Over at the of the September thread Chris wrote:

I am encouraged by Powers saying he cant quite wrap his head round trafficking because I have a same problem. Bergers stories paint a picture that this isnt just a problem in developing countrties nut likely to be lurking in many of our big cities. One question could be: are some big cities better at minimising traficking and if so who or how is the difference made by? ie what are the practices we need as citizens to start demanding our city and communities encourage etc?

I replied:

Hmmm ...

Not so sure of your assertion. Trafficking is an issue in Vancouver,Toronto, Montreal, New York, Chicago, Seattle, Boston ...

The people exploited (not an exhaustive list) are Eastern Europeans, South Asians, Africans etc ...

Many are engaged in sex work others are labourers, and domestics.

I didn't want to miss the chance for Chris to respond or for others to add their thoughts.

Here's what I wrote (for the record it's one of my late night missives)

The issue of trafficking is one which concerns me a lot, but that I have great difficulty with--just wrapping my head around it.

That said, as it is Razoo "issue of the month" I wanted to explore ways to be involved. I went to YouTube, actually looking for Dr. Bales's book intro video. A couple of things I got out of that YouTube search:

First I noticed that Geneva Global had a "channel" with a single video about trafficking put up 8 months ago and nothing else. Geneva Global is a big mystery to me!

Second was The Church of Scientology's involvement in this issue. I don't have strong feelings about Scientology, but a great deal of skepticism. Clearly trafficking is an issue which Scientology uses to reach very young people. And I had noticed that many of the members at Razoo who are into trafficking as an issue are quite young--under 16.

I'm not implying that I'll be a great advocate for this cause at Razoo, but I do think that the "community" wide focus on issues monthly is a good thing, and something I support.

I want to be especially careful about what I point to in this regard. I'm also interested in understanding better the Church of Scientology's involvement in this issue. In the news feed at the Razoo group a recent Washington Post story basically blasting money for trafficking as being a waste of money was a prominent link.

John Berger's recent post there discusses what people can do, and the suggestion is to form a local group. I think that's a great idea. But I was trying to think through a young person's eyes; well, and I suppose with my adult hat on, and getting a bit muddled about the sorts of information sources which seemed useful for young people.

So I put out my observations for what their worth. I suspect some of you who have been at this for a while have already confronted the issue of age appropriateness, and I would be interested if you could point me in the right direction about it.

John, Ive been traveling but here are some quick thoughts to your questions.

I did not know that Scientology is taking a stance against trafficking and slavery as I have never had anyone mention that to me before including the folks in the interfaith working group.

If you don’t want to be affiliated with Scientology that does not mean you can help a human rights struggle that you otherwise want to work on. There are plenty of secular groups or groups of other faiths involved in the issue.

That Washington Post Article, to be honest, was junk. Ill post some critiques but every issue has public doubters. There is an absolute fact that the author has right, and that is most of the numbers people cite about slavery are estimates that could be very widely off.

It is also true that the numbers of victims identified in the US and CERTIFIED is not big enough to support the estimates. But, I challenge you to walk into any police station and find a cop that even knows the law about trafficking, or how to identify a victim. Cops see prostitutes and prostitute, and thus criminals, and victimized laborers as illegal immigrants. I put a caps to CERTIFIED because its quite a process to get certification as Congress was afraid it would be used as an easy way for migrants to get a visa.

If you talk to the folks on the ground doing the work, you will see there is a real problem in the US, and a much larger problem worldwide.

What kind of age groups are you talking about, John, when you say you want info for young people. For younger than high school we stay away from sex trafficking and talk about labor slavery.

In response to Chris, some big cities have started to train cops and DAs so identifying cases has increased in those cities. This also goes to the last post in that not all cases that are clearly trafficking can even get prosecuted as such. Sometimes, the witness, who is also the victim, just does not want to cooperate with the police or has other problems (drug addiction is a common trafficking tool and it can be used to impeach testimony) or the DA gets a plea deal done to a lower crime.

In Kevin Bales new book (see the first post) He has a chapter that talks about cities in the US that have started to address trafficking. There is also a federal program to create inter agency task forces that is slowly spreading.

here is one respose to the post article.

Looking Beneath the Surface A response to Washington Post’s attack on the anti-trafficking movement in the U.S.

By Donna M. Hughes

Are there many victims of human trafficking in the U.S.? Has the Bush administration squandered tens of millions of dollars in a futile search for nonexistent victims? Those are the questions raised in Jerry Markon’s Washington Post articles (“ Human Trafficking Evokes Outrage, Little Evidence” and “ In D.C. Area, Most Cases Involve Prostitution,” Sunday, September 23, 2007). The articles claimed that the estimated numbers of victims in the U.S. were greatly inflated, that few victims had been identified, and that large sums of money had been wasted looking for non-existent victims. The take away message was that the trafficking in the U.S. is a conservative, Republican, Evangelical Christian scam.

