We must fight sex trade in the Sunshine State

It’s tempting to dismiss human trafficking as the shooting star of the criminal underworld — a series of one-off stories that evince a problem afflicting only a handful of the unluckiest people, inevitable tragedies like Ariel Castro’s decadelong capture of three young women. But the reality is that human trafficking is a global, multibillion dollar industry with branches that twist and burrow in our own communities, around our own friends, siblings and children.

Consider this barrage of statistics: According to an Urban Institutes study, sex trafficking in 2007 netted $290 million in Atlanta alone. Georgia, ranked sixth in number of reported human trafficking cases by state, according to data from the National Human Trafficking Hotline, trails far behind California and Florida. The same data ranked our very own Sunshine State third-highest in the country.

Consider that each of those statistics represents a living, breathing person. A human being with as vast a depth of feeling as your own, who finds leaning on her left elbow uncomfortable, who prefers the soft fuzz of the radio when her mom starts the car in the morning, who excels at math and loves her parents and argues with her brother over the front seat. This girl has that life torn away and replaced with sweaty, overweight men who reek of alcohol, men who purchase her like pizza and rape her by the hundreds and beat her when any whisper of agency bubbles through.

We cannot in good conscience ignore this problem or sweep it under some statistical rug. Our own state is home to this slavery in abundance, and we do far too little to combat it.

So how can we improve? The sex trade is a demand-driven industry. Suppliers supply what’s in demand at the quantities demanded. Policies to target the suppliers of sex are abound, but until demand decreases, interested parties will jump at the opportunity to turn a profit. Currently, the U.S. lacks an explicit law targeted at those who purchase sex with trafficking victims, according to a New York Law School academic report; such individuals engage in sex trafficking as consumers (termed “johns”) and are subject only to prostitution and child abuse laws — penalties that can be as minor as a month in jail and a fine. Our state legislators must push for more severe penalties specific to those purchasing the services of trafficked individuals, making potential buyers more careful and decreasing demand overall.

Law enforcement officers must also better recognize and collaborate with rescued trafficking victims to, one, ensure that they feel comfortable coming forward and, two, elicit more useful information for dismantling complicated criminal networks. We can start by requiring mandatory training for officers in how to deal with human trafficking cases.

What’s more, we must have a sturdier safety net for trafficked individuals to escape into. This means signage on public bathroom walls in multiple languages outlining available interventions, programs that train employees at trafficking hot spots (motels, clubs, etc.) to recognize telltale signs and an increase in the number of residential program beds where trafficking victims stay while repairing their lives.

Until we make adjustments, this loss of innocence is a guilt we all bear.

Champe Barton is a UF economics and psychology junior. His columns usually appears on Thursdays.