EJF investigation reveals human rights abuses in Thailand's fishing industry

http://ejfoundation.org/soldtotheseanews

Source: EJF

29 May, 2013

In Sold to the Sea, a new report published today, EJF exposes severe human rights abuses associated with human trafficking in Thailand's fishing industry and documents the testimonies of Burmese workers, as young as 16, who were forced onto fishing vessels for many months and subjected to arduous, often violent, working conditions without pay.

The report details testimonies of crew murdered at sea, and on shore, and the shocking figure from a 2009 survey by the United Nations Inter-Agency Project on Human Trafficking (UNIAP) that found 59% of interviewed migrants trafficked about Thai fishing boats reported witnessing the murder of a fellow worker.
Testimonies from the victims EJF interviewed:
“They said I could not do my job very well and I was beaten. We dare not talk back or make any complaints. When our boat went back to shore, I was sold to another boat and I was beaten on that next boat as well.”
“After 3 nights we were told that one of us would be executed. We had to draw straws to decide who would be killed. If the police had come one hour later we would have been killed already.”
Sold to the Sea reports that authorities tasked with ensuring that workers are employed legally, and are not mistreated, have proved unable or unwilling to do so. EJF has documented that human trafficking onto fishing vessels has, on occasion, been facilitated by corruption and there is an unwillingness to prosecute the individuals and companies that procure trafficked persons.
EJF evidence shows a close relationship between human trafficking and IUU fishing, with migrants reporting their boats regularly operating illegally and fleeing patrol boats in foreign waters. This is a symptom of a wider lack of regulation and transparency in the Thai fishing industry, with ineffective enforcement by Navy patrols and little information on the activities and locations of fishing vessels.
EJF found that monitoring of the activities of the Thai fishing fleet is negligible and consequently new management and enforcement mechanisms must be employed.
In Sold to the Sea: Human Trafficking in Thailand’s Fishing Industry, EJF reveals evidence that raises serious questions about Thailand’s progress in combating and preventing human trafficking. EJF calls on all stakeholders to work together to prevent human trafficking in Thai seafood production and bring an end to this devastating practice. The report offers specific recommendations for action.
Steve Trent, Executive Director of EJF, said:
“EJF has uncovered a huge number of pirate fishing operators and criminal businesses actively using forced and trafficked workers on their boats as a way to maximise their profits. The victims of this, often among the most vulnerable and desperate, are subject to horrific abuse, denied basic freedoms, forced to work punishing hours, savagely beaten and even murdered. There are no excuses for this modern day slavery and governments and business must come together to stamp it out.
All too often the fish that is caught by these vessels, crewed by trafficked workers, is used to supply fish to the shrimp industry and provide for fish markets in Europe. We are eating product produced by slaves and this must be stopped.  
It is absolutely clear that the Thai authorities have long known about the trafficking on to fishing vessels (and into shrimp factories) and that the enforcement agencies supposed to prevent this and protect victims either turn a blind eye, or have even colluded with the traffickers and businesses that benefit.”
Read the report here.

====
TRAFFICKING MONITOR: Video: http://ejfoundation.org/soldtotheseafilm

Related articles

• TCA Joins Fight to End Human Trafficking - News - TruckingInfo.com
• ILO Global Forum Discusses Decent Work in the Fishing Industry - The Fish Site

TCA Joins Fight to End Human Trafficking - News - TruckingInfo.com

http://www.truckinginfo.com/news/story/2013/05/tca-joins-fight-to-end-human-trafficking.aspx#.UaFpccxYHkI.blogger


Source: TruckingInfo.com

May 20, 2013

The Truckload Carriers Association has formed a partnership with Truckers Against Trafficking, a nonprofit organization that educates, equips, empowers, and mobilizes members of the trucking and truck plaza industries to combat domestic sex trafficking.

Speaking at the organization’s Safety & Security Division Annual Meeting in Indianapolis, TCA President Chris Burruss announced that TCA is already making full use of its Truckload Academy On-demand education and training platform to prepare drivers and others to recognize and report such heinous activities.

