Chapter 3: Human Trafficking in Florida: Modern Day Slavery (Mandatory) 2 CE Hours By: Deborah Converse MA, NBCT Learning objectives
Identify strategies to assist human trafficking victims to access resources for assistance and support, including Florida Law Chapter 2019-152. Discuss awareness, prevention, and advocacy to protect massage therapists and clients from human trafficking in illicit massage venues. This training will provide strategies to identify the indicators of labor and sexual trafficking, report cases to access law enforcement, criminal justice, and community resources for victim assistance and ongoing support. The course will cover Florida Law Chapter 2019-152 requirements designed to educate massage therapists on human trafficking. The law was designed to increase reporting of suspected trafficking and assistance to victims through the Polaris Project and National Human Trafficking Hotline network of vetted, local assistance and support services.
After completing this course, the learner will be able to: Define human trafficking and the effects on victims. List the indicators for identification of possible human trafficking victims. Discuss the steps to report possible cases of human trafficking to access human trafficking support networks. Course overview This course will focus on awareness of human trafficking for massage therapists and provide information on how to identify possible trafficking victims, steps to report cases, and information about resources available to assist victims. Human trafficking can be viewed as modern day slavery and occurs in every state in the United States and around the world. The course will discuss definitions of human trafficking, statistics on incidence, and the identification of illicit massage venues that involve sex trafficking. The course will review techniques traffickers use to force, defraud, and coerce individuals into slavery, and to keep victims captive, and the traumatic effects of trafficking. Human trafficking statistics do not represent the total picture due to the underground nature of the supply chain; this leaves many cases unreported. Human traffickers may operate through stand-alone businesses or large networks of illicit businesses and organized crime. These businesses may include nail salons, restaurants, manufacturers, or grocery stores, and traffickers may work inside large legitimate businesses that are unaware that labor and/or sex trafficking is occurring within their organization. Traffickers control the victims and take extensive measures to conceal the labor and sexual trafficking activity; the numbers supplied by states reflect only reported cases. Contrary to popular belief, the U.S. is among the leading countries engaged in labor and sexual human trafficking. Traffickers constantly move victims to avoid detection and often gravitate to areas where the laws, penalties, and prosecution of perpetrators and businesses is less stringent or uniformly enforced. Victims come in all ages, genders, races, religions, economic backgrounds, and nationalities and human trafficking occurs in rural, urban, and suburban areas and tribal lands. The National Human Trafficking Hotline (NHTH, 2019) has collected statistics on human trafficking since 2007. NHTH provides the following statistics current as of June 30 for 2019: ● The statistics given are based on information from phone calls, texts, online chats, emails, and online tip reports received by the NHTH: ○ 23,784 contacts were made nationally and 866 in Florida. ○ 4,584 reports were made with the three highest state numbers of reports coming from California 749, Texas 561, and Florida 466. ○ Sex trafficking reports were 3,266 nationally, with 332 in Florida, followed by labor trafficking at 525 nationally with 63 in Florida.
NATIONAL AND FLORIDA STATISTICS
○ The top three venues/industries for sex trafficking, according to reported activity, were illicit massage/ spas at 686 nationally, 89 in Florida; residential-based commercial sex at 313 nationally, 36 in Florida; and hotel/motel at 272 nationally and 21 in Florida. ○ Citizenship of reported victims was foreign nationals at 622,73 in Florida, and U.S. citizens at 572,54 in Florida. ○ Adult victims numbered 2,684,293 in Florida, with minors at 1,061 and 76 in Florida. ○ The highest number of reports came from community members at 6,843,233 in Florida, and victims themselves at 5,298,220 in Florida. Since 2002, the nonprofit and non-governmental Polaris organization has worked to end human trafficking and slavery. Polaris operates the NHTH along with conducting research, gathering statistics, and developing training and prevention programs. It is headquartered in Washington, D.C., and has work closely with the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services on more than 40,000 cases of trafficking. According to a 2018 article by the Polaris Project, human trafficking in illicit massage businesses is on the rise and traffickers have found a way around business law to open and maintain these businesses in plain sight. Following are national statistics from that article: ● Illicit massage businesses, commonly known as “massage parlors,” have been part of the American landscape for decades. Today, new research finds an estimated 9,000-plus of these businesses are operating in every state in the country, with earnings totaling nearly $2.5 billion a year across the industry. ● Of the more than 6,000 illicit massage businesses for which Polaris found business records, only 28 percent of these illicit massage businesses have an actual person listed on the business registration records at all.
EliteLearning.com/Massage-Therapy
Book Code: MFL1225
Page 80
Powered by FlippingBook