Sex Trafficking: How Activist and Survivor Ele DeRomano Uses Her Past to Help Others | Holly Austin Smith:
Showing posts with label Domestic violence. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Domestic violence. Show all posts
Wednesday, June 10, 2015
Monday, May 25, 2015
Dedicated to the topic of domestic child sex trafficking (DCST): Synergy, Vol. 18, No. 1 | National Council of Juvenile and Family Court Judges
Synergy, Vol. 18, No. 1 | National Council of Juvenile and Family Court Judges:
The Spring 2015 issue of synergy Synergy, the Resource Center on Domestic Violence: Child Protection and Custody's (RCDV: CPC) semi-annual newsletter, is now available! Volume 18, No. 1 of Synergy is dedicated to the topic of domestic child sex trafficking (DCST). Our lead article offers an overview of DCST and explores the dynamics of coercive control and the trafficking victim that makes the prosecution of exploiters and protection of DCST victims so challenging. Other issue highlights include an interview with anti-trafficking pioneer, Leah Albright-Byrd, a trafficking survivor who founded Bridget's Dream, a California-based organization that works with young trafficking victims, and articles about impact of trafficking on the LGBT and Native American communities.
Dedicated to the topic of domestic child sex trafficking (DCST)
Synergy, Vol. 18, No. 1
http://www.ncjfcj.org/resource-library/publications/synergy-vol-18-no-1
May 13, 2015
The Spring 2015 issue of synergy Synergy, the Resource Center on Domestic Violence: Child Protection and Custody's (RCDV: CPC) semi-annual newsletter, is now available! Volume 18, No. 1 of Synergy is dedicated to the topic of domestic child sex trafficking (DCST). Our lead article offers an overview of DCST and explores the dynamics of coercive control and the trafficking victim that makes the prosecution of exploiters and protection of DCST victims so challenging. Other issue highlights include an interview with anti-trafficking pioneer, Leah Albright-Byrd, a trafficking survivor who founded Bridget's Dream, a California-based organization that works with young trafficking victims, and articles about impact of trafficking on the LGBT and Native American communities.
Saturday, December 6, 2014
Modern slavery under the lens | Denton Record Chronicle | News for Denton County, Texas
Researchers at the University of Texas School of Social Work in Austin will be charting the scope of human trafficking in the state as part of the Texas Slavery Mapping Project.
The two-year initiative is funded by a $500,000 state grant awarded to the Institute on Domestic Violence and Sexual Assault and the Bureau of Business Research at UT.
Both organizations are working with Allies Against Slavery, a nonprofit organization, to document the extent of human trafficking across the state.
CONTINUE HERE:Modern slavery under the lens | Denton Record Chronicle | News for Denton County, Texas:
Related articles
Tuesday, August 26, 2014
Recognize the potential victims of human trafficking
Source: KevinMD.com
By: Dr. Alberto Hazan
Given the prevalence of human trafficking, there is no doubt that we come across victims of sexual exploitation or forced labor in our everyday practice. Emergency physicians, advanced practice clinicians, and nurses are in a prime position to identify victims of human trafficking. According to the Family Violence Prevention Fund, 28% of trafficking survivors had contact with a health care provider, but the abuse wasn’t recognized.
Read Alberto Hazan's article here:
http://www.kevinmd.com/blog/2014/08/recognize-potential-victims-human-trafficking.html
By: Dr. Alberto Hazan
Given the prevalence of human trafficking, there is no doubt that we come across victims of sexual exploitation or forced labor in our everyday practice. Emergency physicians, advanced practice clinicians, and nurses are in a prime position to identify victims of human trafficking. According to the Family Violence Prevention Fund, 28% of trafficking survivors had contact with a health care provider, but the abuse wasn’t recognized.
Read Alberto Hazan's article here:
http://www.kevinmd.com/blog/2014/08/recognize-potential-victims-human-trafficking.html
Sunday, February 17, 2013
Renew the Violence Against Women Act - NYTimes.com
3/02/16/opinion/renew-the-violence-against-women-act.html?nl=todaysheadlines&emc=edit_th_20130216&_r=0
Source: NYTimes.com
Published: February 15, 2013
This week’s 78-to-22 vote in the Senate to reauthorize the Violence Against Women Act provided a refreshing demonstration of bipartisanship that the House would do well to emulate. Last year, the Republican-led House blocked the act’s renewal over objections to new protections for gay, immigrant and American Indian victims of domestic violence and sexual assault. It falls to Speaker John Boehner to see that this does not happen again.
The Senate bill would provide services, like shelters and legal help, for abuse victims regardless of their sexual orientation or immigration status. To ease passage in the House, the measure’s lead sponsors, Patrick Leahy, a Vermont Democrat, and Michael Crapo, an Idaho Republican, dropped a provision that would have increased the number of visas available for battered women who were undocumented immigrants. Mr. Leahy has said he will push for the increase in future immigration reform efforts.
Other sticking points remain, chiefly the new powers the Senate bill would grant tribal courts, which currently cannot pursue non-Indians who attack Indian women on tribal land. Domestic and sexual violence has been soaring in tribal communities, and the law needs updating to address this prosecutorial gap. The Senate bill requires that criminal defendants in tribal courts be accorded normal constitutional protections. Negotiators are working on possible changes to alleviate Republican concerns about ensuring fair treatment of non-Indian defendants.
Source: NYTimes.com
Published: February 15, 2013
This week’s 78-to-22 vote in the Senate to reauthorize the Violence Against Women Act provided a refreshing demonstration of bipartisanship that the House would do well to emulate. Last year, the Republican-led House blocked the act’s renewal over objections to new protections for gay, immigrant and American Indian victims of domestic violence and sexual assault. It falls to Speaker John Boehner to see that this does not happen again.
