Human Trafficking in Iowa, by Jeanette Potter and Amber Lawrence
Jeanette Potter, with the Community Foundation and United Way, showed a six-minute excerpt of Gridshock. Content included:
- Trafficking is the buying and selling of children and adults for the buyer’s personal benefit. “It is a slavery situation.”
- Trafficking is a problem everywhere, not just in large cities. Iowa is a giant rural area where the attitude is that “it’s not here.” This is exactly where it is.
- A human is a commodity that can be sold multiple times and not just once. This makes the industry lucrative.
- Traffickers learn lots about a person, then is the information to coerce the individual to do what they want.
Jeanette continued on with other pieces of data:
- Traffickers are often family members or someone a child knows. This makes it particularly difficult for victims to report the situation.
- Boys and men are trafficked, not just females. Girls are often trafficked between the ages of 14-17. For boys, trafficking may start as young as 12.
- The internet is a common tool for perpetrators to access children.
- The best line of defense is a good line of communication. Be a safe place that a child can come to with questions.
Amber Lawrence worked in the Kansas City area before coming to Iowa, dealing with human trafficking. She is currently a Therapist at the Berryhill Center for Mental Health, and still deals with trafficking to this day. She contributed the following information:
- It is, absolutely, happening on Fort Dodge
- There have been legislative improvements in Iowa, but there is room for growth. Improvements include trafficking being a class B felony rather than a class D felony.
- Being trafficked is different from prostitution.
- Amber gave an example of trafficking. An eight year was sold by their mother so rent could be paid.
- Amber reinforced the idea that traffickers are often people the child knows
- Vulnerable children may be targeted for trafficking, like kids in the foster care system
Questions asked of the presenters yielded this information:
- “Symptoms” or signs that a person is being trafficked include the person being highly vulnerable, sometimes physical marks or branding, sleepy children in school during the day because they’ve been sold at night, adults (or older child, like 15-17 y/o) asking children to keep secrets, children being showered with gifts from an adult or older child, children asking for receipts for small purchases like a bottle of water at a convenience store. “Look for the absence of normal,” like a ten-year-old girl standing alone at the entrance of Hy-Vee dressed suggestively.
- Buyers are often educated, middle-class, white, and married with children. They access victims online.
- If you see something concerning or abnormal, do not engage with the trafficker or victim. Report it to law enforcement.
- Randy Kuhlman shared what he considers to be an excellent book, Beautiful Survivor, Escaping the Statistics by Christa Cairus. She was from a conservative Iowa family and was trafficked while in college.
- Iowa City and Okoboki/Spirit Lake are the areas where trafficking is the highest in Iowa. Hot spots in general are places where one would find a lot of wealth.
- Call the Community Foundation and United Way if you want to have Gridshock shared somewhere. It is about 50 minutes long.