Trafficking in Children
Lindsay Lohan Changes Clothes, World
Published August 05, 2009 @ 12:33PM PT
Yesterday began as an average day for actress Lindsay Lohan. Visit girlfriend. Change outfit. Grab a latte at Starbucks. Change outfit. Pick up sister from airport. Change outfit. With the addition of a couple extra wardrobe changes in there, it's the sort of day any one of us might have.
But as evening fell and Lindsay's Twitter activity increased, it appears she discovered human trafficking and was outraged. She tweets:
I just heard a 14 year old victim of human trafficking was married off to a 45 year old man as her father could not repay the money he had borrowed.
Followed by
This story of the 14 year old being sold is 1 of a million. I am going to use my voice to bring attention to this global crisis.
Go Lindsay! You have just joined the ranks of celebrities who are doing something to end human trafficking. Congratulations. And if you're stuck for ideas on how to get involved, have your people call (or email) my people (which is me), and we'll do lattes, or kefir milkshakes, or whatever green-tea-infused beverage is cool these days.
Or if you prefer, you could start small, like with one Fair Trade purchase. Might I suggest these?
Dreams of America Dashed: Mary's True Story of Slavery
Published August 04, 2009 @ 01:21PM PT
Mary's story was originally collected by The Salvation Army. Human trafficking between the U.S. and Mexico can be especially fluid because of the high demand for cheap labor in the U.S. and the broad border between the two countries. Here's Mary's story:
Mary was born in Mexico. When she was about 17 years old, she was persuaded to go to the USA with the promise that she would have a better life and be provided with a job. A man promised to take her and to look after her.
However, when she arrived in the USA her life got a lot worse. She was given a job at a factory packing vegetables. But she was escorted there and back every day and was never allowed to go anywhere on her own. She was never paid for the work that she did. She was given drugs and was badly abused. She wasn't allowed to go and see a doctor when she was ill or hurt. She wasn't allowed to leave her apartment except when she went to work. The man who took her to the USA threatened her. He said that if she tried to escape she would be deported - sent back to Mexico - or hurt by the immigration authorities.
Eventually Mary managed to escape with her young son. She is now staying in a special center that looks after people who have been trafficked or abused. She is being given shelter, food, clothing and advice about what to do next. She is hoping that she will be able to stay in the United States and start a new life.
Having a child, especially a child the trafficker knows about, changes everything for victims. Most parents would do anything in their power to keep their children safe from harm. Just like victims of domestic violence will stay with an abuser if he threatens to harm the children, so will victims of trafficking stay with a trafficker. In Mary's case, she was able to escape with her child. But many victims' children are back in their home country, and the traffickers threaten to harm them before the victim can get home.
The Role of Parents in Child Trafficking
Published August 01, 2009 @ 09:00AM PT
Across the world and here in the U.S., parents sometimes play a role in the trafficking of their own children. The parents' intentions vary from the purely criminal to the completely innocent, and everywhere in between. Here are some of the common ways in which parents play a role in the trafficking of their children.
Parents Directly Traffick Kids
Sadly, sometimes, parents directly traffick their children. I worked with one case in the U.S. where a father was giving his young sons to pedophiles in exchange for beer and cigarettes. A case recently cited in the State Department's Trafficking in Persons Report involved a five-year-old sold into prostitution by her stepmother in Nicaragua. Direct parental trafficking can be as simple as a mother trading her teenage daughter to the landlord for rent that month, or as complicated as parents involved in a larger, multi-child crime ring. In my experience, the smaller scale parental trafficking, and especially in exchange for drugs, rent, food, etc. is more often the case.
Parents Knowingly Sell Children into Trafficking
Often, this is the sort of parental trafficking you hear about in the media: A destitute family in India/Thailand/Bolivia sells one child into slavery in order to feed the rest. Sometimes the situation is that simple, but more frequently it's more complicated. Parents may realize they are signing their child into debt bondage, but believe the debt can be worked off or is limited to a short time period. Parents may intend to send their child to work, but may believe he or she will be better paid, better fed, or work in less dangerous conditions than turns out to be the case. In one case, a Bangladeshi mother sold her daughter into debt bondage to work as a domestic servant but thought the debt would be repaid in 5 years and the daughter well-fed during her time working. In reality, the debt continued to grow and the girl was allowed a small bowl of rice a day, with a serving of vegetables once a week.
Parents Are Negligent or Abusive and Allow Trafficking
Parental negligence or abuse can allow for child trafficking to occur. Children may run away from an abusive home and fall victim to traffickers. They may be more susceptible to predatory pimps offering them the love they have been stared for. Parental negligence may even make it easier for traffickers to kidnap children or otherwise force them away from home. In the U.S., foster youth are extremely vulnerable to trafficking in part because of issues with parental negligence and abuse. I worked with one case of a girl who was trafficked into prostitution at 15 because she ran away from a negligent, abusive home.
