Right-wing group warns of ‘surge in human trafficking,’ despite lack of local cases
Editor's note: this is an example of news / commentary in America.
A conservative women's group rallied nearly 100 people last month to raise the alarm about the growing threat of human trafficking to local children — despite a dearth of local cases.
“Human trafficking is all around us, we just don't know it,” Alcinda Hatfield, a “community ambassador” with Anti-Trafficking International, told The Daily Progress at the Aug. 8 event at Novum Baptist Church in Reva.
She's wrong, at least according to police.
Law enforcement officials from Madison, Greene and Culpeper were in attendance for Hatfield's presentation hosted by the Moms for America group. None of them were able to detail any cases of someone within their jurisdictions being traded for the purpose of forced labor, sexual slavery or commercial sexual exploitation.
“Sex trafficking cases we don't have a lot of, if we have any,” Culpeper Police Capt. Tim Chilton told The Daily Progress.
Nevertheless, Hatfield and the Madison-Culpeper Moms for America want the Anti-Trafficking International “Just Ask Prevention Curriculum” to be taught in schools across the commonwealth.
“We would love to put this program into more schools in the commonwealth,” Hatfield said. “Schools are very hesitant, unfortunately. With the time constraints and funding issues. We have grants and private donors, but even still some schools have not signed on for whatever reasons.”
While local school boards may not be on board, the group has backers in Richmond.
Maggie Cleary previously served as deputy secretary of the state Department of Public Safety and Homeland Security under Gov. Glenn Youngkin; she is now special counsel to Attorney General Jason Miyares. Cleary said combatting human trafficking is Youngkin's top priority.
“The first lady mentioned this while they were campaigning in 2021, but this is really their top priority,” Cleary said. “As someone who worked in the office with him, it was reiterated to us multiple times that stopping human trafficking, fighting human trafficking were Glenn Younkin and Suzanne's top priority.”
Were the curriculum detailed by Hatfield to be adopted, Virginia's students would be taught in class the “signs” of sex trafficking. Hatfield said students could learn about trafficking from real-life stories such as Susan Young's daughter, who was trafficked and exploited by the MS-13 gang in Fairfax County.
Young was at the Aug. 8 event.
“She met a young boy at a local movie theater who pretended to be her boyfriend for all intents and purposes. They became friends, had an online friendship, eventually started dating him. This young boy introduced her to MS-13 affiliates at her high school, and at the time we did not know they were MS-13, and these affiliates begin bullying her, threatening her and then she kind of was aware of who they were and what they were kind of wanted,” Young said.
Young's daughter asked for help multiple times, she said. When no one came to her rescue, she said, the gang retaliated.
“She reached out to the school 22 times to her counselor for help,” Young said. “No one came to her rescue or simply answered her request. So the gang got wind that she was trying to get away from them, so they took her to a secluded part of the school property where they hit her over the head and they gang-raped her while they videotaped.”
The video was used as blackmail, which then led to the trafficking, Young said.
“So she right after that was trafficked every day after school,” Young said. “She would be taken to a nearby house where eight to 10 gentlemen were waiting and she could not leave until she was done. She had to come home and pretend as if nothing had happened, but my husband and I knew there was something wrong, we just didn't know what, and we tried to get her to talk any way we could to tell us what was going on because her behavior was just spiraling out of control and she couldn't for fear of safety and retaliation from the gang.”
Young decided to change her daughter's school, she said, then she went missing for four days.
“So we decided we were going to pull her out of school and put her into a private school, and the day before we were going to do that the gang got wind, and that's when they came and took her,” Young said. “That's when she was missing and she was trafficked over the DMV area. We were able to rescue her and she was at brief home for about four months recovering, and again, we had no idea what had happened because she never disclosed. She was afraid.”
The gang didn't stop there, according to Young.
“She was taken again and she was missing for 10 days and she was recovered in Prince William by a Prince William County gang unit where they were selling her to an out-of-state gang for $2,000,” Young said. “They were going to transport her to New York, and if that had happened, we probably never would have seen Courtney again.”
Young's story, and those like it, are rare. The National Human Trafficking Hotline identified 140 human trafficking cases in Virginia in 2021, the latest numbers available. By comparison, there were 562 homicides, 11,638 vehicle thefts and 10,464 burglaries and burglary attempts reported that same year, according to Virginia State Police data.
