Hidden in plain sight - slavery in your Community: Dr. Kate Transchel at TEDxChico

I met my first slave in 1996 I was in Moscow researching a different project at the time and I met a young woman who had escaped the sex slave trade through her I met marina who told me this story they led us up seven flights of stairs into a large room there were couches against the walls and windows and men sitting on couches drinking tea talking laughing they shoved first girl in centre of room and ordered her to strip she hesitated so they beat her unconscious maybe killed her then a large woman shoved me in centre of room told me to strip I lifted my shirt for an instant and then pulled it right down I heard the ringing in my ears time slowed the room faded I said the prayer God give me wings and I ran across the room jumped over the men on couch and out the window marina woke up in the hospital in a full body cast she had shattered bones internal bleeding and head trauma she discovered that she was not in Italy as she thought but that she had been trafficked to Istanbul as a sex slave three months later she left the hospital she returned to her native village in Moldova today she walks with a pronounced limp she has chronic headaches and nightmares and she's one of the lucky ones Marina was one of the first people I interviewed when I started researching human trafficking since then I have interviewed dozens of slaves and each one has told me how rapidly and how easily they were enslaved meeting slaves sitting with them looking in their eyes hearing their stories has deeply and profoundly changed my life and while it often breaks my heart I refused to avert my gaze because I am committed to focus public attention on this outrageous crime and I want you to join with me in abolishing slavery when I first started researching slavery I thought it was something that happened to those people over there and then I discovered that slavery thrives in the neighborhoods in the suburbs in the fields and the factories of towns and cities large and small all across America and indeed California is a prime destination for slaves slaves work the Central Valley of our state I v is a major corridor for traffickers who take women and children up and down the state to sell them for sex and one of the favored handoff spots for child slaves who have been bought is located in Southern California Disneyland because it's not unusual to see an adult with several small children at Disneyland and in fact even California street gangs today are cooperating in order to maximize profits and extend the trade in human flesh there is no just over there in February of this year Chico PD and the FBI busted a brothel on this street two blocks from my house in my community the traffickers had brought young girls up from Mexico forced them into prostitution and moved them from house to house in Chico Marysville Yuba City in Sacramento they were selling the girls for $40 for 15 minutes of sex and this was not the first trafficking bust in Chico it is opening here so let me ask you how many slaves pick your food how many slaves do your nails because the nail parlors of California are notorious for enslaving young Asian women and sometimes forcing them into prostitution at night how many slaves serve you beer because the cafe cafes and cantinas and restaurants in California are known to use slave labor some of them certainly how many slaves have you seen without recognizing what you were looking at at this moment at this moment millions of people some in our community are living in fear they're being forced to work for little or no pay or forced into prostitution they are controlled by violence by threats by debt or by mental or physical abuse they're dehumanized they're treated as commodities they're bought and sold as property or they're physically constrained now most slaves in the United States are Americans and not all of them are sex slaves and while indeed 56% of those helped by California's task forces are victims of sex trafficking international data shows that the labor exploitation is about 3.5 times more prevalent worldwide than sex trafficking and in fact the US State Department has come up with a list of a hundred and twenty two items common items from 52 countries that are made by slaves typically children so if you eat chocolate drink coffee wear underwear chances are your money is supporting the slave trade in truth there are more slaves per capita today than at any other time in human history we don't know exactly how many but Kurt conservative estimates are they're about three million slaves today and it on any one day on the planet human trafficking and slavery is the fastest growing illegal activity in the world today it has already surpassed the trade in arms and it is closing in quickly on the trade and drugs it Nets somewhere around forty billion dollars a year for the traffickers and one of the reasons for that is because you can only sell a gun once or a drug once but you can sell a person up to forty times a day I know one of the women I interviewed Vicki thought she was going to a job in a bathing-suit factory in Italy when instead she was sold to a casino in Cyprus where she was forced to service 40 min a day when she was finally rescued she needed expensive vaginal and anal reconstruction ninety dollars is the average price of a slave today worldwide and that actually represents a collapse in the world market for slavery in terms of price back when slavery was legal in this country say for example in 1840s the average slave cost about five thousand dollars and in fact today slaves are so cheap and so easy to come by but they're certainly not valued as people they're barely valued as commodities they have become as abolitionist and author Kevin bales caused them disposable people sixty seven thousand dollars is the average profits that one sex slave in the United States makes for her trafficker that's one girl in one brothel and most traffickers have many more than just one there are somewhere between 200,000 and 300,000 American children sold into slavery each year in the United States in fact if you were to go down to International Boulevard in Oakland California yeah any night of the week you'll see at least a hundred children for sale with their pimps just behind them in the shadows the average age of entry into forced prostitution is 13 and as one of the traffickers said I prefer the young ones quote I prefer the young ones because it only takes about a week of sodomy and gang rape their eyes go blank and you know they're not going to try to run away greed and lust fuel the modern-day slave trade the demand for free or cheap labor the demand for illicit sex or sex with children to the traffickers these aren't people they're commodities to be bought and sold to be used up to be disposed of but each slave has a name each slave has a story and each one has a life to try to reconstruct like Mick il who is forced to work for 12 hours a day for no pay in a large construction project his owners beat him and occasionally raped him at night or Masha who at age 14 wishes that her traffickers had killed her because she can no longer stand the nightmares and she lacks the courage for suicide for 21 year old Antonio who came to the United States from Mexico on the promise of a good-paying job he watched while he