By RANDY BARTLEY
Staff writer
Counselor Aislinn Slaugenhaupt painted a frightening scenario: “Imagine you are a homeless 14-year-old girl; pregnant, with nowhere to go.”
That gave Clarion County area law enforcement officials, health care professionals and counselors something to think about during a training seminar on human trafficking held Feb. 27 by PASSAGES, a Clarion-based nonprofit that advocates for the rights and needs of survivors of sexual violence.
The plight of the 14-year-old fictional girl was part of an exercise that Slaugenhaupt, a PASSAGES counselor, created to give examples of choices facing teens caught up in human trafficking.
“In this game, there are no good choices and no winners,” she said.
Human trafficking, as PASSAGES legal advocate Robin McMillen pointed out, is a crime in which people profit from the exploitation of children, adolescents and adults.
Sex trafficking, she said, occurs when one person manipulates another person into sex acts in exchange for something of value, such as money, food, shelter or drugs.
McMillen said while human trafficking tends to involve transporting victims across state or national borders, it often occurs in the community where the victim lives – without any travel.
By contrast, she said, human smuggling is the illegal transportation of a person or people across an international border.
Although illegal, smuggling is often a consensual arrangement. After the smuggling has occurred, the parties go their separate ways.
“It is important to note that these two crimes often intersect,” McMillen said. “What may begin as a smuggling arrangement may become trafficking if the smuggler goes on to profit off of the person they are transporting through sexual or labor exploitation.”
PASSAGES Director Marlene Austin said victims of trafficking come from all walks of life and could be foreign nationals or U.S. citizens.
“Women and girls make up the majority of reported victims,” she said.
People most at risk, she said, are children, youths and adults who are homeless; children and youths living in foster care; LGBTQ people; people of color; people who have experienced physical or sexual abuse in the past; people struggling with self-esteem; people who live in poverty; refugees; undocumented immigrants; migrant workers; people living with addiction; and youths and adults living with intellectual disabilities or mental illness.
“Trafficking can happen anywhere,” Austin said.
Common venues for sex trafficking, she said, include escort services, within homes or on the street.
Reports of labor trafficking most often involve domestic work, farming and landscaping, and street begging or panhandling.
Sex and labor trafficking can intersect in businesses, such as massage parlors, bars and strip clubs.
Austin read a letter from a female inmate to her pimp. It informed him the inmate was recruiting another female inmate.
“The inmate would have nowhere to go and could be easily exploited,” Austin said.
McMillen said although cases of stranger kidnapping that leads to trafficking occur, people who sexually exploit others through trafficking are commonly known to the children they abuse, and are often family members or intimate partners.
She said a problem in our area is drug-addicted parents who pimp their own children. She said this might not involve physical contact, but posting photos of their children online.
Austin said traffickers manipulate their victims to strategically build relationships of trust and dependence.
“These types of grooming behaviors can happen in person or online, and traffickers and their recruiters will often target young people that they perceive to be vulnerable,” she said.
There are many ways, Austin said, a trafficker can manipulate a victim.
“Often, the tactics may seem obvious: threatening to harm or kill the victim or their loved ones,” she said. “In other cases, however, traffickers may use less overt tactics, such as extortion, debt bondage, threatening deportation, withholding legal documents or influencing legal proceedings, using drugs or addiction to control the victim, isolating a victim from family and friends or making promises of love, fame or fortune.”
She said manipulation may be so effective that victims might not realize they are being exploited, or could believe they are to blame for what is happening to them.
PASSAGES, she said, will work with local agencies to create a task force to address the problem.