Human trafficking affects the most vulnerable among us. Potential victims could be the waitress who serves you at your favorite restaurant, the nurse who drew your blood at the doctor, or even your daughter’s friend on the cheerleading team. Traffickers exert such control and psychological manipulation that victims think they are nothing without their abuser. However, with the right help, victims can emerge from the shadows and reclaim their life and worth.

There is no one ethnic group, gender, or age that has a higher risk of being a victim. Any and everyone can be victimized. Awareness is crucial in fighting this crime that occurs across the United States and beyond our borders. People must know and be able to recognize the signs in order to help victims. During National Slavery and Human Trafficking Prevention Month, the Houston Mayor’s Office on Human Trafficking is engaging the public to educate them on the red flags of human trafficking in an effort to stop this crime in Houston. Houston Style Magazine spoke with Minal Patel Davis, Special Advisor to Houston’s Mayor Office on Human Trafficking who broke down Houston’s attack plan to end human trafficking.

What is human trafficking?

“Human trafficking is when someone uses force, fraud, or coercion to compel a commercial sex or labor act,” defined Davis who went on to give several examples of human trafficking. One is in the case of a pimp who victimizes people and forces them to have sex with others for money. The pimp collects the person’s money from the sexual act and makes the person live in deplorable conditions. Then there is the example of labor trafficking when a person is offered what seems like a legitimate job but they might be forced to work in a restaurant, as a domestic servant, or any of a number of other industries.

Categorizing a victim really can’t be done since the problem is so widespread. As Davis informed us, “There are a lot of different profiles of victims.” From their experience, Davis notes that in the illicit massage parlor industry there are more East Asian women victims. Our youth in Child Protective Services and broken systems are more at risk of being victims of human trafficking. They are often lured away from their families by traffickers exploiting social media to groom and entrap them. In the restaurant and food industries, Hispanic victims are more common. By and large though, victims are from across all ethnic groups, education levels, income brackets, and legal status. No one person fits the bill—a victim could be anyone with vulnerabilities.

Profiling a victim is not easy for law enforcement or those professionals who directly work with investigating human trafficking. “It really varies, and it depends on the type of trafficking we are talking about. But there is no one profile that we can say across all boards, all industries that it is this type of person or this person from this ethnic group or age group,” said Davis. That is why the public must educate themselves as much as possible about human trafficking to spot the red flags of those being trafficked because it can happen to anyone.

Red flags of human trafficking

Human trafficking is difficult to identify if you are not familiar with the red flags. Some signs come on suddenly while others are more visible and stand out more starkly. Here is what you need to be looking for:

*Person disconnects from family, friends, and activities

*Person is hungry or dehydrated

*Person has a number of bruises in various stages of healing

*Person has branding tattoos

*Person consistently avoids school or work

*Person seems coached into saying things

*Person has numerous expensive gifts or lacks personal possessions

*Person has dramatic or sudden changes in their mood

*Person does not have freedom of movement

*Person is timid and submissive

*Person exhibits signs of mental and/or physical abuse

Houston’s approach to human trafficking

Mayor Sylvester Turner made fighting human trafficking a priority of his administration, and the City of Houston is fortunate to have numerous partner organizations who are joined in this fight. Leading the way is the Houston Mayor’s Office Anti-Trafficking Division. They developed after stakeholder discussions, a landscape assessment, and SWOT analysis a strategic plan that utilizes a 365-day approach to addressing identified gaps, which are short-term emergency shelter and psychological services, lack of public awareness, and under-reporting of incidents because of human trafficking as an underground economy.

The plan is broken down into two phases and has already seen great success. Davis reports that one of the goals of the plan was to increase victim identification. While Houston has a high number of calls to the Human Trafficking Hotline, it is inaccurate to conclude that calls equal to the prevalence of human trafficking. Looking at the facts Houston is the 4th largest city with a very diverse constituency. Cities like New York, Chicago, and Los Angles are all larger than Houston in terms of the population yet it has been reported that human trafficking is worst in Houston than any of the three cities that I just mentioned. Think about it. How realistic is that? The fact is that ranking is based on calls to the national tip line on human trafficking. What that means is that the Houston Mayor’s Office and partners are doing their job at raising awareness about human trafficking and citizens are responding by reporting potential crime. So it is not that Houston has more incidents of human trafficking. It is that people are taking action and reporting incidents to stop human trafficking in its tracks.

Davis explained the traditional model for addressing human trafficking has been to report the crime, after which law enforcement investigates it, and hopefully, the person or people gets prosecuted. It is the model that is practiced throughout the nation. Davis and her team took a different approach to utilize the many city departments that Mayor Turner oversees and saw that they were underutilized in the fight against human trafficking. For instance, the health department could screen for human trafficking in the community clinics to help victims get connected to services. The procurement department has zero tolerance against human trafficking for the businesses they have contracts with and those businesses sub-contractors. And the list goes on. The Anti-Trafficking Division engaged eight city departments so far by leveraging their day-to-day duties to incorporate a human trafficking response.

But that is not all. They filled in identified gaps in the services landscape to ensure victims have access to emergency shelter, psychological services, and case managers onsite at the shelter to provide social service support. In addition to conducting presentations to the corporate community, Mayor’s Office events are most often held annually to raise the level of dialogue around human trafficking in Houston. This is in addition to a multi-modal media campaign that generated 90 million impressions and increased calls to the national tip line by 80%. Now, this model is being shown to other cities for replication.

Students in school are also getting educated with the help of United Against Human Trafficking and Love146 through the Not a #Number program. According to Davis, the Mayor’s Office refers many community members to these organizations since they have a robust child trafficking and exploitation prevention curriculum that they are already utilizing in schools with positive results. More information can be found at love146.org/notanumber.

What can Houstonians do?

The best weapons Houstonians have in this battle against human trafficking is education. Teach yourselves about all aspects of human trafficking with correct, verified information from reputable sources. A good website to go to is humantraffickinghouston.org. All information from the definition of human trafficking to the detailed plan city officials are using to combat human trafficking is on the website. Learn the definition, know the red flags, and find how to report the crime. Human trafficking is not just our problem but also a global one. Together we can work to decrease its occurrence by starting the work now in honor of National Slavery and Human Trafficking Month.