Government Designates $500,000 to Fight Against the Growing Illegal Labor and Sex Trafficking

USA

Justice Department Eyes Human Trafficking
Family News In Focus - Colorado Springs,CO,USA
.... World Relief's mission is to relieve human suffering. Spokeswoman Ruth
Billings said the victims of human trafficking suffer the most. ...

August 20, 2004

Justice Department Eyes Human Trafficking
by Steve Jordahl, correspondent

Government designates $500,000 to fight against the growing illegal labor and sex trafficking.

Every year, 17,000 men, women and children are brought into the United States to serve the underground labor and sex industries. That has caught the attention of the Justice Department, which has provided a $500,000 grant to the group World Relief to do something about it.

World Relief's mission is to relieve human suffering. Spokeswoman Ruth Billings said the victims of human trafficking suffer the most.

She recalled one teen kidnapped from Guatemala.

"She was 19 years old," Billings said. "She was forced to work in the fields all day, and then at night she would be raped repeatedly, and then sent to the field again to work the next day."

World Relief plans to use the grant to provide assistance to trafficking victims and to organize community outreach. The group is calling its effort the Network of Emergency Trafficking Services (NETS).

"We need to be partnering with legal, mental health (and) health providers, (to help provide for the) medical and dental needs they're going to have," Billings said.

World Relief also will work with local law enforcement, ethnic communities and the church to put a dent in the horrific problem.

"In terms of the collaborative approach, it is critical to effectively combating human trafficking because everyone in the community needs to get involved," said Katherine Chon of the Polaris Project, who applauds the effort.

She added that the victims of this trade never come willingly — children are found as runaways, through abductions or through different coercive techniques.

The problem is also growing within the United States— there are about 300,000 American children per year coerced into the sex industry.

FOR MORE INFORMATION
The statistics are shocking, the reality even worse. Whether halfway around the world or in your neighborhood, human trafficking is a problem many people would rather ignore. But former U.S. Rep. Linda Smith is not one of them. In the broadcast "Setting the Captives Free I-II" she and Dr. Dobson discuss the horror and hope of this largely unreported problem — and what you can do to help