I’ve heard multiple times about how Houston is a big hub of human trafficking, since we are a big city with two airports, a port, and near Mexico. There’s an organization named Elijah Rising that has a Museum of Modern Day Slavery and has a awareness raising van tour, to make people more aware of the issue. Some in my Bible study thought it would be good for our group to do, so we went there last night and took the tour.
The tour guide gave us some info about the sex trafficking industry and all the horrors, and how they do interventions to get brothels shut down and try to get the women out, and it was informative. But he also pointed out a Women’s Clinic that was shut down and how that was such a blessing since there was a terrible abortion doctor doing terrible things there, and that’s not true. And pointed out some statues at a strip club we went by, and how they are pagan idols, and I wasn’t quite sure of his point of if they were being worshiped or if they were demons that were being fought. And also said something about how widespread pornography use is, and how inevitably looking at porn means you’ll start wanting more and more different porn, and how it escalates, and how lots of people go to the torture website Kink dot com. And then later he said something about how the group originated, which was out of some other group that was started at the International House of Prayer. And I know that name because I’ve read about it before as being somewhat culty and having bad influences on politics.
So anyway, after hearing the tour guide say some crazy stuff, and hearing about the group’s origins, I couldn’t help but start questioning other stuff he said. I know that human trafficking exists and is obviously terrible, but I was wanting to know the real scale of it. And also, he was conflating brothels and strip clubs a lot, and saying that often women are brought into strip clubs by their pimps and made to work, and while I’m sure that does happen, I was wondering how common that really is.
TLDR: Does anyone have any info, or links to info on how bad human trafficking is in the US? And does anyone know of any good, non-crazy organizations that are trying to fight it that I could support?
Holee shit. That tour guide’s entire spiel reminds of that old joke:
A man goes into Confession and says, Bless me father for I have sinned. I have cheated on my marriage.
The Priest says, Was it with Mary?
The man says no.
The Priest says, Gwen?
The man says no.
The Priest says Maybe it was Emily?
The man says, No Father, but thank you for all these great leads!
Seriously! Your tour guide just gave a great list of “stuff to do”. I never even heard of the website Kink dot com.
As to your point about human trafficking…it would be nice to have some accurate figures. People really make it sound like human slavery is happening all the time, everywhere, which I am prepared to believe is a possibility, but it’s very hard to get stats that aren’t over dramatized or under dramatized, as the case might be.
It was strange, because one of the people who recommended the tour said that they take you around and you realize that it’s in all these places you never noticed or never would have thought had human trafficking. But they actually just circled around fairly close to their office (which was a former brothel), in this shady area, and it turns out that shady looking businesses can actually be brothels. Sad, but not mind-blowing.
You could use the tour to get some tips on how to find the brothels, and how to distinguish legit massage parlors from fronts for trafficking, but you’d have to be the most jaded person to hear about how the women are treated to then want to go find and use their services.
They did say upfront that it is difficult to get accurate statistics on human trafficking, which is understandable. But I’m hoping someone has some estimates from a legit source. And also more info on the links between trafficking and strip clubs. I tried looking up some info and stumbled upon some Cracked articles, that were saying there is too much violence but that a lot of women and men choose to be strippers or sex workers because of the good money. That wouldn’t be the case for women trafficked into the US, but it does make me think that all the strip clubs in Houston aren’t filled with women forced to work, unlike how the tour made it sound.
It’s not sex trafficking, but human trafficking and enslavement nonetheless is (was?) endemic in some spheres of agribusiness. Tomatoland is nominally about how the fruit itself has changed, but more interesting to me were the stories about what amounts to slavery and abuse in the fields.
It looks like the FBI has just started to track this sort of data, so either it’s only happening in Texas and Illinois or there’s a number of states that aren’t yet on the ball for tracking down and dealing with trafficking. But anyways, here’s an FBI report:
I have a feeling that these guys have a very broad idea of what constitutes “human trafficking” and it probably encompasses any and all kinds of sex work. They probably would count any woman who gets into being a stripper through unfavorable financial circumstances as coerced or something like that.
I’m pretty sure the government is more concerned with things like women being held against their will and forced to engage in that sort of business, not with women who decide to become strippers or hookers of their own free will, and just don’t like the idea.
New York Times columnist Nicholas Kristof has made the eradication of human trafficking a life project of his. I don’t have any cites at my fingertips, but if you try to research all his work in this and all his columns and other writings, you might find some useful and credible stuff.
I’ve been meaning to ask a question here about human trafficking. Namely - why does it seem to be a huuuuge issue to evangelical Christan groups but you don’t really hear about it otherwise? I have a high school friend who goes to a “megachurch” and if she’s not posting on Facebook about homeschooling she is posting about human trafficking. I don’t see anyone else talking about it, yet it is a shocking and serious thing. Most of my friends are Liberals and we’re all in to Human Rights and stuff but no one thinks too hard about human trafficking.
Do the evangelicals blow it out of proportion? Are they scaring Liberals away from the cause?
Not just sex work, but people who do all kinds of non-volunteer work unwillingly and without pay. Agriculture, manufacturing, lawn care, and housekeeping (private or commercial) seem to be the biggest culprits.
I have heard a counterintuitive statistic. It has been said that human trafficking has increased in places where prostitution has been legalized. I sometimes wonder if law enforcement agencies start spending more time examining human trafficking crimes rather than just arresting prostitutes and clients.
Personally, I think we should absolutely legalize prostitution. Certainly it would be a lot easier for a enslaved prostitute go to the authorities if prostitution was legal. I just wonder if there is an agenda to this or whether people are actually horrible enough to go to an enslaved prostitute rather than a legal one.
