Organizations and speakers gathered at North Rock Hill Church to help teach people
A girl taken across borders, about to be sold into the sex slave industry, tied up and chained is what comes to mind when the words “human trafficking” are said. While this can represent some of the cases of human trafficking, A21 campaign administrator Ali Perron, among others, gathered on Saturday morning to break down that stereotype.
Becoming Informed
The main speakers of the event were Perron and special agent FBI Shawnda Drummond.
Perron works for A21, an organization working to abolish modern-day slavery in the 21st century.
Perron made it clear from the beginning of her speech that finding a victim of human trafficking was not a science.
“Every victim of trafficking looks different. They’re not part of any specific socio-economic background or any specific race of gender. It happens to everyone, everywhere, in every city and state,” Perron said.
According to the International Labor Organization, more than 21 million people are trapped in modern day slavery. Of the 21 million, 80 percent are female and 50 percent are minors.
Drummond said, “It happens in upper class communities, lower class communities. I go to schools where they’re high performing, I go to schools where they’re low performing and I find victims and predators in all of these arenas because it’s about the demand for sex and for these pimps, it’s about making money.”
Human trafficking is a 32-billion-dollar industry, making it the second largest criminal industry in the world, according to UNICEF.
Drug trafficking is the largest crime globally, but Perron makes a point to address why human trafficking is a close second.
“You can take a drug and sell it once, but you can sell a human being over and over,” Perron said.
Signs of trafficking range from false advertisements to being trafficked by a friend. According to statistics from A21, the most common form of trafficking is through false job advertisements.
“False job advertisements can come as, you know, ‘Hey, we have a…we’re a talent agency, we think you’re beautiful, you should model for us, you should act, you should sing with us.’ Someone shows up and they take their documents, their identification and they start trafficking them,” Perron said.
Signs of prostitution used to be similar to women in heels and short skirts walking up and down a street, but Drummond says that the signs are not so easy to see.
“Often times the women that are on their stroll in Sugar Creek, they’re in sweatpants, leggings…it’s not the same as when I was growing up. It’s not highly visible like it used to be,” Drummond said.
According to Thorn, a non-profit focused on child pornography and trafficking, research found that 63 percent of sex trafficking minors had been advertised online at some point. They also found that “150,000 new escort ads are posted online every day.”
The internet has played a major role within the sex trafficking industry, making Drummond’s job more difficult.
One such base for sex trafficking is a classified advertising website called Backpage.
According to Drummond, “Backpage has made it very easy for people to use the internet for prostitution and trafficking. It’s like a fake Craigslist, a place to go and sell your boat, but no one’s selling boats. Over 90 percent of their advertisements are for sex.”
Through Backpage the use of crypto-currency, or bitcoin, makes trafficking much harder to track.
Signs of trafficking
Perron, Drummond and other organizations are working to help bring an end to human trafficking.
A21 created a “Bodies not Commodities” curriculum for middle and high school students to identify red flags with potential trafficking. They also hold a Walk for Freedom, where people gather together on the same day through the world and walk single file and hand out flyers on human trafficking. 2017 was their largest walk to date, with over 400 walks in 50 countries.
Drummond said, “Many areas of the United States, now that human trafficking is getting a voice, have created task forces and we have one in Charlotte. It’s comprised of HIS (Health Information Services), FBI, CMPD (Charlotte-Mecklenburg Police Department), the AUSA (Assistant United States Attorney) and also the DA’s (District Attorney) office.”
Organizations in attendance at the event were Lily Pad Haven, Inc., a non-profit that provides housing for human trafficking survivors; Vitamin D to the Rescue, an entrepreneurial organization that sells bottles of Vitamin D that will give five dollars to other organizations fighting against human trafficking for every bottle sold and Born2Fly, a non-profit that fights human trafficking through children’s books and a curriculum.
Born2Fly founder Diana Scimone found inspiration for her non-profit in 2001 in Mumbai, India, where she witnessed cages that held little girls who would then be sold into sex slavery.
The photo of a young girl with her arms crossed holding on to the bars of a cage, eyes staring into the camera, is the photo that changed Scimone’s life.
Scimone said, “I learned there are millions of girls like the ones held in those cages. They’re raped for profit 30 to 40 times a night… night after night after night.”
Scimone has since used that horrific ordeal to write a children’s book called “born to fly” which tells the story of a caterpillar who has a dream to fly as an allegory of child trafficking. The written book is also available as a completely illustrated curriculum available for free download at www.born2fly.org. Nearly 900 organizations in more than 65 countries have registered to use it.
Scimone’s partner, Meshelle Cox, is working on a five part module that will allow others to teach about human trafficking.
The sponsor of the event, Amy Naoum of Nao Leigh Boutique, felt that this event was something people needed.
“The whole idea was not to scare people. The whole idea was not to feel powerless. The whole idea was for us to come together as a community, get smart and just be really aware so we know what to look for, how do we protect our children and then also if we do see something, who in the world can we call.”
For information on human trafficking or help, call the National Human Trafficking Hotline at 1-888-373-7888 or text HELP or INFO at 233733.
