What Is Human Trafficking and Why Should Austin Care?

This guest blog post is by Kyle Bailey.

When you hear “human trafficking,” what comes to mind? If you’re like most people, it’s probably the image of Liam Neeson, his voice rasping out threats against his daughter’s captors in the 2008 movie Taken.

In a couple of ways, this image embodies the misconceptions around the evil that is human trafficking. The first misconception is that it’s “over there” (international, outside the United States). The second misconception is that human trafficking always involves shipping humans from one point to another.

Human trafficking is oppressive, evil and pervasive. It’s also here in Austin, right under our noses. 

What Is Human Trafficking Exactly?

Incidents of human trafficking happen around us frequently, and usually go unnoticed because we don’t realize what we’re seeing. Let’s look at the definition:

The federal Trafficking Victims Protection Act defines the crime of human trafficking as:

• A. The recruitment, harboring, transportation, provision, or obtaining of a person for the purpose of a commercial sex act where such an act is induced by force, fraud, or coercion, or in which the person induced to perform such act has not attained 18 years of age, or
• B. The recruitment, harboring, transportation, provision, or obtaining of a person for labor or services, through the use of force, fraud, or coercion for the purpose of subjection to involuntary servitude, peonage, debt bondage, or slavery.
• Domestic minor sex trafficking occurs when U.S. citizen or lawful permanent resident minors (under the age of 18) are commercially sexually exploited. Children can be commercially sexually exploited through prostitution, pornography, and/or erotic entertainment.

Ugly, right?

Sex trafficking is the part of human trafficking that is least understood. When a 12 year old runaway comes across a pimp who lures her into the world of trading sex for money, it becomes sex trafficking, even if the pimp never “trafficks” her from point to point. Control is the key. He is keeping her under his control for purposes of trading the use of her body for money.

But This Isn’t Going on in Austin, Right?

Now for the scary part. Locally, law enforcement officers regularly come into contact with incidents of sex trafficking. The cities might surprise you:

• In April of 2011, Cedar Park Police arrested two men after an undercover officer arranged to have a girl perform a sex act for money. She was 15.
• In July of 2012, two people were arrested in Cedar Park for “Continuously Trafficking Persons” because they were caught running a prostitution ring.
• In August of 2012, three people were arrested for running a human trafficking and prostitution ring in downtown Austin. They kidnapped at least four women, took them to a hotel and forced them into sexual acts. Fortunately, the cops found the ring in time. The outcome for kidnapped girls in that situation is normally pretty bleak.

How Can Trafficking Victims Recover?

So we know it’s here in the Austin area, now what? Aren’t there agencies or organizations for these victims? This is exactly the problem. There aren’t.

When a woman is encountered in a human or sex trafficking situation, law enforcement is in a tough spot. There are no dedicated facilities to help victims of domestic sex trafficking, and the only other option is to let the victim go or arrest her. Arrest, of course, puts the victim into the legal system, which is not set up to help her transition out of the trafficking lifestyle.

Most prostitutes enter that life around age 12. Usually runaways, they often come from a dysfunctional, abusive or non-existent home life and are looking for acceptance and love they can’t find at home. This is the emotional need that pimps exploit. Pimps come in as benevolent authority figures, only to leverage “love” and support for prostitution.

The road out of this life is difficult. These girls have rarely had any experience in what you and I would call “real life:” never had a real job, never lived independently as an adult, no friends outside of “the life.” Thus, when they have an opportunity to leave, the fear of the unknown takes over and they return to the lifestyle.  It’s all they know. When you add drug addiction into the mix, the leash becomes that much stronger.

See, the pimp has become the supply of all of the victim’s needs. Deceived into believing that the pimp actually cares about them, victims are routinely seen defending their pimps before the police and others.  This is specifically because of the mental and emotional bondage that has taken place in the mind of the victim. This bondage has to be undone for them to be able to enter into a healthy life.  Having your body sold by one man to another for sex is a powerful mental and emotional trauma. It’s not easy to recover.

New Austin Non-Profit Offers Hope

Restore A Voice is a local non-profit established to help trafficking victims recover.  Established in January 2011 by Executive Director Larry Megason, Restore A Voice is in the process of planning the first facility of its kind in the Austin area, and only the second such facility in Texas.

There are many moving parts to a fully functioning transition house, including physical therapy, emotional and psychological therapy, job skills and other training, and more. Much planning and action must still happen to make Restore A Voice’s plans a reality, but the lives at stake are worth it.

Restore A Voice is developing strategic partnerships with the Central Texas Coalition Against Human Trafficking, ALLIES Against Slavery, LifeWorks, local churches and businesses, Restore Communities, Trade In Hope, the APD Human Trafficking Task Force, local judges and courts, to be as effective as possible in their mission.

You can get more information on the Restore A Voice website. There are several options on the site to get in contact or get involved.

Kyle Bailey lives in Austin and owns Frontburner Marketing, an online marketing company. He also sits on the working board of Restore A Voice.

Photos via Flickr CC, courtesy of Michael F, Anjan Chatterjee, Merrick Brown and JB London, and via Restore A Voice on Facebook.