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E. Benjamin Skinner speaking at the DAYTON HUMAN TRAFFICKING ACCORDS 11-09-09
Author condemns price on human life
UNIVERSITY OF DAYTON - FLYER NEWS
Stephanie Vermillion - News Editor
November 12, 2009
Day one of your new job and the nerves of what to wear, how to act and which briefcase to carry have you stressed out to the point of illness. Consider yourself lucky.
As many as 27 million people worldwide have never faced such a situation because they are victims of modern-day slavery. Most are taken into it unknowingly. They think they're on their way to a new career and a better life. Instead of the doors of success swinging open for them, the doors of vehicles filled with human traffickers sentence them to a life that can only be described as hell.
E. Benjamin Skinner, author of the book "A Crime so Monstrous" addressed a full Sears Recital Hall audience Monday about his book, which examines modern-day slavery. Instead of writing as an outsider looking in, he immersed himself in this monstrosity by travelling around the world and talking face-to-face with human traffickers about their "careers."
In Haiti, Skinner learned how one trafficker used the hope for a new life to entice families to hand over their children. Little did these families know that signing away their children wasn't promising them a bright future, it was putting a price on an offspring's life.
"He would go to desperately impoverished families and find those who in many case had eight, nine or 10 children and say he knew they couldn't feed and care for them, and he could give them a better life," Skinner said. "I didn't find mothers or fathers who sold their children; I found parents who made the choice between watching their children slowly starve or die of disease or giving them to a trafficker."
Sharla Musabih, founder of the City of Hope shelter in Dubai, joined Skinner on stage and told the story of a 21-year-old woman who would have given anything for a business suit to be the greatest challenge for her first day on the job.
"She was told she was going to have a job at a hotel, so she came to Dubai, landed and there were two Russian men waiting with a car," she said. "They put her in the car and they took her. Four years she was kept in slavery. During that time customers would be coming and going for her, she had no access to the outside world or anyone. She ended up getting pregnant. She managed to stay alive as well as keep the baby. When the baby was 15 months old, she was able to find a piece of metal around the fence, loosen the bars and escape."
No guards chased her, however. The human traffickers let her go, but not out of the kindness of their hearts. They let her escape because to them, these humans are commodities, not people. If they had chased her, it may have led police to investigate their trafficking or possibly close their businesses. To them, her life, valued at $50, wasn't worth it.
Skinner witnessed firsthand these criminals pricing human beings, most of them still young enough to be considered children. In Haiti he drove up to a barbershop well-known as a hub for human trafficking to be greeted by a man offering him a child for servitude. Skinner had the choice between buying a young child to work in the house, one to be his sexual partner, or for under $100, he could get a two-for-one deal.
"I was negotiating for human life as if I was negotiating for a used stereo in the broad daylight on the street," he said. "The asking price for this child was $100, and the negotiated price within five minutes was $50 U.S."
Throughout his journey into the cold heart of human trafficking, Skinner came face-to-face with multitudes of stories so gruesome they are unbelievable to an outsider. He witnessed a young blonde with physical signs of Down syndrome being raped for under $8 per person. The traffickers covered her face in makeup, but her tears made the mascara run down her face and blood seeped from scratches on her arms.
He met a girl sold to a Nigerian crack dealer who had begun dabbling in the sale of humans because it offered greater profits. She was forced to work on the streets of South Africa, having unprotected sex just eight blocks from the 2010 World Cup soccer stadium. Within a year she had AIDS, tuberculosis and was three months pregnant.
In another inside look Skinner was taken to a hotel in which the fourth floor was an abortion clinic and the fifth floor was a trading hub where girls slept four to a mattress, were raped, and if they resisted, were thrown from the window.
As horrific as these cases are, they are only five of the 27 million worldwide. The fight against human trafficking needs to target the traffickers themselves. Laws against trafficking in countries such as South Africa, which has none, need to be established and enforced, Skinner said. Governments need to be willing to make this issue a priority.
Bringing an end to human trafficking won't be accomplished by one person; everyone must accept a role against this monstrous crime. Skinner challenged the audience and the entire UD community to an easy task.
