On this day when we celebrate an activist for hard won civil rights, we focus on slavery in America, victims of an industry that traffics in human beings. The Department of Justice reports 83 percent of those enslaved are American citizens of every age. The Executive Director of the New Jersey Coalition Against Human Trafficking is Mandy Bristol-Leverett. She spoke with NJTV News Anchor Mary Alice Williams about the issue.
Williams: Define human trafficking. What exactly is it?
Bristol-Leverett: Human trafficking by both state and federal definition is the use of force, fraud or coercion to entrap, imprison, abuse or exploit someone else, another human being.
Williams: And we’re not just talking about prostitution, right?
Bristol-Leverett: Right. We typically see two forms of human trafficking in the U.S. In the U.S., the number one form of human trafficking is sex trafficking. Number two is labor trafficking. There are generally six forms of human trafficking globally. We have had even organ trafficking cases, but that’s not as predominant as it is overseas. So we’re looking at those two forms predominantly — sex and labor trafficking.
Williams: You’re enlisting the public’s help in your cause. What are the signs to look for that someone’s being trafficked?
Bristol-Leverett: Well it depends on the kind of trafficking, because sometimes it can look like a tattoo of a boyfriend’s name. It could look like someone who just starts skipping school or has a controlling boyfriend or someone in their life, they’re not allowed to be alone. They’re very controlling, texting constantly wanting to know where they are, that sort of thing. In the case of foreign nationals that they don’t have documentation of their own if they’re living on the premises where they’re working. It’s ultimately being controlled by someone else.
Williams: How many people in New Jersey are enslaved in this?
Bristol-Leverett: That’s a tough question because we don’t have unified numbers and comprehensive numbers. We have great organizations gathering those numbers, but a lot of organizations that are gathering numbers answer different questions. For example, our national human trafficking hotline number, their stats cover the number of calls, not cases. Our state service provider, our state sponsor service provider, they deal with cases but sometimes they’re people coming back through the system so it can represent more than one. And then they’re not the only service providers serving New Jersey. Then of course we talk about law enforcement and you know how many prosecutions, that’s a very low number. Not because there aren’t people to be prosecuted, but sometimes proving that force, fraud or coercion is difficult so they might charge them with other charges like child endangerment and that sort of thing so it doesn’t get chalked up as a human trafficking case, but they get just as many years in jail sometimes as if they had charged them with human trafficking.
Williams: What is your organization doing to prevent it and combat it?
Bristol-Leverett: Well, I’m here representing the New Jersey Coalition Against Human Trafficking and what we do is unite New Jersey communities to abolish human trafficking. It looks like a lot of different things. We’re an organization made up of over 100 very diverse organizations so they bring their expertise to the table to prevent it, to detect it, to end it. My other organization, CAN [Church and Community Abolition Network], empowers people and retrofits existing services to serve survivors. So I was just talking with your makeup artist and I said sometimes we have people, survivors, that have come out of the life and we have a once a year gala for a fundraising event and professionals in the garment industry donate gorgeous gowns and makeup artists volunteer to do hair and makeup. That’s a way that you can use your profession to really benefit a survivor. Sometimes there are so many professions that see the indicators that are specific to their profession, something like a flight attendant, a truck driver, a postal worker or bus driver. They see things within their professions where they can make that call, that 888-373-7888 hotline number. It becomes the lifeline and makes everyday heroes out of regular people and that’s our movement, is empowering people to make the very real difference.
Williams: Are there certain events where you see a spike in this? I’m thinking about when New Jersey hosted the Super Bowl.
Bristol-Leverett: Right, absolutely. Anything that brings a lot of people in hotels, traffickers will bring victims from other states to meet that demand. The political conventions, both political conventions we had outreaches bringing information to hotel staff and bringing that hotline number, sometimes posters of missing children. That’s an ongoing effort of the New Jersey Coalition Against Human Trafficking is reaching out to hotels and giving them updated posters of missing children and they’ve been able to find victims of human trafficking, call that number and get children that are missing rescued out of their hotels.