Why you should care about human trafficking

The young woman's voice shakes as she begins her story: She was 15, a runaway, in and out of trouble, when her friend's stepfather sold her to a man ...

She breaks down, unable to speak. Minutes pass. She tries again.

You can feel the effort behind every word as the woman, eyes locked on the desk in front of her, tells 100 silent and somber attendees at Iowa's first human trafficking conference, held late last month at Iowa State University, how she was forced to prostitute in Cedar Rapids. How she was drugged and traded around and taken to Chicago. How her traffickers took out an ad on Craigslist in order to better sexually exploit her - selling her body to any customer with the right amount of cash.

Why should you care about human trafficking? Because it's happening all around you. Advocates at the Iowa Network Against Human Trafficking (which presented the conference with ISU) say they've identified more than 125 human trafficking victims in Iowa since 2005, alone.

Most were children trafficked for commercial sexual exploitation - girls ages 13, 14, 15, forced into prostitution to line the pockets of a pimp.

And if broader trends hold true, they represent only a tiny fraction of the children being trafficked in our state.

It's no surprise that human trafficking is the world's fastest-growing criminal enterprise - you can make more money trafficking people than you can drugs or weapons, and often the penalties aren't as harsh.

What is a surprise to most people is that trafficking is a problem - a growing problem - here in Iowa.

In fact, it's often the same criminal network - using the same threats and tricks and lies - forcing underage girls onto strip club stages in remote Iowa towns such as Denison and making them walk the track in Chicago, Las Vegas or Washington, D.C.

And everywhere, the same factors allow traffickers to flourish - to abuse and exploit kids from our high schools and neighborhoods.

Victims are too scared to come forward, even if they do find an opportunity; communities are blind to their captivity. Outsiders can be reluctant to believe such fantastic-sounding stories of exploitation and abuse.

Which you can't help think about, listening to the young woman push on with her own story; witnessing her conviction that, as painful as it is, she has to share it - to make people understand that trafficking exists, that we all have a role in stopping it. Here. In Iowa.

Find out more at www.iowanaht.org/.

Comments: (319) 339-3154;jennifer.hemmingsen@sourcemedia.net