How much do you know? It’s a valid question. Human Trafficking has replaced drugs as the world’s leading criminal enterprise. When you think about how rampant drugs are and of the lives close to you, that have been touched by drugs, just think, “Sex trafficking is touching more lives than drugs.” This is not a foreign problem. It is not an immigrant problem. We’re not just talking about the lady that does your nails, or the local asian massage parlor. In the US, a majority of trafficking victims are citizens. What’s scarier is that an alarming number of them are children.
This is a topic that exists on the periphery of the private investigation sphere. We routinely have to entertain the possibility that our cases have tie ins to prostitution or child exploitation. It is a sensitive subject that has impacted us all, at one point or another. For me, the impact has been two sided. The first was in discovering a subject of an investigation was producing child pornography. There’s no way to prepare for that, ever. The other side in working with families of runaways and missing persons. It’s overwhelming and frustrating to discover how little people know about the risks out there.
As much as I’d love to spend the next six weeks crafting and spelling out all the ways we are ignoring a pandemic that is sweeping our neighborhoods and schools into a blog, I would rather give you the opportunity to come learn from experts on the subject from around the country. Tomorrow, I will be joining a Spring speaking tour hosted by an organization called imPACT, at VCU. In the months that follow, dozens of speakers and I will be presenting on all different topics throughout Richmond.
For more info on the speaking tour and to sign up, visit www.impactinamericanschools.net My lecture is called “Day to Day Exploitation: A Discussion on Rape for Profit in our Communities” I urge you all to consider attending as many as possible.
For more info on trafficking in the US:
http://traffickingresourcecenter.org/
http://www.stopitnow.org/ohc-content/tip-sheet-7
The Best Resources For Learning About Human Trafficking Today
http://sharedhope.org/
To report suspected trafficking, call 1-888-373-7888 or text “help” or “info” to (233733)