My experience interning at Restore this summer has equipped me to recognize human trafficking when I see it, to understand the depth of the issue, and to contribute to the fight against it.
I learned quickly to identify the signs of human trafficking and realized that this underground world that had seemed so foreign to me was actually closer than I thought. While on a prayer walk in the Flushing neighborhood where I had stayed last summer before moving into my dorm, I came to the realization that I would never see that neighborhood the same way again. All the places I remembered so fondly— the Chinese restaurant where I used to get dumplings with my family, the grocery store where I had purchased snacks to stock my dorm room for the first time— were thoroughly intermingled with places that had remained invisible to me before. During the prayer walk, I began to notice the neighborhood's high concentration of suspicious massage parlors. On the map of the area provided by Restore, all the familiar streets were highlighted in yellow to call attention to places where trafficking had been discovered. I now knew the implications of the signs that read "New Asian girls every week" or of the newspaper advertisements that emphasized "outcalls only." I learned that massage parlors that offer sexual services, that frequently change names, addresses, or both, that are located in ethnic-specific communities, and that are staffed by recent and possibly undocumented immigrants are often places where desperate women are forced, deceived, or coerced into sex work. It grieved me that our we live in a society that allows such establishments to advertise in mainstream publications like Time Out New York and Village Voice, which are praised, promoted, and occasionally given away for free by my university.
When Karen and I accompanied Kara to the Queens District Court, my eyes were opened to one more of the countless injustices that plague victims of sex trafficking: the criminalization of the victims. When we were on our way to court, I had imagined that the defendants would not be the women but their perpetrators: the people who sold them into slavery or held them captive or paid for their services. I was shocked and appalled to see the women themselves standing before the judge, accused of criminal acts when, instead, they should have been viewed as exploited victims desperately in need of rescue.
My time spent at Restore taught me that, despite the magnitude of the need, the fight against human trafficking is far from hopeless. I was encouraged to see that organizations like Restore and GEMS are able to make the best of the unfortunate fact that the victims are tried as criminals, because they actually work through the court system to come into contact with the women and counsel them. Becoming better acquainted with the issue, learning to identify the warning signs has prepared me to take action against human trafficking, as well.
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