Sex or human “trafficking”—a term for modern-day slavery—has been reported in all 50 states. The Department of Justice estimates that anywhere between 100,000 to 300,000 of America's children are at risk of entering the sex for sale industry every year. Trafficking often occurs where young girls, and sometimes boys, can be easily moved from city to city and forced to engage in commercial sex along the way.

TCA has developed a test that all interested parties (not just truck drivers) can take to obtain the designation Certified Trucker Against Trafficking, or CTAT. The questions are based on a half-hour video that outlines the scope of the human trafficking problem and what to do when someone encounters it.

There is no cost to become certified, and everything is available through TAO (www.truckload.org/TAO). The training and testing also will be offered on-site at the Great American Trucking Show, Aug. 22-24, 2013, in Dallas, Texas.

Additionally, TCA will ensure that its member companies have access to TAT materials, which include awareness posters that can be hung in company break rooms and wallet cards that promote the National Human Trafficking Hotline: (888) 373-7888. These items are available in English, Spanish, and French Canadian. When suspicious activity is spotted, a simple phone call to this number could help authorities rescue an enslaved victim.

TCA stresses that anyone who wants to help end human trafficking can get CTAT certified; it is not necessary to be a truck driver or a TCA member. However, it is hoped that the trucking industry can set an example for other industries so they will get involved with the program. With millions of people making a living through trucking in some way, there is much potential for closing loopholes to traffickers who victimize both women and children along our nation's highways.

For more information about Truckers Against Trafficking, please visitwww.TruckersAgainstTrafficking.org.

Related articles

• Graduate students use design to combat human trafficking | The Daily
• Kevin M. Ryan: New Study Reveals Vulnerability of Homeless Youth to Trafficking
• No End in Sight: Why the 'End Demand' Movement is the Wrong Focus for Efforts to Eliminate Human Trafficking

Graduate students use design to combat human trafficking | The Daily

http://dailyuw.com/archive/2013/05/23/news/graduate-students-use-design-combat-human-trafficking#.UaO96NI-ZzG

Source: The Daily

May 23, 2013 at 8:41 PM | Nicole Einbinder

The Pivot Project -

Five UW graduate students designed a way to convey information to victims of
human trafficking without being suspected by their captors, in the form of a
paper hidden inside the packaging of sanitary pads, which can then be
flushed down the toilet to avoid detection.

Photo by The Pivot Project | Courtesy Photo

The Pivot Project

May 23, 2013 at 8:41 PM | Nicole Einbinder

A female victim of forced labor — whether in agricultural, sexual, or another form of bondage -— has a few moments of privacy in the bathroom. She opens a sanitary pad, a seemingly normal item used in everyday life, an object a trafficker would likely not deem threatening. However, tucked within the package is a means of escape: a number, disguised as a fortune-cookie tab, she can call to seek out help and free herself from slavery. And after she leaves the restroom, the rest of the product is flushed down the toilet due to it being printed on water-soluble paper, while she now has been given the resources to transform her life.

Five UW graduate students in the school of art’s division of design have used the innovation of design to turn such an idea into reality and combat human trafficking. The Pivot Project, named for its role as a pivotal point in the lives of victims, was created to combine design with social change and make an impact for those experiencing forced servitude.

“Washington state is actually deeply entrenched in the whole area of human trafficking because we’re a gateway state since we’re on the coast, Canada is bordering us, and there is a major metropolitan area,” said Kari Gaynor, one of the design students who created the project. “We chose to focus on trafficking since it’s such an atrocious crime, and design isn’t really being used in that area to address it.”

The other students involved in the project are Josh Nelson, Melanie Wang, Mike Fretto, and Adriel Rollins. 

“What got us interested was we found a supposed statistic that Washington state was ranked third in America for human trafficking, but we never verified that or found any information behind it,” Nelson said.

As the students tried to seek out information to better understand the phenomenon of human trafficking, they were frustrated by the contradictory information available, with trafficking largely being sensationalized by the media. To better understand the issue, they reached out to the Washington Anti-Trafficking Response Network (WARN). 

