STILL ARGUING OVER SLAVERY

By conservative estimates, there are more slaves today than at any other time in history — 27 million people worldwide. Sex trafficking — depicted in the 2008 action-thriller movie Taken — gets the most attention. The U.S. government estimates that up to 18,000 women and girls are trafficked into sexual slavery here each year. But slavery occurs across a number of industries, including construction, janitorial/custodial services, agriculture and domestic labor.

Human trafficking or modern-day slavery is the recruitment,
harboring and transportation of people through force, fraud or coercion
for the purpose of economic gain through forced labor. The first
concerted effort to address this problem in the United States since the
Fourteenth Amendment was passed in 1868 was the Trafficking Victims
Protection Act (TVPA) passed by Congress in 2000 — the first
comprehensive federal law to address trafficking. The U.S. Department
of Justice (DOJ) encourages states to pass their own legislation to
support and augment national anti-trafficking efforts.

Considering that the FBI ranks Toledo as one of the top national
recruiting grounds for underaged prostitution and defines Ohio as a
supply, transfer and destination state for human trafficking in the
U.S., state legislation seems essential. But Ohio’s efforts have been
wanting.

Ohio had no anti-trafficking legislation in 2005 when Innocence
Lost, an ongoing FBI investigation into a multi-state sex-trafficking
ring, resulted in dozens of arrests for the forced slavery of underaged
girls. State Senator Teresa Fedor (D-Toledo) introduced Senate Bill
205, a comprehensive anti-trafficking bill modeled after the DOJ’s
recommended state legislation, but it didn’t even make it out of
committee. After months of effort to build support for an effective
anti-trafficking law, explain the need for the law and educate elected
officials, human-trafficking organizations and victims’ advocacy groups
across the state watched as politicians yielded to pressure from the
Ohio Prosecuting Attorneys Association (OPAA). As the group’s executive
director John Murphy put it, “We have all the laws we need.”

Compromise legislation was finally passed in January 2009, so
there’s a new state anti-trafficking law and a new state commission,
headed by attorney general Richard Cordray, set up to study the
problem. That sounds like progress, but a leading anti-slavery
organization, Cincinnati’s National Underground Railroad Freedom Center
(freedomcenter.org), says in
its recently released Greater Cincinnati Human Trafficking
Report that the new law is ineffective.

“Perhaps the best way to describe the law that criminalizes human
trafficking in Ohio is to say that there is no law,” says the Freedom
Center report. “Although valiant efforts were undertaken by a few
concerned lawmakers and advocates to embrace the national trend to
stamp out this modern form of slavery, the watered-down version of
Ohio’s answer to the [Trafficking Victim’s Protection Act] leaves
nothing but room for improvement.

” … Ohio’s Revised Code now contains certain enhancement
provisions for sentences related to prosecutions for current crimes
such as kidnapping or compelling prostitution. For example, when a
kidnapping or abduction is committed and it is found to have been ‘in
furtherance of human trafficking,’ the offender will face mandatory
jail time. There are a few other enhancement provisions. However, there
is no new offense of human trafficking, although several proposed laws
were before our state legislators.”

One possible explanation for this ineffectual law is that OPAA’s
Murphy admitted he hadn’t even read the federal anti-trafficking law
and couldn’t explain how the Ohio law would support or conflict with
it. Yet he still made the assertion that his simpler proposal was
better and easier to implement.

In an attempt to develop greater awareness of what human trafficking
is, the Freedom Center report examined media accounts and court filings
to illustrate how human trafficking is being incorrectly identified as
other, better-known crimes.

“Human trafficking … occurs in every metropolitan area in the
United States. Unfortunately, due to the hidden and transient nature of
the crimes, you will not often see the term ‘human trafficking’ in the
headlines,” says the report. “In May of 2006, four supervisors for a
large residential home-construction company, along with the owner and
six managers for a subcontractor, were arrested for allegedly harboring
illegal aliens. The charges against the supervisors were eventually
dismissed without prejudice at the request of the U.S. district
attorney. However, the subcontractor’s owner, as well as his son, his
daughter and four longtime crew chiefs pleaded guilty to conspiracy to
harbor illegal aliens and were given sentences ranging from three years
probation to 18 months imprisonment with three years supervised release
plus fines.

“On its face, this could just be a case of hiring illegal
immigrants. However, it was reported that the subcontractor provided
housing to the illegal alien workers and paid them a substantially
lower wage than the industry standard.”

Labor-related cases are investigated with a bias toward known
crimes, like immigration or labor-law violations. Instead of looking at
the living and wage conditions as being forced and the result of
individuals existing in debt bondage or having been bought by the
employer, the victims are assumed to be guilty of breaking the law.
Similarly, prostitution is considered a vice problem and a life that
women have “chosen” as opposed to having been kidnapped, beaten and
their families threatened if they don’t perform as directed.

Some of the survey results illustrate this lack of awareness.
Volunteers interviewed 137 people between July 2007 and February 2008.
The interview subjects included law enforcement, judges, attorneys,
government officials, interpreters, social workers, health-care
providers, pastors, reporters and victim advocates; 41 percent believe
“they or their organizations have encountered victims of
trafficking.”

“The survey results showed a surprising lack of awareness and
knowledge of the issue of human trafficking, even among those most
likely to encounter it,” states the report. “Although many survey
respondents stated that they did not know the level of public
awareness, a vast majority (77 percent) said that the general public’s
knowledge of trafficking is only poor or fair. This comports with other
studies that have shown that the general public lacks awareness of the
issue.”

The people in professions most likely to respond to an incident
involving a victim of human trafficking — referred to as “first
responders” — are aware that human trafficking exists but few
know what signs to look for, according to the report. This inability to
even identify victims illustrates the invisible nature of slavery today
and why, according to the U.S. government, less than 1 percent of
trafficking cases are solved (compared to 70 percent of murder
cases).

“While training on the law is important for all groups, it is
particularly important for those groups most likely to encounter
trafficking victims first,” says the report. “A majority of respondents
(57 percent) said they believed that law enforcement is most likely to
be the first to encounter trafficking victims. If law enforcement is
indeed a first-responder, they must be knowledgeable and well-trained
on the issue.

“Yet, 48 percent of law-enforcement respondents said that local law
enforcement in the greater Cincinnati area has only a poor or fair
knowledge of human trafficking. In fact, 68 percent of law-enforcement
survey participants rated their own knowledge of trafficking as poor or
fair.”

Efforts are already underway to reintroduce anti-trafficking
legislation based on the state model proposed by the Department of
Justice. The Freedom Center report includes recommendations for
strengthening the existing Ohio law.

“Due to its recent passage, Ohio’s new anti-trafficking law has yet
to be applied,” states the reports. “However, its convoluted definition
of human trafficking, requirement of a pattern of corrupt activity and
lack of labor-trafficking provisions suggest the Ohio law will be
somewhat more limited than the TVPA or laws passed by other states.
Just as importantly, the new law does not provide for law-enforcement
training, agency reporting or services for victims.”

Ohio clearly has more work to do in order to increase awareness
about and stop human trafficking, in addition to helping victims become
truly free.

news@clevescene.com

This article appears in Sep 2-8, 2009.