There are 5,000 animal shelters and only 226 beds for trafficking victims

Lately, I've been too busy to blog about my life. However, I've been working on my portfolio for the end of the semester. So, I decided to blog part one of my research on human trafficking and foster care. Stay posted for part two tomorrow.

Individual Civic Engagement Project

Foster Care and Human Trafficking in America:

 How the Government and Society Fails Kids

“One of the most devastating examples of vulnerability of kids in foster care is when they become victims of sex trafficking.”- Rep. Dave Reichert

“We owe it to these children to ensure our nation’s foster care system does all it can to protect them so that they can live safe, happy and successful lives. But we’re not living up to that promise.”- Rep. Dave Reichert

“The (foster care) system needs to become more cognizant and more forceful in developing strategies to stop it (human trafficking).”- Rep. Lloyd Doggett

During my junior year of high school, I was given the opportunity to create a school wide service project that would be the one cause for all of the clubs and organizations that school year. After reading the book Half the Sky, and being mentored by my English teacher I was exposed to the issue of international child trafficking. A friend and I decided to compete to make building a school in Cambodia for children at risk of being trafficked the one cause at my high school for that year. We won and raised approximately $20,000 to build the school. After this project finished, I sought out more ways to get involved but thought that there was not a whole lot I could do. However, during my sophomore year of college, I asked one of my professors to write me a recommendation and she saw that I was involved with trafficking in high school. This led to work with her on a project with USAID that created a mobile application for first responders against trafficking in Indonesia.  While I was aware that there was extensive human trafficking happening worldwide and some trafficking in America, I was not able to comprehend the extent of trafficking in America until this summer and this project.

On July 31st, 2013, I attended a Senate briefing with my boss and staff within my office, which was a presentation of 15 former foster youth to members of congress and their staff. The testimonials given by the interns and their policy recommendations changed my views on foster care and human trafficking forever. My experience with human trafficking and foster care, like most other things in my life have occurred as a domino effect. A few weeks prior to this briefing I met someone at a briefing who was interning and said he was doing a presentation on adoption at the end of July. He did not give me many details, but told me to ask my boss because she knew about it. Frankly, I forgot about the briefing but I reconnected with my former acquaintance when I saw him there. This led to friendships with two of the foster youth interns. Having gone to private school my entire life, this was the first time I became friends with people my age that had backgrounds vastly different than my own. That fact is hard to admit and sad, but true. While some of my friends came had divorced parents or smaller houses, all of them had a car and a sense of stability: not having to worry about their next meal or where they will sleep. Having read about poverty and foster care and volunteered extensively, it was only apparent to me how little I understood until I met these interns. I learned that while the Foster Youth Interns were incredibly special people, many of their foster care counterparts did not have the same opportunities. Only 1.4% of foster youth graduate from college by the time they are 24. Foster youth “age out” when they are 18 or 21, depending on the state and are often left homeless and without resources. 25% of foster youth are incarcerated within 2 years after emancipation. One of my foster youth intern friends spoke of her homelessness in high school and it occurred to me how easily she could have been trafficked if it wasn’t for her incredible resilience and determination. I realized there was a reason I sat next to a former foster youth at a speaker and that my boss asked me to go to this briefing at the last minute, it was an undeniable calling and I had to do something about it.  When I heard about the civic engagement project, I knew that this was my opportunity to explore this issue further.

My first step was to read about organizations with contacts in DC. I read at least 25 articles regarding human trafficking and foster care and reached out to my professor at TCU who originally sparked my interest. I also watched a CNN documentary about a middle class girl who was trafficked after running away from her Nevada home. The documentary was when I first began to understand the reality that trafficking can affect anyone. I met with James Dold, Senior Legal Council at Polaris Project who helped write over twenty laws last year regarding trafficking at the federal level and also traveled around the country presenting policy recommendations to states. We discussed the process of getting laws passed and the difficult decisions of judges when prosecuting trafficking victims. The major issues when rescuing victims are: lack of law enforcement knowledge about trafficking (ie thinking that trafficked victims are prostitutes), lack of housing and recovery programs for trafficked victims, and Stockholm syndrome which often causes victims to return to their pimps. Mr. Dold informed me of Safe Harbor Laws, which he recommends that states enact. A complete Safe Harbor Law includes preventing minor victims of sex trafficking from being prosecuted for prostitution and protecting child victims of sex trafficking by providing them with specialized services. The precedent of not prosecuting children was a Texas Supreme Court case in 2010 which reaffirmed the law that minors cannot consent to sex. However, with the lack of knowledge by law enforcement and officials, this is not always enforced and many juveniles are imprisoned for trafficking. The second part of the law is also problematic, as there are 100,000 trafficking victims in the US and only 226 beds specifically for trafficking victims. There are 5,000 animal shelters in the US. Safe housing for trafficking victims also includes foster care, however since up to 90% of trafficked minors have been in the foster care system, this is usually ineffective.