Parents Are Duped By Traffickers
In some cases, traffickers trick parents into believing their children are going to school or to work, especially in another country, and will be well-paid and cared for. Sometimes the trafficker is a distant relative promising a Western education. Sometimes the trafficker is promising a job as dancer/waitress/model which turns out to be prostitution. Sometimes, once the child is gone and no money is sent home and no letter written, the parents realize what has happened. Other times, traffickers may force or forge correspondence home to tell the parents their children are safe and happy and the money is being put in a "special account". This is a common technique of traffickers, especially where parents are poorly educated or illiterate.
West Africa to EU: Major Sex Trafficking Circuit
Published July 31, 2009 @ 08:07AM PT
A report released by the United Nations Office of Drugs and Crime this week identified a major and continuous trafficking route from Western Africa to Western Europe. Most of the people moved along this route are women and girls from Nigeria, Sierra Leone, Ghana, and Cameroon on their way to be forced into prostitution in the Netherlands, Italy, Belgium and other EU countries. You can read the report here.
According to the report, this trafficking circuit is huge. It moves between 3800 and 5700 women into the EU annually, to the tune of over $200 million dollars a year. And yet despite those huge numbers, it is estimated that West African trafficking victims comprise only about 10% of the trafficking victims enslaved in commercial sex in Western Europe. If $200 million dollars is only a tiny percentage of the money being made through forced prostitution in Europe, imagine how much money exists in the industry as a whole. We're talking billions of dollars generated by the enslavement of human beings all over Europe. And when there is that much money to be had by the criminals, you can be the crime becomes harder to fight.
The system usually used on this circuit is debt bondage. The trafficker gives the victim a "loan" of somewhere between $40,000 and $55,000 to cover the costs of entry into the EU, usually including false documents, transportation, housing, etc. The trafficker then creates a "contract" detailing the method and time period of repayment. However, victims are often deceived about the nature and conditions of work awaiting them. Even if the victims know they will be engaging in prostitution in Europe, they are often lied to about the working conditions, their ability to leave or say "no", or the amount of money they will get to keep. Victims are then forced into prostitution on the traffickers terms "until the debt is repaid", which is sometimes never.
More often than not, victims are flown in (another reason we need better training for immigration personnel at airports). Adult women may be presented as the trafficker's wife or newly hired maid. Minor girls are often told to ask for asylum, after which they are placed temporarily in a juvenile shelter. It's easy for the trafficker to then take the girl from the shelter. Once in the EU, the victims are often rotated between countries or cities. This serves the dual purpose of keeping the faces (and bodies) changing for the male buyers and keeping the victims disoriented and confused.
This route is one which the international community has known about for a long time. But because of the hidden nature of the crime, it is still thriving.
The Body Shop Fights Child Sex Trafficking with..... Lotion?
Published July 30, 2009 @ 12:14PM PT
Out of all the things I thought would one day be a great tool to prevent child sex trafficking, I never would have picked hand creme. But then again, I'm not an entrepreneurial and humanitarian genius like The Body Shop founder Anita Roddick.
The Body Shop, which is based out of the UK, will soon launch their "Soft Hands, Kind Heart" cream, which is a silky hand lotion infused with fair trade organic olive oil. I have been fortunate to try this lotion out already and it's wonderful (much like other Body Shop products). Over 50% of the proceeds of this new lotion will go to programs to prevent child sex trafficking. Specifically, the money will go to support ECPAT and the Somaly Mam Foundation, both of whom work directly with survivors of child sex trafficking and who create prevention programs for girls at risk.
As of yet, the lotion does not seem to be available at Body Shop stores in the U.S. Update: The lotion is now available at stores across the U.S. as well as online. However, you can order it online here. The campaign is set to formally launch in 60 countries, including the U.S., on August 3. So hopefully by the first week in August, you can stroll into your local Body Shop and buy a tube of awesome lotion to help prevent child sex trafficking.
Does Craigslist Think We're Stupid?
Published July 29, 2009 @ 07:00AM PT
These days, Craigslist is looking more and more like a naughty child who keeps getting caught with his hand in the cookie jar. That is, if the cookie jar were illegal prostitution and pimping of children. It's time for real change.
Amid increasing pressure (some of it from you, dear readers) two months ago, Craigslist agreed to replace their "Erotic Services" section with the more euphemistically-named "Adult Services" section, as if it now offers mostly wine classes and tax preparation. However, Cook County Sheriff Tom Dart who sued Craigslist last year claims that prostitution is still thriving in the Adult Services section under a thin veneer.
According to Connecticut Attorney General Richard Blumenthal, the rampant prostitution ads on Craigslist are
"...so thinly disguised, the real question is how they are permitted to be there if, in fact, the site is doing the screening and policing that they said they will do."