The Senate bill would provide services, like shelters and legal help, for abuse victims regardless of their sexual orientation or immigration status. To ease passage in the House, the measure’s lead sponsors, Patrick Leahy, a Vermont Democrat, and Michael Crapo, an Idaho Republican, dropped a provision that would have increased the number of visas available for battered women who were undocumented immigrants. Mr. Leahy has said he will push for the increase in future immigration reform efforts.
Other sticking points remain, chiefly the new powers the Senate bill would grant tribal courts, which currently cannot pursue non-Indians who attack Indian women on tribal land. Domestic and sexual violence has been soaring in tribal communities, and the law needs updating to address this prosecutorial gap. The Senate bill requires that criminal defendants in tribal courts be accorded normal constitutional protections. Negotiators are working on possible changes to alleviate Republican concerns about ensuring fair treatment of non-Indian defendants.
In one important change from last year’s bill, the Senate agreed to tack on a renewal of another stalled measure, the Trafficking Victims Protection Act. This would toughen penalties for sex traffickers and impose stronger protections for trafficking victims. What should be an uncontroversial bill has been held up by Republicans over the Obama administration’s proper insistence that contractors under the act afford victims access to a full range of reproductive health services.
Seventeen Republican members have written to Mr. Boehner urging action on a Violence Against Women Act renewal that reaches “all victims and perpetrators of domestic violence.” This is a sign that the G.O.P.’s rejection by female voters in November is causing some rethinking. Mr. Boehner should allow a vote on the Senate bill.
Other sticking points remain, chiefly the new powers the Senate bill would grant tribal courts, which currently cannot pursue non-Indians who attack Indian women on tribal land. Domestic and sexual violence has been soaring in tribal communities, and the law needs updating to address this prosecutorial gap. The Senate bill requires that criminal defendants in tribal courts be accorded normal constitutional protections. Negotiators are working on possible changes to alleviate Republican concerns about ensuring fair treatment of non-Indian defendants.
In one important change from last year’s bill, the Senate agreed to tack on a renewal of another stalled measure, the Trafficking Victims Protection Act. This would toughen penalties for sex traffickers and impose stronger protections for trafficking victims. What should be an uncontroversial bill has been held up by Republicans over the Obama administration’s proper insistence that contractors under the act afford victims access to a full range of reproductive health services.
Seventeen Republican members have written to Mr. Boehner urging action on a Violence Against Women Act renewal that reaches “all victims and perpetrators of domestic violence.” This is a sign that the G.O.P.’s rejection by female voters in November is causing some rethinking. Mr. Boehner should allow a vote on the Senate bill.
Friday, November 2, 2012
Stop Violence Against Women (SVAW) - Trafficking in Women
CHECK out the section on Trafficking in Women at Stop Violence Against Women
http://www1.umn.edu/humanrts/svaw/trafficking/index.htm
Trafficking in persons is an increasing problem that involves both sexual exploitation and labor exploitation of its victims. Trafficking affects all regions and the majority of countries in the world. Both men and women may be victims of trafficking, but the primary victims worldwide are women and girls, the majority of whom are trafficked for the purpose of sexual exploitation. Traffickers primarily target women because they are disproportionately affected by poverty and discrimination, factors that impede their access to employment, educational opportunities and other resources.
Women’s advocates in Central and Eastern Europe and the Commonwealth of Independent States (CEE/CIS), and around the world, are addressing the problem of women being trafficked into the commercial sex industry as a human rights violation and a form of gender-based violence.
Trafficking in women is a complicated phenomenon with many forces that affect women’s decisions to work abroad. Perhaps the strongest factor is the desperate economic situation, which impacts the availability of satisfactory employment in many countries for women more severely than men. Women may become victims of trafficking when they seek assistance to obtain employment, work permits, visas and other travel documents. Traffickers prey on women’s vulnerable circumstances and may lure them into crime networks through deceit and false promises of decent working conditions and fair pay.... GO TO SVAW Website for more information.
Tuesday, September 4, 2012
Years Later, Human Trafficking Survivors at Risk of Re-Exploitation - New America Media
http://newamericamedia.org/2012/08/years-later-trafficking-survivors-at-risk-of-re-exploitation.php
Source: New America Media
New America Media/SF Public Press, News Report,
Posted: Aug 30, 2012
Source: New America Media
New America Media/SF Public Press, News Report,
Posted: Aug 30, 2012
Pictured above: Lili Samad, a survivor of international labor trafficking, holds her three-year-old daughter.
Photo by Jason Winshell / SF Public Press
When Lili Samad came to the Bay Area to work as a nanny for an Egyptian government official, she thought it was an ideal job. Instead, she said, she was forced to work long hours doing domestic chores and forbidden from contacting her family in Indonesia.
“First when I arrived there, they treated me like a prisoner,” Samad said.
After almost 3 1/2 years, for which she was paid just $1,000, she sought help from a neighbor she had met a few times. She said the neighbor concealed her in the back of a car and took her to a police station.
But after she escaped, Samad faced a whole new set of challenges: finding housing and a stable job to pay for it. Samad stayed with the neighbor for a few months before moving to the Asian Women’s Shelter, a San Francisco nonprofit that provides temporary housing for women who have suffered violence. There, case managers connected her to community rehabilitation services for victims. Still, the road to recovery was rocky. Over the course of six years, she lived in four temporary apartments before settling down in subsidized housing.
People trafficked into the country receive temporary government and nonprofit social service benefits after rescue or flight from captivity: shelter, health care, counseling, employment and legal help. But once these benefits term out, counter-trafficking specialists worry that victims, who generally have little work experience and weak social and family networks, could fall back into labor conditions as exploitative as the ones they fled.
