Critics in the past have argued that the number of human trafficking have been exaggerated by the feminists and activities of anti-human trafficking movement. They further accused abolitionists of promoting their own agenda to eradicate prostitution and called anti-human trafficking activists opportunists. Certainly, many scholars have difficulty showing a precise number of statistics on human trafficking around the world. But interviews with law enforcement show that the difficulty of the estimation of human trafficking may be attributed to a number of factors involved in the complex nature of human trafficking as a crime. Also, it leads another question of whether lack of statistics should mean that human trafficking does not exist.
Victims: unwilling to come forward
One veteran law enforcement officer in human trafficking expressed her frustration in catching the traffickers in her area. She said that while victim's testimony or cooperation is a key element of prosecuting traffickers, many victims are too afraid to come forward to report their traffickers. What's more, they do not even know who to trust, even after they were rescued by the law enforcement. Another victim's story from Macon Georgia further confirms that many victims are unwilling to report the crimes committed against them. According to the article, a victim was arrested during the prostitution stings held in local massage parlors. Though she was initially taken to the police custody with other prostitutes, law enforcement speculated that she was a victim of human trafficking because of her excessive fear. Therefore, instead of being charged her with the crime, she was placed in a local shelter for trafficking victims. It was only after the two hour long interview with a local nonprofit staff that the victim finally disclosed that her traffickers were holding her identification and that they threatened her with deportation. The nonprofit staff also said that the victim was afraid that her boyfriend in China would find out about her history of prostitution in the U.S. She further disclosed that she came to the States after responding to a job advertisement in China.
Therefore, the law enforcement further stated that the fear of victims inflicted by the traffickers become main obstacles for the victims to testify against their traffickers.
Evidence is harder to come by
Another law enforcement further stated that evidence of human trafficking is even harder to come by than cooperation from the victims. In Macon Georgia, for instance, many victims are not from the area and they move one location to another very frequently. Some victims stay in one location for a week while another may stay for a month or so. Therefore, the law enforcement said that it is difficult to prosecute traffickers when they continue to relocate from one state to another.
Should you rely on statistics?
It'll be nice to have a hard statistics representing the cases of human trafficking in anywhere around the world. But, the lucrative nature and the complexity of human trafficking as a crime are two obstacles to generate a hard statistics. Just as critics say, the number of human trafficking could have been exaggerated by the abolitionists. But, the problem is that no one cay say whether the currently statistics on human trafficking was under-represented, either. Consider the story of a victim mentioned above, for instance. Her case will not be counted as part of the human trafficking statistics regardless of how traumatized she was by her traffickers. If she refused to testify against her traffickers, her case will not be prosecuted as part of statistics on human trafficking case. What's more, consider another example. Many domestic human trafficking victims refuse to testify against their pimps because their pimps are their sole source of affection as a boyfriend. I once had a concerned aunt emailed me about her niece who was willing to go to jail for her boyfriend/pimp on child prostitution charges but stubbornly refused to testify against her pimp/boyfriend. In such case, statistics will not account the victim's story as part of human trafficking cases in the area, since she never pressed the charges against her pimp or boyfriend. But, should you say that her lack of testimony against her boyfriend/pimp shows that the element of human trafficking didn't exist in her case?
I am interested in helping post the global human trafficking roundup. I have been researching some of the same articles and posting them on Facebook. It is great to have them all in one place.
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