-Notice the discussion of "Sex trafficking" and "Human trafficking" in the same article; almost synonymous3-18-15 National:
Less than 10 percent of doctors recognize trafficking victims, and less than 3 percent of ER doctors have received training in recognition and action. Here’s what we can do about it.
When his church embarked on a small project to help prevent human trafficking, Douglas Chin, MD, a surgeon in Oakland, Calif., joined the group.
In their minds human trafficking was an overseas problem. Church members began looking into ways to address gender inequity outside the country by empowering women, which experts agreed would help reduce the sex trade, strengthen global health, and lead to better economic opportunities. “We were really thinking, ‘What can we do in the United States to help international women — in Thailand, in India?” Chin tells Yahoo Health.
But then a young woman went to Chin’s office in California for a routine orthopedic problem, and he noticed something very unusual. She came with an older male figure, who spent the appointment hovering close by. She was reticent. She had tattoos on her body, and gray marks on her skin.
He later found out that the young woman was a victim of human trafficking.
“The gray marks were something called postinflammatory hyperpigmentation, which is the result of repeated trauma. The tattoos were probably indicating she was property,” Chin says. “It just hit me. At church, we were looking at this as an international problem, yet it was right here under our noses.
“A lot of these victims were likely seeking medical help. Were we just missing them?”
Trafficking in the United States
Human trafficking, for both sex and labor, is not just an international problem; it is a U.S. problem. According to estimates, roughly 1 million adults and 400,000 children are presumed to be at risk for sex trafficking annually on American soil.
It’s big business, with relatively low risk and high reward, says Holly Atkinson, MD, director of the Human Rights Program at Mount Sinai in New York City and co-chair of the American Medical Women’s Association’s, Physicians Against the Trafficking of Humans (PATH) initiative. Global revenues for human trafficking likely exceed $31 billion, according to estimates.
“It is so lucrative, probably only second to drug trafficking in revenue,” Atkinson tells Yahoo Health. “This is because you can sell a human 10, 20, even 30 times a day. You can’t sell drugs or a firearm that many times.”
And there is no specific profile for victims of trafficking. It can affect people of any gender, age, race or social class. Chin says that while more than 80 percent of labor-trafficking victims in the United States are brought in from foreign countries, that stat is flipped for sex-trafficking victims. “Roughly 80 percent of those victims are American-born, U.S. citizens,” says Chin. “It affects all demographics, from the affluent to the underprivileged.”
And traffickers seek victims everywhere. “One of the biggest myths is that it doesn’t happen here or that most victims are foreign-born — with sex trafficking, it’s not true,” says Atkinson. “They’re recruiting at schools, in shopping malls. They are using psychological techniques, acting as boyfriends to young girls, buying them things — and then they start to ask for things. ‘If you really loved me, you’d have sex with my friend.’”
Certain risk factors do make a person more vulnerable to that slippery slope into trafficking, though, including being from a broken home. “It is higher in specific demographics,” Atkinson says. “Among runaways, [and among] LGBT, sexually-abused and foster children.”
What’s difficult about trafficking is that it’s a hidden problem. You can pass victims everyday on the street and not really realize it — especially because many of the young women and men who are initially victimized and pushed into this life of captivity become attached to their captors and can’t find a way out, according to Elaine Richardson, Ph.D, a professor at the Department of Teaching and Learning at The Ohio State University and a former victim of sex trafficking.
“Young victims are in middle schools, in your neighborhood, or even in your family,” she tells Yahoo Health. “Some of them are grown women, and many are not doing it just because they enjoy sex and want to get paid for it. Many victims have become entrapped into a way of life, even if they now seem to be doing it for themselves without pimps.”
Once you’re in the middle of this life, it’s hard to climb out, says Richardson. “They are still human beings who deserve to be valued as humans, who need help, support, and love,” she says.
..Continued.. by Jenna Birch
