Renewal Forum

Below is the text of the Forum’s formal response to the Washington Post A-1 story, “Human Trafficking Evokes Outrage, Little Evidence.”

Renewal Forum President Steven Wagner, responding to the September 23, 2007 A-1 Washington Post story on human trafficking, “Human Trafficking Evokes Outrage, Little Evidence,” said today “Unfortunately, instead of holding the federal government accountable for results, the Post inappropriately gives it a pass by suggesting the phenomenon is overstated.”The Post article focuses on the disparity between the number of federally certified victims of human trafficking (1,362) and estimates of the annual number of new foreign victims (14,500 – 17,500).

The Post article goes on to suggest the estimates are overblown. At no time does the Post explore why efforts to identify and rescue victims have been ineffective.”This story’s conclusion might be justified if we could say that the federal government has made every effort to find victims of trafficking,” Wagner said, “but this is not the case.”According to Renewal Forum analyses, several factors ignored by the Post explain the lagging pace of victim identification and rescue:The paucity of federal law enforcement resources devoted to enforcement;The routine deportation of victims, contrary to their status as victims of crime under the Trafficking Victims Protection Act (TVPA);The lack of systematic intelligence-gathering, targeting foreign criminal trafficking syndicates;A de facto cooperation standard for minor victims, insisted upon by the U.S. Department of Justice in defiance of the TVPA; andVictims not being made known to federal authorities by NGO service organizations, out of concern for their clients’ potential deportation, among other factors.  

Curiously, the Post’s Mr. Markon is dismisses the biggest population of trafficking victims in the U.S. today – American juveniles trapped in situations of sexual exploitation – as if these victims are of less consequence than victims from other countries. The federal anti-trafficking statute, the TVPA of 2000 mandates that any minor under the age of 18 who engages in commercial sex is a victim of trafficking. Estimates of this population range from 200,000 to nearly 400,000.”We dismiss the Post’s assertion that the allegedly declining federal estimates of the annual number foreign trafficking victims from an original 50,000 to the current 14,500 – 17,500 per year indicates the problem is evaporating” Wagner said.

Wagner added “These changing numbers are the result of improving counting methodology, not because the extent of trafficking is changing.” The Renewal Forum asserts that fluid statistics are only to be expected at this early stage of engaging the problem. Wagner observed, “early estimates of social pathologies, like human trafficking, historically understate the extent of the problem. For example, when C. Henry Kemp authored the seminal “Battered Child Syndrome” in 1962 on child abuse, he speculated that there were perhaps 10,000 cases per year in the U.S. Last year, HHS put the number at nearly one million.”The Renewal Forum also notes the Post ignored the good news in the anti-trafficking movement — the proliferation of state anti-trafficking statutes.

The Renewal Forum’s forthcoming analysis of state laws finds that while all have their deficiencies, state laws empower local law enforcement to investigate the crime of trafficking, thereby dramatically increasing the resources devoted to this effort. The Forum remains encouraged that many more victims have been rescued and aided in rebuilding their lives than are counted in the federal statistics.The Renewal Forum is a non-profit organization undertaking programs of policy analysis and advocacy on issues related to human dignity. Its Program for the Abolition of Juvenile Trafficking is focused on making our response to human trafficking more effective.http://www.renewalforum.org