Learn
What is human trafficking?
Plain language, no jargon. What it actually is, how it differs from smuggling, what it looks like in Palm Beach County, and what to do if you think you are seeing it.
Need help right now?
If you or someone you know is in immediate danger, call 911. To reach LightHouse directly, call Becky at 561-386-0031.
National Human Trafficking Hotline
Free, confidential, 24/7, over 200 languages. Or text HELP to 233733.
The basics
Three tests, and all three have to be met
The United Nations definition has three parts. People usually remember the first one and forget the other two, which is why so much gets mislabelled as trafficking and so much real trafficking gets missed.
Recruitment, transportation, transfer, harbouring or receipt of persons.
By threat or use of force, or other forms of coercion, abduction or fraud, to achieve the consent of a person having control over another person.
For exploitation.
A common mix-up
Trafficking is not smuggling
People confuse these constantly, and the difference matters enormously. Smuggling is about a border. Trafficking is about whether someone is free to leave.
A man drives products between plants either side of the border. He befriends a family desperate to reach the United States who cannot get the paperwork. He hides them in his truck, gets them across, and drops them at their cousin's house. They are free to build a new life. He broke the law. He did not traffic anyone.
His co-worker copies the idea with a different family. But once across, he tells them they owe him for the risk he took. He takes their documents and puts them to work on his farm to pay it off. They are never told how much they owe or how much they have worked off. They are not free to leave. That is trafficking.
Both examples are fictional and deliberately simple. Real cases are rarely this tidy.
Closer than you think
What it looks like here
Palm Beach County is not an exception to any of this. It happens along the Federal and Dixie Highway corridor, in hotels, in massage businesses and online. The women we meet at laundromats every week are not from somewhere else. They are from here.
A few things worth understanding before you judge what you are looking at:
- Almost no victim identifies as a victim. That is why we train clinicians and police to spot it rather than wait to be told.
- There is always a story behind it. Family of origin trauma, dissociation, low self-worth, rape and addiction are what land someone in the life. Nobody grows up planning it.
- Traffickers create dependency on purpose. They isolate her from friends and family, confiscate her social security card so she cannot get hired, and often facilitate a drug addiction, because an addicted woman is easier to control.
- "She could just leave" is not true. Statistically, 1% of women being sex trafficked escape. Leaving with nothing, nowhere to go and no one to call is not really an option until someone makes it one.
Definition · Online enticement
Online enticement involves an individual communicating with someone believed to be a child via the internet with the intent to commit a sexual offense or abduction.
National Center for Missing & Exploited Children
If you see something
Warning signs worth paying attention to
None of these on its own proves anything. Several together are worth a call to the hotline.
- Someone else speaks for her, holds her ID, or will not leave her alone with you
- She is not free to come and go, or seems to be monitored
- Scripted or rehearsed answers to simple questions
- Signs of physical abuse, malnourishment or untreated medical conditions
- Branding style tattoos, or fear of a specific person she will not name
- Living where she works, or an address she cannot give you
- A much older or controlling "boyfriend" who provides everything
- Sudden expensive gifts, a second phone, or unexplained travel in a young person
Do not confront the suspected trafficker
It can put her in far more danger than she is already in. Call 911 if there is immediate danger, or the National Human Trafficking Hotline at 1-888-373-7888. Let people who do this for a living take the next step.
Keep learning
Nobody does this part alone
We deliver presentations to churches, schools, law enforcement organizations, universities and civic groups across Palm Beach County, and offer CEUs to medical and mental health providers on identifying victims in their own practice.
We are also a co-founder of Sharing One Love Palm Beach County, a consortium of local stakeholders serving this population. It meets quarterly with 20 or more organizations at the table: law enforcement, victim services, the faith community, community action groups and nonprofits. Everyone brings their piece of the puzzle, and there is not a trace of competition in the room.