WARN provided the students with two important pieces of information: First, trafficked people are not typically rescued out of their situation, but instead are encouraged to seek out help. And second, the process of self-rescue comes in a myriad of forms, like having a conversation with a potentially trafficked individual. 

“What we do is be here when someone is ready for our services,” said Kathleen Morris, the program manager for WARN. “Our clients come out of trafficking situations on their own or reach out for serviceswhen they no longer want to be in that situation. It’s hard for someone to leave an abusive situation, and so we’ve found is that the most effective way for us to serve people is to be available when they need us. We really try to work with them on their terms.”

The students also sought to address the sensationalism around human trafficking, a major problem that can have a detrimental impact on tangibly addressing and combating this problem.

“Some of the misconceptions is that all trafficking occurs in the commercial sex industry, which is not accurate,” Morris said. “Some people think it only happens in other countries, and that’s obviously not accurate. People tend to sensationalize the issue, so we try to explain the form of trafficking that we see in Washington state and across the U.S. and talk about realistic ways to reach vulnerable populations.”

According to Morris, a common form of trafficking in Western Washington is domestic servitude, with a person being treated like a slave while in a suburban, middle-class neighborhood, an environment where many would assume such practices could never exist.

The Pivot Project is using their message to target two specific trafficked groups: people forced into prostitution and people forced into agricultural trafficking. Gaynor said their messages have been printed in both English and Spanish and incorporate language and images that evokes trust to encourage victims to call the number. 

“It has to be treated with a lot of care because as soon as you engage with that person you’re putting them at risk,” Nelson said. “We need to get them information that is critical to their well-being and deliver it in a way that they can understand and take care to not put them at risk. We had this idea about a feminine product: There’s a moment around this when a women is likely to be alone, less likely to get in trouble, and she can also think and reflect on her own situation.”

Due to their efforts, the Pivot Project won the 2013 Design Ignites Change Idea Award and is also a finalist in the Industrial Designers Society of America’s IDEA competition. 

The team used the money from the award to start producing the sanitary pads on a larger scale and begin distribution. 

“It is important for us to target who is receiving these pads since it could potentially put someone in danger,” Gaynor said. “It is not just men trafficking women but also women trafficking men. We wanted to make sure we got the right distribution channels in reach to distribute these to people who are potential victims or potentially trafficked individuals.”

The students first became interested in using design to solve social issues after taking a graduate seminar course about alternative design taught by Tad Hirsch, assistant professor of interaction design in the school of art.

“At the end of the quarter, they approached me and said they wanted to keep working with me and do something design-oriented,” Hirsch said. “I had, since arriving at UW, been wanting to start a kind of studio within the school of art that would focus on socially engaged design work, so it was the perfect kind of match. They were motivated and excited, so it all came together.”

Hirsch now serves as the advisor of the Pivot Project and also established the Public Practice Studio on campus as a way to bring together research and design to tackle pressing local, national, and global issues.

“We come at an issue like human trafficking and our approach is, ‘What we can do here?’ What design can do really well is work with scientists and researchers and policy makers and advocacy and work with these groups. But, what we can do is take those different perspectives and boil them down to a concrete kind of intervention,” Hirsch said. “The kinds of work we do have immediacy to it. We had to know what the experience of a victim is like, that community health clinics routinely give out sanitary pads. We are good at synthesizing information and turning it into concrete intervention that hopefully can make a difference.”

The project is still currently in a pilot stage, but based on positive feedback from WARN and other anti-human trafficking network organizations, Hirsch thinks the project will make a difference.

The winners of the Industrial Designers Society of America’s IDEA competition will be announced July 1. 

“Thinking about items [the students] could create through design that could actually come into contact with potential victims so those people could better seek services, that to us is the most powerful type of impact that can happen,” Morris said. “If the design students that work on this project are informed by the right people, I think the sky is the limit.”

