LAKE OF THE OZARKS, Mo. — As the sex industry creates victims close to home—in Missouri, and even at Lake of the Ozarks—locals are working to increase the community's awareness and improve the response.
In recent days, numerous people were arrested in Kansas and Missouri as part of the human trafficking investigation called Operation Cross Country X, according to the FBI, which coordinated the effort with local police agencies.
The FBI said five teens and four women who were victims of sex trafficking were rescued as part of the operation in Kansas and Missouri. The FBI said 12 pimps and 14 prostitution customers were arrested.
Human trafficking is a real issue, with real victims, and as light is being increasingly shined into this dark corner of society, many are beginning to ask: “What can we do to help?”
Christine McDonald spent two decades being trafficked as a prostitute, being first pimped out by her mother at the age of eight. She now advocates against and raises awareness for the problem of human trafficking.
In describing those two decades, which included 100 arrests and numerous felony convictions and prison sentences, Christine McDonald addresses the adversarial relationship between the police and the prostitute who is, by definition, committing a criminal act. If police only see a criminal, and the victim can only identify herself as a criminal while believing her man/pimp is not victimizing her but protecting her, she is not likely to seek help or escape by cooperating with police.
McDonald described an encounter with a Kansas City police officer who said he would be better off not having to deal with her and people like her when they were found in the Missouri River dismembered, as many of the working girls were being dumped after grisly murders. He was expressing the reality of a “working girl’s” life: it usually ends in her death, and few people—if any—see that woman as having any worth.
McDonald recently spoke at an event sponsored by Heart to Heart of Camdenton, Mo. McDonald explained that some outreach efforts by groups outside law enforcement cause more problems than relief to the victims. Attempting to approach the victim while she is “working her corner,” usually results in the pimp, who is loitering nearby to keep tabs on his “employee,” being abusive because she might give him up to the police. The abuse serves as a deterrent, reminding the victim who is in control.
Even those who mean well can accidentally cause harm. McDonald described one effort she witnessed firsthand. A church assigned a person to pull up to the curb and invite the “working girl” into the car to “work.” After the driver left the vicinity, the well-intentioned man revealed his real purpose was to preach and pray with the girl. But he did not offer an exit.
The result was always the same. The pimp saw the girl leave as usual and return in half hour. He then expected his money and when she had none, his belief was that she was holding out on him. This would always bring a beating to teach her a lesson.
Another example was a soup kitchen that would not let the street people eat if they did not attend the service first. McDonald described a violent encounter she had following by a long, shoeless walk from the hospital. After 46 blocks with bleeding feet on hot pavement, she arrived at the kitchen to find the door locked. The man in charge would not make an exception and told her to come back the next day but to be earlier.
After lying in an abandoned building all night, hungry and bleeding, Christine went to the soup kitchen and was turned away because she had no shoes to wear. She tells the story with humor and wit and grace these many years later, but her point is razor sharp: some well-intentioned efforts do more to push away a victim than to build any sort of rapport. The person victimized needs unconditional help and a path out of that life. Some organizations now create social opportunities to build rapport in the hope that victims will ask for a way out.
In the face of a global phenomenon like Human Trafficking, there is much that can be done, even on a local level, to educate citizens and law enforcement, in addition to offering options for actively helping in the fight to stop Human Trafficking.
The U.S. Department of Homeland Security operates Blue Campaign with a website offering a trove of specific resources designed to address every facet of the problem. On the Resources page are links to a Resource Catalog, a collection of videos, an Awareness Training package, a Media section for disseminating information to and by the media, and a collection of audio files available to anyone.
In the Law Enforcement Support section, there are specific resources for local police and sheriff’s offices who encounter potential victims during their normal tour of duty. The primary thrust here is the Victim-Centered Approach, which addresses the fact that victims may not identify themselves as victims and may display behaviors indicating the extreme amount of control the trafficker holds over the victim. They may give pre-rehearsed answers to questions, actually be fond of their trafficker, seeing them as their safe person, and they may fear law enforcement, making them reluctant to help prosecute their oppressor.
Without the cooperation and testimony of a victim, actual prosecution of the perpetrator becomes much more difficult. When the enforcement community tries first to assess a victim’s needs and to meet them, they spend time gaining the victim’s trust. Building trust and ensuring the victim is safe increases the chance of that witness becoming cooperative.
A local organization at the forefront of the fight is the Lake of the Ozarks Stop Human Trafficking Coalition (LOSHTC), organized in June of 2014 by Mike McDonnell and Dr. Sally Kemp through the Saint George Episcopal Church on Old Business Highway 5 in Camdenton, Missouri. The coalition is in the process of finalizing its 501(c)3 status on both the State and Federal level. As such, it will function in complete autonomy from the church and have a newly installed Board of Directors to guide the efforts.
Dr. Sally Kemp, a clinical psychologist, recently spoke to a local group about the Intersection of Attachment Disorder and Human Trafficking. Attachment Disorder is the condition where normal human emotional development and a healthy attachment to the caregiver fails to take place. This can happen for a number of reasons.
Material from the Kennedy Krieger Institute, a non-profit affiliated with Johns Hopkins in Baltimore, Maryland, explains that the need for attachment to another human is inborn and must be met. If that need is unmet through normal bonding relationships in infancy and early childhood, it does not go away but becomes even stronger. A teenager with an attachment disorder lacks the ability to differentiate between safe and unsafe persons. Thus the teen is in a survival mode at all times.
In the first two years of life, human children attach to a primary caregiver and simultaneously develop a sense of existence. During the next stage, from one to three years of age, a child develops a sense of well-being followed in the next few years with a sense of self and self-worth.
Without these normal emotional developmental stages, denied because of circumstances in the abusive or neglectful home life, a young person becomes extremely vulnerable to influences and gestures which mimic love and safety while hiding an emotional shackle and bonding the victim to a life of degradation and pain and danger. Statistically, this life almost always ends in an early death.
Preventing those deaths is the challenge and the work of groups such as LOSHTC. One outreach effort involves training for hotel and resort staff. The group helps staff learn how to recognize indicators of trafficking. Five of these are:
- Being in the company of a controlling individual and not speaking for herself,
- Having no personal money, identification, or travel documents
- Being driven rather than driving or living and working in the same place
- Being unable to leave a job due to indebtedness to the employer
- Being submissive, bruised, afraid, and/or depressed
LOSHTC also distributes individual soap bars packaged with hotline resource phone number (888-3737-888) printed on the bottoms so that girls in jeopardy might carry the soap bar or wrapper hidden in a pocket and call the number when she can do so safely. The number is also written so that it’s easily memorized.
In addition to soap bars, LOSHTC distributes a trifold card small enough to be hidden in a pocket. The provides information and lists resources if a victim wants to escape her predator or pimp.
Many at Lake of the Ozarks are becoming aware of the truth about human trafficking and that it takes place here at the lake. As the public becomes more informed, more victims can be rescued and, hopefully, fewer people will become victims in the first place.
