In 1865, the 13th amendment abolished slavery in America. While we celebrate the end of that dark time in our history, the unfortunate reality is that slavery is still very much alive.
It is estimated that, in America alone, there are over 403,000 people being trafficked for either labor or sex. Because of Iowa’s central location connecting major cities like Chicago, Kansas City, and Omaha it offers a unique -dare I say- support to this industry, which means that ‘Iowa nice’ isn’t enough to make us immune to this issue.
Traffickers take advantage of the mid-western attitude that bad things like that won’t happen here. They use this naivety to their advantage to settle and operate in small towns where the physical spacing of homes makes it easier to hide. In places like this, the victims, who are often forcibly addicted to drugs, are stigmatized and there are fewer resources and avenues for a trafficked person to find help. All these factors have played a role in Iowa’s placement of 13th among the 50 states in the number of trafficked victims between 2019 and 2023. In the span of those 5 years, 834 victims of human trafficking were identified.
If that number surprises you, consider this: because of the complexity of human trafficking and its victims, it is estimated that the number of victims identified is only about one tenth of the actual number of victims. Join us next week as we touch on why it is so difficult to identify the victims of human trafficking.