Reach reporter Nicole Einbinder at news@dailyuw.com. Twitter: @NicoleEinbinder

Related articles

• Using comic strips to report on human trafficking
• Saudi Diplomat Human Trafficking: Why Do Diplomats and the Wealthy Turn to Human Trafficking?
• East Portland area Rotarians to use soap bars, posters to combat human trafficking
• IPS - Brazil Lagging in Fight against Human Trafficking | Inter Press Service

The Misconception of Modern Slavery: Reinterpreting Forced Labour | Fair Observer°

Source: The Fair Observer

17 MAY 2013
MIRKO VAN PAMPUS

The dominant terminology on forced labour relations is too rigid in assuming the existence of two homogeneous but separated groups of workers.

"For three hundred years, the most powerful nations on earth grew richer and stronger on the profits of slave trade. Over twelve million men, women and children were forcefully transported from Africa...to the colonies and plantations of North and South America. Today, slavery is illegal in every country on the planet, but the truth is slavery did not die in the 19th Century. It is alive, it is thriving and it is bigger than ever."

With this sweeping statement, researcher and journalist Rageh Omaar introduces every episode of the eight-part Al Jazeera series on modern slavery. The message is clear: slavery is by no means banished to history books, but still out there as an embarrassing injustice in the modern world."

Well worth reading. Full article at 

http://www.fairobserver.com/article/misconception-modern-slavery-reinterpreting-forced-labour

ABOUT THE CONTRIBUTOR

MIRKO VAN PAMPUS

Amsterdam, Netherlands

Mirko van Pampus holds an MSc in Development Studies from the School for Oriental and African Studies (University of London). He specialises in issues of labour and development, such as unionisation, informalisation of labour, and labour exploitation in the sphere of global capitalist production relations.

View Profile

Related articles

• Maria Grazia Giammarinaro: Scotland's Move to Protect Victims of Modern Slave Trade Is Model for the World
• New Push, at Home and Abroad, to Combat Modern-Day Slavery | American Civil Liberties Union
• A Map of Modern Day Slavery
• Demand for forced labour increasing in EU

Kevin M. Ryan: New Study Reveals Vulnerability of Homeless Youth to Trafficking

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/kevin-m-ryan/homeless-youth-sex-trafficking_b_3321193.html

Source: The Huffington Post

Kevin M. Ryan

President and CEO, Covenant House

05/24/2013 9:44 am

Today we are releasing the findings from one of the largest human trafficking studies among homeless youth in New York history, and the news is numbing. In interviews with almost 200 randomly selected homeless youth over the last year, researchers at Covenant House and Fordham University found that almost half -- 48% in total -- of those who engaged in commercial sexual activity said they did it because they did not have a place to stay.

Almost one out of every four homeless young people we interviewed were at some point in their lives either victims of trafficking or had engaged in survival sex (trading sex acts to meet basic needs like food or shelter). Kids who had a history of childhood sexual abuse, who lacked a caring, supportive adult in their life, and who had no means to earn an income were particularly vulnerable to such exploitation. Since Covenant House offers shelter and care to more than 3,000 youth in New York City each year, it is possible that we work with as many as 700 youth annually who have experienced trafficking or survival sex.

Imagine that - in two buildings in midtown Manhattan, we may see as many as 700 kids every year who have been sexually exploited, trafficked or forced to exchange sex for shelter. That is disgraceful, and a wake up call to all of us, including all of us at Covenant House, that we have to be prepared to respond to the needs of victims by making sure we do everything in our power to help them leave the streets safely and permanently.

Solid figures have been particularly hard to come by in growing discussions of human trafficking, in part because many survivors don't like to talk about having been exploited. Working with the Applied Developmental Psychology Department at Fordham, researchers at Covenant House developed a set of interview questions to make it easier to find trafficking victims, and we were surprised and dismayed by the extent of exploitation the young people who participated in the interviews had suffered.

We knew when the research team launched its study of human trafficking among our kids, that those who didn't have a safe place to sleep at night were particularly vulnerable to being exploited, pimped out, even enslaved, but the incidence is more common than I had anticipated. For advocates working with homeless youth across the United States, the study is a thunder clap - the fight against human trafficking is ours.

The kids told researchers stories that are hard to comprehend, but they were consistent over time. Those who had been compelled into sex trafficking reported being gang raped, intimidated, and beaten up. Four were kidnapped before being forced into prostitution, and several described repeated and unsuccessful attempts at escape. Their traffickers were often family members, friends of family, or boyfriends who at first pretended to love and care for them. How do you ever learn to trust again, after such experiences?

