Human Trafficking: There is No Place for Slavery in the 21st Century

covenanthouse.org | Jul 12th 2011

I couldn’t believe my eyes last week when I read that the Village Voice in defense of its backpage personal ads (Backpage.com), many enabling sex to be sold for profit, claimed that anti- human trafficking advocates had created a panic about the “nonexistent epidemic of sexual slavery.” As President and CEO of Covenant House International, where we are in the midst of amping up our human trafficking prevention efforts to protect homeless and runaway youth from those who prey on their bodies and vulnerability for financial profit, I was aghast by the Village Voice’s comment.

The editorial claimed that the numbers frequently cited by advocates fighting human trafficking of 100,000 to 300,000 underage prostitutes in the US was junk science, inflated and based on “a flimsy study.” Instead the Village Voice cited official law enforcement data emphasizing that underage prostitution arrests are approximately 800 per year for the entire country.

So how many victims of human sexual trafficking are there in the US each year? The truth is that accurate data is hard to come by. Victims are not running out in public waiting to be counted. In fact, psychologists have found that it often takes a survivor of human trafficking four to five meetings with a mental health professional before they admit that they are a victim of human trafficking, even to themselves. The fact that homeless and runaway youth are a transient population who often stay in a shelter for limited periods of time makes it especially hard to collect data on their long-term experiences. And citing numbers of arrests for underage prostitution is hardly useful. That number only reflects cases where law enforcement chooses to intervene and victims are honest about their age, netting only a fraction of actual victims.

While I admit I do not know the exact number of victims of sexual trafficking in the US each year, I do know this; pimps are out each and every day preying on homeless and runaway youth like those we serve at Covenant House. Pimps have been known to hang out outside of group homes, drop in centers and shelters throughout our city pretending to offer friendship and love, and often food and a place to stay. Often they bring another previously homeless young woman with them, to befriend the runaway or homeless recruit and assure her that all will be ok.

The Village Voice also declared that they spend millions of dollars ensuring that only adults find each other through their newspaper, and that “The whole point of Backpage.com is that we aren't involved after two consenting adults find each other through the community bulletin board.” But even if they can successfully screen out those who are underage (and that is a big if), how can they be so sure that all the adults who use Backpage.com to sell sex are really consenting? What about the 19-year old trafficking victim who appears to be consenting, but only because she knows she has to meet a quota, or face the physical anger of her pimp? And how about the 31 year-old, who was lured into prostitution at 16 and made repeated attempts to leave through the years, but instead of freedom found the wrath and violence of her pimp? Now years later she believes there is no way out and has resigned herself to a life in his servitude. Is she a consenting adult prostitute? I think not. She is a victim of trafficking.

Ultimately, the Village Voice has a right to defend itself, but not with misinformation that belittles the tragedy that human trafficking truly is. Yes, trafficking is getting a great deal of attention these days, and it should be. It is thanks to tireless advocacy that we are finally starting to understand that those forced into sexual servitude are victims and should not be branded as prostitutes and thrown away. While I agree with the Village Voice that we must do better in documenting accurate numbers of trafficking victims, whatever number we find will be too high, as there simply is no place for slavery in the 21^stcentury.

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