As a victim of international labor trafficking, Samad received government help to stay in the U.S. But she is among hundreds of trafficking survivors each year who end up, months after getting help trying to build a new life, living in marginal housing and working in low-wage jobs.
Samad, who works part-time as a waitress at an elder care facility with her husband and lives in a low-income public housing unit in the Bay Area, said their combined income is only sufficient to pay for basic needs.
“We cannot spend on other things, so only food and rent,” she said.
From fiscal year 2002 through May of this year, the U.S. government issued 3,042 visas for trafficking victims, called T-1 Nonimmigrant Status visas, data from the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services show. These provide temporary protection and a chance to apply for permanent residency for those trafficked from foreign nations.
Experts say it is difficult to identify and quantify the number of victims in this country or those who are re-exploited. Not all victims of sex or labor trafficking seek help from government agencies or community groups. And international trafficking incidents in the U.S. are diverse. They can involve the exploitation of farm laborers by contracting companies, the abuse of domestic workers by foreign diplomats and the coercion of people into prostitution by pimps.
Traffickers — anyone who brings people to the U.S. through force, fraud or coercion — often hide victims in their homes, brothels, boats or other clandestine locations.
Risk of re-exploitation
A recent in-depth academic study by researchers at the University of Texas, Austin and North Carolina A & T State University, looked at women in Texas who had been trafficked from other countries. It showed that victims need targeted, long-lasting and culturally sensitive services to help them rebuild their lives.
Almost all of the women interviewed for the study now work in restaurants, hotels and other service jobs. This presents a challenge for their rehabilitation, said Noël Busch-Armendariz, director of the Institute on Domestic Violence and Sexual Assault at the School of Social Work at the University of Texas at Austin, and one of the authors of the report, published in the Journal of Applied Research on Children.
One of the long-term needs of trafficking survivors is acquiring new life and professional skills, so they can move toward jobs that give them more security and income, Busch-Armendariz said.
“If we don’t give survivors and their children ways to fully integrate, ways to be self-sufficient, they could continue to be targeted as somebody who could be exploited,” she said.
A 38-year-old single mother from the Philippines, who requested that her name not be used, said she came to the U.S. to work as a housekeeper for an ambassador from Africa more than three years ago. But as soon as she arrived in New Jersey, her employer seized her passport and work contract.
“The first thing that made me scared is they said their house is alarmed — if I open the door, the alarm will go off, and the police will arrive and take me away,” she said in her native Tagalog through an interpreter.
The woman said her employer paid her $1,000 per month for working 17-hour days, threw a fork at her in a fit of anger and made her scrub the kitchen when she was ill. “I was so scared,” she said. “I was always nervous. I was feeling sick.”
With the help of the ambassador’s driver, she contacted the Damayan Migrant Workers Association, a nonprofit group in New York City, which helped rescue her.
She said finding work has been difficult, and potential employers fear her trafficking background. She now works as a part-time nanny, but the pay is not sufficient to support herself.
“In truth, it’s short,” she said. “Not enough. My part-time work is just enough for the housing. There’s no health insurance.”
Community groups say survivors run the risk of re-exploitation if they work in sectors that are not properly regulated.
“This is especially true in the domestic worker industry, but any kind of informal sector where people are kind of more hidden from sight,” said Cindy Liou, staff attorney and coordinator of the Human Trafficking Project at Asian Pacific Islander Legal Outreach, a nonprofit organization in San Francisco that provides legal services for victims.
“It’s not uncommon that some of our clients sometimes come back to us with wage-and-hour questions, and we refer them out to the Employment Law Center and other places usually so they know their rights,” Liou said.
The benefits clock
County, state and federal governments offer a variety of temporary benefits to help smooth the way to rehabilitation for victims of international human trafficking.
Victims granted a T visa or continued presence status — a short-term immigration status from the U.S. Department of Homeland Security — receive certification from the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services to access public benefits at the same level as refugees.
Benefits typically last eight months, and include cash assistance, health care, food stamps, job training, English courses, transportation passes and other services.
Some states, such as California and New York, have approved short-term benefits to assist trafficking survivors in the process of qualifying for federal benefits.
The maximum benefit for single adult T visa clients in San Francisco is $422 per month, which includes a county supplement of $105, said Josef Bruckback, eligibility manager of the state’s welfare program CalWorks at the Human Services Agency in San Francisco. Clients with children receive benefits through CalWorks and are eligible for services for up to 48 months.
“The overarching problem is that once they time out of those benefits, they’re really left on their own,” said Denise Brennan, associate professor and chair of the department of anthropology at Georgetown University in Washington, D.C. “It’s a very short time frame. It’s not likely that they have built a social network that could fill in where the government support leaves off.”
Survivors generally find work in the same labor sector they worked in when they were trafficked, Brennan said, and it’s usually low-wage work, limiting their economic mobility.
“What I think is really quite concerning is that over time, some of the first T visa recipients who now have green cards are just treading water,” she said. “Just in the past six months, I’ve heard about some folks who have lost their jobs.”
Some rescued trafficking victims struggle to pay rent. “I’ve found that there are formerly trafficked people who sometimes stay in romantic relationships even after they’ve fallen out of love, because they just can’t really afford to move out on their own,” Brennan said.
Hurdles in finding housing
Trafficking survivors often have difficulty finding an economical place to live in the long term. Some migrate from shelters to transitional housing until they can secure an affordable room or apartment. Others find temporary accommodations by working as live-in nannies.
A 64-year-old woman, who requested that her name not be used because she feared her former captor, said she came to California from Peru, because her brother-in-law offered her work as a nanny to take care of his granddaughter. But he made her cook, wash, clean, garden and do other domestic work for about 14 hours a day, and restricted her from getting in touch with her family, she said.
“He invited me to come over here with the promise of work, and that he would support me in everything, but it wasn’t like that. It wasn’t true,” she said in Spanish through an interpreter.
