FBI report- Today's slave Trade

The FBI recently released an online report on human trafficking. Accompaning this story was this startling image (picture pending) showing an older white male negotiating with a Thai woman over the terrified little girl clinched to her arm. The caption read "the man left with the girl and the trafficker left with her payment" (Photo courtesy of the U.S. State Department).

Let this image and the little girl who could not be any older than 9 years old, be embedded in your mind. Then to fully understand the severity of the human trafficking epidemic, allow yourself to recognize what is next for this innocent child.

The FBI's piece Human Trafficking: Today's Slave Trade gives facts on trafficking along with ways the FBI specifically addresses human trafficking.

Some basic facts highlighted in this report include:
- Most of the women and girls trafficked are from Central America and Asian countries. Most are forced in to the commercial sex industry and many others are placed in service-related industries.
- Here in Atlanta, nearly 90% of trafficked women and children are African American, as recorded in Mayor Franklin's report on sex trafficking Hidden in Plain View.
- The FBI states that women are not the only ones that fall victim to this crime. There are a rising number of male victims being forced into the commercial sex industry.
- Many victims are kidnapped but even more are lured into the industry with promises of a better life for them and their families. An Anchorage man was arrested in February, told the article, for prostituting under age girls, mostly runaways. "He controlled them by getting them addicted to crack cocaine, confining them to a small closet for days at a time, and beating them."

How the FBI addresses human trafficking:
-Participating in joint law enforcement task forces (there are up to 30 such task forces around the country right now);
-Using intelligence to identify traffickers and gain insights into how they conduct their operations (i.e., finances, logistics);
-Looking at possible human trafficking elements in cases initially identified as human smuggling, Internet crimes against children, and/or sex tourism matters; and
-Perhaps most importantly, working closely with trafficking victims—many of whom don't speak English—to enlist their help in prosecuting their captors AND to make sure they get the support they need to cope with the horrors they've been through and get back on their feet.

The report states in the Fiscal Year 2007, the FBI launched a total of 119 human trafficking investigations, made 155 arrests, and filed 63 complaints. Ninety-one information/indictments were filed in our human trafficking cases, and their investigative efforts resulted in 57 convictions.

Author: Miranda