By David Triana
It is sometimes easy for us to think that terrible things like Human Trafficking are issues that affect “other places”, not our own hometowns, but the reality is, it occurs in cities and towns all across Florida. It affects both adults and children, men and women, and people from all parts of the United States and around the world!
According to the U.S. Department of Justice, while there is no defining characteristic that all human trafficking victims share, human traffickers normally prey on individuals who are poor, vulnerable, living in an unsafe or unstable situation, or who are in search of a better life.
Human trafficking is also known as trafficking in persons and many do refer to it as “the modern-day slavery”, and is a crime that involves compelling or coercing a person to provide labor or services, or to engage in commercial sex acts.
The coercion can be subtle or overt, physical or psychological. The exploitation of a minor for commercial sex is human trafficking, regardless of whether any form of force, fraud, or coercion was used.
Sex trafficking has been found in a variety of venues within the sex industry, including street prostitution, fake massage businesses, strip clubs, and escort services.
When it comes to labor trafficking, it includes settings like domestic work, small businesses, larger farms, and factories.
The National Trafficking Hotline is a great resource for data related to sex and labor trafficking in the United States.
Within the United States, according to data from the National Human Trafficking Hotline, Florida had the third highest number of human trafficking cases in 2019 with 896 reported cases. The hotline’s statistics show a steady increase each year since 2015.
Most of the human trafficking cases have been reported in California (1507), Texas (1080), and Florida, according to the hotline.
The hotlines data is based on the contacts, i.e., phone calls, texts, online chats, e-mails, and webforms, received by the hotline.
Within those 896 cases in Florida, 172 were minors. The data also showed that 640 of the total reported cases involved sex trafficking and 128 involved labor trafficking. A great majority of the cases involved females…734!
Because many cases do go unreported, it is easy to believe that the actual number of human trafficking that occurs in the United States is higher than the data shows.
The pandemic, according to a report by Polaris, compared the hotline activity in three periods in 2019 and 2020 and the analysis indicates that the number of crisis trafficking situations has increased by 40 percent.
The analysis compared a post-shelter-in-place period to two deliberately chosen pre-shelter-in-place periods.
Crisis situations are those in which some assistance, such as shelter, transportation, or law enforcement involvement, is needed within 24 hours.
Human trafficking affects us all in one way or another and is on-going around us in small, medium and large cities and towns and throughout our nation and world.
If you are a victim or suspect someone is a victim of trafficking, contact the National Human Trafficking Hotline:
– Call 888-373-7888, Anti-Trafficking Hotline Advocates are available 24/7.
– Text HELP or BEFREE (233733)
– e-mail: [email protected]
– Chat online: https://humantraffickinghotline.org/
The Covenant House website has related information and locations of shelters throughout the United States, Mexico, and Central America: https://www.covenanthouse.org/homeless-shelters#32566