After he released her from his house more than a year later, she found work as a nanny for a family in the Bay Area, who provided a space for her to stay in their home. She said she has lived in low-income housing apartments and has worked low-wage jobs at stores and cafes in the region since then.
She now earns $11 an hour working at a chain supermarket and lives in a subsidized apartment with her son.
Community organizations that provide shelter and rehabilitation services for international trafficking victims say finding both short-term and long-term affordable housing is difficult, and without proper housing, they could be at risk for re-victimization.
At the Asian Women’s Shelter in San Francisco, case managers start looking for housing once the victim has stabilized and recovered from the trauma, said Hediana Utarti, the group’s community projects coordinator. For trafficking survivors in the process of applying for a T visa, they look for housing that meshes with the government benefits.
“It’s very, very tight, but we would look for a place where maybe they can share with other people,” Utarti said. “Usually we are able to find something like a live-in situation, like help with the elderly.”
Those situations often work as barter: trafficking survivors provide support for elderly people who give accommodations in return. Survivors sometimes find these work opportunities on their own through friends.
While most of the time this type of arrangement works, employers have been known to abuse the trafficking survivors by making them do more work than they signed up for, or not giving any breaks during their shifts, Utarti said.
When this type of re-exploitation occurs, case managers advise the trafficking victims to talk about the situation with their employers. “If need be, then we’ll do intervention,” she said.
In San Francisco, case managers also work with the city to identify space in single-room occupancy hotels, and if the clients have children, they look for housing in transitional facilities, such as the Compass Clara House, Raphael House and Hamilton Family Center.
Clients can stay for up to three months, but the Asian Women’s Shelter provides extensions for clients unable to find housing, to ensure that they do not find themselves on the streets.
“If they end up in a homeless shelter, then they’re going to go back to the whole cycle again — re-abuse,” Utarti said. “And we don’t want to do that.”
This story was made possible by a grant from Atlantic Philanthropies and was produced as part ofNew America Media’s Women Immigrants Fellowship Program.
Photo by Jason Winshell / SF Public Press
When Lili Samad came to the Bay Area to work as a nanny for an Egyptian government official, she thought it was an ideal job. Instead, she said, she was forced to work long hours doing domestic chores and forbidden from contacting her family in Indonesia.
“First when I arrived there, they treated me like a prisoner,” Samad said.
After almost 3 1/2 years, for which she was paid just $1,000, she sought help from a neighbor she had met a few times. She said the neighbor concealed her in the back of a car and took her to a police station.
But after she escaped, Samad faced a whole new set of challenges: finding housing and a stable job to pay for it. Samad stayed with the neighbor for a few months before moving to the Asian Women’s Shelter, a San Francisco nonprofit that provides temporary housing for women who have suffered violence. There, case managers connected her to community rehabilitation services for victims. Still, the road to recovery was rocky. Over the course of six years, she lived in four temporary apartments before settling down in subsidized housing.
People trafficked into the country receive temporary government and nonprofit social service benefits after rescue or flight from captivity: shelter, health care, counseling, employment and legal help. But once these benefits term out, counter-trafficking specialists worry that victims, who generally have little work experience and weak social and family networks, could fall back into labor conditions as exploitative as the ones they fled.
As a victim of international labor trafficking, Samad received government help to stay in the U.S. But she is among hundreds of trafficking survivors each year who end up, months after getting help trying to build a new life, living in marginal housing and working in low-wage jobs.
Samad, who works part-time as a waitress at an elder care facility with her husband and lives in a low-income public housing unit in the Bay Area, said their combined income is only sufficient to pay for basic needs.
“We cannot spend on other things, so only food and rent,” she said.
From fiscal year 2002 through May of this year, the U.S. government issued 3,042 visas for trafficking victims, called T-1 Nonimmigrant Status visas, data from the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services show. These provide temporary protection and a chance to apply for permanent residency for those trafficked from foreign nations.
Experts say it is difficult to identify and quantify the number of victims in this country or those who are re-exploited. Not all victims of sex or labor trafficking seek help from government agencies or community groups. And international trafficking incidents in the U.S. are diverse. They can involve the exploitation of farm laborers by contracting companies, the abuse of domestic workers by foreign diplomats and the coercion of people into prostitution by pimps.
Traffickers — anyone who brings people to the U.S. through force, fraud or coercion — often hide victims in their homes, brothels, boats or other clandestine locations.
Risk of re-exploitation
A recent in-depth academic study by researchers at the University of Texas, Austin and North Carolina A & T State University, looked at women in Texas who had been trafficked from other countries. It showed that victims need targeted, long-lasting and culturally sensitive services to help them rebuild their lives.
Almost all of the women interviewed for the study now work in restaurants, hotels and other service jobs. This presents a challenge for their rehabilitation, said Noël Busch-Armendariz, director of the Institute on Domestic Violence and Sexual Assault at the School of Social Work at the University of Texas at Austin, and one of the authors of the report, published in the Journal of Applied Research on Children.
One of the long-term needs of trafficking survivors is acquiring new life and professional skills, so they can move toward jobs that give them more security and income, Busch-Armendariz said.
“If we don’t give survivors and their children ways to fully integrate, ways to be self-sufficient, they could continue to be targeted as somebody who could be exploited,” she said.
A 38-year-old single mother from the Philippines, who requested that her name not be used, said she came to the U.S. to work as a housekeeper for an ambassador from Africa more than three years ago. But as soon as she arrived in New Jersey, her employer seized her passport and work contract.
“The first thing that made me scared is they said their house is alarmed — if I open the door, the alarm will go off, and the police will arrive and take me away,” she said in her native Tagalog through an interpreter.
