Stand Against Human Trafficking
Our For Good Taste Mission
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"For Good"
As workers for God, we stand united against the pervasive darkness of human trafficking. Our divine mission is to illuminate the shadows surrounding these heinous crimes, endowing you with the knowledge to become instruments of change. Our goal is to nurture community leaders, fortified by the light of awareness, combating the forces that seek control over our land. Together, as instruments of God's compassion, we spread invaluable information to thwart the insidious grip of human trafficking.
Let's Define It
Under U.S. law, human trafficking is the brutal act of compelling individuals into sex or labor through force, fraud, or coercion. Tactics include inducing, recruiting, harboring, or transporting victims, allowing perpetrators to ruthlessly exploit individuals, and subjecting them to commercial sex or labor manipulation.
Two Overarching Types
Sex Trafficking.
LET'S START HERE
Labor Trafficking.
How does it begin?
Those ensnared in sex trafficking often know, trust, or even love their traffickers. Exploiting vulnerabilities, traffickers offer material support like housing, clothing, or promises of quick wealth. Alternatively, they provide emotional support, love, and a sense of belonging. Actual kidnapping and violent coercion into the sex trade are rare occurrences.
Who are the Traffickers?
Traffickers defy stereotypes, representing all genders, races, ethnicities, and walks of life. In sex trafficking scenarios, they could be intimate partners, spouses, family members, friends, benefactors, or even business acquaintances and bosses of the victims.
How do victims get out?
Every story is unique, bound together by resilience. Survivors reach a point where they decide to leave their situation and fiercely fight for freedom. While some receive aid from service providers or anti-trafficking organizations, the notion of 'rescuing' adult sex trafficking victims is misleading and perilous. Survivors, in reality, rescue themselves.
Who are the victims?
Trafficking can happen to anyone, but vulnerability often stems from greater needs. This encompasses individuals living in poverty or unstable housing, as well as those with a history of trauma or addiction.
What can we do?
Human trafficking doesn't occur in isolation. It emerges as a consequence of underlying inequities in our society and economic system, leaving people susceptible to traffickers' enticements. While prosecuting traffickers and ensuring justice for survivors is crucial, it alone isn't sufficient to eradicate trafficking. To tackle this pervasive issue, we must collaboratively address societal challenges, bolster support and services for vulnerable individuals, and transform conditions such as homelessness, family violence, poverty, and discrimination that make people susceptible to the allure of traffickers.
Recognizing sex trafficking.
Sex trafficking isn't a crime you witness across a crowded room or report like a carjacking. It's a covert, insidious manipulation, often leaving victims unaware due to expert grooming. Recognizing the true nature of sex trafficking is crucial – identifying vulnerabilities before someone becomes a victim and supporting survivors to break free, heal, and reclaim their lives.
Common red flags in sex trafficking.
Wanting Out, But Trapped
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Individuals yearn to break free from selling or trading sex but are paralyzed by fear or feel incapable of leaving.
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Reluctance Revealed
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They admit hesitance in engaging, exposing the coercion or pressure they face.
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Living in the Shadows
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Dwelling where they work or being ferried between home and workplace under guard, their lives are ensnared in a web of control.
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Children in Crisis
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Vulnerable children dependent on family members with substance abuse issues or other forms of abuse find themselves in dangerous situations.
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Pimps and Managers
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They fall prey to a pimp or manager within the sex trade, exacerbating their predicament.
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Industries of Exploitation
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Engaged in professions where coercion into sexual acts is common, such as strip clubs, illicit cantinas, go-go bars, or illegal massage businesses.
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Guardians of Control
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Controlled by an older, domineering parent, guardian, romantic partner, or "sponsor" who restricts meetings, monitors movements, and scrutinizes spending and communications.
Three examples of sex trafficking.
Read about real sex trafficking situations that we hear about through the Hotline to help you to understand and recognize possible sex trafficking in your own life.
Boyfriending
Recruitment and Manipulation
A chance encounter at a party sparks a connection between a man and a woman. He follows her on social media and seizes the opportunity when she posts about a breakup with her baby’s father. Portraying himself as her dream partner, he becomes a supportive listener, showering her with gifts. Convinced she has found her family's foundation, she falls deeply in love. The manipulative turn comes when he takes her to a party, introducing the idea of being "nice" to his friends to earn jewelry. Initially downplayed, this demand escalates over time.