"Simply tell others," he said. "I hope you all get engaged some way, and one way is to commit to telling 10 people about modern-day slavery."
Or you can get involved even more actively. For ideas, contact Sharla Musabih at UnitedHopeSharla@gmail.com
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Abuse, rescue stories recounted at human trafficking forum
By Dave Larsen, Staff Writer 
Sharla Musabih, “The Mother Theresa of Dubai” www.unitedhopeethiopia.com
10:55 PM Tuesday, November 10, 2009
DAYTON — Life is cheap to people who traffic in human beings and exploit them for commercial sex or forced labor.
On Tuesday night, Nov. 10, that message was supported through the harrowing accounts of victims’ advocates from around the globe at a public forum, “Trafficking is Slavery,” at the University of Dayton.
The forum was the final event of the two-day Dayton Human Trafficking Accords conference at UD.
The conference was intended to raise public awareness about a global problem that also impacts Ohio, said Mark Ensalaco, director of UD’s Human Rights Program.
The speakers who addressed an audience of about 300 in the Kennedy Union Ballroom included Theresa Flores of Columbus, a UD graduate who at age 15 was sexually exploited in an affluent Detroit suburb.
Flores told how she was drugged, raped, photographed and then blackmailed into selling her body for two years by organized human traffickers.
“Traffickers don’t value human beings, I can attest to that,” Flores said.
Celia Williamson of the Lucas County, Ohio, Human Trafficking Coalition said Toledo is the No. 4 city in the nation for human trafficking arrests and victim rescues.
On Oct. 26, the FBI announced the latest such raid in Toledo, where the youngest victim rescued was 10 years old.
“Toledo, as well as the rest of Ohio, is a recruitment city,” Williamson said.
Sharla Musabih, the founder of United Hope, a human rights organization in the United Arab Emirates, recounted the rescue of boys as young as age 3 who were recruited from Pakistan for the dangerous practice of racing camels in Dubai.
“I managed to collect 30 children,” she said.
Yeshi Risek of Ethiopia was moved to tears as she described the trafficking trail for young girls from her country to the Arab Gulf states.
Earlier Tuesday, at an invitation-only working session for law enforcement officials and victim advocates, Ohio Attorney General Richard Cordray assessed the extent of human trafficking in the state.
“What everyone was convinced of is that it’s here and it’s in large numbers,” Ensalaco said.
Contact this reporter at (937) 225-2419 or dlarsen
@DaytonDailyNews.com.
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Dayton Human Trafficking Accords Conference
9 - 10 November 2009
University of Dayton
SCHEDULE OF EVENTS
Monday, 9 November, Sears recital hall, 1st floor, Jesse Philips Humanities Center
7:00 - 8:30 "A Crime So Monstrous" - A conversation with E. Benjamin Skinner, Author,
2009 Dayton Literary Peace Prize recipient
INTRODUCTION: Dr. Paul Benson, Dean, College of Arts and Sciences
Books available for purchase at 6:oopm.
Open discussion and book signing to follow presentation.
Tuesday, 10 November
12:00 - 4:30 Working Session (by invitation only - not open to the public)
AGENDA: Develop set of recommendations to address human trafficking in Ohio; outline protocol for cooperation between government, law enforcement and human trafficking advocates.