We learned that more than 40 percent of the young people in the study were over 18 when they first traded sex for something of value like food and shelter, either through trafficking or survival sex. This is an older starting age than earlier studies‎ have shown - many trafficked youth report having started selling sex at age 12 or 14. According to the research team, the sample of kids represented in today's study may have started later because many didn't experience enduring homelessness until they were over 18, when they left foster care, for example, or were kicked out of their homes for being gay. The findings starkly underline the correlation between youth homelessness, exploitation and commercial sexual activity.

We have to remember that older adolescents who have been trafficked have the same needs for help, love, and guidance, as younger ones do. The older trafficked kids are often suffering from more entrenched problems and educational deficits, yet some in the public tend to look at them as guilty criminals, rather than as young people who have grown up with constant trauma who were left to survive on the streets.

It is clear to me that if we want to reduce the number of young people who are trafficked -- and who doesn't? -- we need to attack the problems of supply and demand. Too many of us focus on just the demand side of this nightmare -- fighting important battles to detect, arrest, prosecute and punish those pimps, johns, gangs and cartels who buy and sell young bodies, while deterring others who may do so next.

The truth is we will never arrest our way out of this. We cannot effectively end the exploitation of young people if we do not focus on the root causes and conditions of their vulnerability. And that means we have to ensure stable housing for many more kids than we currently do, so they won't have to make impossible choices between shelter and dignity, between shelter and innocence, between shelter and safety.

All across the nation, both at the federal, state and local levels, government is withdrawing aid to homeless youth while in some instances establishing new anti-trafficking programs or heralding new safe houses for trafficking survivors. It makes no sense for public leaders in New York and elsewhere to increase aid to shelter human trafficking victims while simultaneously slashing support for homeless youth shelters. These are the same kids!

The nation's expanding state and federal anti-trafficking coalitions must build agendas that go beyond a criminal justice response for traffickers; we need robust prevention initiatives. We need to keep kids safe from sexual abuse, promote firm family ties, and ensure kids are equipped, through housing, education and job training, to live safely and independently when they are old enough.

Of course every young person deserves a future of opportunity, one free from sexual exploitation. But keeping them safe from the predators who lurk in the darkest corners of society is going to require that we get real about the causes of human trafficking and start building more bridges from homelessness to hope.

Follow Kevin M. Ryan on Twitter: www.twitter.com/covhouseprez

Related articles

• Fighting poverty would limit trafficking, Vatican's U.N. observer says | National Catholic Reporter
• The James M. Cox Foundation Announces $100,000 Gift to Covenant House Georgia
• Rev. Dr. Nancy Wilson: Say No to Slave and Sex Trafficking
• Human trafficking hits closer to home than you might think
• 'Hazel's law' protects state's foster youth

New Push, at Home and Abroad, to Combat Modern-Day Slavery | American Civil Liberties Union

http://www.aclu.org/blog/human-rights/new-push-home-and-abroad-combat-modern-day-slavery

Source: American Civil Liberties Union

05/17/2013

By Chandra Bhatnagar, Senior Staff Attorney, ACLU Human Rights Program at 7:07pm

A White House task force set up to combat human trafficking held its annual meeting today, chaired by Secretary of State John Kerry. The cabinet-level group, called the President's Interagency Task Force to Monitor and Combat Trafficking in Persons (PITF) coordinates the U.S. government's efforts to eradicate the phenomenon commonly likened to "modern-day slavery."

At the meeting, Secretary Kerry stated he had been "stunned by the stories and examples of the evil... It is nothing less than the most predatory, extraordinary modern slavery that you can conceivably imagine."

The PITF was not the only human trafficking-related event this week.

