Guest commentary: Human trafficking (sex and labor)

Human trafficking - Photo by Imagens Evangélicas

Human trafficking is a form of modern-day slavery in which traffickers use force, fraud, or coercion to control victims for the purpose of engaging in commercial sex acts or labor services against his/her will.

Sex trafficking is the recruitment, harboring, transportation, provision, or obtaining of a person for the purposes of a commercial sex act, in which the commercial sex act is induced by force, fraud, or coercion, or in which the person induced to perform such an act has not attained 18 years of age, (22 USC § 7102). Sex trafficking has been found in a wide variety of venues within the sex industry, including residential brothels, escort services, fake massage businesses, strip clubs, and street prostitution.

Labor trafficking is the recruitment, harboring, transportation, provision, or obtaining of a person for labor or services, through the use of force, fraud, or coercion for the purposes of subjection to involuntary servitude, peonage, debt bondage, or slavery, (22 USC § 7102). Labor trafficking has been found in diverse labor settings including, domestic work, small businesses, large farms, and factories.

Traffickers use violence, threats, blackmail, false promises, deception, manipulation, and debt bondage to trap vulnerable individuals in horrific situations.

For more information, please call the National Human Trafficking Resource Center: 1(888)373-7888.

Today's guest commentary comes to us from Ricardo Moore, who represents the Warrendale and surrounding neighborhoods on the Detroit Police Commission.