Participants:
- Sharla Musabih, Founder United Hope UAE – United Action for Empowerment
- Yeshi Riske, Co-founder, City of Hope and United Hope Ethiopia
- Kristyn Williams, Anti-Trafficking, US Conference of Catholic Bishops Migration and Refugee Services
- Michelle Hannan, Central Ohio Rescue and Restore Coalition, Ohio Trafficking Commission
- Celia Williamson, Lucas County Human Trafficking Coalition, Ohio Trafficking Commission
- Theresa Flores,Gracehaven, Ohio Trafficking Commission
- Norma Ryan, Dayton Southwest Weed and Seed, Ohio Trafficking Commission
- Joanne M. Hale, Center Director, Sunrise Center of Montgomery County, Ohio
- Gene Kelly, Clark County Sheriff, Ohio Trafficking Commission
- Stephen Moody, Chief Springfield Police Division
- Wendy Surikov, Federal Bureau of Investigation
- Mark Ensalaco, Director Human Rights Program, University of Dayton
- Philip J. Cenedella, Founder, Combating Trafficking Anywhere
- Claire Renzetti, University of Dayton
- Gregory Singer, Judge Montgomery County Court Common Pleas
- Lisa M. Miriello, Federal Bureau of Investigation, Victim Specialist
- Bob Mullins, Public Affairs Director, ADAMHS Board for Montgomery County, Ohio
- Linda L. Kramer, CEO, Daybreak, Dayton, Ohio
- Joe Spitler, Executive Director, Montgomery County Criminal Justice Council
- Richard Biehl, Director and Chief of Police, City of Dayton Police Department
- Selene K. Edmunds, LexisNexis, Dayton, Ohio
- Phil Plummer, Sheriff, Montgomery County, Ohio
- Patti Schwarztrauber, Executive Director, Artemis Center
- Jody Raphael, DePaul Law School
- Kathleen Davis, Polaris
- Maria Baldini-Potermin, Attorney, lecturer and co-author of Immigration Trial Handbook
- Cynthia Kohr, Ohio Bureau of Investigation
- Pat Meadows, MSSW, Executive Director, The National Conference for Community and Justice of Greater Dayton - invited
- Laura Clemmens, Assistant U.S. Attorney, U.S. Attorney's Office
- Rhonda Barner, Victim Witness Division, Prosecuting Attorney's Office, Montgomery County, Ohio
- Jeffrey Barrows, Executive Director, Gracehaven
- 6:00 - 8:00 public forum - trafficking is slavery - John F. Kennedy Memorial Student Union - Ballroom
- Welcome: Mark Ensalaco, Director Human Rights Program, University of Dayton
- Keynote: Kristyn Williams
- Panelists: Celia Williamson
- Sharla Musabih
- Yeshi Riske
- Teresa Flores
- Please note that the film, "Playground", originally scheduled to be shown after the panel discussion has been postponed due to a promotional conflict of the film's director, Libby Spears. We hope to show the film at Ms. Spears' earliest possible convenience.
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- Dayton Human Trafficking Accords Conference
- 9 - 10 November 2009
- John F. Kennedy Memorial Student Union
- University of Dayton
- Schedule of Events and Participants
- “The trade in human persons constitutes a shocking offense against human dignity and a grave violation of fundamental human rights.”
- -- Pope John Paul II
- Human trafficking is a modern-day form of slavery. Victims of human trafficking are subjected to force, fraud or coercion for the purpose of sexual exploitation or forced labor. Victims are young children, teenagers, men and women.
- Human Trafficking global – and local
- As many as 12 million persons worldwide are subjected to slavery or modern-day forms of slavery such as involuntary servitude, peonage or debt bondage.
- As many as 800,000 victims are trafficked into slavery across national boundaries each year.
- As many as 17,000 persons are trafficked into the United States each year from Asia, Central and South America and Eastern Europe, and are exploited for commercial sex, including prostitution, stripping and pornography, or exploited for labor in domestic servitude, sweatshops or migrant agricultural work.
- As many as 300,000 young Americans are vulnerable to sex trafficking within the United States.
- OHIO is an origin, transit and destination state for human trafficking
- The Dayton Human Trafficking Accords.
- The Human Rights Studies program at University of Dayton, together with the Office of Migration and Refugee Services of the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops, presents this conference bringing law enforcement officials, victims’ advocates, academic experts, students and the public together for the purpose of stirring society’s conscience to action against trafficking and slavery.
- Conference participants are invited to sign the Dayton Human Trafficking Accords as an expression of a common commitment to end trafficking and free slaves from their captivity.
- The conference will begin at 12:00 with a Working Session for Law Enforcement and Victims Advocates. Attendance to the working sessions is by invitation only. The public session, Trafficking is Slavery, will begin at 6:00. The Conference concludes with screening of "Playground" and a conversation with film-maker Libby Spears.