As someone who has done research on trafficking and been active in educating and lobbying for anti-trafficking policies and legislation for 17 years, I’ll share with you my perspective on these stories and on how effective the U.S. campaigns have been on identification of victims and efficient use of funds.

Before I address the specific questions raised, let me point out that the debate is about sex trafficking, not forced labor. Secondly, almost everything said or written about sex trafficking has to be filtered through the debate over legalization of prostitution. The word “legalization” seldom appears anymore; it’s too unpopular, so its supporters find other ways to advance their position or undermine the efforts of those who oppose legalization of prostitution.

These Washington Post articles were published while the Trafficking Victims Protection Reauthorization Act (TVPRA 2007) is being drafted. In other words, there is quite a lot at stake presently. There are competing groups and bills that fall into two basic perspectives: One that supports the status quo ­ in other words, makes no significant change in law or policy and hold open the possibility for a future time when legalization of prostitution can be popularized ­ and another that wants to close that option forever.

The first question of importance is, how many victims of human trafficking are in the U.S.? There have been two government estimates of the number of foreign victims of trafficking in the U.S. (There is no government estimate on the number of U.S. citizen or domestic victims.) In 1999, the estimate was 45,000 to 50,000; in 2004 the estimate was lowered to 14,500 to 17,500. Those estimates vary widely and should raise concerns about the validity of the estimates and the methods used to calculate them.

On Monday, I heard several administration officials respond to the suggestion in the Washington Post articles that the estimates may be grossly exaggerated by saying that the number of victims doesn’t matter, that the crime is so serious that it warrants being made a priority even if there are only a small number of victims. I agree about the seriousness of the crime, but it would be better to have reliable estimates.

We would be on the road to having a baseline for understanding sex trafficking in the U.S. if the Department of Justice (DOJ) had initiated the study authorized in 2005 by Congress on the illegal commercial sex industry in the U.S. To date, I’ve not been able to get an answer from DOJ on why that study was not done. Unlike illegal gambling or drug trafficking, there has never been a study on the illegal sex industry in the U.S. Why?

Instead of conducting the congressionally approved study on the illegal sex industry, the DOJ funded a study on estimating the number of victims of severe forms of trafficking in the U.S., study that in my opinion, as a researcher, cannot be done successfully. Such a study requires the identification of victims coerced into the sex industry. As the Washington Post correctly points out, there have been relatively few victims of trafficking identified. Victims who cannot yet be identified cannot be counted.

Researchers can employ fancy sampling methods, but they still have to rely on people who know a victim of trafficking when they see one. I predict that the funded study will be a waste of money. The study that could have given us a baseline on the scope of illegal sex industry, which recruits and exploits victims of trafficking, sadly still waits to be done. And consequently, anyone who wants to attack the anti-trafficking movement on the basis of the widely varying estimates of the number of victims still has plenty of ammunition.

The Washington Post article says that only 1,362 foreign victims of human trafficking have been identified since 2000. The Post reporter slants the article to imply that relatively few victims have been found because few victims exist. This number represents the number of foreign victims certified as victims of trafficking. There are many more known victims than those who have applied for and been granted certification. First of all, certification requires that the victim be willing to cooperate with a police investigation. Following a police raid, some victims just want to go home, some victims don’t want to cooperate with police and are deported, and some victims are afraid to testify against vicious traffickers. The application for certification requires support from law enforcement. If the victim is not seen as useful for a case, or if they police don’t want to pursue a case, she has no support to stay in the U.S. and be counted as a victim of trafficking.

One cannot discount the fear that victims live under. They usually have been physically and sexually assaulted, and the emotion-battering involved in psychological control is constant. A frequent and effective hold that traffickers have over victims is to threaten to harm family members, sometimes even the children of the victims. Even after a woman or girl is safe herself, her family is still at risk. That prevents many victims from admitting that they are victims and cooperating with police.

A number of law enforcement agents have told me that the women and girls they interview will not admit that they have been victimized. They say that they are in prostitution by their own choice, and that they make a lot of money. Significantly, all the women interviewed usually have the exact same story. As police say, “It’s as if they are all reading from the same script,” suggesting that someone has schooled them on how to respond to police questions.

The slogan created for Health and Human Services campaign to identify victims is: “Look Beneath the Surface.” Good insight and advice. The biggest problem in identifying victims of sex trafficking is the assumption that these women and girls are “just prostitutes.” And even when people know they should be “looking beneath the surface,” they are still profoundly unable to do so. They still base their identification of victims on false assumptions and don’t see potential victims because of myths and stereotypes. And probably most important, they have not learned how to gain the trust of the likely victims they interview.

Also contributing to the lack of identification of victims has been DOJ attitudes: one senior official was advocating for a distinction between “hard” and “light” pimping, and that victims who were only “lightly pimped” could be ignored. Not only is this inconsistent with the law, it reduces the number of victims identified and perpetuates the myth that the women and girls are “just prostitutes.”