What is more common than what is considered typical human trafficking is something called “sextortion.” It's a form of blackmail, usually targeting teenagers, in which someone threatens to share a nude or sexual image or video of the victim unless they pay a ransom or meet other demands.
“A lot of the kids are getting into this same kind of scenario. A kid gets friended by a real pretty girl online and obviously the girls are fake,” Chilton said. “Once they do that, the scammers start pushing the kids to send them pictures. As soon as they threaten to leak the photos, they make money.”
Part of what is fueling the fear of human trafficking in the U.S. is media. Shelley Burnham, co-director of Moms for America, said the recent event was planned to coincide with the release of the film “Sound of Freedom.”
“What we wanted to do was let people know not only is it a problem around our country, but how is it a problem here, why is it a problem here and what you can do about it,” Burnham said. “So we did host this on the heels of that movie because so many people had seen it and wanted to know does this affect my community and what can I do about it.”
“Sound of Freedom” depicts the story of a former government agent who rescued girls from sex traffickers in Colombia. In the five weeks between its release and the Aug. 8 event, it had already grossed more than $155 million.
The movie has been criticized for peddling conspiracy theories about trafficking. Its star, James Caviezel, is a prominent promoter of outlandish QAnon conspiracy theories about “elites” abusing and killing American children. One of its funders, Fabian Marta, was charged on July 21 with accessory to child kidnapping.
While the Moms for America group said the Aug. 8 event wasn't politically motivated, the organization has a habit of endorsing right-wing candidates in school board races, such as Terese Matricardi who is running for a seat on the Culpeper County School Board. Matricardi is a vocal supporter of schools outing children who have not conformed to gender norms to their parents and has argued that “Christians and Conservatives” are primary targets of bullying in schools.
While trafficking remains a less common crime, political experts say there has been a significant uptick in discussion of it, especially in places such as Virginia.
“Discussion of sex trafficking and transgender issues have really ramped up in Virginia in the past several months as the elections have drawn closer,” said Stephen J. Farnsworth, a professor of political science and international affairs and the director of the Center for Leadership and Media Studies at the University of Mary Washington. “It would be useful for people talking about these issues to draw more attention to specific cases to give people a sense of whether this is a greater threat to students than gun violence in schools, for example.”
Every day, 12 U.S. children die from gun violence and another 32 are shot and injured, according to the New England Journal of Medicine.
Trafficking has been used for years as a tactic to stoke fear and rally political support.
“Fear is a common motivator to increase turnout, and Democrats and Republicans have been using issues they consider to be valuable for that end for years,” Farnsworth said.
Much of today's rhetoric surrounding human trafficking resembles the “white slavery” panic of the early 20th century. According to the National Institute of Health, “white slavery” was the term used to describe organized coerced prostitution. While anyone could be a target of “slavers,” the primary concern was White women.
“Efforts to stop ‘white slavery' share many of the hallmarks of moral panic: crusaders often used misleading statistics and shocking narratives of abduction that obscured the economic context of prostitution, sex work, and trafficking,” Brian Donovan, a sociologist at the University of Kansas, wrote in an article for the Social Science Research Council. “Narratives of innocent white girls abducted into sex work formed a justification for anti-immigrant policies and ideologies.”
“Like the Progressive Era crusades against coercive prostitution, many contemporary antitrafficking efforts are about more than stopping sexual violence,” Donovan continued.
Back in Reva, Cleary told the audience gathered that the best thing they could do to stop the “surge” of trafficking would be to watch “Sound of Freedom” and then go vote.
“Watch ‘Sound of Freedom' and learn about this,” Cleary said. “You should talk to people who are running. Talk to your candidates and see what they want to do. Then, vote, vote, vote, vote. Please, please, please, vote in local elections. They matter.”
Luke Fountain (828) 320-6633
[email protected]
@Luke_Fountain25 on Twitter
Faith Redd (410) 245-4898
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@faithredd5 on Twitter
This “Eyes on Trafficking” story is reprinted from its original online location.
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EYES ON TRAFFICKING
This “Eyes on Trafficking” story is reprinted from its original online location.
ABOUT PBJ LEARNING
PBJ Learning is a leading provider of online human trafficking training, focusing on awareness and prevention education. Their interactive Human Trafficking Essentials online course is used worldwide to educate professionals and individuals how to recognize human trafficking and how to respond to potential victims. Learn on any web browser (even your mobile phone) at any time.
More stories like this can be found in your PBJ Learning Knowledge Vault.