Trafficking at Home?

Recently, a man in Boston and his niece were charged with advertising underage girls for sex on Craig's List. For those of you who might not be familiar with the site, Craig's List is an online community where people can post job openings, babysitting services, or items for sale. My friends have often gone to the site to look for apartments or parking spots for rent. The other month, my roommate bought a pair of used vintage cowboy boots; another friend a chair that she planned to refurbish.

More than 25 million people use Craig's List monthly. It receives more than 8 billion views per month (http://homepage.mac.com/srjeanschafersds/stoptraffic/stoptraff603.pdf). But, there is an alternate side to the site that most people are unaware of. An article on www.notforsalecampaign.org cites that 25,000 new "erotic ads" are posted per day; many of these are child traffickers. Particularly in Washington D.C., the spots typically endorse "legal escort services," however this all too often serves as a cover for the darker reality. Girls as young as 13 are being passed off as though they are a used pair of shoes or a tired old couch. They often are made to have sex with 10-12 men per day. It seems that sex trafficking is now entering the online realm in full force.

One of the problems in montoring such advertisements on Craig's List is that users are not required to register before they post something on the site. Craig's List therefore provides a prime location to solicit prostitution because it is free, anonymous, and depends on viewers to censor its content. If a viewer has a problem with a post, she can flag it; after repeated flags, the post is removed from the site. However, this system makes real enforcement particularly difficult. If the majority of users aren't aware of these posts, how will they receive the "flags needed" to be removed? Doesn't somone else need to step in?

The fact of the matter is that most victims of human trafficking have been promised a far different life than the one they face upon arriving in the US. They are often promised a job and a home; only upon arrival are they forced to work, often without pay, in the control of criminal employers. Many women do not know their rights, and lack the peer support necessary to find help. They struggle with both a language barrier and foreign legal system, and this makes the prospect of help even more forlorn. Particularly around here, sex services are often concealed under the guise of massage palors or nail salons, and this makes tracking down such cases particularly difficult.

Nobody likes to think that such "modern human slavery" is happening within any real proximity to them. Wrongly so, most Americans seem to think that "sex-selling" happens only in impoverished corners of the world, or on risque street corners. But the fact of the matter is, it happens right in our neighborhoods, under our noses. What can we do to take a stand against this type of behavior, to let places like Craig's List know that we do not support such activity?

You can check out www.notforsalecampaign.org to get a better idea of how to get involved. The organization is a "campaign of individuals, musicians, artists, people of faith, business, schools, and sports teams united to stop it." When you hear a statistic like "27 million people are enslaved today," the number is really too big to comprehend. Even in my own mind, I am quick to think of people in other countries suffering such inequity. Gross disparate numbers that are nevertheless faceless. But the truth is, it's so much closer to me than that. I went on Craig's List just the other day to browse for a new apartment. And so it seems that I have an automatic responsibility, as a user of this website, to try and help protect those who may not be able to protect themselves. As my friend/co-worker Mike said, "it's all connected."