There is also some evidence that the Washington Post reporter only used information that supported his slant on the lack of victims. For example, a service provider in California emailed me and told me that Markon called and interviewed her. She told him that they currently are working with 14 foreign and three domestic victims. I know this woman is knowledgeable about trafficking from Mexico and probably told him some hair-raising facts, but that didn’t get into the story.

Over the last few years, I’ve heard countless number of people holding anti-trafficking government jobs or getting government funding say, “I never heard of trafficking until a year ago.” Government agencies gave out tens of millions of dollars in grants and contracts to groups and coalitions that could write good proposals and had the infrastructure to administer grants and contracts. Those groups were not the same ones as those who actually knew something about trafficking victims, how to identify them, and how to assist them.

I’m aware of meetings in which the poorly or non funded experts on sex trafficking, the survivor run service agencies around the U.S., were brought in to tell the highly paid contractors what they needed to know. Of the tens of millions of dollars dispersed, only a fraction went to groups that have daily contact with victims.

Millions of dollars were spent on a hotline that almost no one called, because there was a false assumption that victims would just pick up the phone and call for help. The highly paid contractors didn’t understand that victims are physically and psychologically controlled. When a victim does get access to a phone, she usually calls home, not the police or a hotline.

The Washington Post article exposes its political bias when it only targets conservative, faith-based, or Republican supporters of the anti-trafficking movement or recipients of funds. First of all, the Trafficking Victims Protection Act (TVPA) 2000 was supported by groups from across the political spectrum, as have the subsequent Reauthorization Acts of 2003 and 2005. Immediately after the TVPA was passed, most of the recipients of grants to provide services to victims were liberal/leftist groups that worked with immigrants. They knew nothing about sex trafficking. I talked to one woman who worked on a government funded grant to assist victims of trafficking who was politically opposed to working with law enforcement. I talked to another woman who worked on a Boston-based grant who told me that they hadn’t worked with one victim. When I asked if they were looking for victims, she said that they were not funded for “outreach,” and anyway that would be too dangerous. These liberal/leftist groups are also the most blinded by false perceptions about prostitutes ­ preferring to see them as “just sex workers” ­ versus victims of sex trafficking, leading to low identification of victims.

The Washington Post stories were biased hit pieces with an agenda behind them. They selectively held up faith-based and Republican groups to ridicule while ignoring the liberal/leftist groups that are open to criticism. The reporter revealed the “pro-prostitution” bias of the story by featuring quotes from Ronald Weitzer, a long time apologist for the sex industry, who advocates decriminalization of prostitution in indoor venues (and for full disclosure, someone who has written against my work). Supporters of decriminalized or legalized prostitution have known for some time that they must undermine the bi-partisan anti-trafficking movement before it digs too deeply into the sex industry and exposes its myths about satisfied, voluntary sex workers.

The administration does indeed need to clean up its act. It deserves criticism for the many false starts and wasted funds on how to identify and reach victims based on invalid assumptions, and for granting funds to groups that know little or nothing about sex trafficking.

But there is still a broad, bipartisan coalition of groups, including faith-based and conservative groups, and members of Congress, that know there are tens of thousands of foreign and U.S. citizen victims to be assisted, and understand these front page stories are an effort to stop a history-making global human rights movement. Backlash is to be expected, but ultimately, these articles are just bumps in the road.

­ Donna M. Hughes is the Professor & Carlson Endowed Chair at the University of Rhode Island.

and another

Set Them Free How can the Washington Post turn a blind eye to sex slaves

October 1, 2007 7:00 AM National Review Online By Claudia Barlow

Those who have vigorously built a national movement to confront modern slavery, and who had effectively established a legacy for the Bush presidency on the subject, discovered that, according to an article on the front page of last Sunday’s Washington Post that the problem of modern slavery never even existed.

Jerry Markon, the 26 year-old reporter from the Washington Post’s Virginia desk, was tasked to determine if there really are sex slaves here in the United States. Sure, he admits, the Bush Administration spent a lot of money forming task forces, sponsoring public awareness campaigns, and starting hotlines. Sure, after many speeches, events, and advertising, after law enforcement training, meetings, and public forums, as well as TV dramas and movies, there are fewer victims than the CIA reported, forced to travel here for sex ­ about 17,000-50,000 yearly actually. Since the inception of the T Visa (visas for trafficked victims by Rescue and Restore), in April 2004, only about 1300 have been issued.

Many of us are outraged and alarmed by the deliberately misleading piece in the Post. It accuses Bush, and Congress, and the Christian Right of wasting tax money finding and protecting sex slaves, money that according to the piece would be better spent on domestic violence. But why is it that domestic violence ought to be considered a priority over sex slavery?