was sold for $500 to a Florida tomato farmer for the Chico State co-ed whose life was ruined when she went to a party when her boyfriend took her to a party and plied her with alcohol until she passed out he then filmed her while two of his friends raped her the next day he showed her the film and he told her he would send his her parents a copy and post it on Facebook if she didn't let him pimp her out she was for sale on Craigslist for nearly six months now the people I interview they were powerless to confront their oppressors but you in this room you are not powerless and in fact you are some of the best advocates excuse me yeah it means so much to me because I know that we can change this you are some of the best advocates the slaves have today because you're here learning about an issue that has barely crept onto the radar of our society 150 years ago every country in the world adopted anti-slavery laws as a result of an international abolitionist movement that movement started when 12 men met in a bookshop in London and they decided that slavery in the civilised world is not acceptable and less than 50 years most states had adopted anti-slavery laws I challenge you to become a modern-day abolitionist and there are some concrete things that you can do the first and perhaps most important is to learn the signs every national and international agency that liberate slaves and works with victims says that the number one obstacle to ending slavery in the world today is lack of public awareness the US Department of Health and Human Services as you can see here their URL they have a website that has a wealth of information on how to recognize the signs of trafficking and slavery and what to do about it if you see them it also has a lot of information on how to educate your community it's really important that you educate yourselves and educate your friends to help end this terrible crime in fact even the FBI website says they're trafficking website says help us identify help us find victims of trafficking know the signs now all of the people that I interviewed or at least most of them were rescued when somebody noticed that something didn't look right and made a phone call all of the women that I interviewed who were rescued from brothels were rescued because one of the John's gave them his cellphone to make a call for help in the United States almost 75 percent of those who have been rescued from slavery in this country we're rescued not because they were found by law enforcement but because an ordinary citizen like you are I knew the signs of trafficking and slavery called the national hotline and a rescue was launched an investigation and then a rescue was launched here are some of the signs of trafficking as you can see here if someone can't speak for themselves if they seem to be under someone else's control if they don't have control over their documents their money their personal schedule any of those things chances are there it's a trafficking situation going back to those nail parlors if you were to walk into a nail parlor and you see the women are very hesitant to talk to you and there's a guy standing in the back keeping close watch on what's going on chances are you're looking at a trafficking situation so armed with just a little information you can educate yourself and your community and you can perhaps save lives second thing you can do is to use your money wisely you can demand slave free products by adjusting your consumer behavior we can put pressure on local businesses to become leaders in the anti-slavery movement today and there's a number of really good websites and apps that can help you monitor your consumption of slave produced goods this 1ww slavery footprint org has a great survey that month that asks you what kinds of things you do what you eat what you wear and it'll tell you how many slaves support you I'm actually embarrassed to say that I have 47 slaves working for me and that's a number I'm committed to reduce by the end of this year I began researching human trafficking and slavery in 1999 and in 1999 only a handful of people had even heard about it in fact we didn't even have any laws against it and since that time there have been more TV shows more movies more testimonials more arguments more articles more conferences more NGOs more money more Commission more investigations than ever before and the problem is getting worse and the reason is because we're doing a lot of talking but we're not doing much action on average the penalties for selling people are much less than the penalties for selling drugs if you get caught selling a human being you'll get probably on average five years and maybe serve two we need to change that we can demand better more enforceable laws also we need to work on the demand side of the equation as long as there's demand there will always be supply in a typical brothel bust that women go to jail and the men go home and if they're underage girls they go to juvenile hall where they're further stigmatized and victimized does that seem right to you that it's illegal to sell sex but it's kind of okay to buy it we also need to educate our boys that buying a prostitute is not a male rite of passage because if it's okay to buy people some of the time is it okay to buy people all of the time so we need to start asking we as a community can decide that this that trafficking especially sex trafficking human trafficking in any form is not acceptable and we can demand better laws this picture here just for an example is the actual cover of a book the title of the book is pimp ology and it is by pimping Ken and the books premise is to learn the female psychology so you can break it and to make her dependent upon you it's sort of a DIY on how to create for yourself a stable of dependent hoes and start making good money so we need to shift the conversation we need to dig lammer eyes pimp and Ho culture and then finally report suspicious activity this is a number that should be on everyone's cell phone so I'm telling I'm asking you right now to take your cell phones out I mean it take your cell phones out get them out got him okay under s for slavery dial the type in this number in yellow one eight eight eight three seven three seven eight eight eight it's right up there one eight eight eight three seven three seven eight eight eight the time that you need it now you'll have it and it might actually save someone's life and while you have your phones out type in this website WWWE the people that run the national hotline and they also run a National Resource Center for victims of trafficking they also have lots of legislation that you can add your voice to in order to bring about and into slavery on the planet today a hundred and fifty years ago we as a global community ended slavery and we did it without the benefit of social media and without the internet we can certainly do it again so I invite you to join me in making history by making slavery history [Applause]

Channel: TEDx Talks

Views: 671,115

Rating: 4.8897038 out of 5

Keywords: Slavery (Crime Type), United States, Modern Day Slavery, Kate Transchel, tedx talk, English, ted talk, ted, TEDx, Activism, ted x, global issues, Sex Slavery, tedx talks, ted talks, TEDxChico, Human Trafficking, tedx, 2013

Id: Sm3UfctR5ZA

Length: 19min 28sec (1168 seconds)

Published: Tue Dec 03 2013