On Monday and Tuesday, the United Nations convened a high-level General Assumbly meeting on the Global Plan of Action to Combat Trafficking in Persons. The Plan of Action commits governments around the world to fully implement key anti-human trafficking treaties and to join forces to counter the multi-billion dollar industry which has trapped some 21 million men, women and children in forced labor. At the meeting, actress Mira Sorvino, the United Nations Goodwill Ambassador to Combat Human Trafficking, described human trafficking as "one of the great social justice issues of our time." The United States also addressed the meeting, stating, "(t)he solution in face of this scourge is clear – joint action across nations and across UN agencies." United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon noted that "(h)uman trafficking devastates individuals and undermines national economies," and called on governments to prevent trafficking by ratifying relevant treaties, implementing the U.N.'s Global Plan of Action against trafficking, and making contributions to the United Nations Voluntary Trust Fund to help victims.

The ACLU endorses these measures and encourages the U.S. to do more to address human trafficking through better monitoring and enforcement of existing anti-trafficking laws, policies and practices.

For years, the ACLU has worked with other organizations to protect the human rights of victims of labor trafficking. That work has included:

• Advocating on behalf of 500 guestworkers from India who were trafficked into the U.S. through the federal government's H-2B guestworker program with dishonest assurances of becoming lawful permanent U.S. residents and subjected to squalid living conditions, fraudulent payment practices, and threats of serious harm. The workers' lawsuit, which was filed in 2008, highlights serious flaws in the current guestworker program wherein foreign low-wage temporary workers are subjected to numerous human rights violations including trafficking and forced labor. These violations take place due in part to the exploitation of visa application processes by duplicitous recruiters and employers. The lawsuit also highlights the U.S. government's failure to regulate and supervise these visa schemes appropriately to prevent abuse, and failure to vigorously enforce anti-trafficking and labor laws when violations occur.
• Advocating on behalf of foreign workers, known as Third Country Nationals (TCNs), contracted to perform services for the United States overseas, including in Iraq and Afghanistan. Many of these workers have been deceived about how much they will be paid, as well the nature and location of their job, and charged thousands of dollars in recruitment fees that effectively place them in debt bondage. Last year, President Obama issued an importantExecutive Order aimed at addressing these issues and in January this year Congress enacted legislation designed to achieve these same ends. These measures, while welcome, will only prove effective if they are properly implemented and enforced. Together with a coalition of anti-trafficking groups, the ACLU recently made recommendations to the Federal Acquisition and Regulatory (FAR) Council to ensure the laws effectiveness.
• Advocating on behalf of domestic workers trafficked into the United States by foreign diplomats stationed here and subjected to forced labor and other abuses.  Because of diplomatic immunity, victims are left without access to legal remedies for these abuses. Domestic workers are a uniquely vulnerable population as they do not generally enjoy the right to organize, minimum wage protections, or other fundamental workplace protections, and their race, gender, immigration status, education levels, and physical isolation in the home make them particularly susceptible to labor trafficking.

Today's PITF meeting and Monday and Tuesday's UN meetings were important reminders that despite some progress, much more must be done by governments and civil society to combat human trafficking in this country and to provide redress and other support to victims.

In the words of Secretary General Ban Ki-moon, "(h)uman trafficking is a vicious chain that binds victims to criminals. We must break this chain with the force of human solidarity."

Related articles

• Fighting poverty would limit trafficking, Vatican's U.N. observer says | National Catholic Reporter
• IPS - Brazil Lagging in Fight against Human Trafficking | Inter Press Service
• U.S. Must Work to End Human Trafficking, Modern-Day Slavery on Government Contracts | American Civil Liberties Union
• Maria Grazia Giammarinaro: Scotland's Move to Protect Victims of Modern Slave Trade Is Model for the World

The face of human trafficking - Al Jazeera Blogs

http://blogs.aljazeera.com/blog/americas/face-human-trafficking


SOURCE: Al Jazeera Blogs

Kristen Saloomey

Kristen Saloomey is Al Jazeera's correspondent in New York.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=7pb_SaUuCXc

Shandra Woworuntu once paid $3,000 to a broker expecting to get a job in a Chicago hotel and her ticket to the American dream. Instead, the then 25-year-old from Indonesia got sold into prostitution, literal sexual slavery.

Now, at 36, she spends her free time talking about the dangers of human trafficking.

