Government reform needed to fight U.S. modern-day slavery

The recent publicizing of U.S. slavery omits a great deal of essential information. Most important is the failure to publicize the major reasons this heinous practice has been able to become so widespread. What's being printed also often omits a number of points that hamper efforts such publicizing is intended to achieve: to create public awareness due to the need for help in victim identification and rescue, and to prevent additional victimization. My own awareness of these shortcomings is through my experiences after witnessing the August 2002 abduction of David, my main love, who has been subsequently forced into a sadistic form of homosexual prostitution and torture. Since then, I continue learning of additional victims, and of many aspects of this crime as it is being carried out in the U.S. today.

(PRWEB) April 30, 2004 -- The recent publicizing of U.S. slavery omits a great deal of essential information of critical gaps in our infrastructure that are perpetuating the rampant growth of this crime, which are the major reasons this heinous practice has been able to become so widespread:

·VICTIM RESCUE * - Slavery victims are still being required to contact authorities, or other otherwise service providers, and report that they are, indeed, victims. By the nature of the conditions which make them slaves, most often this is not possible. If someone other than the victim is reporting to authorities that the victim has been taken, that person is required to submit medical records that prove that the victim is being held by force.

U.S. anti-slavery efforts need to primarily focus on rescue and prevention. It will be important to provide these victims with needed medical attention, protection and other services once they are freed, but victims need to be rescued first for it to be possible for them to benefit from those services.

One of the major aspects that impedes victim rescue is the terrorism often associated with the presence of this crime. In such an environment, members of the community often have directly or indirectly been warned or threatened against exposing these criminal operations. Because of this and the complex and sophisticated criminal networking that appears to be inherent in this crime, possible informers, i.e., witnesses and others with the information needed for investigation and/or rescue, are concerned about phone tapping, email intrusion, web site hacking, etc..

But, for traffickers, one of the major easily monitored avenues of communication is evidently the U.S. postal service and/or similar non-electronic modes of communication. Despite this, many entities, particularly governmental, are still requiring the use of non-electronic modes, even after being advised of considerable danger to the safety of informers in this requirement.

·CORRUPTION * - Other otherwise seemingly unconnected efforts need to focus on eliminating corruption and organized crime, including the monitoring, accuracy and completeness of police reporting about this crime, the entry point of crime statistics that drive federal law enforcement budgets and resource allocation. The same must be done of requests and appeals, relating to this and other issues, made to other authorities, including federal and state representatives.

This mechanism would increase accountability and allow needed public scrutiny. Until efforts are made in these areas, they will continue to impede efforts to fight human trafficking activities in the U.S., particularly efforts to free victims.

There have been numerous indications that, not only are U.S. authorities often refusing to investigate possible slavery situations, they are also failing to record that requests have even been made, therefore perpetuating the "invisibility" of this crime, in that the result is that these even "possible" indications will not even appear in any crime mapping or statistics database. This, thus, also perpetuates another gap reported in Trafficking in Human Beings on a web site of the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, www.unodc.org/unodc/en/trafficking_human_beings.html: "...a lack of systematic research means that reliable data on the trafficking of human beings that would allow comparative analyses and the design of countermeasures is scarce..." In addition, authorities are not using protocol appropriate for this crime.

There is evidence of traffickers extensively abusing law enforcement and the legal system, or working those into their schemes, to protect and support their operations. That this may be a possible tendency of many traffickers appears to be reflected in the wording of 18 USC CHAPTER 77 that relates to slavery and the sexual exploitation of children:

Whoever knowingly provides or obtains the labor or services of a person -

(1) by threats of serious harm to, or physical restraint against, that person or another person;

(2) by means of any scheme, plan, or pattern intended to cause the person to believe that, if the person did not perform such labor or services, that person or another person would suffer serious harm or physical restraint; or

(3) by means of the abuse or threatened abuse of law or the legal process, shall be...or if the violation includes kidnapping or an attempt to kidnap, aggravated sexual abuse or the attempt to commit aggravated sexual abuse...