The woman said her employer paid her $1,000 per month for working 17-hour days, threw a fork at her in a fit of anger and made her scrub the kitchen when she was ill. “I was so scared,” she said. “I was always nervous. I was feeling sick.”
With the help of the ambassador’s driver, she contacted the Damayan Migrant Workers Association, a nonprofit group in New York City, which helped rescue her.
She said finding work has been difficult, and potential employers fear her trafficking background. She now works as a part-time nanny, but the pay is not sufficient to support herself.
“In truth, it’s short,” she said. “Not enough. My part-time work is just enough for the housing. There’s no health insurance.”
Community groups say survivors run the risk of re-exploitation if they work in sectors that are not properly regulated.
“This is especially true in the domestic worker industry, but any kind of informal sector where people are kind of more hidden from sight,” said Cindy Liou, staff attorney and coordinator of the Human Trafficking Project at Asian Pacific Islander Legal Outreach, a nonprofit organization in San Francisco that provides legal services for victims.
“It’s not uncommon that some of our clients sometimes come back to us with wage-and-hour questions, and we refer them out to the Employment Law Center and other places usually so they know their rights,” Liou said.
The benefits clock
County, state and federal governments offer a variety of temporary benefits to help smooth the way to rehabilitation for victims of international human trafficking.
Victims granted a T visa or continued presence status — a short-term immigration status from the U.S. Department of Homeland Security — receive certification from the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services to access public benefits at the same level as refugees.
Benefits typically last eight months, and include cash assistance, health care, food stamps, job training, English courses, transportation passes and other services.
Some states, such as California and New York, have approved short-term benefits to assist trafficking survivors in the process of qualifying for federal benefits.
The maximum benefit for single adult T visa clients in San Francisco is $422 per month, which includes a county supplement of $105, said Josef Bruckback, eligibility manager of the state’s welfare program CalWorks at the Human Services Agency in San Francisco. Clients with children receive benefits through CalWorks and are eligible for services for up to 48 months.
“The overarching problem is that once they time out of those benefits, they’re really left on their own,” said Denise Brennan, associate professor and chair of the department of anthropology at Georgetown University in Washington, D.C. “It’s a very short time frame. It’s not likely that they have built a social network that could fill in where the government support leaves off.”
Survivors generally find work in the same labor sector they worked in when they were trafficked, Brennan said, and it’s usually low-wage work, limiting their economic mobility.
“What I think is really quite concerning is that over time, some of the first T visa recipients who now have green cards are just treading water,” she said. “Just in the past six months, I’ve heard about some folks who have lost their jobs.”
Some rescued trafficking victims struggle to pay rent. “I’ve found that there are formerly trafficked people who sometimes stay in romantic relationships even after they’ve fallen out of love, because they just can’t really afford to move out on their own,” Brennan said.
Hurdles in finding housing
Trafficking survivors often have difficulty finding an economical place to live in the long term. Some migrate from shelters to transitional housing until they can secure an affordable room or apartment. Others find temporary accommodations by working as live-in nannies.
A 64-year-old woman, who requested that her name not be used because she feared her former captor, said she came to California from Peru, because her brother-in-law offered her work as a nanny to take care of his granddaughter. But he made her cook, wash, clean, garden and do other domestic work for about 14 hours a day, and restricted her from getting in touch with her family, she said.
“He invited me to come over here with the promise of work, and that he would support me in everything, but it wasn’t like that. It wasn’t true,” she said in Spanish through an interpreter.
After he released her from his house more than a year later, she found work as a nanny for a family in the Bay Area, who provided a space for her to stay in their home. She said she has lived in low-income housing apartments and has worked low-wage jobs at stores and cafes in the region since then.
She now earns $11 an hour working at a chain supermarket and lives in a subsidized apartment with her son.
Community organizations that provide shelter and rehabilitation services for international trafficking victims say finding both short-term and long-term affordable housing is difficult, and without proper housing, they could be at risk for re-victimization.
At the Asian Women’s Shelter in San Francisco, case managers start looking for housing once the victim has stabilized and recovered from the trauma, said Hediana Utarti, the group’s community projects coordinator. For trafficking survivors in the process of applying for a T visa, they look for housing that meshes with the government benefits.
“It’s very, very tight, but we would look for a place where maybe they can share with other people,” Utarti said. “Usually we are able to find something like a live-in situation, like help with the elderly.”
Those situations often work as barter: trafficking survivors provide support for elderly people who give accommodations in return. Survivors sometimes find these work opportunities on their own through friends.
While most of the time this type of arrangement works, employers have been known to abuse the trafficking survivors by making them do more work than they signed up for, or not giving any breaks during their shifts, Utarti said.
When this type of re-exploitation occurs, case managers advise the trafficking victims to talk about the situation with their employers. “If need be, then we’ll do intervention,” she said.
In San Francisco, case managers also work with the city to identify space in single-room occupancy hotels, and if the clients have children, they look for housing in transitional facilities, such as the Compass Clara House, Raphael House and Hamilton Family Center.
Clients can stay for up to three months, but the Asian Women’s Shelter provides extensions for clients unable to find housing, to ensure that they do not find themselves on the streets.
“If they end up in a homeless shelter, then they’re going to go back to the whole cycle again — re-abuse,” Utarti said. “And we don’t want to do that.”
This story was made possible by a grant from Atlantic Philanthropies and was produced as part ofNew America Media’s Women Immigrants Fellowship Program.
Wednesday, February 15, 2012
Friday, October 21, 2011
Human trafficking investigated at Juárez shelter for battered women - El Paso Times
Source: El Paso Times
Posted: 10/20/2011 12:00:00 AM MDT
JUAREZ -- Soledad Griensen Porras had been known for almost a decade as a regular figure in the fight for women's rights -- a charitable soul who took food and blankets to the needy and as the owner of a shelter for battered women.