"Forgetting is not the solution," Shandra told me. She wants to make people aware that this crime is happening, often right under their noses.

Talking about such a horrific experience is one thing, last week she actually took me to one of the many places where she had been locked up.

Her captors trafficked her to several locations in New York and Connecticut over the course of a month in 2001. This was the last one, the apartment building she had  escaped from.

It sits on a corner in a neighbourhood known as Sunset Park, New York, home to many recent immigrants, where many of the storefronts bear Chinese lettering. The building she took me to looks like any other Brooklyn tenement building. For Shandra, however, it was living hell.

She pointed out the wrought iron bars covering all of the first floor windows, ostensibly to keep intruders out but also serving to hold her and two other Indonesian women in.

A bouncer slept in front of the door. Whenever they changed locations – the customers like variety - they travelled with an escort who held a gun to their backs. But soon after arriving at this location she discovered a possible way out: a small bathroom window that didn't have a lock or bars covering it.

It is bricked over now, but you can make out where it was thanks to the different color of the bricks, about three metres off the ground. Shandra had screamed for a shower and so the women were allowed into the bathroom. They turned on the water to disguise any noises and Shandra climbed up and, at barely 100 pounds, wriggled through. The window was so small that one of the other women didn't make it out.

The two who escaped promised to come back for her – and they did - but it took over a month of living on the street to find help from law enforcement. When Shandra first tried telling their story, the police either didn't understand her broken English or didn't care. Her captors had taken all of her identification. Finally, Shandra met someone who put her in touch with the Federal Bureau of Investigation.

Human trafficking is not a crime typically associated with the United States, even though it is estimated that half of international trafficking victims end up here. Like Shandra, the victims are generally looking for a better life and get trapped.

One recent federal bust involved a dozen individuals who are now charged with trafficking Mexican women to the greater New York area. Many of them were wooed into romantic relationships with their captors and then, once far from family and all that is familiar, told they'd have to sell themselves to help pay the rent.

"The women were sometimes beaten, threatened with violence both sexual and physical and their families were threatened," explained James T Hayes Jr, special agent in charge of Homeland Security Investigations' New York office, adding they were forced to have sex 20 to 30 times a day. Ultimately many were threatened with deportation.

"It's a really heart-breaking ordeal."

Manhattan District Attorney Cyrus Vance notes there has been a shift in the way law enforcement handles these cases. In the past, the women might have been charged with prostitution. Now, there is greater recognition that the women are generally unwilling participants.

Vance has created a special unit in his office to handle human trafficking cases, combining experts in sex crimes and money laundering. He has also begun working with banks to identify financial clues that could serve as red flags for investigators looking for evidence of human trafficking.

"The way to attack sex trafficking and human trafficking is to understand that what we are dealing with here is a business," Vance explains.

And it is a growing one. The Polaris Project estimates 14,500 to 17,500 men and women are trafficked into the US from other countries. Tens of thousands more Americans, primarily children, are also trafficked.

Such evidence could help prosecutors rely less heavily on the testimony of traumatised victims.

Shandra had to tell her story over and over again to the investigators who ultimately put her captors behind bars, a feat many victims are not up to. Their road to recovery is long. Shandra still receives counseling and struggles with post-traumatic stress disorder.

Visiting Sunset Park was not easy for her. Seeing the room with the bars on the window brought back lurid memories – but it was only after our cameras stopped rolling that her composure cracked.

She wondered out loud why no one ever told the authorities that men – no women or children - were coming in and out of the building at all hours. The window with the bars is barely a metre from the street.

Related articles

• Saudi Diplomat Human Trafficking: Why Do Diplomats and the Wealthy Turn to Human Trafficking?
• Abuse And Human Trafficking Prevalent Among Central American Migrants Crossing The Mexico-U.S. Border
• Trafficking couple sentenced to two decades in prison
• AVODAH: Hidden in Plain Sight: A Story of Human Trafficking
• Beyond Border Security: Feminist Approaches to Human Trafficking
• Using comic strips to report on human trafficking
• East Portland area Rotarians to use soap bars, posters to combat human trafficking