CULBERTSON – With the help of the Internet and accompanied by a healthy consumer appetite, human trafficking is a booming business that leaves thousands upon thousands of victims in its wake.
And the Bakken region is no stranger to it, says Sister Anne Walch, a member of the Franciscan Sisters of Assisi Heights in Rochester, Minnesota, an order that is on a mission to bring awareness to an unaware public.
Walch was at St. Anthony’s Catholic Church in Culbertson May 9 to give a presentation on human trafficking to several dozen people. In the summer of 2011, some members of her order began a six year planned campaign against human trafficking. Other religious women’s communities are also uniting to address trafficking, she said.
Saturday’s event began with a prayer for all trafficking victims.
“The biggest thing we can do is educate,” Walch said.
The Catholic Church says human trafficking, which is a form of modern-day slavery, is a “sin against the dignity or persons.”
It thrives due to conditions which allow for high profits to be generated at low risk and is found in all 50 states, she said. Most lose their freedoms when they are forced into commercial sex, agricultural work and housekeeping, Walch said in her presentation.
It’s estimated there are 27 million victims world-wide. “If you want to know how many that is, it’s like putting the states of Washington, Oregon, and Florida together,” she said.
In the United States, where it is believed there are more than 50,000 victims, sex trafficking are brought into it by force, coercion or fraud. Some of the signs from a victim may include debt bondage, isolation, no self-identity, confiscation of documents, on the receiving end of violence and threats and marked with tattoos of an insignia or code bar nature.
Traffickers could be anyone including organized crime, businesses, recruiters, informal networks and individuals, Walch said.
They control their victims through shaming, control of money and lies, she said. Traffickers make about $32 billion in world-wide profits, she said.
“Poverty makes people vulnerable to human trafficking,” Walch said.
Many recruiters can be found on social media and often use compliments to lure victims. “They have no control over their own money and have to bring in a certain amount every night.”
Walch said people can make change to help stop trafficking. Recently, reports began coming out of the Ivory Coast in Africa that children were injuring themselves with machetes when harvesting chocolate.
“A write-in campaign began to the Hershey Company and they have now changed their tactics,” Walch said.
People can also urge their legislators to make laws protecting people from becoming victims. In Minnesota, the Safe Harbor Law will now treat victims as victims, and not as criminals.
Billboards bringing awareness to the subject are also popping up in Minnesota. 
To learn more about human trafficking and how to help, contact the Polaris Project website at PolarisProject.org or call 1-888-373-7888.
Reprinted with permission of Rich Peterson.
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