But that image was shattered on Monday after a group of women staying at the shelter accused Griensen of forcing them into prostitution and holding them against their will.
Municipal police said Griensen, the 55-year-old owner of the shelter Mujeres Unidas contra la Violencia (Women United Against Violence), was arrested on Monday after a woman outside the building flagged down a patrol car and reported being abused.
Police rescued eight girls and five women who claimed they were being held against their will. Four of the women have filed complaints against Griensen before state authorities.
According to sources familiar with the investigation, one of the women told authorities that men regularly arrived at the shelter soliciting sex, for which Griensen requested payment. The victim also said that Griensen asked the women for money in order to let them go.
Municipal police said Monday that other victims accused Griensen of beating them and punishing girls by putting chile on their private parts. Police also found pornographic material at the shelter, officials said.
Griensen, who is now in state custody, could face charges of human trafficking, which could be punished with up to eight years in prison. Authorities said they may add charges for threats, injuries and privation of liberty.
Griensen is expected to appear before the end of the week before a court, which will determine whether there is enough evidence for an investigation to move forward.
Arturo Sandoval, spokesman with the Chihuahua state prosecutor's office, said this could become the first case of human trafficking in the current state administration.
Irma Casas, director of the women's rights organization Casa Amiga, said she was shocked to hear the situations of abuse the women were reporting.
"It is a shame to have this happen because there aren't any spaces for women in high-risk situations," Casas said. "Sadly, this is how we find out what's going on."
Casas said she visited Griensen's shelter about four months ago and didn't notice anything suspicious. She said she thought the small facilities within the house looked clean and in order. She also recently worked with a girl who spent two days at Griensen's shelter and didn't report anything irregular.
She said she had often seen Griensen during protests and focus groups denouncing violence against women. Griensen had been involved in issues of women's rights for the past eight years and was known to work closely with local politicians, Casas said.
Casas said the case should prompt authorities to take a closer look at the shelters operating in the city.
"This is a symptom of the little or null political and social intervention in this topic," she said. "We should evaluate if in the case of Mrs. Griensen there had been an inspection of the spaces and who was in charge of them."
On Tuesday, officers with the state investigative police cordoned off several blocks around the shelter, situated in a residential neighborhood in the center of the city.
Neighbors said the women living in the shelter could be seen outside now and then, but always in the company of Griensen. Police cars were constantly seen outside the shelter because Griensen would explain that girls would escape regularly.
One neighbor who preferred not to be identified said Griensen had an outward personality.
She said that Griensen was known to take groceries, blankets and toys to marginalized neighborhoods in the city, but that yelling could be regularly heard coming from the shelter. The neighbor added that one girl who lived at the shelter used to describe the place as "hell" and once had her long hair shaved off because she had misbehaved.
"I'm not going to tell you she was a nice person," she said. "Outside, she helped a lot, but she didn't treat well the people inside."
Another neighbor who worked with Griensen in the past, though, did not believe the accusations made against her.
"To me all of this seems impossible because I like the work that she does. I really don't think so, but who knows, I'm not going to stick my hands out to the fire either."
She said Griensen had to be strict to control the girls at the shelter, which in the past used to focus on rehabilitating female drug addicts.
She said the shelter received visits and support from high-level politicians -- like the current and past mayors of the city -- as well as doctors, psychologists and academicians, which, she believed, helped prove the legitimacy of Griensen's operations.
"If she has done all that, why would they have helped her so much?" she said.
Alejandro Martínez-Cabrera may be reached at a.martinez@elpasotimes.com; 546-6129.
Wednesday, February 9, 2011
Bill targets sex trafficking in Georgia | ajc.com
By April Hunt
Special to the AJC Atlanta police arrest a suspected "john"
during a crackdown on prostitution last fall.
House Bill 200 is designed to help law enforcement and prosecutors go after people who traffic in people, especially minors, for sexual servitude, said its sponsor, House Majority Whip Edward Lindsey.
Bill targets sex trafficking in Georgia | ajc.com
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
A bipartisan group of lawmakers has proposed a law to tackle human trafficking and underage prostitution in Georgia.
during a crackdown on prostitution last fall.
House Bill 200 is designed to help law enforcement and prosecutors go after people who traffic in people, especially minors, for sexual servitude, said its sponsor, House Majority Whip Edward Lindsey.
Members of both parties fashioned the bill, with the support of Attorney General Sam Olens, the Georgia Commission on Family Violence and prosecutors.
The proposal increases penalties for the crime to those similar to drug trafficking, with offenders facing up to 20 years in prison for human trafficking and 50 years in prison for trafficking in minors.
The bill also treats those in sexual servitude as victims, not criminals, by offering them recovery under the state crime victims fund and an affirmative defense when coming forward.
“Human trafficking for sexual servitude is one of the most serious criminal problems facing our state,” said Lindsey, R-Atlanta. “[The bill is] designed to make it easier to go after this crime and treat the victims with compassion and give an avenue to get out of the trap that was laid for them.”
Source: ajcBill targets sex trafficking in Georgia | ajc.com
Monday, January 17, 2011
Manpower to assist survivors of domestic abuse and trafficking | The Business Journal
The Business Journal
Date: Wednesday, January 12, 2011, 12:53pm CSTManpower Inc. has formed a strategic alliance with Second Chance Employment Services to assist women who are survivors of human trafficking and domestic abuse find sustainable employment.
Under a memorandum of understanding, Milwaukee-based Manpower (NYSE:MAN) and Second Chance Employment Services will create local collaborations, beginning at pilot locations in the United States and potentially expanding to any of the 82 countries and territories where Manpower operates.
The organizations plan to work together to identify long-term employment opportunities for at-risk women and survivors of trafficking and domestic abuse to prepare them for re-entry into the work force and to help them find and hold sustainable jobs.
