Response to Letters to the Editor re: Human Trafficking
Linda Witong of the Marin County Task Force on Human Trafficking supplied the following data in response to reader questions about the Pacific Sun’s story on trafficking (January 9-15): Marin’s Task Force is still in the process of collecting statistics that might show a pattern regarding questions raised by the letters to the editor a few weeks back. The latest UN report covers trends worldwide and includes the biggest markets for which ethnicity. Of all the people who are trafficked in the world, one out of three will be a child … while most regions traffic people that are within their own region or nearby, check out the countries that are some of the biggest consumers of enslaved people. Those most vulnerable to human trafficking are those who are struggling economically and live in areas of violence. Women and girls from racial minorities in the U.S. are disproportionately recruited by sex traffickers in the U.S. Some human traffickers even recruit handicapped young girls, such as those suffering from Down syndrome, into the sex industry.
Regarding Marin: Emily Sims responded that currently her stats don’t show obvious trends over who is exploited or who the exploiters/purchasers are. She also said that as 2015 progresses and more data analysis is done, she would be better able to answer stat-related questions. Further, 72 percent of victims identified by the U.S. task force were born in the U.S., and 16 percent of victims identified were born in foreign countries. For a complete report, see www.unodc.org/documents/data-and-analysis/glotip/GLOTIP_2014_full_report.pdf.
Joanne Williams, Marin
