Bought and Sold: Trafficking in America | Kaylen Runyan | TEDxACU

[Music] [Music] sara was 22 when I met her she was bone thin with bleached blond hair that her pimp had dyed to appropriately suit his nickname for her his Barbie girl you see Sara met her boyfriend through a process called grooming he recruited her into a relationship they dated on and off for about two years during this process he wined and dined her he bought her luxurious clothes took her two steak dinners and as soon as he perceived her as having enough emotional investment in him he decided that it was time for her to start paying him back for all the nice things he had done for her that night Sara's boyfriend put her in a strip club her boyfriend her now pimp made sure that she made extra money for him by visiting the back rooms to go on dates with the patrons if Sara met her quota for the evening she was allowed to go home and go to sleep for the night if she didn't make enough money he would lock her in a dog cage if Sara even threatened of leaving he told her intricately how he would kill her three-year-old daughter this was just the beginning of Sara's experience as a victim of sex trafficking Josef was 27 when he came from Nashville Tennessee to Houston Texas he responded to a job ad in his local newspaper that read looking for young adults to make extra money Joseph thought this sounded like a pretty good gig so he took a bus token from this new employer it took a 24 hour bus ride to Houston upon arrival his new employer picked him up at the bus station and subsequently took him to his new co-ed dormitory where he would sleep at night and be picked up from in the morning to work Josef's employer would take a van around neighborhoods dropping Joseph and his co-workers off the neighborhoods to do magazine door-to-door sales at the end of every day Josas employer would collect all of their earnings but if they didn't meet their quota they were forced to work more hours the next day and Justus employer would reward this behavior of meeting their quota with field trips to Fiesta Texas and six logs on the weekends but this was only a fraction of experience as a victim of labor trafficking so you might hear these two stories and think that they have severely different context right yeah both of them encompass every single element necessary to create a case for human trafficking today I'm going to talk to you about what human trafficking looks like on the local and domestic level as well as ways you can spot it in your own community and finally how you can report and respond to this crime but before we get into that it's important to first define human trafficking as it obviously serves as a foundational framework for this talk so even though trafficking is not a new crime laws against it are fairly new it wasn't until the year 2000 that Congress passed what's known as the trafficking Victims Protection Act this was the very first piece of legislation to exist which made human trafficking a federal crime so the TVPA breaks human trafficking down into three elements the action the means and the purpose so human trafficking is the action of recruiting harboring obtaining transporting providing even advertising an individual by the means of force fraud and coercion for the purpose of either labor or sexual exploitation now the only caveat to this definition is if an individual is under the age of 18 and is being exploited for a commercial sex act they do not need to prove force fraud or coercion because a child can't consent to sex there's no such thing as a child prostitute only a victim of trafficking so now that we have a basis for what trafficking is I think it's important to talk about what it's not there are plenty of myths that surround this crime that abound and they Aid and the misconceptions and misinforming of society so because these are generally socially constructed misconceptions we're gonna call them fake news so fake news number one human trafficking is only an international problem the reality is that human trafficking is present in every single state in the United States and Texas alone it was estimated by the UT School of Social Work and a study done in 2016 that there are three hundred and thirteen thousand victims in Texas based on calls to the National Human Trafficking hotline polio supported that over a thousand of the calls were from United States citizens whereas over 800 were non-us citizens so we can see that it's not just an international problem human trafficking inherently is a human rights violation problem fake news number two human trafficking requires movement the reality is that someone can be trafficked without ever leaving their home human smuggling and human trafficking are two terms that are used interchangeably all the time but they are in fact two separate crimes human smuggling is a crime against a border whereas human trafficking is a crime against a person human smuggling can turn into human trafficking but again there are two different tract crimes fake news number three sex trafficking and the forced prostitution are the only forms of human trafficking like we saw in the study from UT Austin there are over three hundred and thirteen thousand victims in Texas over two hundred thousand of those victims in Texas are victims of forced labor trafficking so labor trafficking is actually just as prevalent as sex trafficking in the United States because commercial sex is already illegal it's often easier to identify and because labor trafficking is more difficult to spot it often goes overlooked and underreported because someone who's a victim of labor trafficking can be a nanny made a waiter a waitress it can look like someone in our everyday activities and fake news number four human trafficking only affects women and it only affects children this is kind of part of the glamorization of the crime we think that it only affects a specific demographic but actually the International Labor Organization estimated that it's a pretty even split between men and women where fifty five percent of women are victims of trafficking and forty five percent are men and similarly the majority of victims that we see are actually adult so seventy four percent of adults and twenty-six percent of children so I do want to say it's difficult to substantiate accurate data when it comes to victims of trafficking so we go off of what we know based on cost to the human trafficking hotline or survivors that are seen by direct service providers and this leads us to fake news number five victims of trafficking only come from situations of poverty there is no such thing as a as a perfect victim right human trafficking doesn't discriminate against the people that it exploits so someone can become a victim because they have a weakness we all have weaknesses we all have vulnerabilities so someone becomes a victim when a trafficker has access