- For further information concerning this event, please contact Mark.Ensalaco@notes.udayton.edu or call 937-229-2765
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UDQ - The price of a human being
 Ben Skinner (center) flanked by UD Grad and Current Student
More than a century after the Emancipation Proclamation, slavery is at an all-time high. Human beings, mostly young women and girls, are being sold today by the millions for a fraction of the price 150 years ago.
I listened to Benjamin Skinner, a journalist who investigates and reports on human trafficking, reveal his account of the black market human trade Monday in Sears Auditorium.
Since every seat was filled with students, faculty, staff and community members, I sat on the auditorium stairs listening to Skinner’s story about negotiating with a human trafficker for a 12-year-old girl in Haiti.
The trafficker's price for her: $50.
Skinner was one of several speakers — including specialists, victims of human trafficking, and activists against the trade — that spoke at the Dayton Human Trafficking Accords conference, hosted by UD Monday and Tuesday.
The conference served to educate attendees about modern-day slavery. According to Skinner, the State Department estimates between 600,000 to 800,000 people work in forced labor in the U.S. Worldwide, an estimated 20 million of God's children are enslaved.
by Rachael Bade ’10 11-11-09
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Modern-Day Slavery
The University of Dayton will convene an international conference Nov. 9-10 to expose and combat human trafficking.
The Dayton Human Trafficking Accords international conference will be held at the University of Dayton Nov. 9-10.
October 26, 2009 - Human trafficking is a modern-day form of slavery that violates human rights globally — and in the heartland of America.
That stark message will be delivered at the Dayton Human Trafficking Accords international conference Nov. 9-10 at the University of Dayton.
Held in collaboration with the Anti-Trafficking Program of the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops' Migration and Refugee Services, the forum will bring together law enforcement officials, victims' advocates, academic experts, students and the public "for the purpose of stirring society's conscience to action against trafficking and slavery," said Mark Ensalaco, director of the University of Dayton's human rights program. The media co-sponsor is WYSO Radio.
Participants will sign the Dayton Human Trafficking Accords as an expression of a common commitment to end human trafficking, punish offenders and promote new laws against the dehumanizing practice, according to Ensalaco, who also serves as the Rev. Raymond A. Roesch Chair in Social Sciences.
It's a timely effort. Just today, the FBI, as part of a nationwide initiative to end domestic sex trafficking of children, recovered 52 children and arrested 60 pimps allegedly involved in child prostitution. That included seven juveniles from Toledo and pimps in Toledo and Columbus, according to Ensalaco.
Ensalaco and sociology professor and conference co-chair Claire Renzetti say human trafficking is largely a hidden crime, but the problem is enormous. Consider:
• As many as 20 million people worldwide are subjected to slavery or modern-day forms of slavery, such as involuntary servitude, peonage or debt bondage, according to the U.S. State Department and the United Nations Office of Drugs and Crime. Victims are typically women and children who are often afraid to seek help for fear they'll be arrested for prostitution or immigration violations;
• As many as 800,000 victims are trafficked into slavery across national boundaries each year, according to the U.S. State Department;
• As many as 17,000 people are trafficked into the U.S. each year from Asia, Central and South America, and Eastern Europe. They are exploited for prostitution, stripping and pornography, domestic servitude; sweatshop labor and migrant agricultural work, according to the U.S. State Department;
• Ohio is an origin, transit and destination state for human trafficking, according to the FBI. Ensalaco estimates the state has at least 100 cases.
The conference will kick off at 7 p.m. on Monday, Nov. 9, in the Sears Recital Hall with a conversation with E. Benjamin Skinner, winner of the 2009 Dayton Literary Peace Prize for non-fiction for A Crime So Monstrous: Face to Face With Modern Day Slavery. It's free and open to the public and will be followed by a book signing.
An invitation-only afternoon working session with federal, state and local law enforcement officials and victims' advocates will take place on Tuesday, Nov. 10. Ohio Attorney General Richard Cordray will address the group about stopping human trafficking in Ohio.
A 6 p.m. public forum in the Kennedy Union Ballroom, "Trafficking is Slavery," will feature a keynote talk by Kristyn Peck Williams, program support coordinator for the Anti-Trafficking Services Program of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops/Migration and Refugee Services office. A panel will include Sharla Musabih and Yeshe Riske, founders of United Hope in United Arab Emirates and Ethiopia; Celia Williamson, activist and University of Toledo professor of social work who developed the Lucas County Human Trafficking Coalition; and Theresa Flores, author of The Sacred Bath: An American Teen's Story of Modern Day Slavery.
