Member-only story
Technology Can Help Women In Trouble
Trafficking victims can be located
We’ve all heard the horrible statistics. The stories of women, stolen away from their families, forced into prostitution by men who pretended to care for them.
It’s the most common way women are lost to trafficking. They meet a guy, he claims to be her “boyfriend”, gets her hooked on drugs, then puts her on the street to pay off the debt for “taking care of her”. Sometimes they’re shuttled between strip clubs, but many times, they’re listed on the adult hookup or dating websites.
These are ads for prostitution, make no mistake. And most times, those women aren’t posting themselves there. It is that “boyfriend” posting her, and that woman is being sex trafficked.
I am a domestic violence victim advocate and writer of all matters in women’s self defense. My work often intersects with human trafficking and I’ve witnessed it more times than I care to elaborate on. It’s an ugly truth, and often times, these women are convinced that, even if they managed to escape, nobody would want them back after what they’ve gone through.
Of course, if it were your daughter or sister who was being trafficked, you would probably feel differently. I know I did when it was my own sister, addicted to heroin and trafficked by a “boyfriend”. My sister has been gone a decade now, an overdose victim in the early days of fentanyl poisoning.
Often times, people working in anti-trafficking organizations burn out quickly. The things you see, they’re difficult to unsee. I once knew a woman, 9 months pregnant, prostituting until the day of the birth of the child.
She was doing it for money for crack cocaine. For the father of her baby, because he beat her if she didn’t. She is now dead, she overdosed when her daughter was 8 months old. My friend adopted her baby, and the baby is doing well. The baby’s father is still smoking crack, and has another young woman prostituting in the same area.
I hang in a lot of forums for domestic abuse and trafficking. I have been known to assist women looking to leave abuse, and when someone needs a quick route to safety, my name is often mentioned. I met someone in a trafficking forum a few months back, and for the first time…
