Disciple: Today's Slave Trade
Human trafficking is modern-day slavery
By Lisa H. Towle
In the early decades of the 20th century, North Carolina became known as the “Good Roads State” after a successful drive to improve the state’s abysmal thoroughfares. In the early decades of the 21st century, the state’s expansive highway system continues to prove useful for many things, including something never envisioned by those early good roads advocates: human trafficking.
Despite the fact this type of commerce has the word traffic in its name, it does not, by definition, have to involve such travel. But the easy access to major roads has contributed to North Carolina’s growing problem as a highly trafficked state.
MODERN-DAY SLAVERY
Human trafficking is a form of modern-day slavery in which people profit from the control and exploitation of others. As defined under United States federal law, victims of human trafficking include children involved in the sex trade, adults ages 18 or over coerced or deceived into commercial sex acts, and anyone forced into different forms of labor or services, such as domestic workers held in a home or farmworkers forced to labor against their will.
“Compelled service” is the phrase some people in the field use to sum up the concept of what various government and law enforcement officials characterize as one of the fastest growing industries in the world. It is a $32 billion a year industry, second only to global drug-running.
An estimated 27 million people worldwide are victims of trafficking. The U.S. Department of State has estimated between 600,000 and 800,000 people are trafficked across international borders annually; about 17,500 of these people are brought into the United States. For instance, the majority of victims in human trafficking cases handled by the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) are women and young girls from Central American and Asian countries. They are forced primarily into the commercial sex industry and domestic servitude. Men and boys are typically victimized in the migrant farming, restaurant and other service-related industries. However, the FBI notes that the number of young males being forced into the commercial sex industry is also increasing.
Not all of the victims of human trafficking in the U.S. are foreign nationals, though, not by a long shot. American citizens or residents are victims, too. Nor do victims originate in only one economic sector. William Woolf, a detective specializing in human trafficking cases for the Fairfax County, Virginia, police department, sounded a cautionary note in September 2013 when addressing a two-day, statewide symposium in North Carolina on human trafficking. “There’s a common misperception about human trafficking, that it affects only poor people. That couldn’t be further from the truth. It happens everywhere and across all classes and races of people.”
“I mean, look at where I work,” added Woolf. “Fairfax County is one of the wealthiest counties in the country - the second wealthiest by some measures - and it has a highly educated population, and trafficking still happens. No one can afford to be complacent about this.”
The National Human Trafficking Resource Center (NHTRC), a public-private partnership created to combat human trafficking and assist survivors of trafficking, reported in 2013 that it had experienced a 259 percent increase in call volume between its first full year of operation in 2008 and its fifth, in 2012. In 2008, NHTRC hotline staff fielded an average of 479 calls per month. By 2012, the average monthly call volume rose to 1,721. Of the states with the most reports of potential human trafficking, North Carolina ranked ninth.
PART OF THE PROBLEM?
In fact, though the nature of organizations gathering and reporting data may vary, North Carolina consistently appears in the top ten states for human trafficking activity. The North Carolina Coalition Against Human Trafficking (NCCAHT) notes that North Carolina ranks in the top eight states in the country for factors conducive to trafficking in persons.
These factors include the state’s strategic location on the Eastern seaboard, the number of major interstate highways traversing the state (think truck stops), the large agricultural economy, the number of military installations, and the number of ports located in the coastal region. Studies have also shown an increase in human trafficking activity – commercial sex and labor exploitation - at the time and place of all manner of major sporting events at both the college and professional levels.
Though slavery is illegal everywhere, such trafficking grows, and federal, state and local authorities and volunteers continue to work to address it. One of the goals of the 2013 symposium was to encourage more effective communication among and between these entities. The Episcopal Church is also grappling with the subject. This type of bondage and violence has led to a number of resolutions at past General Conventions calling for the Church to condemn trafficking, asking for the development of educational resources for congregations, commending the anti-trafficking work currently happening, and urging continued support of legislation and action to assist victims as they reintegrate into society. The Church is also encouraging dialogue between provinces to understand the areas where trafficking is prevalent.
In March 2013, at a church-wide forum about human trafficking, the Most Rev. Katharine Jefferts Schori asked that everyone consider individual and collective responses to trafficking. She suggested setting statistics aside for the moment to instead focus first on the most basic response, the one that “concerns the image of God and how we receive or encounter someone caught in slavery. Can we befriend, welcome and accompany a person who has been so abused in the same way we’d welcome the Crucified One or the Suffering Servant? Trafficked persons are often imprisoned by shame and rejected by the wider community. They are also traumatized by their dehumanization. Building relationships is the first step in healing the outcast and caring for someone who has been treated as less than human. When Jesus charged his followers to care for the ‘least of these,’ he certainly included the trafficked.”
Lisa Towle is is the president of the Episcopal Church Women of the Diocese of North Carolina. Contact her at [email protected].
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