Despite this awareness, no attempts are being made by U.S. authorities to correct this problem. Basic research and management practices can substantially help ensure the recording of reports and requests for investigation of abduction, slavery/forced services, sexual assault/exploitation of children and related crimes that are currently not always being recorded. Those or similar practices can also substantially reduce police corruption related to alleged human trafficking victims and complainants, including retaliatory false arrests of informants and other obstruction of justice schemes involving police and federal officials. The public needs to be made aware that mechanisms as simple as these are not in place:

·Federal or state level monitoring of municipal police training and certification

·Police training in activities relating to abduction, slavery and tactics used by perpetrators to mask activity, prevent investigation and force a local population to support and protect their operation

·Periodic police examination of awareness of current federal laws, crime trends and schemes

·Ensuring law enforcers receive notices and training in changes in federal laws, and emerging crime trends and schemes

·Mandating law enforcement supervisory and management policies and practices designed to prevent police corruption, false arrest, etc..

In addition, criminal operations involving abduction and slavery often join national syndicates, which also makes government infiltration easier and more likely. The lucrativeness of this crime and the crimes often associated with abduction and slavery facilitates major lobbying efforts by crime syndicates. Political "concern" may mask efforts by traffickers to further their own welfare while hiding it under the name of the welfare of others. Governmental and public attention to and scrutiny of proposals are more important than ever.

·ASSOCIATED ORGANIZED CRIME* - Often, intricate coordination of a number of individuals is required to carry out the clandestine operations surrounding abduction for the purpose of slavery and the subsequent slavery activities. In this way, such operations fall under the definition of organized crime, and, depending on various aspects of that operation, may also fall under that of racketeering, as well as the many other federal and state laws their activities violate. The overly simplistic approach of U.S. authorities fails to take the aspects of possible organized crime into consideration in response to information of abduction and slavery activities within its boundaries.

·ASSOCIATED TERRORISM - Terrorization results to a community in which possible rampant abduction and sex slavery, unchallenged by authorities, is being possibly openly carried out and in a very organized way, the community thus terrorized into supporting and protecting trafficking operations on implied or open threat of abduction or other harm to them if they do not cooperate. Such threats carry a heavy weight due to the poor response of authorities, combined with the highly complex schemes of traffickers to mask abduction and slavery situations and to prevent investigation.

Getting information needed in anti-trafficking efforts requires awareness of both signs of the possible presence of such terrorism, as well the type of community behavior that would result from that presence. Current U.S. law enforcement practices are not recognizing the possibility of such terrorism in expecting victims or other members of the community to openly report signs of this criminal activity.

·INTER JURISDICTION ACTIVITIES * - Traffickers often move victims from one area of the country to another, as well as from place to place. While some areas of the country are reporting that information is being shared with neighboring law enforcement jurisdictions, it is neither widespread nor consistent.

There also doesn't appear to be any centralized managing of the development of inter jurisdiction databases of local level activities at a national level. Heated controversy relating to the various systems being proposed for various levels and resistance to information sharing between local level jurisdictions as well as between local, state and federal levels, are reported. An emerging school of thought is for the need for more centralization of law enforcement entities, and appears to be what we need to implement before law enforcement makes any real progress in this area.

·COMMUNITIES PARALYZED BY COMBINED DYNAMICS * - The environment in which epidemic abduction and slavery breeds results in that community being unable to help itself overcome these dynamics, let alone begin to challenge traffickers themselves. Traffickers are able to thwart any attempts the community may make to challenge them.

Effective non-profit organizations and other entities that offer the services needed cannot exist in such an environment. People from outside the local area are needed to help in the efforts, but most law enforcement agencies and other service providers are restricted from providing services to victims and communities in other geographical areas.

·NARROW SCOPE OF SERVICE PROVIDERS * - It is inhumane and a violation of human rights to allow slavery victims, men, women and children, many of whom are U.S. nationals, to continue to be subjected to the conditions of their situation until all of these other complexities are resolved.

Merely allocating effective resources for services if a victim has the freedom to approach a service provider, and/or after a victim is freed, does not address the U.S. slavery problem and is a sham.

Slavery victims have to be rescued, need assistance in getting freed, in order to be able to benefit from the funds and resources that are currently being allocated for their welfare.

NGOs, particularly those receiving government funding to fight slavery, need to include in the scope of providing benefits to slavery victims activities such as:

·Coordination of the necessary community surveillance activity and networking with other communities and NGO's in that same activity

·Advocacy and coordination of investigation and rescue appeals to authorities and other entities

·Activism in police and government reform

·Assistance to other communities too terrorized to be able to act on their own and/or in which corruption may be too prevalent to enable an appropriate response

·Proactive media relations

·Publicizing these many aspects of the complexity of this problem to help motivate the change, and possibly the public outcry, necessary to effectively address them

* I may be contacted for documented evidence of these facts.

