Trafficking in the USA hits close to home

Excerpted from "Sex trafficking in the USA hits close to home," U.S.A. Today, by Yamiche Alcindor. September 27, 2012--Asia Graves looks straight ahead as she calmly recalls the night a man paid $200 on a Boston street to have sex with her. She was 16, homeless, and desperate for food, shelter and stability. He was the first of dozens of men who would buy her thin cashew-colored body from a human trafficker who exploited her vulnerabilities and made her a prisoner for years. "If we didn't call him daddy, he would slap us, beat us, choke us," said Graves, 24, of the man who organized the deals. "It's about love and thinking you're part of a family and a team. I couldn't leave because I thought he would kill me."

By day, she was a school girl who saw her family occasionally. At night, she became a slave to men who said they loved her and convinced her to trade her beauty for quick cash that they pocketed. Sold from Boston to Miami and back, Graves was one of thousands of young girls sexually exploited across the United States, often in plain sight. A plague more commonly associated with other countries has been taking young victims in the United States, one by one. Though the scope of the problem remains uncertain -- no national statistics for the number of U.S. victims exist -- the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children says at least 100,000 children across the country are trafficked each year.

Globally, the International Labor Organization estimates that about 20.9 million people are trafficked and that 22 percent of them are victims of forced sexual exploitation. The growing number of human trafficking cases handled by U.S. Attorney MacBride's office -- 14 in the last 18 months -- reflects the domestic trend, experts say. The familiar echo of these crimes reaches the other side of the country, too, says Alessandra Serano, an Assistant United States Attorney for the Southern District of California. "You can sell drugs once," she said. "You can sell a girl thousands of times."

Since 2006, the U.S. Department of Education has focused on the problem and worked on training with several schools, said Eve Birge, who works for the agency's Office of Safe and Healthy Students. In doing so, they collaborate with the White House, the FBI, the Departments of State and Justice as well as other agencies. "For a lot of these kids, school can be the only safe place they have," Birge said. Click here to read full article.

CMDA Member and Founder of Gracehaven, Jeff Barrows, DO: “When the average person hears the words ‘human trafficking,’ they first of all think of women and girls being sold for sex in other countries like Thailand or Cambodia. Most individuals don’t realize that trafficking is happening right here in the United States in every major city. The most common form of trafficking in the U.S. is child sex trafficking of minors under the age of 18. The story of Asia in this article is being repeated all across the United States in every state! Like Asia, most of these victims come out of abusive/neglected homes.

“While it is good that President Obama recently drew attention to this horrible plague, the announced $6 million grant program is hardly enough to have a significant impact on the tremendous need for specialized services. Currently there are less than 200 specialized beds for 100,000 victims of child sex trafficking. Physicians and dentists have a major role in identifying these victims while they are being trafficked. Some important identifiers mentioned in the article are:

• Signs of physical abuse
• Truancy
• Homeless youth
• Sudden ability to possess expensive items
• Older boyfriends or girlfriends
• Frequent travel

“In addition, physicians and dentists are needed to provide the medical and dental care these victims need after they are freed. CMDA has a Trafficking in Persons Task Force that is developing a 11-part human trafficking training curriculum that provides continuing education credit and can be found online here."

Human Trafficking Resource Page
Human Trafficking Continuing Education
Human Trafficking - Trade of Innocents Trailer