Coercion and Domination
Seizing control, he appropriates all the money she earns under the guise of saving for a shared home. Coercion takes a violent turn as he justifies physical abuse to make her comprehend the urgency of her contributions. Threats of withdrawal of love and abandonment loom if she resists or questions his authority.
Escape Plan
Following a severe incident where he blackens her eye, she takes matters into her own hands. Swiftly packing a "go" bag, she reaches out to a friend and executes her escape plan when her trafficker is away from the house.
Familial Trafficking
Recruitment and Grooming
Mom is a survivor of rape and abuse who has been prostituting for many years. In her community, there are few options for young people and she is already struggling to support her children. When men start expressing interest in one of the kids, she tells her it’s time to contribute to the household and takes her out on the streets.
Coercion and Control
The child loves her mother, and has no other means of support.
Escape Plan
A teacher notices the child is tired all the time and appears frightened and asks if she needs support. The child confides in her and a social services team comes together to work out a safe place for her to stay.
Online Trawling
Recruitment and Grooming
A lonely, insecure teen dreams of a modeling career and frequently posts pictures of herself striking a pose. She is contacted by someone who claims to be a modeling agent and sends her a plane ticket to come to his studio. When she arrives, he takes her out on the town and tells her she has to “be nice” to some people in the business to get contracts and sends her out to prostitute.
Coercion and Control
She is far from home, didn’t tell her parents she was leaving, has no money and is ashamed. He tells her she is making a good impression, and that it will just take a little longer for her hard work to turn into modeling jobs.
Exit Strategy
Eventually, the child contacts a friend, who tells her family where she is and she is extracted from the situation.
Labor Trafficking.
NOW THE OTHER
How does it begin?
Labor trafficking typically starts innocently with a job offer. It escalates into trafficking when pay or working conditions turn abusive, leaving the worker trapped due to threats or exploitation of their desperate economic circumstances. Kidnapping or physical force rarely initiates labor trafficking situations.
Who are the traffickers?
Traffickers come in various forms – they can be business owners, bosses, or other workers holding managerial roles in formal businesses. Additionally, traffickers may also include victims' own families or legal guardians, such as parents, spouses, and intimate partners.
How do victims get out?
Traffickers predominantly exert control through threats and economic abuse, with immigrants being especially vulnerable due to reasons like fleeing violence or severe poverty in their home countries. Threats such as "I will call ICE if you complain" hold significant power. Many labor trafficking victims remain bound to traffickers by debt and the belief that even minimal payment is preferable to their other limited options.
Who are the victims?
Anyone can fall victim to a labor trafficker, but certain individuals are more vulnerable. Economic need is a significant risk factor, and immigrants – including those legally in the country – are particularly susceptible to labor trafficking.
What can we do?
Robust enforcement of fundamental labor protections for U.S. workers is crucial in combating labor trafficking. Equally important is empowering workers with knowledge about their rights and available protections. Enhanced employer accountability, or having 'skin in the game,' is vital for effective measures against labor trafficking.
Recognizing labor trafficking.
Keeping victims isolated – sometimes physically, sometimes emotionally – is a key method of control in most labor trafficking situations. But that does not mean you never cross paths with someone who is being trafficked. A contractor might notice that a subcontractor’s team appears to be sleeping in unfinished homes, or a suburban mom might learn from a nanny at her local playground that her employer mistreats and threatens her. If you understand how labor trafficking works, you may well be able to help.
Common "red" flags in labor trafficking.
Pressured Entrapment
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Coerced by their employer, compelled to endure a job or situation they desperately wish to escape.
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Debt Shackles
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Entrapped by owing money to an employer or recruiter, receiving less pay than promised, or being denied what is rightfully owed.
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Identity Seizure
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Stripped of control over their passport or identity documents, leaving them vulnerable and powerless.
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Isolated Exploitation
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Subjected to isolation in perilous conditions, cut off from interaction with others or support systems.
