Seminar on human trafficking teaches red flags of the industry

By Grace King, Mt. Pleasant News

When law enforcement officers in Davenport conducted an inspection of a nail salon, they didn?t think twice about the appearance of someone sleeping in the storage closet. But for advocates for human trafficking survivors, that?s a huge red flag.

If it looks like someone is living in a storage closet, they probably are, an indicator they could also be a victim of labor trafficking. Missed signs like these are why Kelly Saul from Braking Traffik conducts training sessions for area professionals across Iowa, one of which was held at the Henry County Extension Office in Mt. Pleasant on Tuesday, April 17.

A dozen people from the fields of health care, family services and hospice from Henry County and surrounding counties attended the seminar to learn the signs of human trafficking.

Angelina Tomow, who works at Christamore House in Mt. Pleasant, came with scrap paper in hand to take notes back to her co-workers. ?We work with a lot of young kids,? Tomow said. ?It?s important for us to know the signs.?

Melodee Whaney, from Families First Counseling Services in Mt. Pleasant, had the same reasoning for attending, saying as someone who goes into people?s homes, it?s important to recognize what human trafficking looks like if the situation were to arise.

?It?s important to learn how we can, as a community, help them, help recognize signs,? Whaney said.

Above all, Saul stressed that the biggest take-away from the two-hour session is not to stereotype what a trafficked victim or trafficker looks like, saying that anyone looking for work could be trafficked. This includes men and women, immigrants, U.S. citizens, people of all education levels, people who are homeless and people with cognitive disabilities.

Part of why Saul likes to do these trainings is because she has seen so much trafficking that she didn?t recognize at the time as trafficking.

?I want to make sure other people recognize it and know what they could possibly do about it because I don?t want everyone to miss as much as I?ve missed,? Saul said.

Saul started the session by talking specifically about labor trafficking, saying it?s ?pretty much what you think of when you think of slavery.?

Labor trafficking can happen in any industry, and although most farmworkers in Iowa are not labor trafficking survivors, Saul said that they are susceptible and vulnerable with 82 percent of traffickers U.S. citizens in the agriculture industry.

When it comes to poverty-stricken individuals, Saul said people have to have food, clothes and shelter. People have to pay the rent somehow, and that leaves them vulnerable to getting into illegitimate employment activities.

Particularly, Saul pointed out college students and young adults who may join traveling sales crews for summer work. ?A lot of coercion keeps people making sales on traveling sales crews,? she said.

Some of that coercion includes traveling crew members not being allowed back in their hotel rooms if they did not meet their selling quota during the day, leaving them to sleep on the street. Saul said some people who find themselves in this situation may also be physically or sexually assaulted if they do not meet their quota or even left behind altogether.

Labor trafficking can also be tied to sex trafficking such as in the illicit massage parlor industry where people come in to pay for a massage and it ends in sexual acts of some sort.

When Saul was working in child protective services, she worked with a woman with a three-year-old kid. Saul had been working with her for a few months because she was homeless, and they were trying to get her established in an apartment. She managed to get an apartment with her boyfriend.

While Saul knew this woman worked as a prostitute, it wasn?t until much later that she connected the dots and realized the woman was being trafficked.

?I can?t tell you how many times I picked her up at different apartments or different hotel rooms,? Saul said. ?Every time she was out there prostituting, the boyfriend had her three-year-old kid.?

Before Saul finished her presentation, she showed a short documentary of three women from Iowa who escaped the human trafficking industry. One of the survivors gave a warning that traffickers will sometimes target smaller communities because they think they have less of a chance of being caught.

Another shared that it can happen to anyone. ?You hear these crazy stories and think that will never be you, but it could be,? she said in the video.

While Saul said a lot of people don?t think human trafficking can happen in rural areas, through her research, she has found that it does and can happen anywhere. In fact, in Iowa there is an average of 330 kids each month who are trafficked.

Many people who are being trafficked will not recognize it because their traffickers use the self-blame of their victims to maintain control. Questions to ask someone who is possibly a human trafficking victim include: Can you quit your job if you wanted? Are you free to leave the premise on your time off? Where do you live, sleep or eat? Has ID or documentation ever been taken away from you?

For concerns regarding whether you or someone you know may be a victim of human trafficking, call the Iowa Braking Traffik crisis line at 866-921-3354.