The attack is two tiered: it is another attempt to discredit the work done in the Bush years, and at the same time, it is a signal for women to return to the domestic violence money trough where government saves them from their husband’s and their boyfriends, but not from slavery.

I was a subcontractor for the Department of Health and Human Services Rescue and Restore campaign to find trafficked victims here in the United States. Everywhere we searched, we found victims of trafficking. Everywhere. Did they get T Visas? Not all, but the effort to search and rescue is ongoing, and the struggle to get the agencies to comply with the needs of victims continues. But we should not stop. We should not ridicule those who are heroically doing all they can to find those who suffer here in the United States. We should continue to help and support those who do this noble work.

In 2007, how can any reporter at the Washington Post deny seeing the reports of rape trees at our border, or the reports of the property owners in border towns in Texas who find abused and discarded women and children naked on their land? Has the Post missed talking to doctors, who, having once described the sight of a trafficked victim, in tears admit, “I have treated victims and not known it.” Or have the reporters discussed trafficked victims with the forensic nurses who help capture the evidence and then accompany abused girls to trial if allowed? Or, has any Post reporter asked the DC Task Force about the prevalence of the forced prostituted women criminal abuse on 14th and K?

Has any Post reporter checked the drug resistant TB rates in hub cities like LA, Detroit, Atlanta, Seattle, San Diego, and wondered why that happens? Has any Post reporter wondered if the MS-13 gang, which headquarters in the Shenandoah Valley, to do their drug runs, also sell girls up and down I-95? Has any Post reporter checked out the number of brothels, day spas, and massage parlors around military bases in America, to see if these girls inside want to do this for a living?

Does any Post reporter want to really find out why the United States is now exporting HIV/AIDS to Mexico? Migrant workers, who toil here to send home their income, use the services of trapped women who must turn 20- 30 tricks daily. Once those workers return to small towns in Mexico, they give their wives a present from the U.S. ­ ­ HIV.

No, the Post says, this is all a rumor. Bush is a religious zealot, the people working to help trafficking victims are mostly conservative Christians, this cause has failed, and all of those critics who want to legalized prostitution were right ­ there is no slavery here in America. We shouldn’t find the trafficking victims; we should just defund the programs, and deny that those poor people are here.

Peter Landesman of the New York Times, who wrote a series called Girls Next Door (no relation to the Playboy show, of course), knows otherwise. His reporting on slavery in America was made into a movie called TRADE which comes out on September 28. He hasn’t gotten work since he wrote that series for the New York Times, and he has been ridiculed for what he found to be true.

I suppose if the Post really believes there are no sex slaves in America, then maybe it also believes there are no gays in Iran either.

Internet communications are funny, it's hard to judge the tone of things sometimes. I rather get the feeling of defensiveness from the tone of John Berger's response to my post.

I did not post in order to be controversial nor to take a stance that slavery and human trafficking are non-issues. Indeed, my stance is that these are complicated and sensitive issues.

I'm very surprised that John Berger is unaware of Scientology's involvement in the issue. Youth for Human Rights International TM is a place to begin. I only became aware of Scientology's involvement through looking at the videos at YouTube. I think it's pretty clear that Scientology's is organized in this effort to reach young people through the issue.

Many people do not have relatives or close friends who have been caught up in indoctrination. Scientology is hardly alone in using indoctrination, but Scientology certainly has been subject to scrutiny about indoctrination. But many people do have difficult experiences with groups which indoctrinate; I do.

But leaving aside Scientology, certainly John Berger must be aware of points of view like those expressed in Jennifer Block's Why the Faith Trade is Interested in the Sex Trade. My point is not to argue one side or the other, rather to point out that ideology is one of the reasons that this issue is complicated and difficult.

Kevin Bales identifies three forms of slavery: Chattel Slavery, Debt Slavery, and Contract Slavery. Explicit in his writing is that many forms of modern slavery are a direct result of economic globalization--the race to the bottom.

Bales contends that the stopping poverty and stopping slavery are inextricably intertwined.

I did not reference the Washington Post article to express an opinion about the article, but rather to show that a person going to the Razoo Cause John Berger set up would get a picture of controversy.

John Berger prominently posts an article by Claudia Barlow from the National Review Online as evidence that the Washington Post article was "junk." What Barlow's article demonstrates is that ideology plays an important role in how the issue is framed. The National Review surely will not touch Bales critique of globalization with a ten foot pole. Barlow's article stands in contrast to Donna Hughes's response, which seems to lend evidence to my contention that the issue is complicated and sensitive.

Surely John Berger and others have noticed that there are very many young people at Razoo, many between the ages of 14 and 17. Something I admire about Lars Hasselblad Torres how well he deals with the sensitivity of the subjects of AIDS and violence in Peace Tile presentations. I also notice that Lars reaches out to young people at Razoo in a ways which are so good.