The pressure on Craigslist to remove their "Erotic Services" section stemmed from several cases of minor and adult human trafficking victims being sold via Craigslist. Craigslist claims the new section has strict qualifications to help avoid the exploitation of minors, but they have not yet released what those qualifications are.
I thought, perhaps, as Craigslist claims, all these sheriffs and attorney generals are only attacking the company for personal or political reasons. So I hopped onto Craigslist to see what I could find. Here are a few of the ad titles:
- Bodywork By Black Stunning Transsexual Beauty
- $100- Super Hot Grad student for massage
- S.U.P.E.R.S.T.A.C.K.E.D.massage
- Young sweet Asian girl massage
- Sexy Sexy Sexy Sexy Sexy Sexy
In most of the ads I looked at, the massage skills of the "masseuse" were not mentioned at all, whereas their supposed ages, physical attributes, and prices were described in detail. Sometime, obvious euphemisms like "100 roses per half hour" or "200 diamonds" are used in place of dollar signs.
Unlike Craigslist, I don't think you're stupid. I think you can look at the ads in Craigslist's Adult Services section and tell if they look like ads for legitimate massages, Or if they look like the same escort and prostitution businesses, some of which were pimping minors, that have been on advertised on Craigslist since its inception. Congress has already called Craigslist on their lack of real change. Now you can tell Craigslist you see through their game too, and you're not stupid.
Interview: Human Trafficking Filmmaker Guy Jacobson
Published July 28, 2009 @ 12:00PM PT
Recently, I had the chance to chat with Guy Jacobson, creator of the critically acclaimed film Holly, about a young girl trafficked into prostitution in Cambodia. While making Holly, Guy also started the Redlight Children Campaign to raise awareness about child trafficking.
Rare in the anti-trafficking movement, Guy walks the fine line between the serious subject and being downright funny. His passionate rhetoric is punctuated with his charming, earthy Israeli accent and sharp, self-deprecating wit. It's with a joking twinkle in his eye that he says his career change from high-powered New York lawyer to anti-trafficking filmmaker was a huge disappointment to his Jewish mother. But it is with grave seriousness that he tells the story of traveling through Cambodia and being solicited by throngs of 7, 8, and 9-year-old girls. He recounts,
"'Me yum yum you,' said one of the little girls. ‘Me no have money, then mamasan be boxing me.' She meant that the madam of her brothel was going to beat her that night if she didn't return with money."
It was then Guy decided he couldn't sit back and wait for someone else to help these children.
Amanda: You mentioned that you made Holly to draw attention to the issue of child trafficking. Do you think you've succeeded?
Guy: I would like to believe that the last 7 years of my life have made whatever amount of tiny impact to put this issue more on the agenda, to make it slightly more mainstream. We've tried to use the film to get law firms and associations and corporations involved and active. I hope that people will hear about this issue because of [Holly], people who may not want to hear an academic panel about trafficking but will go see a film. If not, (he chuckles) my mother was right and I should have stayed an attorney and made more money.
Editors Note: Holly has inspired perhaps hundreds of news articles and other media pieces on this issue, so despite Guy's commendable modesty, he has made much more than a slight difference.
Amanda: One of my favorite things about listening to you speak is your use of humor. Given the seriousness of the subject matter, where is there room for humor in anti-trafficking activism?
Guy: In my case, I am just a smartass! But seriously, child trafficking is an incredibly difficult issue, and maybe the reason this issue is not discussed more regularly is that it so emotionally difficult and taxing. It is a gross human rights violation and a crime against humanity. It involves the word "sex", and it makes people want to put their hands on their ears and go "la la la!" So I use a little bit of humor; it's a way to ease people into the issue. Humor can allow people to hear it more easily.
Amanda: Sounds like between your wit and the film you chose to make, you're all about making this issue accessible to as many people as possible.
Guy: Then bottom line is you can't only preach to the choir. You can't only talk about trafficking to the people who already know about it. I realized I knew so little- the scope, the ages of the children, the location and the prevalence. If I didn't know these things, and I'm reasonably educated, then the issue is not in the media. I thought maybe I can leverage mass media to reach the masses.
Amanda: Do you have plans to make another anti-trafficking movie?
Guy: I think there are enough contracts on my life after the first one (he laughs)! When we shot Holly, at the same time we started working on a documentary. It's called Redlight, and Lucy Liu is the producer and narrator. It follows the story of Somaly [Mam] and the kids [in her shelter] for five years. We're in the polishing stages, and we hope it will be premiered in the major international film festivals later this year and released in theaters in 2010. Beyond that, as a filmmaker, I personally don't have another story to tell on this issue.
You can find out more about Holly, Redlight, and Guy's other projects at www.priorityfilms.com and www.redlightchildren.com. The trailer for his Holly is below, and it is now available on DVD on the Priority Films website.
