VIDEO: Human Trafficking Targets ‘Young Intellectually Disabled Girls’

Human Trafficking Research reports:

The Department of State lists the top three states with the most human trafficking activity are California, New York and Texas. California Against Slavery reported that 3 of the ten worst child sex trafficking areas in the United States are in California: San Francisco, Los Angeles and San Diego.

The below video titled “Human Trafficking” was produced by the Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton’s office. While the focus of this production is Texas specific, similar stories and cases can be found across the United States.

According to Texas AG Paxton’s website:

Human trafficking is a media buzz word that often conjures images of brothels in Thailand or confusion with the ongoing immigration debate. This innovative digital training tool cuts through the confusion, arms the viewer with an understanding of what human trafficking is and is not, and helps them recognize that this is a Texas problem with Texas buyers, sellers, and victims. It refocuses our attention on adults and children who are regularly exploited but are unlikely to self-identify as victims or seek help. This video walks the audience through actual cases prosecuted in the state of Texas, identifies the tools of traffickers and how they are typically utilized to obtain and maintain victims, and equips viewers with red flags and a reporting protocol. Most of all, it challenges Texans to change the culture in which we live from one that identifies with and honors perpetrators to one that provides safety, security, and genuine reintegration for the survivors of trafficking.

In an October 19, 2015 column titled “Sex trafficking targets young, intellectually disabled girls” Jessica Jagodzinski reported:

In a state that is already notorious as a haven for human trafficking, USFSP professor Joan Reid has documented a disturbing trend: Many of the underage victims are intellectually disabled and “might not even realize they are being assaulted.”

Reid, an assistant professor of criminology, cites a national map compiled by the National Human Trafficking Resource Center, which offers information, aid and support to victims.

The map shows human trafficking trends around the country, with red marking the areas with the most cases.

“Florida is bright red,” Reid said.

In her research, Reid studied case files of 100 underage victims in Tampa and Miami and found that 30 percent of them were girls with intellectual disabilities.

Women and girls usually become prostitutes “through force, threat, use of coercion, abduction, fraud, deception, abuse of power and vulnerability,” Reid said.

Intellectually disabled girls are even more threatened, she said, because of their inability to comprehend the extremity of abusive treatment.

Read more.

The map above depicts the data collected from calls made to the National Human Trafficking Resource Center hotline from 2007-2012. Florida is the third highest state in sex trafficking reports. Map Courtesy of The Polaris Project.

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