In recent columns, I have highlighted that part of Catholic Charities’ mission statement that says we will “work in solidarity with the Church and other people of good will in advocating for justice.” During the month of January we have an easy but discomforting subject on which to focus that advocacy, namely human trafficking. February will bring another reminder.
Catholic Charities’ Refugee Resettlement program takes the lead in the diocese to annually welcome and help acculturate 350–400 refugees across our 11 counties. As they fear for their lives and health, they go through the most thorough vetting of any group of forced migrants anywhere, any time.
The terms “refugees,” “immigrants,” “asylees” and “visa holders” get used as if they are synonymous. (More about that in a future column.) But within the Refugee Resettlement program “special consideration ... (is) given to the most vulnerable among these populations (including) ... victims of human trafficking.”
The United States Conference of Catholic Bishops is placing warranted and special attention to this international scandal and has organized the Coalition of Catholic Organizations against Human Trafficking. We will be working with them and the “other people of good will” described in our mission statement to discover, expose and deter this abomination within our diocesan borders.
Recent law enforcement activities around the diocese prove that this abuse is a recurring local crime, and we must do more than just talk about it.
Efforts around the country are spotlighting both the indicators of human trafficking and the myths surrounding this modern slavery. Myths include the denial that trafficking occurs in this country and this state, or that victims are only from other countries. Even though the underground sex trade is a major player in this moral blight, other industries also profit from the practice.
The common goal is exploitation. The tools are force, coercion and violence.
Research shows that females make up three-fourths of the trafficking victims, half of whom are victims of labor manipulation coupled with sexual exploitation. Males make up 25 percent of exploited children, mostly victims of labor abuse, often coupled with the underground sex trade. The sad and brutal fact that the majority of trafficking victims — a whopping 63 percent — were relatives or on intimate terms with the trafficker eliminates the idealized scenario of family reunification as the universal solution to the abuse.
It is appealing to avoid this subject by relegating it solely to the field of law enforcement, and tempting to think it doesn’t happen in our back yards. But if we’re going to live up to our responsibility to advocate for justice, targeting slavery for elimination should be an easy one for all of us to endorse. Even dressing it up in the more antiseptic word “trafficking” sounds as if we’re at a stop or yield sign.
Come to think of it, maybe that’s where we are.