Trafficking Monitor: Human trafficking subject of conference at UD

Tuesday, October 20, 2009

Human trafficking subject of conference at UD

Cover of "A Crime So Monstrous: Face-to-F...

By Dave Larsen, Staff Writer 12:11 PM Monday, October 19, 2009

Dayton Daily News

DAYTON — The FBI has identified Ohio as a source, route and destination for human trafficking.

“A Global Report on Trafficking in Persons,” released in February by the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, said that a country with at least 100 reported cases of human trafficking is considered to have a serious problem with the modern-day form of slavery.

“Ohio probably has 100 cases,” said Mark Ensalaco, director of the University of Dayton’s Human Rights Program, on Monday, Oct. 19. If Ohio was a country, “we would ... qualify,” he said.

As many as 17,000 persons are trafficked into the U.S. each year from Asia, Central and South America and Eastern Europe, and are exploited for commercial sex, including prostitution, stripping and pornography, or exploited for labor in domestic servitude, sweatshops or migrant agricultural work, according to U.S. State Department figures.

“It’s everything maids to exotic dancers to prostitutes on the streets to, who knows, people working in commercial agriculture even in this area,” Ensalaco said.

UD on Nov. 9-10 will host the Dayton Human Trafficking Accords Conference, university officials announced Monday in a meeting with the Dayton Daily News editorial board.

The event will feature a talk on the evening of Nov. 9 by Benjamin Skinner, winner of the 2009 Dayton Literary Peace Prize for nonfiction for his book, “A Crime So Monstrous: Face to Face With Modern Day Slavery.”

On Nov. 10, the conference will include working sessions for area law enforcement officials and victims advocates to assess the extent of human trafficking in Ohio and what is being done for victims, Ensalaco said. Attendance to the working sessions is by invitation only.

The public session, “Trafficking is Slavery,” will include a forum with former trafficking victims, a screening of the film “Playground” and a conversation with filmmaker Libby Spears.

“The idea is to make the University of Dayton available as an academic resource to the community and see what we can do moving forward,” Ensalaco said.

For more information on the conference contact UD’s Human Rights Program at