Agricultural work, manufacturing, lawn care and housekeeping are all legal, and yet you have people trafficked to work in them. In places where prostitution is legal, you cannot assume that the (legal) prostitute that you patronize has not been trafficked. It seems that the social and economic status of the occupation is a bigger factor in the likelihood of trafficking occurring than the legal status. It may indeed be easier to get away with trafficking sex workers when sex work is decriminalised, since it’s easier for sex workers not to come to the attention of the police.
As for it being easier for a trafficked sex worker to go to the authorities if sex work is legal, I don’t know but I suspect not. The sex worker’s biggest fear may not be that she will be prosecuted for working as a prostitute, but that she will be deported and/or punished by those who trafficked her. Legalising sex work does not make these concerns go away.
Well, to actually put out some numbers: I work with non-profit agencies that resettle refugees, and in the same way that they administer programs of HHS for refugees, they also administer an HHS program for victims of international trafficking, called TVAP. The same case managers that work with refugees also work with those victims of trafficking. They are not allowed to say which clients are part of the TVAP program, because confidentiality is extremely important, in light of possible retaliation, especially toward those who might testify, but they do say that it’s a much smaller case load. The U.S. will accept up to 85,000 officially designated refugees this fiscal year, but in comparison, it’s estimated that about 17,000 people are trafficked across the boarder each year.
That would be slavery though. What I’m saying is that I suspect that the OP’s tour guide has an overly wide definition of “slavery” that would encompass anything from the actual, classic human trafficking type cases, to a woman involved in sex work, even willingly, or at least non-coercively. I suspect that the evangelical crowd’s sex horror/fetish implies that ANY sex work is tantamount to slavery.
Otherwise, why would they have taken the OP by several places that aren’t related to human trafficking and mentioned websites that (presumably) aren’t related to it either, except that those businesses and websites are ones that they find odious and are being lumped in with (IMO) more serious human trafficking.
It sounds to me more like a “OMG! Sex work in Houston! Bad! See how bad!” kind of tour to me.
Given its illicit nature, it is naturally difficult to nail down the scope of trafficking, but here is some of what we do know:
Every year, at least 100,000 AMERICAN CHILDREN are sexually exploited through trafficking (Shared Hope)
–this estimate has undergone various iterations, but given the expansive definition of trafficking, extrapolating from other information, etc., this seems a conservative number
1 in 5 ENDANGERED RUNAWAYS are likely victims of sex trafficking (2015 National Center for Missing and Exploited Children)
–Note that this is consistently increasing, from 1 in 6 (2014) and 1 in 7 (2013) and 1 in 8 (2012); This number has tripled since NCMEC started comparing missing children to trafficked children
$150 BILLION - The estimated annual revenue of human trafficking worldwide, making it the second largest – and fastest growing – criminal industry (International Labour Organization, 2014)
–“Globally, two-thirds of the profits from forced labour were generated by commercial sexual exploitation,” says the report, “amounting to an estimated $99 billion [U.S. dollars] per year.” [more PEOPLE in labor trafficking, but more MONEY GENERATED from sex trafficking]
–No reliable estimate for within United States alone
Obviously our organization focuses on minors, but hopefully this at least helps with some of your “scope” questions…gets a lot murkier with adults, so the most reliable numbers are around minor anyway, as the law makes that cut-and-dry that it’s always trafficking. What we have beyond that is Maryland-specific…the task force within your state should have more localized information. Following is a great link around “hub” claims: http://www.rebeccabender.org/blog/2016/2/16/3-reasons-youre-not-the-busiest-hub
I’ve simply tried to provide some of the more reliable information out there, with citation, so for more information on that one, you’d need to go to the source, the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children (NCMEC): http://www.missingkids.org/home
Should also be noted that with statistics that are newly collected, the increase could obviously reflect our greater awareness and reporting and not necessarily an increase in trafficking itself…it just may have been under-reported in previous years…
Problem with getting any real figures is that there are disputes about definitions and even if you agree on that, measuring is difficult. Not in the least because many individuals that are considered trafficked, don’t feel that is the case. In the UN definition it is explicitly stated that it doesn’t matter whether the victim considers himself/herself a victim.
As a result most numbers are put forward by parties that have an agenda (from both/multiple sides) which gets requoted a lot by groups with a similar agenda and discredited by groups with a different agenda.
Thanks for the information so far everyone, and keep it coming if anyone has anymore. I understand that it is difficult to get accurate numbers, based on how you define trafficking. I’m hoping that the Washington Post article is true, that the 100,000 kids statistic is an overblown one. But if human trafficking is as big as some of the organization say, then I don’t want to ignore a real problem that’s going on.
Yeah, that’s true. One of the Cracked articles I read mentioned that sex workers had a higher than expected satisfaction with their job (something like 40%, I don’t have the cite right now), and rightly pointed out that’s there are a lot of people unsatisfied with their office or retail jobs.
The tour guide did say something about how predatory pimps are, and how they’ll go to malls or wherever and look for groups of teenage girls, and not talk to the prettiest one but to the second prettiest one because they can be more manipulated. And how the girls that haven’t been getting affirmations from their dads are more likely to fall for the compliments from other men. And wow, the more that I write out what was said the more it sounds like Christian urban legends or from Chick tracts or something.
If people are being manipulated into the sex industry, and kept there not by force but by abuse, then that is still terrible, but I don’t know how often that really is the case.
Yeah, I’m starting to wonder that too.
I had been a bit concerned about the tour being like that. Like I had heard of tours going through the devastated parts of New Orleans after Katrina to gawp at the destruction and the people dealing with it, and I was kinda concerned about the tour being like that. Like it’s a way to get your thrills by driving through the shady parts of town before going back to your nice safe neighborhood. I don’t think that’s the only purpose of the tour, but that is probably part of the draw for some people at least.