Slavery is far from dead—and Vermont is far from free of this pernicious evil. "It’s important that the public be aware that trafficking does occur and has occurred in Vermont,” says Andrea Van Liew, director of the Community Engagement and Training Department at the Vermont Center for Crime Victim Services.

The International Labour Organization estimates that three out of every 1,000 people on the planet have been trafficked—sold or compelled to engage in involuntary servitude in sex, farm, or factory trade—at some point in their lives and that approximately 20 million people worldwide are presently living in slavery. That’s about twice the number of Africans brought across the ocean in chains through what most Americans think of as the historical slave-trade era.

Legal Designation of Trafficking

The 13th Amendment to the US Constitution, passed in 1865, outlaws both outright slavery and involuntary servitude. A federal law expanding the prohibition against forced labor was passed in 1945.

It was not until passage of the federal Trafficking Victims Protection Act of 2000 and more recent statutes regarding fraud in foreign labor contracting, followed by the 2003 United Nations Protocol to Prevent, Suppress and Punish Trafficking in Persons, however, that the long-standing practice of compelling young women, as well as young men, into the sex trade got its own legal designation—sex trafficking—and received targeted attention from the criminal justice community.

Although Vermont was one of the last states to do so, in July 2011 the Vermont legislature passed Act 55—H 153: An Act Related to Human Trafficking. The act, 13 VSA Section 2561 et seq., created a statewide human trafficking task force and mandated development of a protocol—released in 2013—to identify, rescue, and protect human trafficking victims in Vermont. Although there have yet to be human trafficking prosecutions in Vermont, widespread efforts to raise awareness among the law enforcement and medical communities, as well as in the general public, are laying the foundation to confront this crime against human dignity.

What Is Sex Trafficking?

Slavery globally involves both sex trade and forced labor, such as the slave laborers who pick most of the commercial chocolate in the world. (Look for fair-trade and farmer-owned brands if you want to avoid serving up a side dish of human rights violations along with your Valentine’s treats.) Efforts and awareness in Vermont have focused on both domestic and international sex trafficking.

The Vermont statute, paralleling language from federal law and the UN protocol, makes it a crime to “recruit, entice, harbor, transport, provide or obtain a person through force, fraud or coercion for the purpose of having the person engage in a commercial sex act."

The public often associates the term trafficking with movement—the transportation of sex or labor slaves across state or international lines. But that definition does not adequately encompass the crime and is not part of the law ."There are trafficking cases with movement interstate or internationally, but that’s not a defining element of the crime, ” Van Liew says ."Trafficking means the sale of a person."

While traffickers may pimp their victims, trafficking differs from ordinary prostitution ."There’s a myth about prostitution, ” Van Liew explains ."It implies that the person whose body is being sold benefits from the transaction, usually financially. In actuality, in a trafficking case, the person whose body is being sold is not profiting from it."

The language referencing sexual exploitation of women is very important, agrees Edith Klimoski, director of the nonprofit Vermont antitrafficking organization Give Way to Freedom ."When you read an article that says ‘prostitution ring, ’ it implies ... that the person chose to engage in that job. When it is sex trafficking, we use the terms sexual exploitation or forced prostitution to distinguish it from those situations where engaging in the sex trade is a choice,” she says.

The UN protocol uses the word trafficking but points out another depressingly misleading implication of the term. According to Global Report on Trafficking in Persons, a 2009 report by the UN Office on Drugs and Crime, “it places the emphasis on the transaction aspects of a crime that is more accurately described as enslavement. Exploitation of people day after day. For years on end."

Victims feel vulnerable and without options. Their trafficker provides them with food and shelter. Homeless or runaway youth may feel unable to seek help because the events of their past have led them to distrust authority and institutional services, such as justice or medical resources, that could help them. Lacking transportation or any financial resources, “they are unable to leave and are dependent on the trafficker, ” Van Liew says, “Or young women are brought in and introduced to and become dependent on drugs, which is a strong means to keep them enslaved."

Vermont Trafficking Victims

The two most common types of trafficking scenarios in Vermont are either the massage parlor workers, profiled in recent Chittenden County busts, or homeless or runaway youth who are recruited and then become dependent or drug addicted.

Christal Jones is the most well known case of the latter in Vermont. The 16-year-old girl was under SRS supervision in a foster home, but was found dead in 2001 in a New York City apartment. She had been recruited in Burlington to participate in a prostitution ring and was addicted to heroin.

Jones was recruited by a “bottom girl, ” Van Liew says—another young woman engaged by the traffickers to locate and gain the trust of new recruits. The involvement of women on the traffickers’ side of sexual exploitation is not as unusual as it sounds. The Global Report on Trafficking in Persons found that 79 percent of human trafficking is for sexual exploitation, the victims are predominantly women and girls, and the majority of traffickers are women. In some regions of the world, human trafficking is exclusively a women’s domain.

