Imagine a mother desperately seeking her 15-year-old daughter. Gone for a week and she’s nowhere to be found. Little does this mother know her daughter has been captured by a pimp.
We may not know it, but this is happening in our neighborhoods.
Welcome to Springfield, MO, the small growing city located in the “Bible Belt.” A place where businesses are developing and communities are growing. A place that sex trafficking occurs.
Southwest Missouri is an area targeted by sex traffickers. Many traffickers live nomadic lifestyles. They stay in a place for two or three days, send out solicitations on social media, and entice their victims to meet them. In 2017 alone, there were 109 sex trafficking cases in Missouri reported to the National Human Trafficking Resource Hotline.
Social Media Used to Lure Victims
Where pimps once stalked malls and group homes, now they are all over the internet. Some pimps use online ads to target victims. One of the most popular ad sites was Backpage.com, which has been seized and shuttered by the feds this past April. Donna Hughes, an American researcher on the trafficking of women and children, has studied how the Internet has facilitated the global trafficking industry since 1997. According to the Shared Hope International report, the U.S. faces the challenge of combating sex tourism and sex trafficking markets using technology.
To protect yourself and your family from social media trafficking, do not accept friend requests from strangers. Parents, you should comb through your children’s social media accounts to ensure their friends and followers are within your child’s immediate and real-life networks.
How can we protect our families and prevent sex trafficking from happening?
There is no single profile for trafficking victims; trafficking occurs to adults and minors in rural, suburban, or urban communities across the country. Victims of human trafficking have diverse socioeconomic backgrounds, varied levels of education, and may be documented or undocumented. Traffickers target victims using tailored methods of recruitment and control they find to be effective in compelling that individual into forced labor or commercial sex.
Here are key indicators of sex trafficking that we can look for:
- Do they appear disconnected from family, friends, community organizations?
- Has a child stopped attending school?
- Have they had a sudden or dramatic change in behavior?
- Are they engaged in commercial sex acts?
- Are they disoriented or confused, or showing signs of mental or physical abuse?
- Do they have bruises in various stages of healing?
- Are they fearful, timid, or submissive?
- Are they often in company with someone they are submissive to? Could be a much older friend or boyfriend.
- Are they in controlling/ dominating relationships?
- Do they seem to be coached on what to say?
What to do next…
If you suspect sex trafficking:
- For an emergency situation, call 911 to speak with your local law enforcement officials.
- If you see something that is NOT an emergency, call the U.S. Department of Homeland Security TIP Line: 1-866-347-2423, or online at www.ice.gov/tips
- You can call the National Human Trafficking Resource Center Hotline with questions regarding how to handle suspicious activity: 1-888-373-7888.
- In Missouri, you can reach out to the Missouri Attorney General’s Office to report suspicious activity or find additional resources specific to Missouri using their TIP line: 1-844-487-0492.
- At any time, victims can text ‘INFO’ or “HELP’ to BeFree (233733), part of the National Human Trafficking Resource Center Hotline.
Be present in your community. If you have a suspicion of sex trafficking, please do something. Do not stand on the sidelines thinking it isn’t your responsibility. It is. Act on It.