According to the Victims of Trafficking and Violence Protection Act, "severe forms of trafficking in persons" is defined as:

1] Sex trafficking in which a commercial sex act is induced by force, coercion or in which the person induced to perform such an act is under 18.

2] The recruitment, transportation, harboring, provision, or obtaining of a person for labor or services, through the use of force, fraud or coercion, for the purpose of subjecting that person to involuntary servitude, peonage, debt bondage or slavery.

Victims of trafficking have rights.

No one can legally force a person to work against his or her will. Victims of trafficking in the US are entitled to protection and assistance, including:

• Access to translation/interpretation
• Information about their rights
• Free or low-cost legal services
• Federal and state benefits

Washington Anti-Trafficking Response Network {WARN} is a coalition of Washington State organizations that provide assistance to pre-certified victims of trafficking with:

• Immediate access to food and stable housing
• Physical and mental health treatment
• Immigration advocacy and legal assistance
• Interpretation services
• Education and job readiness training

SMUGGLING of migrants: VS TRAFFICKING of victims

Smuggling is the movement of consenting people across an international border for a fee. The migrant's relationship with the smuggler ends upon arrival at the migrant's destination.

Trafficking is ongoing exploitation. Travel is not always involved. In general, victims have either never consented to their conditions, or their initial consent is rendered meaningless by the victim's age or by coercive, deceptive or abusive actions on the part of the traffickers.

IMPORTANT QUESTIONS to ask if you suspect that a person is a victim of trafficking:

• How did the person migrate?
• How did the person find out about the job?
• What happened when they arrived in the destination country?
• What was it like when they started to work?
• Was the person paid? How much? How often?
• Did the person try to leave the job? What happened?
• Is the person afraid of his or her employer? Why?

IMPORTANT PHONE NUMBERS:

To report a human trafficking situation to federal law enforcement, or to obtain information about services for trafficked persons, call one of these numbers:

The Trafficking in Persons and Worker Exploitation Task Force: 1-888-428-7581

Trafficking Information and Referral Hotline: 1-888-373-7888

[Washington Anti-Trafficking Response Network: 206-245-0782]

LEARN MORE

Department of Justice: http://www.usdoj.gov/trafficking.htm

Department of Health and Human Services: Rescue and Restore Campaign: http://www.acf.hhs.gov/trafficking/

Office of Refugee Resettlement: http://www2acf.hhs.gov/programs/orr/programs/astvict.htm

United States Department of State: Office to Monitor and Combat Trafficking in Persons: www.state.gov/g/tip

Washington State Task Force Against Trafficking of Persons: Resources: http://cted.wa.gov/portal/alias_cted/lang_en/tablD_251/DesktopDefault.aspx

Report: http://cted.wa.gov/_cted/documents/ID_29_Publications.pdf

International Rescue Committee: http://www.theIRC.org/trafficking/

LOOK BENEATH THE SURFACE. Can you recognize child victims of human trafficking among the people you help everyday? As a law enforcement officer, a health care professional or a social service provider, you can help rescue and restore the future for victims of human trafficking.

Human Trafficking is Modern-Day Slavery

Human trafficking is a modern-day form of slavery. Victims of human trafficking are subjected to force, fraud, or coercion for the purpose of sexual exploitation or forced labor. Victims are young children, teenagers, men and women.

Approximately 600,000 to 800,000 victims annually are trafficked across international borders worldwide according to U.S. government estimates. More than half of these victims worldwide are children, according to the U.S. Department of State.

Child victims of trafficking are often exploited for sexual purposes, including prostitution, pornography and sex tourism. They are also exploited for forced labor, including domestic servitude, sweatshop factory work and migrant farming.

Child victims of trafficking can be found in:

• Commercial sex
• Domestic servitude {servants}
• Sweatshop factories
• Construction
• Farming or landscaping
• Fisheries
• Hotel or tourist industries
• Panhandling
• Janitorial services
• Restaurant services

Identifying Child Victims of Human Trafficking

Children who are victims of human trafficking may be mistaken for prostitutes, runaway youth, migrant farm workers or domestic servants. By looking beneath the surface, picking up on the right clues and asking the right questions, you may uncover children who are being exploited.