Barkley believes the recent high-profile massage parlor raids in Chittenden County have increased public awareness and helped spark improvement in responses, but it’s still a work in progress ."There have been efforts to improve and coordinate responses, ” she says, “but there are limited resources. That’s in part because we don’t have the data, but we don’t have the data because we lack resources. It’s a chicken and egg thing ."

It remains easy to characterize a massage parlor raid as a one-off event, with no data backing up the proposition that it’s merely the tip of the iceberg. HOPE began keeping segregated data on sex trafficking cases for the first time in fiscal year 2013–2014. During that time period, 3 percent of the 956 sexual assault victims they provided services to were victims of sex trafficking—about 28 individuals.

The victims identified locally are almost exclusively female. Barkley, who previously served on the state’s Human Trafficking Task Force, says that most of the trafficking victims that HOPE Works has provided services to were local Vermonters, though several were international victims.

Most Vermont victims of sex trafficking are female and usually from a vulnerable population. Barkley says these victims are often “homeless and precariously housed youth, in their teens or early twenties. The pimp or trafficker may be someone they know or were in a relationship with.
Often there is substance abuse or drug use ." Being in a fragile economic and social position, especially when coupled with substance addiction, creates an atmosphere ripe for ”survival sex”—a woman doing whatever she can do just to survive.

The Vermont victim of sex trafficking may find herself put out to prostitution within the state, or brought out of state to engage in sex for money or drugs. She sees no way to escape her circumstances ."There may be a prior abuse history that may have contributed to their housing situation. They have few resources to get out. They believe there is nothing else they can do. These factors all come together in a perfect storm of vulnerability, ” Barkley says.

The University of Vermont College of Medicine, in partnership with Give Way to Freedom, recently produced a resource—a journal article in poster form—that provides the best data picture to date on the vulnerabilities that lead to enslavement in the sex trade. Titled “Barriers to Identifying Trafficked Youth in Vermont, ” researchers, including Klimoski, did an intensive review of the literature and conducted anonymous field surveys, following IRB (Institutional Review Board) protocols, of 98 at-risk youth in four Vermont counties and 104 health-care providers across the state. Over 19 percent of health-care providers reported having seen between one and five patients whom the providers believed to be victims of sex trafficking.

The most significant risk factor identified for youth was placement in the foster care system: 22 percent of Vermont youth in foster care responding to the study reported being forced to have sex to obtain something, and another 13 percent reported being compelled to do something they did not want to do other than sex. The study concluded that Vermont youth “participate in activities suggestive of human trafficking” and that “youth with a history in the foster care system appear to be at greater risk for trafficking, survival sex, and fear of accessing medical care."

Expansion of Services Not the Solution

As awareness of sex trafficking in Vermont grows, so does the broad array of services available to sex trafficking victims, whether or not they choose to report to or cooperate with law enforcement. Those services include existing sexual assault crisis centers and domestic violence shelters as well as the resources of the state Crime Victims Fund.

“The rules for victim compensation are no different for a trafficking victim than for any other victim, ” Van Liew says ."The victim’s fund can provide limited compensation in qualifying cases for medical treatment, counseling, and sometimes for relocation and temporary housing. In other types of cases, a victim is eligible for lost wages, but that is a difficult issue here as the person engaging in the sexual services is not directly benefiting financially from their position."

In addition to services already available to victims of crime or sexual or domestic violence, new resources are springing up to address the specific needs of sex trafficking victims. The rapid response system of Give Way to Freedom is one such example.

“It’s Friday night at 9 p. m., and a law enforcement officer thinks something is going on. He has a person who may be seeking help or showing signs of fear, and he doesn’t know what program or services to send them to, ” Klimoski explains ."We will get a facilitator there, get them established in a hotel, get them food and shelter for a few days, and just let them know what services are available. Let them know what their options are."

The most important thing to remember, Klimoski says, is that “it’s a very complicated issue. The
perpetrator can be anybody. The victims can be anybody, male or female, any age, from anywhere.”

Like many other social ills, such as the drug trade, sex trafficking is a product of supply and demand. According to UNICEF’s “End Trafficking” campaign, human trafficking generates over $32 billion in profits globally each year. The high demand for cheap consumer goods and commercial sex puts women and men, but especially children, at risk of becoming the supply that fulfills the demand. Human trafficking has been reported in all 50 states, and the United States serves as both source and transit point for labor and sex trafficking, but it is also one of the world’s top destinations for human trafficking, particularly of children.

Services can’t truly translate into solutions until there are robust options ."Until we start to make real economic opportunities for women across the globe, ” Barkley says, “these situations will continue to arise. If there wasn’t a demand for sex business locally, we would not see the sex trade here. It’s Vermonters who are buying this service."

Cindy Ellen Hill practices law, writes in law and public policy fields, and homesteads in Middlebury, Vermont.