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State to focus on human trafficking By MARY LOU PICKEL Email: mpickel@ajc.com The Atlanta Journal-Constitution Published on: 04/15/06 A bill awaiting Gov. Sonny Perdue's signature and two special task forces set up with funds from the federal government are adding muscle to Georgia's efforts to crack down on human trafficking. Sen. Chip Rogers (R-Woodstock) says his intent was to cut down on the flow of illegal workers into Georgia. The Georgia Security and Immigration Compliance Act would make human trafficking a felony in Georgia with jail sentences up to 20 years. "The hope was to send a message to coyotes and people who would bring people to Georgia illegally that this is the last state you would bring people to," Rogers said. The bill also goes after pimps who force people into the commercial sex trade. "As a byproduct of this overall immigration legislation, if we can go after those people as well, I'm all for it," Rogers said. Human trafficking is about making money off society's most vulnerable people. Between 14,500 and 17,500 people are brought into the United States each year, according to a State Department report, and between 600,000 and 800,000 are trafficked globally. There is no estimate for the number of Americans who are trafficked, but Fulton County Juvenile Courts alone see 10 to 12 cases per month of minors as young as 9 and 10 years old who are victims of commercial sexual exploitation, said Patricia Crone, project director at the Juvenile Justice Fund. As part of Washington's heightened efforts to curb the illegal trade in humans, Atlanta Police and the Cobb County Sheriff's Office have set up anti-human-trafficking task forces with three-year federal grants of $450,000 and $360,838, respectively. As head of the Atlanta Police Department's anti-trafficking unit, Sgt. Donna Chambers is only too well acquainted with the misery of those trapped in this netherworld. She listens day and night to frightened young prostitutes who want to leave their pimps but can't. They tell her they are trapped. "One of the reasons human trafficking is such a big business is they can resell their merchandise over and over again," Chambers said. "With drugs, they sell it once." Chambers' unit hits the streets almost every day, following tips from the police department's vice unit and 911 calls. Any crackdowns on prostitution is welcome news to Yvonne Smith and Flora Tommie, who say prostitution took over their Perkerson Park neighborhood, although it has eased in recent years. Smith reached her breaking point in the summer of 2001 when she went to the park with her kids and ran into a man having sex with a young girl on a bench. "I was so angry to know that people care so little about themselves," Smith said. "We had given up the park to pimps and drugs." Smith, who runs Children's Paradise Academy, made fliers and encouraged volunteers to pick up condoms littering the park. Tommie says officials should do something about the strip clubs and bars close to public schools. Chambers has found that many of her trafficking victims have been sexually abused at an early age and have never recovered. "These are little girls and their lives are pretty much ruined," Chambers said. "When they come into adulthood, they feel like they're less." The cycle won't change until society decides not to penalize what it considers to be "bad victims," said Covenant House Georgia's Alisa Porter. She draws a parallel between tolerance of slavery in the Old South and indifference today toward trafficking victims. Society did not consider black people to be human beings and therefore slavery flourished, Porter said. Today there's not much outcry about trafficking because prostitutes aren't sympathetic victims, she said. "If we don't see sexually exploited children as victims, we don't have the will to change it," Porter said. In Cobb County, Carole Morgan, director of the North Central Georgia Law Enforcement Academy, coordinates a countywide task force for the Cobb County Sheriff's Office that has educated police, service providers and translators about human trafficking. "You've got the dynamics of sexual assault and the dynamics of domestic violence and the dynamics of everything all rolled into one," Morgan said. "The victims are terrified, and in many cases depend on the trafficker." Cobb law enforcement agencies haven't had many trafficking cases yet, Morgan said. That could be because police are still learning how to identify such victims. They are not always easy to find. Take the case of Rosa, who ended up on a South Georgia tomato farm after entering the country illegally from Mexico in 2004. She had paid a coyote $1,600 to smuggle her in, and had hoped to pay off that debt in two months. Instead, after three months of living and working under harsh conditions, she had earned only enough to pay $400 toward her debt. Rosa later escaped with the help of lawyers from Legal Services of Georgia, but she still sent $800 to the coyote who smuggled her into the country and supervised her on the farm. If the governor signs Rogers' legislation into law, as expected, it would enable local police and prosecutors to specifically address trafficking cases and likely increase prosecutions. Victims' advocates say any new tool will likely help cut down on trafficking. Under current Georgia law, prosecutors have to resort to a variety of minor offenses to charge traffickers, including assault and battery and stalking. These are misdemeanors that carry at most a 12-month sentence, said Ann Harris, an assistant district attorney in Cobb County. She helped draft the human trafficking provisions included in the state bill. "Maybe a woman is beat up because she didn't perform — that is battery," Harris said. "And maybe on Wednesday and Thursday one of the women doesn't do what she's supposed to so she's kept in a locked room for two days. That's false imprisonment," Harris said. "Having to prosecute these one at a time, you miss the big picture." Find this article at: http://www.ajc.com/metro/content/metro/stories/0415mettrafficking.html Post a comment in response: |
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