Current publicizing of U.S. slavery

The recent publicizing of U.S. slavery also omits a number of points that hamper efforts such publicizing is intended to achieve: to create public awareness due to the need for help in victim identification and rescue, and to prevent additional victimization.

My own awareness of these shortcomings is through my experiences since witnessing the August 2002 abduction of David, my main love, who has been subsequently forced into a sadistic form of homosexual prostitution and torture. Since then, I continue learning of additional victims, and of many aspects of this crime as it is being carried out in the U.S. today.

Most of the current news articles are still portraying this crime as something that "only" involves non-U.S. nationals, and only those who've been "abducted," i.e., taken under control of human traffickers, either in another country then brought here, or who have been lured to the U.S. for the purpose of making them slaves. Some even talk about the need for victims to come forward to report their situation - totally ignoring the restraints/conditions under which these people are held.

Articles are also still not alluding to the rampant heavily masked abduction and slavery taking place here, in the U.S., of U.S. nationals and people who had been living in the U.S. well before being targeted for abduction. News articles are also not publicizing how easy it is to be taken victim. This is particularly the case for someone working "undercover" in anti-slavery efforts, such as trying to identify victims, and the many working "underground," i.e., someone who has infiltrated a trafficking ring for the purpose of trying to help victims escape.

We reach a bit of a milestone in articles that talk about victims being "usually too frightened or isolated to get help." However they fail to describe this in a way that the public can understand what victims and advocates are up against, and how vulnerable they, these other members of the public, may be:

Victims are usually/often "isolated" by being kept

·out of sight of the general public by being held captive in brothels, etc., and not permitted contact with the public, other than sex patrons and those guarding them, usually watched through the use of hidden cameras during that time

·heavily drugged into unconsciousness and in physical restraints when not working

(David was found in chains once, abandoned, in an otherwise unused basement of a business, by the person who'd been responsible for harboring Dave. But the people who found Dave did not know that he would now need special protection from the traffickers. Dave's "rescuers" thought that all they had to do was release him from those chains. They didn't realize that he couldn't tell them that he, as well as I, because he is being threatened with harm to me, should he escape, would subsequently need such protection until his traffickers are effectively apprehended. So now, 17 months later, Dave is still being held and has been subjected to additional incredible suffering and abuse.)

Victims are "usually too frightened" because

·they may be kept under constant guard in public, or know that they will be interrogated under sodium pentothal (truth serum) so that traffickers will know if they've said/done something to reveal their slavery situation

·if traffickers learn that a victim has said/done things to reveal his or her actual situation, the victim will be severely punished, etc., by the traffickers - as what has been done to David

·rescued victims showed signs, and/or reported, having been badly beaten and were exhausted, undernourished and in need of critical medical attention, at the time they were found

Victims are often "homeless and destitute" because

·those are the conditions under which traffickers place them to help keep them from escaping. It is also what authorities or others are to be told, if they are looking for a victim. That is often the reason given as to why the victim can't be located.

Traffickers often

·force their victims to maintain what may appear to be the victim's normal interaction with family and friends, so that their victimization is less likely to be evident

·cause a victim, or targeted victim, to end what had been the person's normal employment or social associations, to make a slavery situation easier to hide and to possibly make a targeted victim more vulnerable to becoming a victim

·are someone the victim knew before becoming a victim, including as a family member, and even a spouse

·gain control of a victim through systematic bullying, harassment and assaults, particularly sexual assaults, often carried out and/or reinforced by other people, and often, initially, in exchange for drugs

·have someone who is guarding a victim appear to be the victim's "new" girlfriend/boyfriend/lover

·will take other victims to prevent those people from revealing their operation

·make victims less likely to be found, often moving the victim to another area or illegally to another country, if the trafficker is concerned that the victim's actual situation is suspected

·use law enforcement to support their operation

·will sell the victim to another trafficker, rather than releasing the victim

·can not be trusted to honor a ransom payment

The public must be made completely and accurately aware of the U.S. abduction and slavery situation, how serious and dangerous it is, and the urgency needed in addressing it. Traffickers are domestic terrorists and this critical problem is getting more rampant and complex the longer it continues at its current force.

Marianne LaBrecque

The writer is someone whose love, David, was abducted before her eyes on August 9, 2002. She authors the web site, mykindredspirit2.home.att.net, that she's established to facilitate efforts to help get him and at least 40 other slavery victims, of whom she knows personally, freed.