Now more than ever, we have a chance to protect our young women and young men, and also our young adults, who experience this youth and life destroying devastation. Human trafficking affects all of us and we have to start opening our eyes and realize there is something each one of us can do to stop human trafficking. We must encourage victims to stop the terrifying silence and create a safe place for them to escape to, so they can heal from the cruel and heartless abuses they have suffered.
Alexandra D. Datig, Survivor
By Teresita Chavez Pedrosa/Hispanic National Bar Association
“Latinas, African-Americans and indigenous women are disproportionately affected by human trafficking,” Norma Ramos, Executive Director of the Coalition Against Trafficking in Women (CATW) a non-profit organization dedicated to abolishing modern day slavery, told those attending the Hispanic National Bar Association’s 2nd Annual Human Trafficking Conference at the University of Miami last Friday. While there are 15,000 to 18,000 people trafficked in the United States each year, Ramos stated, the “overwhelming majority” are the country’s own citizens.
“The worse thing about the movie Taken,” said Miami Springs Councilman Dan Espino, referring to the 2008 film starring Liam Neeson in which his on-screen daughter is abducted in France “is that it created the impression that human trafficking is something that happens over there.” The truth is that Miami is third in the nation in the human trafficking, behind New York and California.
“Everything that makes South Florida a great place to live,” said U.S. Prosecutor Barbara Martinez referencing diversity, the weather, its geographical position as a gateway to other nations, “makes it easier for traffickers to hide.” Martinez, who has worked with colleagues at the U.S. Department of Justice to secure various human trafficking convictions, discussed a case involving Mexican nationals. The women had to service 30 to 40 “clients” per day, for $20 each. They had no days off. Every week or so, they were transferred to a new location in Florida. “We don’t always report these cases to the media, in order to protect our victim-based approach” added Martinez.
Victim-based view of prostitution
“Prostitution is the oldest oppression,” said Ramos, who believes that calling prostitution a profession implies that its existence is inevitable. Panelists agreed that the incidence of prostitution was exacerbated by poverty, but was caused by factors that include gender-based inequalities and vulnerabilities. According to Martinez “people are vulnerable for different reasons.” Foster children are vulnerable. She has also seen cases where affluent and educated girls have sneaked out of their homes while their parents slept and lured into prostitution by a boyfriend.
Some women, including college co-eds, are made to believe that prostitution is a glamorous form of earning extra cash. Although expressly forbidding communications regarding cash in exchange for sex on their sites, sugar daddy web-based dating services are gaining visibility among university students. Catherine A. Mackinnon, Professor of Law at the University of Michigan, Special Gender Adviser to the Prosecutor of the International Criminal Court (The Hague) and “the Malcolm X of the Women’s Movement” according to Ramos, reported having had students who turned to prostitution while in school. “None of them are alive today,” MacKinnon admitted. Ramos challenged: “Do we really want to live in a country where prostitution is seen as a form of financial aid?”
A person prostituted through force, fraud or coercion, is a victim under federal law. “Victimizing her (under the law) raises her status,” said MacKinnon, while “criminalizing him lowers his privilege.” The law is broad enough to prohibit the non-physical versions of force, fraud and coercion, such as mental manipulation. Minors are considered victims even in the absence of force, fraud and coercion. Actual physical transfer of the victim is not necessary to meet the federal law’s definition of human trafficking.
U.S. federal law also provides protection and services to victims of human trafficking. These may include migratory relief for otherwise undocumented victims. Community-based groups facilitate food, shelter and other services to victims. According to Protection Consular Luz Elena Lopez Rodea, the Mexican government, through its consulate offices, has an array of services available to trafficked Mexican nationals. These include help with legal representation.
Like with the racketeering laws that once helped the government reach and prosecute the heads of major crime families, the human trafficking federal laws target the enterprise. “The bodies and lives of these women are appropriated for them to be exploited by organized crime,” said Ramos, who distinguished these pimps from free speech groups who in some capacity actually defend women.
“We should all be offended,” said Espino, acknowledging all the opportunities that his Cuban parents, and him as a first-generation American, have enjoyed as a result of hard work and study. “These (human) traffickers have turned the land of freedom and opportunity into one of oppression and torture.”
Protecting children from human trafficking
“The average age when girls enter prostitution is 13—maybe 12,” said Ramos. Making another argument for why prostituted women should be treated with the same compassion extended to children, MacKinnon explained that the prostituted child and adult do not represent two different peoples. “You are talking about the same group of people at two different points in time. In order to help one group you have to help the other,” MacKinnon added.
Ramos believes that those who would only help children should remember that generally, “it is women who protect children.”
Gail Dines, Professor of Sociology and Women Studies at Wheetlock College, author of the newly-released book Pornland: How Porn Has Hijacked Our Sexuality, and co-founder of StopPornCulture.org argued that it is crucial that children be shielded from the effects of pornography. “I never thought I would say this, but Playboy and Hustler were the good old days of pornography,” said Dines. “Free porn is the worst thing that has happened to the internet.”
Dines argued that the porn industry has taken a page out of the tobacco playbook by making themselves available to young and impressionable “clients” whose “template” they can shape. Shocking images of women gagging and vomiting while mascara-tinged tears run down their face, are accompanied by challenges to a boy’s masculinity meant to keep him watching. “Are you man enough?” ask some websites.
“I do not believe boys go to porn as women haters, but they do come away as such,” said Dines. “Most boys look at pornography with an erection and don’t think of the horror behind it.”
“We support this education because combating human trafficking is one of our top priorities,” said U.S. Prosecutor for the Southern District of Florida Wifredo A. Ferrer, who wants the community to understand that human trafficking is real and that “those who commit these crimes will be brought to justice.”
A federal task force will be working with Miami-Dade schools to develop an educational curriculum on this topic. This summer, Dines will have a slide show available for parents and educators on her website StopPornCulture.org. “Some younger defendants are shocked to learn that (human trafficking) is a crime,” said Martinez.
“We have to start uprooting these things out,” said Espino. “Human trafficking is not something that only Liam Neeson can take care of.
Source: www.voxxi.com
