Columbia discusses local human trafficking

CMSHTC works with 13 counties in Missouri, including Boone.

By Jessica Silverman

Published Sept. 25, 2009

Correction appended

A lecture and discussion on human trafficking took place at Thursday night at Carpe Diem where the Central Missouri Stop Human Trafficking Coalition educated Columbia about modern-day slavery and how it happens locally.

"Columbia is an ideal location to traffic people through," Mustard Seed Fair Trade director Jessica Canfield said. "It's in between Kansas City and St. Louis, two large cities. There were several cases out of Kansas City where trafficking was involved."

CMSHTC works with 13 counties in Missouri, including Boone, Cooper, Miller and others.

Canfield said people are not aware of the situation because it could be happening within families, where parents solicit their children outside of their homes.

"It's something that can happen in Missouri, or really anywhere in the U.S.," Canfield said. "It's a bigger issue than most people realize."

Shelly Evans, a recent Stephens College graduate and licensed counselor, said she is interested in doing volunteer work after attending the discussion.

"I was kind of familiar (with human trafficking)," Evans said. "I know it's a global problem. It's something that happens in other countries, but it happens right here as well."

CMSHTC co-chairwoman Elizabeth D'Agostino said one or two women every year for the past five or six years have been trafficked here in Columbia. Interstate 70 is ideal because it runs coast-to-coast.

Places that might be involved in sex trafficking include massage parlors, brothels, nightclubs, escort services and porn shops. Labor trafficking occurs on farms, in construction work, factories and garment-making. Cleaning jobs, restaurants, domestic situations, such as nannies or servants, as well as panhandling can be part of human trafficking.

D'Agostino said in Kansas City, seven men were indicted after responding to an explicit human trafficking ad set up by the Kansas City Police Department on craigslist.com. Despite the warning on craigslist.com that criminal activity will not be tolerated, D'Agostino said the ad was up for two days, with hundreds of e-mail replies.

In the 61 CMSHTC presentations, D'Agostino said there is always someone who comes up to them afterward and says they have come across someone who's been trafficked or they have been trafficked personally.

CMSHTC said they like to work with preventing trafficking and finding victims, but also helping them establish their lives by finding housing and employment opportunities for the victims.

"Eighty percent are re-trafficked," Hume said of victims.

Human trafficking exists because there's supply and demand, Canfield said.

"Brothels wouldn't run successful businesses if there weren't men demanding that service," Canfield said. "It's individuals taking advantage of others. If someone is promised a job in the U.S., they get here and realize they're in a forced labor situation. People wonder why they can't get away or do something, but there's a lot of manipulation involved with it."

Canfield said human traffickers use tactics like psychological control.

"There's a lot of fear involved," Canfield said. "There's as much psychological bondage as there is physical bondage."

D'Agostino closed the discussion with a comparison to the Underground Railroad.

"This is modern-day slavery," D'Agostino said. "It's flipped around now, it's so underground. We have the freedom and rights to stop it at our fingers. Something is powerful when it's kept a secret. The more people know about it, the faster it'll go away."