Recognizing the Power in Communities to Address Child Maltreatment
January 28, 2016
(Editor's Note: January is National Slavery and Human Trafficking Prevention Month)
By Sarah Jakiel, Chief Programs Officer, Polaris
Human trafficking is a form of modern slavery that affects people in every state of the country. Men from overseas have been forced to work against their will in shipyards in the Gulf coast. U.S. citizen girls who ran away from abusive homes have been forced into commercial sex by their abusive pimps in urban and rural areas across the country. Victims of human trafficking have been forced to work or sell sex in homes, restaurants, farms, hotels, suburban strip malls, and more.
Since 2007, the National Human Trafficking Resource Center (NHTRC) hotline has been operated by Polaris and funded in part by the Administration for Children and Families, Office on Trafficking in Persons. The NHTRC’s mission is to provide human trafficking victims and survivors with access to critical support and services to get help and stay safe, and to equip the anti-trafficking community with the tools to effectively combat all forms of human trafficking.
As the hotline’s latest statistics show , the NHTRC has now identified and responded to more than 24,000 cases of human trafficking. In 2015 alone, the hotline answered almost 22,000 calls and learned of more than 5,500 cases of human trafficking in every state of the country.
Most importantly, we saw a near 30 percent increase in the number of calls from survivors in 2015. Natalie* was one such caller. Natalie was staying in a hotel room and was being forced to engage in commercial sex by a pimp. She wanted to leave, but she was afraid to do so on her own, as her pimp had threatened her with violence in the past. The trained call specialist worked with her to ensure it was safe to talk and to put in place some safety plans. Then, she asked Natalie if she wanted help from our trusted law enforcement contacts in order to leave the hotel. Natalie agreed.
The call specialist stayed on the phone with Natalie to provide emotional support, while a colleague reached out to local law enforcement contacts. The officers arranged to meet Natalie at the hotel to help her leave. During the last few minutes before Natalie left the hotel, she was very nervous. But as local officers escorted her out of the hotel and to a shelter, she expressed relief. The next day, Natalie told us that she was safe and receiving shelter and services from a local anti-trafficking organization.
This call illustrates the power of a central, national hotline. Whether a victim calls from a farm in the Central Valley of California or from a hotel in Washington, DC, we have to know who can help that person escape, and which agency can provide the long-term services so that person can rebuild their lives. The National Human Trafficking Resource Center has built up a database of more than 3,000 contacts around the country – trained law enforcement agents, social service providers, domestic violence shelters, and more to ensure that the people who call us can be connected with the best services that their community has to offer.
The National Human Trafficking Resource Center is working hard to ensure that every victim in the U.S. knows that there is a national number they can call to get confidential help and advice, no matter where they are located, at any time of day. However, we have also learned that each call we answer, and each case of human trafficking that we respond to, can be woven together to paint critical insights into the national landscape of human trafficking.
The NHTRC hotline has a unique vantage point that no one else has, because it is crowd-sourcing information from all over the country. This hotline now has the largest dataset on human trafficking in the U.S. that we are able to collect and analyze with the support of major technology partners like Salesforce and Palantir. This data is helping us all understand where and how traffickers operate so that we can work together to put them out of business, keep them from harming more people, and help survivors find the services they need.
*Name has been changed and identifying details omitted to protect the confidentiality of the people we serve.
Location of potential human trafficking cases in the U.S. This map only reflects cases where the location of the potential trafficking was known. Some cases may involve more than one location. Photo credit: Polaris