I don't have his experience. I mention the young people at Razoo primarily because Invisible Children was one of the first groups I joined at Razoo. That's how I noticed young people being called to the issue of Slavery and Human trafficking. Some of them surely are making the connection between the issue and child soldiers. That's a connection which is not only logical, but reinforced by the media they see. But there's also a connection to sex trafficking, a connection which the Razoo administration has chosen to highlight.

John Berger wrote: What kind of age groups are you talking about, John, when you say you want info for young people. For younger than high school we stay away from sex trafficking and talk about labor slavery.

John, I think it's pretty plain from my post I'm talking about Razoo. And at Razoo there's a group of kids between the ages of 14 and 17 very concerned about the issue. And there's a lot of media about the issue directed towards them. Much of that media has implicit political and religious associations, sometimes at loggerheads.

I mentioned that Geneva Global has a YouTube Channel. Before Razoo, which is owned by Geneva Global, I had not heard of them. I was surprised to see what a large player they are in non-profit money scene. I was also curious to note that it's hard to figure the ideological slant of the organization.

The video the organization put up was part of the publicity for a campaign in conjunction with the movie Amazing Grace. This campaign was targeted towards school-aged children. The materials and presentation seem good to me.

The issue of abolition has always been connected with religious faith. But religion along with politics is a subject my mother taught not to raise in polite conversation. I think she might have warned me against the subject of sex had she not assumed I didn't already know better. So Slavery and Human Trafficking is the perfect storm of controversy, it's an issue that touches lots of hot-buttons.

Without intending to I'm afraid I've pushed John Berger's buttons. I'm not sure there's any conflict really. But sometimes conflicts escalate from what is really a difference of styles: One person pushes to get to the bottom of the conflict and the other person withdraws. The response to the withdrawal is more pushing.

A blow on referee whistle is good thing. I think I just heard the whistle blow.

No Worries John, I did not feel you were being challenging. I was assuming some folks would follow your lead to the post article so I wanted to get in some coments related to its core problems.

The articles I cited were emailed to me as part of a back channel network that shares this kind of stuff. I agree 100% that they highlight there is enormous conflict between social and religious interests especially regarding prostitution and that those interests significantly bias the views of many anti-slavery advocates. I started a long discussion on this very issue in the old site. I choose not even to tell people what my opinion is on issues like sex work vs. prostitution since I work in a middle ground area, so I kind of have to be indirect sometimes when these issues come up.

I meant to ask Kevin if he was aware of Scientology and what their strategy might be, but I forgot. Ill see him again next week so Ill try to get more details for you.

To be honest, I was not sure what the demographics at Razoo are as I have not really seen enough interaction there in to get a sense of it. I may just not be members of the groups with the younger set. I have to edit the Human Trafficking and Slavery Cause site there this weekend so Ill take a shot at making it as age appropriate as possible. Ill take any suggestions you have.

Phew! Thanks John for the quick response. I'm very happy you're not upset with me.

Obviously I'm just now learning about this issue, and I thank you for your great leadership. The problem is of such magnitude and complexity that I had come at from various directions before. What I hadn't quite understood before were the land mines of the culture wars here in America set around the issue of Slavery and Human Trafficking. That's pretty naive of me, because in every other cause I care about those land mines are there. Really it's not too big a deal, understanding where the dangerous shoals are is usually sufficient to navigate safely around them.

I think that the new social media has great potential to help many to discover their power to make good things happen. The closing of Omidyar.net has been an education for me, but I'm still feeling my way. Clearly there are people of various ages at Razoo, nonetheless there is a particular attention to young people there.

I care about young people everywhere. It takes attention to effectively communicate. It's so easy to take for granted that young people know what we do, for example kids born in 1993 can hardly be expected to know who Ronald Reagan was really. One of the great things about young people is their hunger for justice. Slightly snide or snarky remarks can sting with an unintended ferocity and kids can smell insincerity a mile away.

Razoo has made me think hard about the ways that the critical issues facing humanity are presented, especially to young people. I've got lots to learn. It's great with my brief involvement at Omidyar I became exposed to people who have been working with young people for a while. So I've got some good teachers to learn from.

Trafficking Case Exposes Child Servitude

By JENNIFER KAY Associated Press Writer

MIAMI (AP) -- The teen slept on a rolled-up mattress on the dining room floor and bathed in the backyard with a garden hose. For six years, she washed dishes, made beds and cooked for a family that beat her and hid her in a closet when visitors arrived. She never went to school.

Simone Celestin's story sounds like a slave narrative from another century, but federal prosecutors say it happened in South Florida. They say Celestin is one of an unknown number of children and teens called "restaveks," who are hidden as slaves within the Haitian immigrant community.

"Restavek" is a Haitian Creole word meaning "one who stays with." The term applies to an estimated 300,000 poor children in Haiti, mostly girls, who are given or sold by their parents to wealthier families, or taken from orphanages.