At 15, Flores was drugged, raped and tortured for two years while living in an upper-class suburb in Detroit. After 20 years of silence, she began telling her story to help others. A licensed social worker, she is the director of development for Gracehaven, a safe home in Dublin, Ohio, for girls under the age of 18 who have been victims of commercial sexual exploitation. She earned a master's degree in counseling education from the University of Dayton in 2007.
The evening will wrap up with the screening of the film, "Playground," and a conversation with filmmaker Libby Spears. Independent filmmaker Steven Bognar of FilmDayton will moderate the discussion.
The Dayton Human Trafficking Accords conference is the latest in a series of conferences organized by the University of Dayton to address human rights issues, such as violence against women and the rights of children. Last October, at a campus event held in partnership with the Minneapolis-based Center for Victims of Torture, University of Dayton President Daniel J. Curran and Cincinnati Archbishop Daniel Pilarczyk signed a national petition calling for the president of the United States to reject torture.
The University of Dayton is a pioneer in human rights education. In 1998, the University launched the country's first undergraduate human rights program. In 2007, the University of Dayton began offering a bachelor's degree in human rights studies.
For more information about the Dayton Human Trafficking Accords conference, call 937-229-2765 or visit http://academic.udayton.edu/humantrafficking.
For more information about this article, contact: Shawn Robinson, assistant director of media relations, at 937-229-3391.
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Voice of America ®
Trusted Source of News & Information since 1942
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Human Trafficking Reaches to High Alert Around World
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Voice of America
VOA News
By Kane Farabaugh
Dayton, Ohio
13 November 2009 
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The U.S. State Department estimates that 800,000 human trafficking victims cross international borders each year. The United States is often a destination for many of these victims, where they are held in what many human rights activists consider modern day slavery. Some of those activists participated in the Human Rights Accords in Dayton Ohio, a two-day conference to help raise awareness about the problems victims face. The conference occurred this week as U.S. law enforcement agencies are engaged in a nationwide crackdown on human trafficking.
Sharla Musabih has watched the Emirate of Dubai transform from a small town into one of the largest and fastest growing cities in the Middle East.
Dubai's growth has made it an attractive destination for people from poorer areas looking for work. According to Musabih, it has also attracted criminals looking for victims in the dark underworld of human trafficking.
"A lot of women are coming in victims of agents that go out to rural areas and promise them wonderful jobs," said Musabih.
But according to Musabih, those wonderful jobs often lead these women into forced labor and prostitution.
Musabih has led a sometimes solitary effort to help fight for the rights of victims of human trafficking in Dubai. Her job became increasingly difficult as Du![]() bai's population grew. Her work has recently attracted unwelcome attention in Dubai and she is now living in the United States.
"I think I was a very loud voice for the victims," said Musabih. "I was basically exposing things that were going on. I was kind of pushed out and then slandered in the media."
These are some of the experiences Musabih shared with U.S. law enforcement and social agencies gathered at the University of Dayton, Ohio for the Human Trafficking Accords. Director of the University's Human Rights Program Mark Ensalaco says one of the targets of the conference is to shed light on a growing problem in the United States.
"It would be a terrible misconception on the part of Americans to think that this crime of human trafficking, or modern day slavery, is confined to the Third World. It's everywhere, and it's in the United States as well," said ensalaco.
Polaris Project, one of the largest anti-trafficking organizations in the United States, estimates as many as 17,500 foreign nationals are trafficked into the United States each year. They also estimate as many as 244,000 American youth are vulnerable to exploitation.
To combat the growing problem, Ensalaco said in late October the U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) initiated Operation Cross Country IV, a nationwide crackdown on human trafficking.
"They arrested dozens of pimps and freed more than fifty sex slaves," he said. "Many of them children in Ohio, the youngest was 10."
