Stopping Human Trafficking in the IE

On Tuesday March 11, 2014, the San Bernardino County Coalition Against Sexual Exploitation (CASE) held its monthly meeting in a downstairs conference room at the Carousel Mall in San Bernardino. Present at the meeting were representatives from entities across Southern California that included local government offices, small grassroots organizations, law enforcement and religious organizations, all with one common goal: stopping human trafficing. To the casual observer, this was a regular boring meeting with a pre-printed agenda, flyers announcing upcoming events and even a video presentation that could allow a quick peek at your cell phone activity. But once the meeting started it was very clear that this was no ordinary meeting. This group has an agenda to stop human trafficking in the Inland Empire and each and it became clear that every person sitting at this meeting takes an active role in pursuing that ideal every on a daily basis. Anne-Michelle Ellis opened the meeting in quick fire discussion of the agenda at hand. After discussing with the group several choices of educational information to choose to present to the young people in their programs, she played a video from the A21 Campaign Curriculum entitled ‘Commodity’. The video spoke very clearly about the demand of human bodies for sexual exploitation or as household slaves and made the point of reality that even today children and adults are targeted by others for this horrendous fate. After the video presentation there was an invitation for those interested in attending free training for the Identification and Assessment of Victims of Trafficking and Commercial Sexual Exploitation offered by CASE. There will be several sessions of training covering this topic throughout the year and CBRN CE Credits will be given to those interested in that pursuit. A discussion ensued about the media use of the term “child prostitute” and those in attendance were encouraged to read a Washington Post article called ‘There is No Such Thing as a Child Prostitute’ by Malika Saada Saar. Saar’s article pointed out several cases of human trafficking and gave various statistics, including the fact that most girls who are risk of being exploited and trafficked for sex are between the ages of 12 and 14. For CASE, it was important to bring the awareness to the public that the individuals who are forced into this lifestyle are victims of sexual abuse for profit, victims of human trafficking, rather than those who choose prostitution as a profession. All of the CASE members offer education to local junior high and high school students to provide them with realistic takes on what behaviors could make them open to being exploited and teaches area young people how they or others they know could be vulnerable to getting pulled into trafficking either as a victim or on the other side of trafficking which includes ‘pimping’ others. With an open discussion/roundtable, Stefanie Benvenuto, Director of Public Policy & Advocacy of Crittenton offered the group updates on the most pertinent legislation covering all areas and aspects of human trafficking. Then Amy Andrews, a survivor of human trafficking and employee of the Family Assistance Program of Victorville announced that she and a group of other survivors have formed an organization called Survivors United Network (SUN) to provide consultation services to the area’s groups making the effort of reaching out and preventing human trafficking. Andrews is a Shelter Youth Advocate at Our House in Redlands, and has worked there for three months. Andrews shared a story about a young woman who came to the shelter as a runaway and said that because of training given to her caseworker, the young woman was screened for the possibility of having been a victim of human trafficking. “Just because of a simple hunch and some training received by this individual, someone saw the signs and spoke up,” said Andrews, “and that resulted in discovering three people in this area involved in human trafficking. Remember, that every little step counts in this battle. Everything here, all of the effort for training, for education, everything you are doing in this meeting, is making a difference. Every step is helping to end the exploitation of these children.” For information on CASE’s monthly meetings or to get information about offered training or curriculum, you can check out their Facebook page at facebook.com/sanbernardinocase or for upcoming events their website at sbcase.eventbrite.com.