Sex Trafficking in the U.S.: Young Lives, Insane Profit | Yolanda Schlabach | TEDxWilmington

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not long ago I sat across the table from a beautiful young woman who told me about her daughter's upcoming birthday and she wanted to buy our gift but she couldn't cuz she didn't have any money cuz she didn't have a job because no one will hire a former prostitute with a drug record so it's here streaming down her face she told me about her only option to trick herself out for 30 bucks so she could buy her daughter a gift so if I were to ask you your thoughts at this moment about this woman I wonder if any of them would include trafficking by the end of this talk I want you to make the connection between prostitution and trafficking and I'll show you in part how it works in our nation and in our state of Delaware there are 300,000 American children being trafficked in our country every year these are kids that are in the u.s. from the u.s. being sold for sex in the US and they often grow up to be the prostitutes that we know and judge so I want to tell you story about a young girl I'll refer to as Tosha she went with her mom and grandmom to town and when they arrived mom and grandmom took her to a hotel where an older man was waiting so he could sexually assault her she was younger than 12 he paid these women her mom and grandmom so he could rape her and this is the man from Homewood Alabama Tasha's family members were her traffickers traffickers and pimps are one in the same this is familial trafficking one of various types of trafficking that happens in the u.s. sex trafficking of all kinds is occurring in Delaware now and a demand for this exists because there are thousands of John's now anyone who purchases this sex with a minor is a pedophile and a child rapist so we're going to call that what it is but for the purpose of today's talk I'll be discussing adult victims as well so I'll refer to anyone who buys commercial sex as a John so here's an example these two men are John's church pastors from Knoxville Tennessee one is a pastor for children age of birth through fifth grade and he responded to an ad soliciting sex with underage girls he negotiated a hundred dollar fee for a half an hour of sex with a female minor the other pastor was also charged for soliciting sex with underage girls and these men are not alone there were three hundred contacts made in response to that one ad placed online ads just like this one on backpage.com so I want to show you a recent Delaware Backpage search and anybody can access this many of these are individual ads placed by pimps selling girls and women for sex sometimes the girls and boys because males can be victims as well are forced to place their own ad words like nu petite or extra small our code words that the pimps use to let the John's know that they're minors so when you click on one of these ads a video clip or a photo like this one will appear and while this may not be the girl that they're actually buying it may be a random image used for bait you get the idea they are luring men with photos of underage girls and do you see how brazen the pimps are new young girl so you call the number and you talk to the pimp who sets up the time place service and cost and then there's in call and out call depending on whether the pimp travels to the John or the John travels to the pimp so by now are you asking yourselves how do they get away with this if any of us can pull this up on our computers why are these traffickers not being caught and we'll look at that in a bit but for now we're going to look at a different type of trafficking victim an adult this woman is a probable trafficking victim she was arrested in Delaware for prostitution she offered an undercover officer a happy ending at this Spa in Kent County now how do we reasonably assume that she's a trafficking victim she was the ones soliciting right she was the one offering sex nobody was holding a gun to her head and maybe not at that moment but part of trafficking is the forest fraud and coercion that occurs during the grooming phase which comes after the luring phase and we'll look at that in a bit too this is a typical room in the back of a trafficking spa these are the working conditions and often the living conditions of these women Rob Maps calm displays a total of over 90 spas in Delaware offering sex for sale and this is one of multiple websites like this and Delaware so if you click on one of these ads it includes reviews by previous John's rating the prostitutes body parts and sexual services so see at the top where it says paid to house a man may walk in and get a legit massage for 60 bucks at the bottom you can see where it says extra tip $40 that often goes for the happy ending that money gets turned over at the end of the day to the pimp to meet her quota a typical quota in a day for a sex trafficking victim is anywhere from 500 to 750 dollars a day and this is what happened when one young victim did not meet her quota that and then one night she sent me outside and the area would live to make five hundred dollars which is impossible so the earlier article speaks to the arrest of the prostitute in the spa no mention of the guys find the sex and often these guys possess a dark and disturbing mindset an attitude of perverted entitlement I paid for you I can do whatever I want to you I own your body for the next 30 minutes so who are these John's that pay for commercial sex they are from every walk of life every race and culture people you work with and rub shoulders with every day it may not be that creepy guy lurking in the shadows it might be your mail carrier or the person next to you in the pew on a Sunday morning or your in-law or your friend or your child's teacher here's a teacher from a Baltimore public charter school he trafficked a 16 year old girl he dated her for two months before forcing her to prostitute herself so he could take her money police said that the 16 year old girl