Ensalaco says the recent arrests reinforce the reality that human trafficking is not just an international problem, but also a local one affecting every community in the United States. Ensalaco said he hopes the conference is the first of many would help educate the public as well as law enforcement to reach the goal of ending human trafficking.
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Victims are trafficked into slavery across national boundaries each year
Theresa Flores from GRACEHAVEN HOUSE
www.gravehavenhouse.org
Kelsey Cano - Editor-In-Chief
UNIVERSITY OF DAYTON
FLYER NEWS
November 12, 2009
"She has no name."
She wasn't a person, and to them, she didn't have an identity. They didn't value her as a human, only as a body that could be exploited for sex.
But, she does have a name. Her name is Theresa Flores, and she's a survivor of modern day slavery.
Flores, a UD alum who grew up in an upper-middle class family near Detroit, was sexually exploited for two years, beginning when she was 15 years old.
On Tuesday, Flores spoke as part of a panel for the Dayton Human Trafficking Accords. Discussing her experiences in human trafficking never gets easier. As the last one to speak, Flores stood at the podium, instead of remaining in her seat as others on the panel had done. It's still hard enough that she needs to hold onto the podium as a form of support.
"One decision you make can change the rest of your life," she said.
For Flores, that decision was getting into a car with a boy who offered to drive her home. Having just moved to a new town and being the new kid at school, Flores appreciated the attention from him and other men. But, instead of driving her home, the boy drove her to his house.
"I was taken to his home where I was drugged and raped," she said.
The hardest part, Flores explained, was losing her virginity in the rape. Being raised in an Irish Catholic family, she had planned to remain a virgin until marriage. She was devastated.
The next day, Flores was shown pictures that had been taken during the rape.
"They said they would show my parents, my dad's boss, my priest and post the pictures at school," Flores said. "They said I had to earn them back."
For the next two years, Flores was used by this group of men for sex until she could "earn" her pictures back. The traffickers would call her during the night and drive her to mansions where she was forced to have sex.
"There was no way to escape until they were done," she said.
Flores explained that in those two years she was trafficked, she learned traffickers don't value people. She became unwillingly aware of this fact one night when older gentleman at a mansion asked her what her name was. The trafficker there responded, "She has no name. Why would it matter?"
The worst night of those two years, Flores explained, occurred when she was driven to a dirty hotel in inner-city Detroit and dragged into a hotel room. After being dragged into a small room, two dozen men waited for her.
"They said it was a reward for all my hard work," Flores said.
Flores was auctioned off to the highest bidder, and the next day, she woke up with no money or clothes. She eventually made her way to a diner, and said a waitress asked if she was okay.
"She was the only person that helped in those two years," she said.
Now, instead of looking back on the ordeal, Flores is moving forward and helping young girls avoid, or survive, human trafficking.
Flores is now the spokeswoman and director of awareness and training for Gracehaven, a safe home for girls under 18 who have been the victims of human trafficking.
The shelter is the fourth of its kind in the entire U.S., the first in Ohio and also the first faith-based shelter.
Flores is also raising awareness about human trafficking and its misconceptions.
"You can open the paper and see an article about a 16-year-old arrested for prostitution," she said.
She explained that these girls are being pimped out, and we need to stop treating them as criminals, and rather as victims.
Flores experienced misconceptions about human trafficking when she appeared on the Today Show. After appearing, the site received 280 comments, 90 percent of which were negative.
People would ask, "Why didn't you just leave?" she said.
"We have to change our ideals," Flores said. "People don't understand the bondage doesn't have to be physical. It can be mental."
Flores hasn't lost faith that human trafficking, a modern day form of slavery, can end.
"I do believe we can stop slavery. Even when it was happening to me, I never lost faith or hope that it would stop tomorrow."
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Editorial: Human trafficking issue gets useful look from UD, Cordray
By the Dayton Daily News| Sunday, November 15, 2009, 05:48 AM
How’s this for a coincidence:
Just as the Dayton Literary Peace Prize was going to a young writer named Ben Skinner for his book about modern human slavery (“A Crime So Monstrous”), the University of Dayton independently had a conference on human trafficking in Ohio.
Because of the serendipitous convergence, Mr. Skinner accepted his award at the Schuster Center on Sunday, Nov. 8, and got to make a speech the next day at UD.