The children work in exchange for food, shelter and the promise of school, but often end up victims of physical and sexual abuse, according to the U.S. State Department's annual report on human trafficking.

Some sneak into the United States when their host family emigrates, then hide in a Haitian-American community, which is often loath to discuss the practice with outsiders.

Haitian-American advocates recall about 30 instances that have come to light since 1999, when a 12-year-old came forward with an appalling story about being a Broward County couple's household servant and a sex slave for their son.

But authorities believe those examples are probably just a small fraction of the actual number, because so few cases are reported.

"Haitians don't see those kids as slaves," said Jean-Robert Cadet, a former restavek who published a memoir tracing his journey from Haiti's poverty to the American middle class.

Marleine Bastien, executive director of Haitian Women of Miami, said some Haitians view the practice as an informal foster care system.

"They may feel they were helping the little child by bringing the child here and express bewilderment that they are being prosecuted for 'doing the right thing,'" Bastien said.

Maude Paulin, a teacher, and her mother, Evelyn Theodore, are scheduled to stand trial in January on federal charges that they illegally brought Celestin into the country in 1999 and kept her in involuntary servitude. Prosecutors say Celestin, then 14, was taken from an orphanage Theodore owned in Haiti, the least developed country in the western hemisphere.

Paulin's ex-husband is also charged with human trafficking, and her sister faces forced labor charges. All four could spend decades in prison if convicted.

Richard Dansoh, Paulin's attorney, said this is a case of cultural misunderstanding. He said Celestin had been the favorite of Paulin's late father at the orphanage, and the family took her in at his wishes.

"They took her to improve her chances of having a good life. This is not a slavery case," Dansoh said.

Dansoh said Celestin could not be enrolled in school because she lacked the proper documents, but Paulin home-schooled the girl. Celestin protested when the family tried to curtail her involvement with older men who had promised to help her gain permanent residency in the U.S., he said.

Paulin and her family were trying to "shield her from a life of inappropriate relationships," Dansoh said.

Prosecutors and Celestin's immigration attorney declined to comment because her case is pending. They declined to make her available for this story. It's not clear how Celestin's situation came to the attention of authorities.

U.S. immigration authorities and advocates call human trafficking a hidden crime because victims do not contact police. They say law enforcement and school officials often miss the warning signs in young people, such as missing identification, isolation or behavioral problems.

Advocates say it's difficult to coax suspected restaveks to open up, even when they are identified, because they are told their work supports family members back in Haiti, and they fear relatives will suffer retribution.

Cadet remembers the shame he felt as a teenager when a high school teacher discovered he was homeless and asked why. Cadet spent his childhood in Haiti as a restavek for a prostitute and her son, then continued working for them after the family emigrated to New York. They kicked him out when school interfered with his chores.

"For me to tell that teacher I was a restavek was like telling him I was a dog. In Haiti, a restavek and a dog share the same social status. For me to tell this man that, I am not really a human being," said Cadet, who is now a college professor and an advocate for restaveks.

Danielle Romer, president of Haitian Support Inc. in Homestead, recalled one 15-year-old girl whose experience showed why restaveks don't reach for help: "She was working a.m. to p.m., not going to school, but where she sleeps is better than what she had in Haiti."

Dwa Fanm, a Brooklyn-based women's rights organization, decided in 2004 not to renew a federal grant for services directed at Haitian restaveks because the 20 women who came forward did not want to register as human trafficking victims. Registration would have allowed them to apply for asylum or specific visas to stay in the U.S.

"As soon as we said, 'You have to report it, we have to report it so you can be certified,' they said, 'Never mind, I've changed my mind,'" said Farah Tanis, the group's executive director. "They didn't want to prosecute. It makes sense - people are afraid for their lives."

Bush Penalizes Countries for Trafficking By ANNE GEARAN and BEN FELLER Associated Press October 19, 2007

WASHINGTON (AP) ­ President Bush on Thursday punished two perennial adversaries ­ Myanmar and Cuba ­ for alleged "human trafficking," the forced labor and prostitution that the United States calls a modern-day form of slavery.

Bush chose not to come down hard on several other countries where the State Department found serious trafficking problems, including important Middle East allies such as Saudi Arabia. He approved partial punishment, in the form of financial sanctions, against Iran and other nations where the United States holds out hope that limited cultural or educational outreach may deter abuses.

The Bush administration also lifted the immediate threat of sanctions from two nations that had made progress in the months since the State Department issued a preliminary assessment of worldwide trafficking abuses in June.

Notably, the administration chose to change its assessment of Kuwait, a key Mideast ally, because Kuwait recently opened a long-promised shelter for abuse victims, often Asian women forced to work as virtual house slaves in the homes of wealthy Kuwaitis.

"It's a nascent effort, but we made a conclusion that Kuwait had taken steps that merited an upgrade," said Mark Lagon, head of a State Department office that compiled the annual list required by Congress.