• Children exploited for labor are often hungry or malnourished to the extent they may never reach their full height or they may have poorly formed or rotting teeth.
• Children exploited for sexual purposes may show evidence of untreated sexually transmitted diseases, including HIV/AIDS, urinary tract infections, and kidney problems.
• Children who are victims of trafficking can also be identified by environmental factors, including whether the child is living at the workplace or with an employer, living with multiple people in a cramped space, or not in school, attends school sporadically or has a signficant gap of schooling in the U.S.
• Forced labor may expose children to physical abuse or leave signs such as scars, headaches, hearing loss, cardiovascular/respiratory problems and limb amputation. They may also develop chronic back, visual and respiratory problems from working in agriculture, construction or manufacturing.
• The psychological effects of exploitation include helplessness, shame and humiliation, shock, denial and disbelief, disorientation and confusion, and anxiety disorders including post traumatic stress disorder, phobias, panic attacks and depression.

Communicating with Child Victims of Human Trafficking

When communicating with childrenwho have been exploited, it is important to remember child victims have special needs and may assume what has happened to them is thier own fault. Often, child victims of trafficking may not establish trust easily due to their experiences. They may have been coached to answer your questions in a certain way. With the guidance and involvement of a child welfare expert, asking some of the following questions may help you determine if you are dealing with child victims of trafficking:

• Why did you come to the U.S.? What did you expect when you came? Were you scared?
• Do you have any papers? Who has them?
• Are you in school? Are you working? Can you leave if you want?
• Where do you live? Who else lives there? Are you scared to leave?
• has anybody ever threatened you to keep you from running away?
• Did anyone ever touch you or hurt you?

While these questions provide a beginning to a challenging dialogue, it is vital to remember that the child should be approached in a manner that reflects his or her age, development, culture, language and what is known about the nature of his or her experience.

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End Human Trafficking in the U.S. - The Petition Site11700+ petition signatures: Pledge to help end human trafficking in the US by learning to identify victims and report incidents.

If you want to do more......

If you go to the "Browse Petitions" site, as I did, and you type in "Human Trafficking" in the space given, there will be other Petitions to sign, as well as Discussions, Groups, Shares, Photos, Causes, and other things on the subject, posted by Care2 members.

Also keep your eyes and mind open, you may not be aware until you open your eyes, that this is going on all around us every day! Modern-day SLAVERY is a DIRECT CONSEQUENCE of GLOBALIZATION. And of Failed Economies worldwide.

A Domestic Servant of some middle-class neighbors, who seems never to leave the house and grounds and to have no social contacts at all; an entire family of farm laborers who live in abominable conditions; a child excessively thin, timid and unkempt, not in school; they may be people from a third-world country who are not living as they live, voluntarily. Often, it is sad to say, {tho not always}, it is their "employers" or "owners" rather, who are themselves from third-world countries {speaking the same language as their laborers, but keeping THEM from knowing any English}. Such a situation with a family of "enslaved" farm laborers, from India I believe, happened close to our "progressive, cool" City of Seattle just a few years ago. Similar outrages are reported from time-to-time in other parts of the U.S. No telling how many REMAIN UN-REPORTED TILL NOW.

Often, as in the above instance of the enslaved laborers from India, it will be ALERT NEIGHBORS who spot "something funny going on; something not right" about a situation they observed.

End Human Trafficking in the U.S. - The Petition Site

I say to those who reproach me: Do you know how many broken homes that shoe that I threw had entered because of the occupation? How many times it had trodden over the blood of innocent victims? And how many times it had entered homes in which free Iraqi women and their sanctity had been violated? Maybe that shoe was the appropriate response when all values were violated.

When I threw the shoe in the face of the criminal, Bush, I wanted to express my rejection of his lies, his occupation of my country, my rejection of his killing my people. My rejection of his plundering the wealth of my country, and destroying its infrastructure. And casting out its sons into a diaspora.

After six years of humiliation, of indignity, of killing and violations of sanctity, and desecration of houses of worship, the killer comes, boasting, bragging about victory and democracy. He came to say goodbye to his victims and wanted flowers in response.