was advertising prostitution online and offered to meet an undercover officer at a local hotel now she was recognized as a trafficking victim and not cited for prostitution in part because there's no legal definition of a child prostitute but there are prostituted children but what if she was 22 or 26 in Maryland she still would have been seen as a trafficking victim but in Delaware we have a lot of work to do in that regard in many states law enforcement judiciary and state agencies have received statewide trafficking training and I wish I could say the same for Delaware but that has not happened yet but it's not just their responsibility it's our responsibility we all have to dig deeper and change our filter and our state needs a paradigm shift that when we consider prostitution we have to understand that it might be trafficking any time the person is lured forced or coerced into commercial sex they're automatically a trafficking victim and that describes most prostitutes so where does this happen the US has been referred to as a land of opportunity and it is but it's also the land of opportunists so look at all the places identified in the US for probable trafficking via a national hotline Delaware is a hotbed because of the i-95 corridor so how does this start most prostituted adults begin as traffic children they are lured and then trapped and as they get older and keep having birthdays there's no viable way of escape there's nobody to help them they find themselves as adults now able to take the fall as a perpetrator cited for prostitution rather than being recognized as the victim and receiving help so back to the discussion of luring and grooming a pimple date a girl lure her into relationship she falls in love with him after he promises her attention security a future together that they're going to be a family but she has to help out and make some money so he sets her up on her first date which includes her being sold to stranger for sex and then forced to give him the money now she might agree because she wants to please him but if she refuses she may be gang raped or beaten and then forced to comply anyway so she learns quickly to acquiesce because she knows she'll be forced to do it and she may as well save herself the beating she begins to believe that what has happened to her is her fault she believes that what has happened to her becomes who she is she takes it on as her identity which then determines her behavior and that principle is true for every single one of us but her life consists of being bought and sold exploited for the lust of a stranger and the greed of a pimp and she is trapped and enslaved and surviving in life without a voice or a choice because of her perpetrator so how do these perps get away with this how does this become a 99 billion dollar a year industry and the second largest criminal enterprise behind drug trafficking because drugs can be sold and used once but a human body can be sold over and over used multiple times a day for years creating an endless supply of income until she's discarded or dies one FBI agent suggests that from the time of lure to the time of death the average lifespan of a victim is seven years they die of homicide suicide drug overdose and HIV and AIDS so I want you to look at these photos this girl is in the luring and grooming stage but this is the same girl six to seven years later does the girl here in this image seem a little more worthy of our help and understanding often what happens is by the time we see her as an adult our compassion wanes and we cover our kids eyes and we cross to the other side of the street and we feel relieved when we read in the paper that a prostitutes been arrested because we feel like our communities are safer but we have to recognize this is the same girl and it begs the question how did she end up here so how do these perps get away with selling people for sex because most of us are not even aware that this is happening so we don't report it there's no tips to the hotline er to the police our medical field our educational system and many state agencies have no idea that this is even happening so Delaware has become a safe haven for trafficking and pimps know that so how do we send a clear message that we don't want Delaware to be a safe haven anymore just five days ago law enforcement and prosecutors in Sussex County Delaware made our first human trafficking statute arrests and identified eight victims so what can all of us do to make a difference I'm going to give you three action steps to help the first one is to educate yourself so you know how to identify victims here are two documentaries that you can watch on domestic minor sex trafficking the second action item is to call your legislators and request funding for professional training and public awareness along with services and housing for victims we have up to 300,000 American kids every year being trafficked and less than 475 beds in this country for them compared to 13,000 animal shelters the third action item is to call law enforcement if you suspect trafficking along with this 1-800 number this is held by Polaris out of Washington DC their national anti trafficking organization they provided the heat map we saw earlier I've given you three action steps to help those who choose silence choose trafficking silence is complicity please consider what you can do to be a voice for the voiceless thank you

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Channel: TEDx Talks

Views: 85,920

Rating: 4.8833108 out of 5

Keywords: TEDxTalks, English, United States, Life, Agriculture, Behavior, Big problems, Body, Bullying, Cause, Children, Choice, Community, Compassion, Consciousness, Control, Development, Drugs, HIV, Identity, Illness, Relationships, Security, Sex, Slavery, Trafficking, Women, Women's Rights

Id: LNq2WS-QFcc

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Length: 14min 33sec (873 seconds)

Published: Mon Oct 17 2016

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