to those vulnerabilities and then exploits them now there are individuals who are more at risk or inherently vulnerable to trafficking at-risk youth like runaways so it's estimated that one in three runaway youth will be approached by a trafficker within 48 hours people who are experiencing homelessness immigrant and refugee populations and anyone with past physical or sexual trauma can also be more susceptible to exploitation and finally fake news number six traffickers are strangers who kidnap their victims the reality is that like trafficking doesn't discriminate against victims it does not discriminate against who the traffickers are as well traffickers can be family members peers boyfriends organized criminals third party recruiters we've seen trafficking occur in churches and homes and Airlines and in schools a study by Covenant House which is a safe house in New York did a study with their own survivors and found that about 36% of their survivors were trafficked by an immediate family member so a mother a father a brother a sister the next highest percentage was twenty seven percent were trafficked by a boyfriend so now that we have hopefully deconstructed what you've previously known from Liam Neeson and watching the movie movie taken let's talk about some red flags of how you can spot trafficking and your own family or in your own community sorry often times we think that trafficking only occurs in really seedy places right we're not going to strip clubs we're not going to brothels but the reality is that trafficking happens everywhere it happens in Abilene Texas so not every single case is the same but there are some commonalities that you can look for when identifying this crime so truancy perpetual running away luxury items without an explainable source of income a lot of times for minors especially if they have an older boyfriend or an older friend who is providing these things that's something to look out for tattoos are brain remember that pimps especially don't view their victims as human beings they want to brand their items because that's an that's an object to them so oftentimes they'll bring them with an image that will depict some kind of royalty so maybe it's the pimps initials with a crown on it or the word daddy or Prince more often than not multiple phones or social media accounts unfortunately with the internet comes trafficking so the internet is one of those prominent ways that traffickers are exploiting their individuals now Backpage is one of the most popular places for individuals to be sold so sometimes you might find social media accounts with sexually provocative pictures on those accounts unexplained injuries their party control of schedule and interactions traffickers also want to isolate their victims right they don't want them to be in communication or around the people that they are used to depending on because the trafficker wants that person to be completely dependent on themselves so during the exploitation time and throughout the trafficking period the pimp will continue and continue to isolate for red flags of labor trafficking like I mentioned earlier labor trafficking is very difficult to detect because it can look like an everyday job so unless you witness the physical abuse firsthand or you get to know the individual who is being trafficked it might be more difficult for you to identify these red flags but this list can kind of help you with your education of continuing to learn what to look for so again third-party control of schedule much like Joseph's story that I shared he wasn't in control of where he went or where he ate or where he slept so he worked on or lived near the premises of his job evidence of violence and an ability to speak English oftentimes for foreign national victims their traffickers will withhold their documents they'll take their visas take their IDs and then whenever they say that you know hey if you want to call the police because you don't like it here and we'll they'll deport you because I have your all your documents lack of knowledge about the community severe malnutrition or dehydration untreated disease and crime and dental visual problems as well as the security that's designed to keep workers inside instead of out so four premises that are labor trafficking their victims a lot of times they'll have barbed wire that's facing inward instead of so now that we have reached just a fraction of the plethora of information that exists on human trafficking you're probably wondering what you can do to help this is a huge crime that has been historically existent and it's not necessarily going away I'm not gonna stand up here and tell you that all we can do is pray this injustice away though I'm not gonna deter you from doing so I'm also not going to tell you that the only thing for you to do is give all of your money to an anti-trafficking nonprofit but if you want to we can talk later what I will tell you is that it's difficult to convince one of the most complex and intricate crimes into roughly 15 minutes so the first place for action is for you to continue educating yourself without continued education there is no awareness and thus we know without awareness there is no action so continue educating yourself and empowering your community members to know more about this deconstruct myths that maybe your friends have as well the National Human Trafficking hotline is your go-to resource for anything trafficking related if you get that gut wrenching feeling where you think that you see something that's off or you hear if something that might feel a little bit weird even if you don't know for sure this is the number for you to call if you want to put it in your cell phone I employer-employee to do so because this is your number to call it will go to direct service providers and law enforcement in your area it's written as a palindrome so it's easier for you to remember it's eight eight eight thirty seven thirty seven eight eight eight as soon as you see something you want to call this number as soon as possible so you can provide actionable information you're gonna provide as many details as you can it also has a texting capability so if you don't feel comfortable calling and giving out some information you can text them as well so oftentimes we live under this is an assumption that whenever something unjust is happening that it's it's not necessarily our responsibility right there's people out there that can take care of it we can kind of hang back and just learn more but the reality is that if you know about it if you see it if you hear it listen just injustice is you're better'n to where as well thank you [Music] [Applause] [Music]

Channel: TEDx Talks

Views: 18,069

Rating: 4.9024391 out of 5

Keywords: TEDxTalks, English, Global Issues, Social Justice, Trafficking

Id: oMLlCvDf1J0

Length: 13min 25sec (805 seconds)

Published: Fri Jun 08 2018