help the current organizations fight human trafficking, by supporting them fiscally and by educating them. Teachers, school bus drivers, counselors, and health care workers encounter children who are being trafficked, and thus are in a unique position to identify and provide support.
For example, school bus drivers often have the same route for years and get to know the children. Some warning signs to teach them that may indicate trafficking are frequent absences, unkempt or disheveled appearances, bruises, tattoos, behavior changes, appearing malnourished, a child meeting unknown people at school or the bus stop, and signs of drug addiction.
Indeed, Truckers Against Trafficking, established in 2009, has produced educational videos available on their website for school bus drivers and private bus companies, called “Busing on the Lookout.” The videos illustrate how school bus drivers can observe if a child seems fearful and where a student is going when they leave the bus. If the bus driver sees that there is an unknown person waiting for the child and what type of car the person meeting the child is driving, then they can report the situation.
We also can call on our health care organizations to provide annual universal training on human trafficking. Let us call on all our community health centers, hospitals and centers for health care education to provide universal provider training in learning the risks and indicators of human trafficking.
The U.S. State Department offers 20 ways parents, schools, journalists, business persons, lawyers, faith-based communities, health care providers, youth, and all of us can help fight human trafficking. This includes financially supporting anti-human trafficking organizations, providing legal services to individuals experiencing trafficking, learning how traffickers target and recruit young people, and meeting with and/or writing to your local, state, and federal elected officials to let them know you care about combating human trafficking and ask what they are doing to address it..
We must abolish the enslavement of children. The health of our society’s future depends on it.
If you are in the United States and believe someone may be a victim of human trafficking, call the 24-hour National Human Trafficking Hotline at 1 – 888-373‑7888 or report an emergency to law enforcement by calling 911. Trafficking victims, whether they are U.S. citizens or not, are eligible for services and immigration assistance.
You can also text the hotline at 233733. The National Human Trafficking Hotline website also has a national referral directory which allows you to filter by need, location, and demographics.
Bookmark the Cyber Tipline,so if you see something online that may involve an exploited child or trafficker, you can then report it.
For additional resources you can contact the New Haven based nonprofit Love146.
Submitted by:
Cindy A. Crusto, PhD, Associate Dean for Gender Equity and Director of the Office for Women in Medicine and Professor (Psychology), Department of Psychiatry, Yale School of Medicine.
Jamil Harp, MD, MBA, Director of Women’s Health, Cornell Scott Hill Health Center.
Elizabeth Hilton, JD, MPA, the owner and President of Jade Consulting Services, LLC.
Tamiko Jackson-McArthur, MD, pediatrics specialist and owner of New Haven Pediatric and Adolescence Medical Services.
National Trends and Services Subcommittee, New Haven (CT) Chapter of the Links, Inc.
Thank you to the NHI for this very important article and including ways everyone can help to defeat human trafficking.