The State Department gives countries listed as serious violators a chance to address the problems before the White House issues its findings and applies sanctions. In the case of Kuwait and equatorial Guinea, the governments made enough gains to merit an upgrade, Lagon said.

Countries on the list are subject to sanctions for not doing enough to stop the yearly flow of some 800,000 people across international borders for the sex trade and other forms of forced and indentured labor. About 80 percent of those people are female, and up to half of them are children.

The Bush administration determined that Myanmar, also known as Burma, is ineligible for U.S. aid for failing to meet the minimum standards of fighting trafficking or make significant efforts to do so. On the same grounds, Cuba's officials and employees will not be eligible for educational and cultural exchange programs.

Those are the same two countries that suffered sanctions for human trafficking last year.

Bush also declared Syria, Venezuela, North Korea and Iran in line for full sanctions.

But in each of those cases, Bush invoked his waiver authority to continue providing some U.S. aid to those countries, such as for cultural exchanges or for programs that help victims of trafficking. The White House determined that continuing the flow of money is in the national interest of the United States.

Bush waived all sanctions against eight countries: Algeria, Bahrain, Malaysia, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Sudan and Uzbekistan ­ all on the same grounds that doing so would serve the United States' strategic interests with these countries.

Ghana: Sex Trade Gang is Live And Kicking

http://allafrica.com/stories/200 710291766.html

EDITORIAL 29 October 2007 Posted to the web 29 October 2007

The busting of two men last week for allegedly trafficking women to Europe for sex tourism did not come as a surprise since Ghana has become a hub for many things in the West African subregion.

The surprising aspect of it is that it is Ghanaians at the helm of the heinous crime to export as many 19 Nigerian girls to Europe ostensibly to trade as sex tools.

Why on earth would Nigerian girls heading for Europe use Ghana as a transit point? The media reports quoted police investigators as saying that the girls came to Ghana to have travel documents processed for their trip to Europe.

What this simply implies is that whereas even in Nigeria it has become very difficult to use fake documents to travel, Ghana has become a breeding ground for the illegal business, which is gradually eroding the confidence of the embassies in Ghanaians.

While commending the CID authorities for acting swiftly to nip the bud, the latest attempt at exporting young girls to Europe through Ghana, like their Nigeria counterparts, Ghanaian police and their immigration counterparts must assure the public that they on top of the job.

It is a known fact that the sex trade industry is complex network of hardened criminals some of who work in the very security services that are paid by the taxpayer to put the brakes on the activities such social deviants.

Even as this editorial is being read, there are probably scores of such girls still being sent to Europe under the guise of sending them to their relatives or parents. The 19 girls may be Nigerians as the reports indicated, but any girl, no matter her nationality that is being trafficked to be exploited sexually should be our concern. This because human rights abuse against any girl, no matter colour, nationality, religion or tribe is a crime against humanity.

Let us not delude ourselves that Ghanaian girls are being trafficked the same manner as Nigerian girls. Ghanaian girls are even worse when it comes to such things.

At the heart of trafficking girls for sexual exploitation is tourism, no one needs any reminder that wherever tourism is at its peak social vices like prostitution, homosexuality and pedophilia come as a natural consequence. That is why this newspaper has had cause to raise the red flag over the government's zeal to make tourism the number one exchange earner. Undoubtedly, tourism has the potential to boost economic growth, but even where the economies entirely depend on tourism for revenue, they have put in tight laws to protect vulnerable children.

Relevant Links

West Africa Crime and Corruption Ghana Human Rights Legal and Judicial Affairs

Even as we are pushing to possibly make tourism the number exchange earner, we must strengthen the regulatory bodies before opening the gates. For instance, the United States of America has the PROTECT Act of 2003 which is a multipurpose law intended to prevent child abuse.

Among other things, the law provides for mandatory life imprisonment of sex offenses against a minor if the offender has had a prior conviction of abuse against a minor, with some exceptions. It also establishes a program to obtain criminal history background checks for volunteer organizations.

Without such a law, the Ghana 2008 tournament will open our country to excessive abuse by sex tourists masquerading as soccer fans.

Trafficking for adoption is large scale in many countries, but this is an unusual case:

PARIS, France (CNN) -- Authorities in Chad have charged nine French nationals with kidnapping after they attempted to fly out of Chad with more than 100 children the group claimed were orphans from Sudan.

The charges were confirmed by Leonard Vincent, who heads the Africa desk at Paris-based Reporters Without Borders. Three French journalists are among those charged.

In addition, Vincent said, seven crew members of a Spanish charter company were charged with complicity.

The 16 were being held in the eastern Chadian city of Abeche and were expected to be transferred to the capital, N'Djamena, later in the week, Vincent said.

The group was arrested last week as they tried to put 103 children on a plane to France. The "rescue mission" was organized by L'Arche de Zoe (Zoe's Ark), a Paris-based charity which said the children were orphans from the Darfur crisis and were being taken to foster families in France.

