Offering kids to help support drug habit most common human trafficking scenario in region …

JOHNSON CITY, Tenn. (WJHL) — Human trafficking in Northeast Tennessee doesn't look like what people might expect from popular media accounts — and the reality might be harder to stomach than the TV version.

“In the work that we do that a lot of times substance abuse is the root of the ‘why,'” said Gabi Smith, a local community care liaison for the Knoxville-based Community Coalition Against Human Trafficking (CCAHT).

“I need to be able to afford whatever it is that I'm using, I have a 14 year old kid, I'm going to make some money off of this to be able to upkeep my habit. This is probably the most common type of trafficking that I see in this region.”

And Smith doesn't see just a little bit. CCAHT, a non-profit, opened a Johnson City office to serve the Tri-Cities in 2020. Smith said of East Tennessee's 408 trafficking referrals in 2022, nearly three dozen were in Washington and Sullivan counties.

January is National Human Trafficking Prevention Month in the U.S.

The regional numbers break about 50/50 in terms of trafficking of adults and trafficking of children, Smith said. It's enough for the organization to have added Doniqua Joyner as a Johnson City-based care coordinator focused just on youth.

“There's a lot of red flags that we look out for, and they come through the child welfare system,” Smith said of the underage trafficking. In the area's rural counties particularly, trafficking tends to be very localized.

“We see … familial trafficking, where a family member acts as a trafficker, and they'll traffic that family member whether it's their kid, their cousin, their grandkid, right out of the home,” Smith said. “They don't even have to take them across state lines or anywhere.”

In the case of adults who are trafficked, substance use also frequently plays a role, Smith said. Sometimes the victim's own drug habit is used as leverage by an intimate partner, other times drug use stems from the trauma of being trafficked.

Whatever the leverage or source of coercion a trafficker is using —and coercion is a key element of how trafficking is defined — Smith estimated about 90% of trafficking-related activity involves sex. And regardless of the victim's age, that creates tremendous trauma.

“What we see in trafficking victims that's different than victims of other crimes is this complex PTSD,” Smith said.

“When you think about an individual who's experienced sexual assault, it's very traumatizing. They'll think about it for years and years. It'll change who they are as a person. When you think about someone who's been trafficked for a certain period of time, that's multiple sexual assaults in a day, in a week, in a month. The trauma is connected to a whole period in their lives.”

What makes it trafficking?

Smith said three elements must be present for a situation to be considered trafficking and not simply a situation of abuse. Simply put, they are the “what,” the “how” and the “why.”

• The “what” is generally the exchange or sale of another person, although recruiting people into trafficking and harboring traffickers meet the bar as well.
• The “how” must center around the victim being forced, tricked into the situation by fraud or coerced, or any combination of the three.
• The “why” centers around commercial gain, whether money, trading for drugs or trading for any material thing.
• Children under 18 in Tennessee can be considered trafficking victims even without the “how” element. In other words, a child or teen may tell authorities they are in the situation consensually, but the law doesn't consider them at an age to make that decision for themselves.

Smith said the State of Tennessee is a leader in combatting human trafficking as measured by Shared Hope International, a global anti-trafficking organization. In fact, it tops the nation.

“It was a lot of work from the non-profit agencies like us, End Slavery in Middle Tennessee and Restore Corps in West Tennessee and a lot of work from the governor's office,” Smith said. She said those three non-profits have been appointed by the governor's office to be each region's point of contact.

Small staff, big work

Smith said CCAHT's work centers around a couple of main themes: training people in the community in identifying potential trafficking victims or situations and appropriately referring them, and counseling victims, particularly adults.

They also work closely with the Department of Children's Services, schools and other agencies that serve children. They'll do prevention curriculum for at-risk kids who may not have disclosed trafficking involvement but are running away a lot, having inappropriate relationships with older individuals and exhibiting other signs.

For kids who have definitely experienced trafficking, the agency provides psychoeducation, or gets them connected to therapy services. They also attend all team meetings.

“We're advocating for that child,” Smith said. “The wonderful thing about our program is we don't have a time limit, so if I start working with little Susie when she's 12, and you know, five years down the road, we're still working together, then that is okay.”

Smith said trainings are helpful for a wide variety of people, from mental health workers and public housing employees to staff at Bristol's new casino. She said a recent training with a local mental health provider bore almost immediate fruit.

“I'm giving them, ‘this is what to look for, this is how you ask, this is what you do,'” she said. “As soon as we were done with the training one of the therapists came up to me and said, ‘hey, I have a situation that could potentially be trafficking.'”

Smith said the therapist saw the client later and explained the agency's work. People can't call on a client's behalf, but in this case, the client called Smith herself.

Victories can be few and far between, but they do come, Smith said. She talked about one person with a disability who was among the 10% or so of cases who are labor trafficking.

“Someone promised them employment, and the employment turned out to be panhandling,” she said. “They couldn't leave the situation because they had some disabilities.”

The person eventually left, with no documents and no place to live, and somehow they found the CCAHT hotline.

“We were able to get him out of that situation and find housing and things like that, and now he's thriving,” Smith said.

The group has also had successes with some people who have been sex trafficked, including a young woman “who had been trafficked by two different individuals that were into some very bad things in this region.”

The referral came through a substance abuse program whom the victim had told about her situation. Smith's been working with her for about a year.

“She has overcome a lot of barriers that were keeping her from living a normal life,” Smith said. “She is receiving counseling, she is working hard to stay sober, finding employment, being independent — getting out of what we call ‘the life.'”

Many disappointments go along with the success stories, Smith said, but the work is worth it to her.

“I wish I could say every single client that comes to us walks out a new person,” she said. “That's definitely not the reality but we do our very best. Sometimes we might see a client three or four times before they get to the point where they're they are successful, and that's okay.

“We're willing to go at it as many times as we have to to get that person where they need to be.”