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Under Surveillance
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Constantly monitored by another individual while conversing or interacting, eroding any semblance of privacy.
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Deplorable Living
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Forced to live and work in hazardous, overcrowded, or inhumane conditions dictated by an employer.
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Deportation Threats
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Menaced by their boss with deportation or other harm, instilling fear and compliance.
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Unsafe Labor
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Exposed to perilous working conditions without proper safety gear, training, adequate breaks, or other essential protections, jeopardizing their well-being.
Three examples of labor trafficking.
Read about real labor trafficking situations that we hear about through the Hotline to help you to understand and recognize possible labor trafficking in your own life.
Migrants and Domestic Work
Recruitment and grooming
A diplomat entices someone from her home country with an offer to come to the United States and care for her children. They promise the worker a good wage and the opportunity for her to go to school here. The diplomat repeatedly tells the worker how lucky she is for the opportunity she would never get at home. If she returns home without having completed the job, she will be ashamed because so many people in her community are desperate for better opportunities.
Coercion Tactics
​When she gets here, the worker is told she will sleep in a closet and is also responsible for keeping the house and yard, and making and serving all meals. Her passport is taken and she is told she can’t leave the house without permission. When she complains, the employer threatens her family in her home country and says she will call ICE and have the worker arrested for being here illegally.
Exit Plan
​The worker sneaks a phone call to a community center for people from her country and gets help. The trafficker is never punished.
Domestic Work in Marriage
Recruitment and grooming:
​A man from a conservative, patriarchal society promises a poor girl’s family he will marry and take care of her in the United States. She has been raised her whole life knowing she will have an arranged marriage.
Coercion and control
Once here, the wife is forced to take care of the husband’s children from another relationship, keep the house, work in the family business, and not leave the house. She has no money and does not speak the language. Her husband tells her complaining will disgrace her family and ruin her sister’s chances of a good marriage.
Exit Strategy
The wife befriends someone in her religious community – the one place she is allowed to socialize – and the friend helps her find a lawyer.
Exploitation Through Addiction
Recruitment
A person struggling to stay clean from drugs joins a spiritual community that lives under the guidance of a charismatic leader.​
Coercion and control
The formerly addicted person is put to work making and selling crafts in abusive conditions for no pay. Those who complain are expelled from the community, which they have come to depend upon to maintain sobriety.
Exit
The victim collapses from exhaustion and hospital staff recognize she needs help and connect her with services.
Don't Get Washed
Pop culture isn't the best.
Ever notice a seemingly harmless detail in a movie or show that sparks a deeper thought? These "nuggets" can sometimes hint at complex issues like human trafficking, even if they're not the main focus. By exploring these references, we can open our eyes to different forms of trafficking and their subtle portrayals in pop culture. It's not about judging entertainment, but about sparking a deeper thought. So next time you catch a glimpse of something that resonates, take a moment to think: could this be connected to a bigger issue? Let's use these pop culture moments as springboards for open conversations and keep the fight against real-world trafficking in the spotlight.
We aren't trying to deter you from watching shows/movies or saying they are inherently bad. Some ideas shown occasionally exemplify issues that we may not usually connect with a form of trafficking.
DISCLAIMER
Let's Talk Agencies
Who is fighting it?
In the battle against human trafficking, organizations like the Polaris Project, Anti-Slavery International, and ECPAT International play pivotal roles. For valuable information and ways to get involved, visit the National Human Trafficking Hotline's website (humantraffickinghotline.org). Here, you can find resources, report suspicious activities, and contribute to the collective effort to eradicate this grave injustice. Join us in making a meaningful impact in the fight against human trafficking.
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Contact List
They are here to help and take action.
National Human Trafficking Hotline
888.373.7888
The Global Modern Slavery Directory is a publicly searchable database of over twenty-seven hundred organizations and hotlines working on human trafficking and forced labor around the world.
*In an emergency call 911
Your Checklist
This list is for you to remember what to do if you are suspicious
Observe.
Stay Safe and at a distance.
Recognize.
Note physical descriptions, locations, actions, etc.
Report.
888.373.7888 or 911
Our Sources
and studies