The Chadian government disputed that, and a spokeswoman for the UNHCR said that based on preliminary interviews with the children, they "most probably" are from Chad.

The arrested French nationals include six members of Zoe's Ark and three French journalists, Vincent said. Two of the journalists were on assignment for independent media outlets, while the third was on humanitarian leave from her job, he said. Watch aid workers paraded in handcuffs »

"Her editor gave her a camera because she wanted to cover the operation," Vincent said, "but she was also sympathetic to the association as she wanted to host one of the kids."

Vincent said RSF was trying to plead the case of the three journalists, though he acknowledged the woman's case was being treated separately from the other two journalists.

He said the group would be transferred to the capital for security reasons because authorities believe they are in danger in Abeche.

"The population is very angry at them," he said.

The children, meanwhile, were living in an Abeche orphanage while aid groups and government officials try to determine their identities.

A spokeswoman for the UNHCR in Abeche said the children were all very young -- most between 3 and 5, but some as young as 1 -- and that none had any papers or documentation.

The spokeswoman, Annette Rehrl, said the children were all healthy and doing well despite the circumstances.

"Since Friday morning, they have been visited constantly by the education minister, journalists, constantly asking questions," Rehrl said. "They are still under some sort of shock ... but as a matter of fact, they are fine. They sleep, they eat, they start to play."

A spokeswoman for the Red Cross in Geneva said aid groups were providing the children with mattresses, food, and other necessities.

Rehrl said it would take weeks to speak to all of the children and determine their background, but based on information gathered so far, "most probably, the majority of them do come from Chad."

She cautioned that it was a preliminary assessment which also depended on interviews with residents of nearby villages to find out whether they were missing their children.

On its Web site, Zoe's Ark claims it uses teams of doctors, nurses, firefighters and other specialists to take Darfur orphans to foster families in France. In response to accusations that its activities are illegal and unethical, it says, "The extermination going on in Darfur, isn't that scandalous, illegal, and traumatizing?"

The French government said Monday it knew of the charity's plans months in advance but was powerless to stop them.

http://www.cnn.com/2007/WORLD/af rica/10/30/chad.france/index.htm l

The group was arrested last week as they tried to put 103 children on a plane to France. The "rescue mission" was organized by L'Arche de Zoe (Zoe's Ark), a Paris-based charity which said the children were orphans from the Darfur crisis and were being taken to foster families in France.

If the reports we are getting are anything to go by,its so unfortunate that even NGO.The ones we expect to bring hope are taking advantage of the crisis

The French government said Monday it knew of the charity's plans months in advance but was powerless to stop them.

the government knew all along.knew that the NGO was planning to traffick the children?No.Didnt Nicholas Sarkouz criticise it?

Something rather undiplomatic happened here in Kenya last week.There was a conference about human trafficking.The Kenyan minister for labour,a Dr Kulundu,came out saying that the west(European countries) were leading in human trafficking.This so much angered the american ambassador that he snubbed rather refused to shake his hand infront of the glaring cameras and press.I dont want to totally side with the minister but I think there is some truth here.though we can not generalise and say it is the west,but it is evident that most trafficking is destined there.

Trafficking out of Africa that is true, it mostly goes to the "West" and the Middle East, with a large, but size unknown, number of people trafficked within Africa.

However by far the most trafficking in the world occurs in Asia and SE Asia. Thanks for that info on the Kenyan conference, Ill look for a story.

I agree with you John.Most trafficking occurs in Asia and SE Asia,but if the trafficking starts here in Africa,then you will agree with me there are those in Africa who work together with the rest to make it complete.

The UN said the children in the Chad case were not orphans but actually had parents.So they were abducted.But it cant be that the Zoe`s Ark people(the French nationals) who were arrested did the abduction.It is a planned racket with perpetrators working at all levels from the grassroots to the real market.Too bad that they will just charge less than ten people but we know there were more than what we see.

Here unfortunately is a tangible case of sexually exploited children, regrettable something we often react to the consequences of, in the images stored. Behind the pictures are real children and the root causes which deliver them to being disposable humanity.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/scotl and/glasgow_and_west/7079848.stm

Whew - a lot of valuable information to digest in this thread. I stumbled onto this issue while researching information about the horrible sexual violence being perpetrated on women caught in the middle of the ongoing war/unrest in the DR Congo.

Much thanks is owed to all the contributors.

Here's a piece that discusses trafficking and the effect on women's health, from a Canadian perspective - it's 2 years old, but still illuminating, I think.

(NB - among other things, article points to the UN protocol - but the link is out-dated. A more current link is here).

[Edited by Jon A. - typo]

i can put you in touch with the director of this film, if you're interested and not already: http://www.notmylife.org/

~ lars

That would be great, thanks. I am at john (at) madebysurvivors.com