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During a Feb. 11 presentation on human trafficking, parishioners at St. Matthias Parish in San Mateo held strings of yarn to visualize the connections a single trafficking victim has to people in a community. (Photo by Nicholas Wolfram Smith/Catholic San Francisco)
Feb. 24, 2020
Nicholas Wolfram Smith
After California passed a law several years ago requiring some industries to display human trafficking awareness posters, anti-trafficking activists like Sister Marilyn Wilson visited businesses to verify that they were following the law. Talking to owners at strip clubs and bars in Sunnyvale showed her over and over how much work there was to do.“We learned there was no education, no accountability and no enforcement” on existing state anti-trafficking legislation, she said, even for something as simple as putting up a poster. “We have to do a lot to support the laws that are already there.”
St. Matthias’ chapter of St. Vincent de Paul hosted Sister Marilyn and Sister Elizabeth Avalos, members of the Sisters of Charity of the Blessed Virgin Mary, for a presentation on human trafficking Feb. 11. In front of about 50 people, the two discussed what human trafficking is, how and where it happens and what people can do to have an effect on it.
Human trafficking is a form of modern day slavery in which people are coerced into providing labor, services or commercial sexual acts. Victims of trafficking can be found in domestic service, forced prostitution, factory work, agriculture, forced marriage, begging and the hospitality industry.
According to anti-trafficking non-profits, between 24 and 40 million people worldwide live in modern slavery, with the majority experiencing some form of forced labor. Global estimates of the profit from human trafficking place it at about $150 billion per year, Sister Marilyn said. “You can sell a person over and over again, so it’s extremely profitable.”
The Walk Free Initiative estimates more than 400,000 trafficking victims live in the U.S. In California, 1,656 trafficking cases were reported in 2018, the majority of them involving commercial sexual exploitation.
Sister Elizabeth said nearly 100,000 children are trafficked per year in the U.S. “The thing is, if you’re vulnerable that is when you’re most likely to be trafficked, or if your home is not what you’d like it to be and you’re recruited online.”
Even after federal law enforcement put an end to the demise of infamous adult classifieds website backpage.com, after its seizure by federal law enforcement, internet trafficking has thrived, Sister Marilyn said. Traffickers have turned to using social media to lure women and teens into trafficking situations.
“Traffickers are very, very smart at grooming and getting people to get into this.” she said.
But the biggest challenge is getting people to realize that human trafficking happens in their own communities and cuts across all class and income divides.
“For so long, it was considered something over there, or out there, but California is the biggest state for human trafficking,” Sister Marilyn said.
California law enforcement agencies annually conduct Operation Reclaim and Rebuild, a statewide anti-trafficking action that annually rescues several dozen people from exploitation and arrests hundreds for solicitation. During the most recent operation Jan. 26-Feb. 1, more than 500 were arrested statewide.
Trafficking occurs all over the peninsula, Sister Marilyn said, but it can be difficult for law enforcement to bring criminal cases if a victim is over 18 and refuses to testify. In response to that, she said, “what they are trying to do now is get them on wage theft or fraud in cases where victims refuse to testify to sex or labor trafficking.”
Jurisdictional issues can also complicate building and successfully prosecuting a case, she added.
Sister Elizabeth acknowledged it could be “overwhelming” to start engaging in anti-trafficking work and encouraged her audience to start by adding the U.S. National Human Trafficking Hotline to their phones, to call or text in suspected trafficking incidents.
She also encouraged buying ethically produced and traded items, changing consumption habits, supporting anti-trafficking legislation and learning more about the effect of the effect of their consumption choices on trafficking by visiting slaveryfootprint.org
“Where do you buy your chocolate? Where does it come from? Do you buy fair trade coffee?” she asked people.
As part of the evening, attendees participated in an exercise to visualize the relationships a victim of trafficking might have with others, and how often he or she can be encountered. Taking on a fictional story of Miguel, a migrant who is forced to work in a restaurant, participants stood in for the friends, acquaintances, advocates, and exploiters who are bound up in the story of a single trafficking victim, holding strings that centered on a single victim.
“One trafficked person touches so many lives,” Sister Marilyn said. “And everyone has an opportunity to help if they see something.”