How troubling is sex trafficking in the Northland? Important enough and troubling enough that Duluth’s new mayor Emily Larson’s first proclamation as mayor was to recognize January as Duluth Trafficking Awareness Month.
As Larson told the Duluth News Tribune, “I feel it’s important for us as a community to name this issue— sexual exploitation, human trafficking, sex trafficking. These are the realities facing our beautiful children.”
Locally the topic is so significant Cook County commissioners altered their monthly meeting schedule—something they rarely do—so they could attend an upcoming meeting with Lake County Sex Trafficking Task Force called Building Bridges: A Collaborative Approach to Ending the Sex Trafficking of our Youth.
The work session is meant to build a strong working relationship between Cook and Lake counties with an emphasis on providing services for local victims who have been sexually exploited.
One of the things that will be shared at the May 10 all-day meeting held in Beaver Bay is the result of a survey conducted by Minnesota’s Safe Harbor team of victims and survivors. Those findings will be used to help Cook and Lake counties determine what each can do to better serve vulnerable youth.
The Lake County Human and Sex Trafficking Task Force was formed by six women in 2012 after two of its founders, Susan Hilliard and Marlys Wisch, attended a meeting about human trafficking sponsored by the League of Women Voters in Duluth. Since then the group has met with a wide variety of organizations and legislators in Lake and Cook county to spread information about the exploitation of children, and to gather information and try to come up with a way to stop it.
Minnesota’s 2011 Safe Harbor Youth Law that treats children caught in sex trafficking as victims and not criminals was a good beginning, but more needs to be done to end this crime.
According to the Women’s Foundation of Minnesota, the FBI has identified the Twin Cities as one of 13 U.S. cities with a high incidence rate of child prostitution. A 2010 study showed that most girls were traded for sex at the age of 13. A yearly $9.8 billion industry, it is second only to drug trafficking in the U.S. for illegal money made.
Locally, in 2011 the Minnesota Indian Women’s Sexual Assault Coalition interviewed 105 Native girls who were victims of trafficking and found that more than half of them were from the Duluth area.
Statistics gathered by the Polaris Project show children most vulnerable to human trafficking tend to be 11-15 years old. Runaways are very susceptible to the lure of a pimp who promises an easy, rich, fun lifestyle. Children on the Internet are also sought and can be tricked by human traffickers. Children from rich and poor families are caught in this web of deceit as well, and a disproportionate amount of girls targeted, captured and sold for sex are young Native American girls.
There are other groups in the Northland working on this issue. One, called MAST (Men Against Sex Trafficking) is attempting to end the exploitation of young girls in Duluth by making men aware of their role in this crime. If this group spreads, it could go a long way towards ending this horrific crime.
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