“More than 2.4 million people around the world are victims of human trafficking, many destined for sex industry, and 98 percent of sex trafficking victims are women and girls,” said David Arkless, resident of corporate and government affairs for Manpower, a global staffing firm. “There is an urgent need to fight this crime on multiple fronts, and one of the most important things we can do is to empower survivors and at-risk persons, and give them real options for sustainable employment.”
Second Chance Employment Services is a nonprofit organization of human-resources professionals who place women in employment positions free of charge. The group has offices in Washington, D.C., and New York City.
Monday, September 6, 2010
Danah Boyd: How Censoring Craigslist Helps Pimps, Child Traffickers and Other Abusive Scumbags
For the last 12 years, I've dedicated immense amounts of time, money and energy to end violence against women and children. As a victim of violence myself, I'm deeply committed to destroying any institution or individual leveraging the sex-power matrix that results in child trafficking, nonconsensual prostitution, domestic violence and other abuses. If I believed that censoring Craigslist would achieve these goals, I'd be the first in line to watch them fall. But from the bottom of my soul and the depths of my intellect, I believe that the current efforts to censor Craigslist's "adult services" achieves the absolute opposite. Rather than helping those who are abused, it fundamentally helps pimps, human traffickers and others who profit off of abusing others.
On Friday, under tremendous pressure from US attorneys general and public advocacy groups, Craigslist shut down its "Adult Services" section. There is little doubt that this space has been used by people engaged in all sorts of illicit activities, many of which result in harmful abuses. But the debate that has ensued has centered on the wrong axis, pitting protecting the abused against freedom of speech. What's implied in public discourse is that protecting potential victims requires censorship; thus, anti-censorship advocates are up in arms attacking regulators for trying to curtail First Amendment rights. While I am certainly a proponent of free speech online, I find it utterly depressing that these groups fail to see how this is actually an issue of transparency, not free speech. And how this does more to hurt potential victims than help.
If you've ever met someone who is victimized through trafficking or prostitution, you'll hear a pretty harrowing story about what it means to be invisible and powerless, feeling like no one cares and no one's listening. Human trafficking and most forms of abusive prostitution exist in a black market, with corrupt intermediaries making connections and offering "protection" to those who they abuse for profit. The abused often have no recourse, either because their movements are heavily regulated (as with those trafficked) or because they're violating the law themselves (as with prostitutes).
The Internet has changed the dynamics of prostitution and trafficking, making it easier for prostitutes and traffickers to connect with clients without too many layers of intermediaries. As a result, the Internet has become an intermediary, often without the knowledge of those internet service providers (ISPs) who are the conduits. This is what makes people believe that they should go after ISPs like Craigslist. Faulty logic suggests that if Craigslist is effectively a digital pimp who's profiting off of online traffic, why shouldn't it be prosecuted as such?
The problem with this logic is that it fails to account for three important differences: 1) most ISPs have a fundamental business -- if not moral -- interest in helping protect people; 2) the visibility of illicit activities online makes it much easier to get at, and help, those who are being victimized; and 3) a one-stop-shop is more helpful for law enforcement than for criminals. In short, Craigslist is not a pimp, but a public perch from which law enforcement can watch without being seen.
1. Internet Services Providers have a fundamental business interest in helping people.
When Internet companies profit off of online traffic, they need their clients to value them and the services they provide. If companies can't be trusted -- especially when money is exchanging hands -- they lose business. This is especially true for companies that support peer-to-peer exchange of money and goods. This is what motivates services like eBay and Amazon to make it very easy for customers to get refunded when ripped off. Craigslist has made its name and business on helping people connect around services, and while there are plenty of people who use its openness to try to abuse others, Craigslist is deeply committed to reducing fraud and abuse. It's not always successful -- no company is. And the more freedom that a company affords, the more room for abuse. But what makes Craigslist especially beloved is that it is run by people who truly want to make the world a better place and who are deeply committed to a healthy civic life.
I have always been in awe of Craig Newmark, Craigslist's founder and now a "customer service rep" with the company. He's made a pretty penny off of Craigslist, so what's he doing with it? Certainly not basking in the Caribbean sun. He's dedicated his life to public service, working with organizations like Sunlight Foundation to increase government accountability and using his resources and networks to help out countless organizations like Donors Choose, Kiva, Consumer Reports and Iraq/Afghani Vets of America. This is the villain behind Craigslist trying to pimp out abused people?
Craigslist is in a tremendous position to actually work with law enforcement, both because it's in their economic interests and because the people behind it genuinely want to do good in this world. This isn't an organization dedicated to profiting off of criminals, hosting servers in corrupt political regimes to evade responsibility. This is an organization with both the incentives and interest to actually help. And they have a long track record of doing so.
2. Visibility makes it easier to help victims.
If you live a privileged life, your exposure to prostitution may be limited to made-for-TV movies and a curious dip into the red-light district of Amsterdam. You are most likely lucky enough to never have known someone who was forced into prostitution, let alone someone who was sold by or stolen from their parents as a child. Perhaps if you live in San Francisco or Las Vegas, you know a high-end escort who has freely chosen her life and works for an agency or lives in a community where she's highly supported. Truly consensual prostitutes do exist, but the vast majority of prostitution is nonconsensual, either through force or desperation. And, no matter how many hip-hop songs try to imply otherwise, the vast majority of pimps are abusive, manipulative, corrupt, addicted bastards. To be fair, I will acknowledge that these scumbags are typically from abusive environments where they too are forced into their profession through circumstances that are unimaginable to most middle class folks. But I still don't believe that this justifies their role in continuing the cycle of abuse.
Along comes the Internet, exposing you to the underbelly of the economy, making visible the sex-power industry that makes you want to vomit. Most people see such cesspools online and imagine them to be the equivalent of a crack house opening up in their gated community. Let's try a different metaphor. Why not think of it instead as a documentary movie happening in real time where you can actually do something about it?
