Faces of Human Trafficking: Preview TRANSCRIPT
[Music]
BUKOLA: My trafficker was my husband. There was no way I could reach out to anybody for help.
MARQ: We’re scared. We’re scared to run. We’re scared to tell anybody what’s going on.
JERI: It was an incredibly violent situation. I felt like there was no way I could get out.
JAMES FITZGERALD: Human traffickers can be just about anyone from any walk of life. A lot of the trafficking involves domestic servitude—hoteliers, restaurant owners, owners of massage parlors, agricultural farm owners.
KATE CRISHAM: It can be a trafficker who tells a woman, "I want to be your boyfriend. I love you. And if you love me, you’re going to go out and have sex for money." It can be kind of psychological like that or it can be more overt and more physical. It can be hitting, abusing, keeping them away from any support systems.
NIKO: Trafficking doesn’t know any boundaries. The victim can be male, female, transgendered—anyone. And it happens all over America.
AMY: I still see this attitude of it’s just immigrants or it’s just people in other countries. It happens to U.S. citizens so much more than people are aware.
MIGUEL KEBERLEIN: The natural stakeholders in this issue are certainly law enforcement, legal advocates, social service providers, but there’s other players involved as well.
MICHELLE NASSER: It is important to engage the community because victims often don’t self-identify. They don’t come forward to law enforcement.
[WOMAN: Thank you! Buh-bye!]
MYCHELL MITCHELL: Citizens in the community are the eyes and the ears.
MICHELLE NASSER: It’s medical workers. It’s educators. It’s personnel at homeless shelters.
KATHLEEN MORRIS: We can’t do this alone. No one has the capacity to provide every single thing that a victim or survivor of human trafficking needs.
JAMES FITZGERALD: There has to be a support system within the community—psychological counseling, shelter and vocational education so they can reintegrate and become a healthy individual.
MIGUEL KEBERLEIN: There’s an intentional effort to get everyone together so we know how to share resources, we know how to work together and to make sure, at the end of the day, a victim becomes a survivor.