Put simply, that was my flower to the occupier, and to all who are in league with him, whether by spreading lies or taking action, before the occupation or after.

I wanted to defend the honor of my profession and suppressed patriotism on the day the country was violated and its high honor lost. Some say: Why didn't he ask Bush an embarrassing question at the press conference, to shame him? And now I will answer you, journalists. How can I ask Bush when we were ordered to ask no questions before the press conference began, but only to cover the event. It was prohibited for any person to question Bush.

And in regard to professionalism: The professionalism mourned by some under the auspices of the occupation should not have a voice louder than the voice of patriotism. And if patriotism were to speak out, then professionalism should be allied with it.

I take this opportunity: If I have wronged journalism without intention, because of the professional embarrassment I caused the establishment, I wish to apologize to you for any embarrassment I may have caused those establishments. All that I meant to do was express with a living conscience the feelings of a citizen who sees his homeland desecrated every day.

History mentions many stories where professionalism was also compromised at the hands of American policymakers, whether in the assassination attempt against Fidel Castro by booby-trapping a TV camera that CIA agents posing as journalists from Cuban TV were carrying, or what they did in the Iraqi war by deceiving the general public about what was happening. And there are many other examples that I won't get into here.

But what I would like to call your attention to is that these suspicious agencies -- the American intelligence and its other agencies and those that follow them -- will not spare any effort to track me down (because I am) a rebel opposed to their occupation. They will try to kill me or neutralize me, and I call the attention of those who are close to me to the traps that these agencies will set up to capture or kill me in various ways, physically, socially or professionally.

And at the time that the Iraqi prime minister came out on satellite channels to say that he didn't sleep until he had checked in on my safety, and that I had found a bed and a blanket, even as he spoke I was being tortured with the most horrific methods: electric shocks, getting hit with cables, getting hit with metal rods, and all this in the backyard of the place where the press conference was held. And the conference was still going on and I could hear the voices of the people in it. And maybe they, too, could hear my screams and moans.

In the morning, I was left in the cold of winter, tied up after they soaked me in water at dawn. And I apologize for Mr. Maliki for keeping the truth from the people. I will speak later, giving names of the people who were involved in torturing me, and some of them were high-ranking officials in the government and in the army.

I didn't do this so my name would enter history or for material gains. All I wanted was to defend my country, and that is a legitimate cause confirmed by international laws and divine rights. I wanted to defend a country, an ancient civilization that has been desecrated, and I am sure that history -- especially in America -- will state how the American occupation was able to subjugate Iraq and Iraqis, until its submission.

They will boast about the deceit and the means they used in order to gain their objective. It is not strange, not much different from what happened to the Native Americans at the hands of colonialists. Here I say to them (the occupiers) and to all who follow their steps, and all those who support them and spoke up for their cause: Never.

Because we are a people who would rather die than face humiliation.

And, lastly, I say that I am independent. I am not a member of any politicalparty, something that was said during torture -- one time that I'm far-right, another that I'm a leftist. I am independent of any political party, and my future efforts will be in civil service to my people and to any who need it, without waging any political wars, as some said that I would.
My efforts will be toward providing care for widows and orphans, and all those whose lives were damaged by the occupation. I pray for mercy upon the souls of the martyrs who fell in wounded Iraq, and for shame upon those who occupied Iraq and everyone who assisted them in their abominable acts. And I pray for peace upon those who are in their graves, and those who are oppressed with the chains of imprisonment. And peace be upon you who are patient and looking to God for release.

One last word. I say to the government: It is a trust that I carry from my fellow detainees. They said, 'Muntadhar, if you get out, tell of our plight to the omnipotent powers' -- I know that only God is omnipotent and I pray to Him -- 'remind them that there are dozens, hundreds, of victims rotting in prisons because of an informant's word.'

They have been there for years, they have not been charged or tried.

They've only been snatched up from the streets and put into these prisons. And now, in front of you, and in the presence of God, I hope they can hear me or see me. I have now made good on my promise of reminding the government and the officials and the politicians to look into what's happening inside the prisons. The injustice that's caused by the delay in the judicial system.

Thank you. And may God's peace be upon you.

The translation is by McClatchy’s special correspondent, Sahar Issa.