And yet maybe the word coincidence doesn’t quite cover the situation.
In how many other communities, after all, is there a civic organization that gives a nationally recognized peace prize and a university that has a human rights studies program that holds such conferences?
The answer is zero. The Literary Peace Prize is unique. And the human rights program is one of about a dozen such undergraduate programs in the country.
On Tuesday, a big part of the Kennedy Union ballroom at UD was overfilled for a forum featuring four women talking, mainly from personal experience, about various forms of slavery and trafficking abroad and at home.
These are not new evils, but a lot of people are just starting to learn about them. The first question people have about domestic trafficking is how common is it, especially in Ohio?
The feds use 17,000 as a figure for people trafficked into this country in a year. Specialists outside of the government think that number is way low.
There’s also a purely domestic variant, wherein American women and children are lured or dragged into the sex trade. The UD audiences heard from a UD grad who said she was raped at 15 and blackmailed into life as a prostitute under threat of her conservative, Catholic parents and others being shown photos of her in sex acts.
As a result of newspaper attention to the conference, one local family was prompted to come forth to report they believe their very young daughter has been forced into gang-related prostitution.
UD’s Mark Ensalaco, head of the human rights program, says that when one such victim is found, she can usually tell about five others.
At the conference, people in and out of government who work with victims met with local police chiefs and sheriffs, as well as national experts, on how to recognize human trafficking and what to do about it.
Attendees heard about a local woman who paid her landlord with the sexual attention of her underage daughter. That, the gathered were told, meets the legal definition of trafficking.
Attorney General Richard Cordray was there to discuss the Ohio Trafficking in Persons Study Commission he has set up. It is in the early part of its work and is hoping to answer questions about just how much of what kinds of trafficking are prevalent in the state, and what can be done. Several members of the commission were present.
Mr. Skinner called his listeners to a new abolitionism: the cause of eliminating worldwide slavery in our time. A game plan toward that goal is hard to envisage.
But cracking down at least on Americans who use foreigners or Americans against their will for sex or any other industry, or who use children, has to be doable.
What’s going on now is — to use an inelegant phrase out of the 1960s — a sort of consciousness-raising. Most people’s awareness of modern human trafficking might be limited to what they have gleaned from occasional television cop shows.
What’s needed at this stage is a sharp focus on the murky world of traffickers, a focus that two Dayton organizations have done their part to foster.
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http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2009/nov/22/people-trafficking-usa-prostitution-ohio?showallcomments=true#end-of-comments
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Mexicans seeking a new life in America use plastic bags to float down the heavily polluted New River into Calexico, California. Photograph: David McNew/Getty Images
Forced labour and rape, the new face of slavery in America
In the Midwestern heartland, police are encountering a new social evil: trafficking, often involving women and children who are forced to work as prostitutes or unpaid labour; and the outcomes can be brutal.
Human trafficking has become a major issue in the Midwest heartland of America, causing some campaigners to dub it a modern form of slavery.
Figures from the State Department reveal that 17,500 people are trafficked into the US every year against their will or under false pretences, mainly to be used for sex or forced labour. Experts believe that, when cases of internal trafficking are added, the total number of victims could be up to five times larger. And increasing numbers of trafficked individuals are being transported thousands of miles from America's coasts and into heartland states such as Ohio and Michigan.
"It is not only a crime. It is an abomination," said Professor Mark Ensalaco, a political scientist at the University of Dayton, Ohio, who organised a recent conference on the issue. In Ohio a human trafficking commission has just been set up to study the problem, while in the northern Ohio city of Toledo a special FBI task force is tackling the issue. For many local law enforcement officials, it is a bewildering new world.
In one recent incident a 16-year-old Mexican girl was found to have been trafficked across the US border. Doctors noticed the heavily pregnant girl showed clear signs of physical abuse when she was brought into a hospital in Dayton to give birth. The police were called but the couple who had brought her had already fled. When the girl's story emerged, it became clear she had been kept against her will in the nearby city of Springfield and used for labour and sex. "I thought slavery ended a few centuries ago. But here it is alive and well," said Springfield's sheriff, Gene Kelly.
