COVID-19 Stay at Home Request Became an Opportunity to Raise Awareness: Human Trafficking & Sexual Violence
Sydney Branaman, Loveland Direct Service Intern
When COVID-19 rapidly started infecting people, it was recommended to stay home and avoid gatherings with people outside of one’s normal household. The virus, and changes that came with it, greatly impacted people’s day to day lives. People lost jobs due to a decline in economic activity, schools were no longer teaching in person, mask mandates were implemented for the safety of everyone, it created new barriers for people suffering from mental illness and substance abuse disorders, and it asked people to self-isolate, which presented an opportunity to slow down from a typical rushed lifestyle. For some, time at home has allowed recognition and awareness on some of the injustices in the world. More people started using their voice to respond to inequalities and demand policy & ethics be questioned. During the summer, child sex trafficking stories spread like wildfire, leaving people outraged, shocked, confused about what to believe and questioning how to help.
While raising awareness around human trafficking is powerful, it is also important to understand human trafficking as a historically on-going issue and its intersection with sexual violence. According to the CDC, sex trafficking is a type of human trafficking defined as, the recruitment, harboring, transportation, provision, obtaining, patronizing, or soliciting of a person for the purpose of a commercial sex act. Human trafficking and sexual violence do not discriminate and are include all races, ethnicities, gender identities, sexual orientations, etc.
The United Nations describes human trafficking as the “hidden figure of crime” with an estimated 20-40 million people enslaved internationally. The Human Trafficking Institute in 2018 found over half of the criminal human trafficking cases in the U.S were sex trafficking cases involving children at an average age of 12-14 years old. Many teens entering the sex trade are runaways who were sexually abused as children. As social media platforms have progressed, traffickers are using these platforms to advertise and recruit.
Organizations, like SAVA, have been working for many years to support survivors of sexual violence and reduce trafficking. If you’re asking how you can help, consider supporting and volunteering with organizations dedicated to ending sexual violence, working to strengthen families, and fight discrimination and injustice to help change the circumstances that make human trafficking feasible.
If you or someone you know is experiencing human trafficking, you can call the National or Colorado Human Trafficking Hotline:
National Human Trafficking Hotline: 1-888-373-7888 or Text: 233733
Colorado Human Trafficking Hotline: 866-455-5075 or Text: 720-999-9724