Human trafficking is our unnoticed problem
Published June 4, 2015
Editorial by Fayetteville Observer, June 4, 2015.
The most disturbing part of Fayetteville's problem with human trafficking came at the beginning of a Page 1 story Sunday.
"For days," reporter Nichole Manna wrote, "a 14-year-old girl walked around a Fayetteville motel on Skibo Road wearing nothing but a tight shirt and shorts that barely covered her bottom. ... She hoped a hotel employee or patron - anyone - would speak to her. ... Her quiet pleas for help went unanswered."
The police are working hard to crack down on this city's problem with human trafficking, which is a thriving industry, built with the bodies of young women and girls who are often sweet-talked and then forced into sexual servitude.
Trafficking is a $9.5 billion-a-year industry in the U.S. It's happening here and across the state. The 14-year-old at the Skibo Road motel is one of many. Fayetteville Dream Center Director Kelly Twedell, an advocate who helps trafficking victims, says she has worked with 23 of them in the past year. All of them grew up in Fayetteville.
Fayetteville police handled 37 trafficking cases in the last year, involving 39 victims and 49 suspects. The Sheriff's Office this year has made nine trafficking arrests.
But how does a skimpily dressed 14-year-old wander around a hotel for days and nobody checks to see if she's OK? It's a matter of education. People don't know, or fear "getting involved."
The trouble is, sex trafficking is a mystery to too many of us, including many police officers as well as teachers, doctors, social workers and others who work with young people. And the girls forced into prostitution often are protective of their pimps, sometimes considering them a boyfriend rather than a captor.
But there is training out there, groups that understand how trafficking works, how to spot victims and how to catch the pimps and make charges stick. That education needs to become higher-profile, more available, and even mandatory for those who work with young people, for cops - and for hotel workers, who may be in the best position to spot the problem.
A crackdown on "johns" would help too. The law of supply and demand fuels this ugly industry. Cutting off demand could stop it. Some call prostitution a victimless crime. But not in this case. Trafficking's victims need help, but too many of them aren't getting it.
