Making the Invisible, Visible

In February of 2018, two women in their early twenties waiting at a gate in the Minneapolis-St. Paul International Airport. One of them seemed to be intoxicated and she became disruptive, and airport police were called to the scene. After the police calmed her down, they arrested her for disorderly conduct and had obviously missed her flight to wherever she was going. Mari Askerooth works in the investigation unit of the airport’s police station. She had mentioned to the Airport Police Department that had “seemed off” about the situation so she approached the woman to ask if she was alright. When she did this, her story quickly tumbles out. The pair had flown in to work the Super Bowl LII. Askerooth recalls the woman emphasizing the word “work” to imply selling sex. Askerooth and her team eventually tracked down the third party that was in charge of the business. Just by Mari’s gut feeling that she had about this woman saved her life and many other girls that were under the third-party power. There are so many statistics out there about how people’s “gut feeling” is usually right. Askerooth also knew the signs of someone who is being sex trafficked because she is a detective and works in the police force. The signs may include physical marks, being inappropriately dressed, impaired in some sort of way, quiet, and scared or nervous around people in uniforms and authority. If Askerooth just ignored it like any other bystander, the woman would have still been in the industry to this day.

Minneapolis, Minnesota is one of the top locations in the United States for sex trafficking, even though this issue has been hiding in plain sight for years. The State of Minnesota says that this is most prominent specifically in child sex trafficking.There are two main categories of trafficking, labor and sex trafficking. They both can be happening in the same case for a specific person but that is not always the case, it really depends on the situation according to The Advocate for Human Rights. In Minnesota, labor trafficking is the recruitment, transportation, transfer, harboring, enticement, provision, obtaining, or receipt of a person by any means, for the purpose of debt bondage, forced labor or services, slavery or slave-like practices, or organ removal. I didn’t know much about labor trafficking beforehand and the facts behind so when I found out that there is a business out there for kidnapping people and removing their organs, I was absolutely dismayed. Sex trafficking, I have been researching and passionate in for a while and it simply involves the sale of humans for sex. This industry is huge and growing fast, especially in Minnesota.

Human trafficking earns profits of roughly $150 billion a year according to the ILO report from 2014 and it is the second largest growing crime in the United States next to identify theft. Sex trafficking is a form of modern slavery, it is the action or practice of illegally transporting people from one country or area to another for sexual exploitation. I became interested in learning more about sex trafficking recently because I never knew how common it was in my own city and how awful of a crime it is. I have lived in Minneapolis for years and I never realized how dangerous and prominent it is in the community and I want that to change before it can happen to anyone else. This was surprising to me because I never thought of Minneapolis is a city that can get away with such a disgusting crime like that. What usually comes to mind is a foreign county, a popular travel spot, or a big city in the United States like Los Angeles. I feel I can do so if I can research about it and simply get the word out.

This topic is very prevalent all over the world and is happening more than people think.We have a big problem with sex trafficking in Minnesota, especially in the bigger cities like Minneapolis and St. Paul. Since 2007, there has been 1,670 calls and 473 victims involved in sexual exploitation. The amount of people falling into this industry are sadly rising. Each year since 2007, the numbers have increased little by little. It started with only thirty cases and in 2018 it had increased greatly and there were 74 cases reported according to Human Trafficking Hotline. I believe if more people knew about how prevalent it is in Minneapolis, there would be less people being forced into sex trafficking.

Sex traffickers can be master manipulators. They target vulnerable people like children, drug addicts, and people who have a history of abuse, neglect, or mental health challenges. Sex traffickers may get victims hooked on drugs to control them. One national study found that being homeless for longer than thirty days was the single biggest factor for teens to become sexually exploited. These children often get involved in sex trafficking as a form of survival. It is usually females that are exploited in sex trafficking, but males can be too. In 2018, there were 39 females and three males exploited. The average age of someone being put into sex trafficking is thirteen years old which I found incredibly shocking. In Minnesota in 2018, there were 29 adult cases and 11 cases that were minors, meaning that they were under eighteen years of age. I found this absolutely appalling and upsetting that this happens to so many people every day right here in Minnesota. I feel as though everyone looks over it or doesn’t see it happening even though it can literally be happening right in front of us.

Another story in 2014 happened on an airplane from Minneapolis to San Francisco. There was a girl that looked to be about fourteen or fifteen years old. She looked dirty and tired according to the flight attendant and had bruises on her face. There was a man sitting next to her that she seemed to be traveling with that the flight attendant assumed was her father, so she didn’t really think anything of the situation. A little way into the flight the girl tried to get up and the man had grabbed her arm and told her to sit down, this made the girl visibly fearful looking but obeyed his orders. This happened again so the flight attendant went over to ask if everything was okay. She said she just needed to use the restroom but the man didn’t want her to. The flight attendant thought that this was very strange and told the girl if she needed to go to the bathroom, she can. The man just sat in silence as the girl walked up to go to the restroom. The flight attendant thought this whole situation now felt very odd. When the girl came back from the bathroom, she gave a longing serious look at the attendant as she walked back to her seat next to the man. The flight attendant had a feeling to go and look in the bathroom. When she went to check, she saw the words, “Help me” on the lower part of the wall by the floor. This is when she knew that this girl was probably being sexually exploited and is traveling with her pimp. Once they landed she immediately called authorities. He was then arrested and she was returned to her family in Minnesota after she had been missing for a month.

The effects afterwards are complex because the victims experience physical and psychological disturbances. Leah Kaylor from the John Jay College of Criminal Justice says that, “The traffickers use physical violence to dominate and control their victims and use different kinds of tactics that may include starvation, beatings, rape, and gang rape.” Because of this, these victims would obviously be suffering from physical and visible injuries from this which include broken bones, concussions, burns, or brain trauma. Victims can also experience gynecologic health problems that stem from the forced sexual acts. They might suffer from sexually transmitted diseases, menstrual pain and irregularities, miscarriages, and forced abortions, among other problems.

The psychological impact of victimization may be more severe than the physical violence because most physical injuries can be fixed where as some mental disorders may be with a person throughout their lifetime. Victims who have been rescued from sexual slavery, typically present with various psychological symptoms and mental illnesses, including the following;Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD), depression, anxiety, panic disorder, suicidal ideation, Stockholm Syndrome, and substance abuse (WHO, 2012).If the trauma is left unaddressed, it can impair victims’ recovery. Mental health professionals working with sexually exploited people is critical to a victim’s ability to repair and regain their life (US Department of State, 2012). In addition to individual trauma-specific counseling and therapy, a range of alternative therapies may help victims build self-esteem, empowerment, and re-connection with themselves and society. These can be things like support groups that meet a few times a week to talk to others who have experienced similar situations of abuse.

Sex trafficking is an immense issue that is growing rapidly in Minneapolis. It is still a part of the list for the top three highest rates for sex trafficking crimes in the United States. We can fix this issue and decrease the amount of people going into sex trafficking if more people knew about it and how often and prevalent it is. It is happening in our own county, our own state, even our own city; the place where we live. People need to open their eyes and realize that it’s happening everyday around them in their own backyard. It is a topic that has been invisible for years that deserves to be visible now.