He emphasised the risks to the girl's baby after it had been born if the doctors had not been so alert: "Like the mother, the baby could have ended up a victim for years to come. Who knows? Future labour? Future person to traffic?"
Ohio anti-trafficking campaigner Phil Cenedella, founder of Combating Trafficking Anywhere, believes that the baby was destined to be sold off by her captors. "They would have put the kid on the black market. It is crazy that this is happening." Human trafficking – defined as forcing someone against their will to work for no reward – has been dubbed modern slavery. At the Dayton conference, it was discussed as a growing social problem, not in some far-off foreign land, but among the cornfields of Ohio.
"The problems are broader than we realised," said Ohio's attorney general, Richard Cordray. "What we want to do is find and disrupt these networks."
One of the country's leading anti-trafficking advocates is Theresa Flores, a former victim. Flores puts a different kind of face on human trafficking in America. She is white, middle-class and blond and looks the epitome of a suburban American woman. She grew up in a wealthy suburb of Detroit in Michigan and did well at school. Yet Flores tells a nightmarish story of two years being drugged, raped and sold for sex.
Flores, whose ordeal was turned into a book called The Sacred Bath: An American Teen's Story of Modern Day Slavery, was attacked and raped when she was 15. Her assailant used the threat of photographs he had taken during her rape to force her into having sex with strangers. She became the effective prisoner of a drugs gang that used her as a prostitute and kept her earnings, or gave her away free to gang members as a "reward". "People don't think that trafficking looks like me or that it can happen to someone who came from a nice neighbourhood. But it does. People need to see outside that box," said Flores.
Flores said that her lowest point came when the gang took her to a seedy motel where she was raped by as many as two dozen men. She woke up alone, abused and with no clothes. "I was told I would die if I told anyone. It happened over and over for two years as I became a sex slave for those men," she said.
Anti-trafficking campaigners point out that cases in the US come in a wide variety of forms involving men, women and children. One major area is that of trafficked labour with people used for domestic work or, more commonly, for back-breaking labour in agricultural industries. But trafficking cases have also occurred in businesses such as restaurants, hair salons and beauty parlours. The overwhelming majority of the rest are sex cases, usually involving young women or children forced into prostitution. The methods used to keep people vary. They include confiscating the passports of those brought in from a foreign country or the threat of extreme violence. Other tactics are to threaten family members if a victim does not comply or, as in Flores's case, to use blackmail.
Trafficking represents a new challenge to law enforcement, especially in regions which have traditionally not thought of it as a major problem. That is especially true where it happens within an immigrant community. Languages are a problem as well as cultural issues and a natural fear that many immigrants – some of them possibly illegal – have of contacting the police.
Kelly believes that is the case in Springfield, a town that is almost the Midwestern archetype. It was once featured in a story in Newsweek magazine entitled "The American Dream". But its 65,000 citizens also face all the problems of a modern America in the grip of a deep recession: an immigration crisis and profoundly changing demographics. The town now hosts several prominent minority communities who make up more than a fifth of its population, including Russians, Chinese, Latinos and Somalis. "There are a lot of people who distrust law enforcement. We need to break down those barriers. Our officers need training, especially in languages," said Kelly. "If you can't speak to people, you can't reach them."
Some commentators and experts have accused victims' advocates and academics of overstating the problem, arguing the problem has been exaggerated and expressing scepticism at the notion that vast organised criminal networks are dealing in human beings for sex or labour. Law enforcement officers also acknowledge that the definitions of trafficking may need refining.
In North Carolina last week the mother of a five-year-old girl was charged with human trafficking after being accused of offering her daughter for sex. The child was later found dead. The crime was horrific, but the distinction between trafficking and simple, sadistic child abuse might not be immediately obvious.
"We have a problem with definition. It is not always straightforward and easy to explain," said Laura Clemmens, a government lawyer in Dayton. "The hard part is bringing it into the light. At the moment these crimes are clouded in secrecy."
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CLICK HERE -DAYTON HUMAN TRAFFICKING ACCORDS COALITION
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Ohio anti-human trafficking hotline
1-800-282-0515
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