About a week ago The Kansas City Star did an exhaus­tive inves­ti­ga­tion on the polic­ing of human traf­fick­ing in Amer­ica. What they found is that the vic­tims of human traf­fick­ing are often vic­tim­ized twice.

Many peo­ple in law enforce­ment have not been thor­oughly trained on the unique crime of sex traf­fick­ing and treat those involved like pros­ti­tu­tion. So for for­eign­ers that were coerced into being slaves they are often detained for a long time, or deported. For Amer­i­cans who were coerced into being sex slaves against their will, they are often pros­e­cuted for the crime of prostitution.

This video sum­maries the Star’s report­ing on the issue.

From the Kansas City Star’s arti­cle on the issue of sex traf­fick­ing, reporter Laura Bauer gives the story of one Chi­nese mother.

Sit­ting in the jail in Boone County, Mo., the Chi­nese woman didn’t look like a crim­i­nal to Kel­ley Lucero. She looked like a middle-aged mom.

Soon, Lucero learned that the woman had indeed come to Amer­ica to scout out a col­lege for her teenage son. She had come, legally, as part of a cul­tural exchange pro­gram, but her life had taken an unex­pected and ter­ri­fy­ing turn in Mid­dle America.

Forced to work in a one-room mas­sage par­lor, she ended up being arrested for pros­ti­tu­tion at a truck stop between Kansas City and St. Louis.

Only an expe­ri­enced eye like Lucero’s could see some­thing that Boone County deputies appeared to miss. What so many in law enforce­ment all over the nation still are not trained to see.

“This wasn’t a pros­ti­tute,” said Lucero, a sex­ual abuse pro­gram coor­di­na­tor for a domes­tic vio­lence shel­ter in Colum­bia. “She was a human traf­fick­ing victim.”

And yet, the Chi­nese woman sat in jail for five months.

When the United States took a global stand on human traf­fick­ing in 2000, law­mak­ers wanted to res­cue foreign-born women turned into Amer­i­can sex slaves. In too many cases, though, that hasn’t happened.

In its six-month inves­ti­ga­tion into America’s effec­tive­ness in the war on human traf­fick­ing, The Kansas City Star found that the sys­tem orginally designed with sex traf­fick­ing in mind is often unsuc­cess­ful in reach­ing those victims.

Some are mis­tak­enly iden­ti­fied as pros­ti­tutes and end up either lost in the crim­i­nal jus­tice bureau­cracy or back on the streets. Even when vic­tims are iden­ti­fied by law enforce­ment, some are reluc­tant to go through the gant­let that accom­pa­nies the pros­e­cu­tion of their traf­ficker, too untrust­ing or scared to reveal the hor­ri­ble things that hap­pened to them. Crit­ics com­plain that the U.S. law is inher­ently flawed because it con­nects vic­tims’ aid with their will­ing­ness to help make cases.
…

When the mother from China was arrested, deputies in Boone County hadn’t been trained to rec­og­nize human traf­fick­ing. They didn’t know what ques­tions to ask.

Or that the crime requires a victim-centered approach, much dif­fer­ent from what offi­cers are tra­di­tion­ally schooled in.

Boone County Assis­tant Pros­e­cu­tor Mer­ilee Crock­ett said she couldn’t dis­cuss specifics of the case, but gen­er­ally cases that may involve human traf­fick­ing are a “conun­drum” because if vic­tims are released they could end up back with their traf­fick­ers. And some­times there is no safe place to keep them other than jail.

“Where is the res­cue? What do we do for them? How do we pro­tect them?” Crock­ett said.

Law enforce­ment author­i­ties also have dif­fer­ent pri­or­i­ties, explained Ivy Suriy­opas, staff attor­ney for the Asian Amer­i­can Legal Defense and Edu­ca­tion Fund. “They focus on catch­ing per­pe­tra­tors, mak­ing sure the pub­lic is safe from addi­tional crimes. That doesn’t nec­es­sar­ily cor­re­late with the needs of the victims.”

Some police offi­cers get it and know how to work human traf­fick­ing cases, advo­cates acknowl­edged. Yet many don’t. At least not at this point.

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