Visibility is one of the trickiest issues in advocacy. Anyone who's worked for a nonprofit knows that getting people to care is really, really hard. Movies are made in the hopes that people will watch them and do something about the issues present. Protests and marathons are held in the hopes of bringing awareness to a topic. But there's nothing like the awareness that can happen when it's in your own backyard. And this is why advocates spend a lot of time trying to bring issues home to people.
Visibility serves many important purposes in advocacy. Not only does it motivate people to act, but it also shines a spotlight on every person involved in the issue at hand. In the case of nonconsensual prostitution and human trafficking, this means that those who are engaged in these activities aren't so deeply underground as to be invisible. They're right there. And while they feel protected by the theoretical power of anonymity and the belief that no one can physically approach and arrest them, they're leaving traces of all sorts that make them far easier to find than most underground criminals.
3. Law enforcement can make online spaces risky for criminals.
Law enforcement is always struggling to gain access to underground networks in order to go after the bastards who abuse people for profit. Underground enforcement is really difficult, and it takes a lot of time to invade a community and build enough trust to get access to information that will hopefully lead to the dens of sin. While it always looks so easy on TV, there's nothing easy or pretty about this kind of work. The Internet has given law enforcement more data than they even know what to do with, more information about more people engaged in more horrific abuses than they've ever been able to obtain through underground work. It's far too easy to mistake more data for more crime and too many aspiring governors use the increase of data to spin the public into a frenzy about the dangers of the Internet. The increased availability of data is not the problem; it's a godsend for getting at the root of the problem and actually helping people.
When law enforcement is ready to go after a criminal network, they systematically set up a sting, trying to get as many people as possible, knowing that whoever they have underground will immediately lose access the moment they act. The Internet changes this dynamic, because it's a whole lot easier to be underground online, to invade networks and build trust, to go after people one at a time, to grab victims as they're being victimized. It's a lot easier to set up stings online, posing as buyers or sellers and luring scumbags into making the wrong move. All without compromising informants.
Working with ISPs to collect data and doing systematic online stings can make an online space more dangerous for criminals than for victims because this process erodes the trust in the intermediary, the online space. Eventually, law enforcement stings will make a space uninhabitable for criminals by making it too risky for them to try to operate there. Censoring a space may hurt the ISP but it does absolutely nothing to hurt the criminals. Making a space uninhabitable by making it risky for criminals to operate there -- and publicizing it -- is far more effective. This, by the way, is the core lesson that Giuliani's crew learned in New York. The problem with this plan is that it requires funding law enforcement.
4. Using the Internet to combat the sex-power industry
It makes me scream when I think of how many resources have been used attempting to censor Craigslist instead of leveraging it as a space for effective law enforcement. During the height of the moral panic over sexual predators on MySpace, I had the fortune of spending a lot of time with a few FBI folks and talking to a whole lot of local law enforcement. I learned a scary reality about criminal activity online. Folks in law enforcement know about a lot more criminal activity than they have the time to pursue. Sure, they focus on the big players, going after the massive collectors of child pornography who are most likely to be sex offenders than spending time on the small-time abusers. But it was the medium-time criminals that gnawed at them. They were desperate for more resources so that they could train more law enforcers, pursue more cases, and help more victims. The Internet had made it a lot easier for them to find criminals, but that didn't make their jobs any easier because they were now aware of how many more victims they were unable to help. Most law enforcement in this area are really there because they want to help people and it kills them when they can't help everyone.
There's a lot more political gain to be had demonizing profitable companies than demanding more money be spent (and thus, more taxes be raised) supporting the work that law enforcement does. Taking something that is visible and making it invisible makes a politician look good, even if it does absolutely nothing to help the victims who are harmed. It creates the illusion of safety, while signaling to pimps, traffickers, and other scumbags that their businesses are perfectly safe as long as they stay invisible. Sure, many of these scumbags have an incentive to be as visible as possible to reach as many possible clients as possible, and so they will move on and invade a new service where they can reach clients. And they'll make that ISP's life hell by putting them in the spotlight. And maybe they'll choose an offshore one that American law enforcement can do nothing about. Censorship online is nothing more than whack-a-mole, pushing the issue elsewhere or more underground.
Censoring Craigslist will do absolutely nothing to help those being victimized, but it will do a lot to help those profiting off of victimization. Censoring Craigslist will also create new jobs for pimps and other corrupt intermediaries, since it'll temporarily make it a whole lot harder for individual scumbags to find clients. This will be particularly devastating for the low-end prostitutes who were using Craigslist to escape violent pimps. Keep in mind that occasionally getting beaten up by a scary john is often a whole lot more desirable for many than the regular physical, psychological, and economic abuse they receive from their pimps. So while it'll make it temporarily harder for clients to get access to abusive services, nothing good will come out of it in the long run.
If you want to end human trafficking, if you want to combat nonconsensual prostitution, if you care about the victims of the sex-power industry, don't cheer Craigslist's censorship. This did nothing to combat the cycle of abuse. What we desperately need are more resources for law enforcement to leverage the visibility of the Internet to go after the scumbags who abuse. What we desperately need are for sites like Craigslist to be encouraged to work with law enforcement and help create channels to actually help victims. What we need are innovative citizens who leverage new opportunities to devise new ways of countering abusive industries. We need to take this moment of visibility and embrace it, leverage it to create change, leverage it to help those who are victimized and lack the infrastructure to get help. What you see online should haunt you. But it should drive you to address the core problem by finding and helping victims, not looking for new ways to blindfold yourself. Please, I beg you, don't close your eyes. We need you.
Follow Danah Boyd on Twitter: www.twitter.com/@zephoria
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