Connecticut has a plan to stop child trafficking, families can lead the way

“You can buy a child as quickly as you can order a pizza,” Yvette Young said. “In 30 minutes or less, you can have a child delivered to your home or hotel room so you can exploit them.”

It is estimated that up to 300,00 American children are coerced into sex trafficking every year. Young, who works on the Human Anti-trafficking Response Team in Connecticut, said there are children being trafficked in the state’s local communities every day.

One Connecticut mother, who wishes to remain anonymous, spoke of her daughter who committed suicide in 2017 after being trafficked. 

“She was a natural beauty… robbed of her life [by] modern day slavery, a horrific crime,” she said.

She explained her daughter was drugged, beaten, and sold for sex, but that her family had no idea. 

As a mother from the suburbs, I was clueless about this crime. I couldn’t understand why my daughter was becoming increasingly irritable, disrespectful and avoidant of her family.

Connecticut mother of trafficked daughter

Looking back, there were signs and radical changes in behavior, but human trafficking was the last thing she would have thought could happen to her 19-year-old who had just started college with a merit scholarship. 

“Her bright, innocent face along with her ignorance to predators made her perfect prey for human traffickers,” she said. 

Despite stories like these, many feel that human trafficking doesn’t happen in Connecticut. Or at least, want to believe that it doesn’t.

“Anytime you’re confronting an unpleasant and uncomfortable issue, there’s a desire to say, ‘it’s happening to them, not me,’’ said Melissa Kaplan, a professor who teaches courses about trafficking and gender studies at Quinnipiac University and serves on the Hamden Board of Education. “It makes you more comfortable… saying ‘It’s their problem, not my problem.’”

Globally, there are 40.3 million victims of human trafficking, making it a $150 billion industry of exploitation worldwide according to the International Labour Organization and United Nations. Of these victims, a quarter of them are children.

“The north east has a definite concern for human trafficking due to the I-95 and I-91 corridor running between NYC to MA,” said Detective Leonardo Soto, who works for the New Haven Police Department’s Special Victims Unit.

He explained that Connecticut is one of the most susceptible states to trafficking rings because the cost of hotels is much cheaper than that of Boston and NYC.

“New Haven County falls right in the middle of this corridor and has some troubled youth that is easily recruited into ‘the life’,” he said.

And this ‘life’ does not easily let go of its victims or end.

“Unlike selling drugs or guns, human bodies can be used over and over again,” says Kaplan.

Soto added that since he often works these cases and is a Task Force Officer for Homeland Security Investigations, he’s seen the hold trafficking has on the state.

While local nonprofits and community-based outreach and awareness groups have pushed for progress, and the statistics tell a clear story of trafficking in Connecticut, there is still the problem of admitting human trafficking as a local issue, before local prevention and survivor support can even begin to address it.

Trafficking statistics have been proven to be pretty grim right here in the Nutmeg state.

Dave Tedeschi, Assistant Governor of Rotary District 7890 and the founder of Stop the Traffik

According to Connecticut’s Department of Children and Families December 2019 report, “since 2008, more than 1,000 children between the ages of 2 and 18 have been referred to the state agency as possible victims of human trafficking.” Most of these child victims were living under the care of a parent or guardian when they were trafficked. Some were trafficked by parents, guardians, and other loved ones.

“I don’t think [our] communities are ready to accept something like this,” says Susan Curello,  longtime educator, local parent, and the owner of Whitneyville Innovative Learning Center in Hamden. “It is normal human behavior to think the good in all, until it happens to you or someone you know.”

Curello explained that she herself didn’t know what trafficking in the state looked like, and said she often would wonder where the missing children on business billboards were and if this was trafficking within her community. It wasn’t until she saw trafficking within her own bubble that her preconceived notions of what it looked like, and where it was happening, burst.

“We started getting alerts from the school about attempted abductions while a child was walking home or at the school bus stop,” she said. “This actually occurred to my son’s friend, who darted in the woods, while on his way home, after a man tried to pull him in his car.”

She went on to say the friend called her son, who was in elementary school at the time, asking if he could find someone to pick him up because he was afraid to leave where he was. When her son arrived with her husband, he found his friend “hiding under leaves, visibly shaken.”

Curello said she believes that in order for people to see human trafficking as a Hamden issue, just as much as it is a global one, that each scare needs to be publicized and talked about.

“This needs to happen each and every time, over and over until it can’t be denied any longer,” she said. “Otherwise, if you just shove this accusation in the face of the community it will be ignored, laughed at and not taken seriously. I know that people will think you’re crazy, and nothing will be changed.”

While trafficking struggles to even be a recognized local affliction, many feel strongly that not only does it need to be accepted as a “backyard issue” in communities, but as one that requires local action and solutions.

“One of the things that I think is important is to make the connection to the local [level],” said Kaplan. “I think on the upper level, human trafficking is a concern in Hamden. Being part of conversations on the Board of Education, on the administrative level, it is definitely a conversation being had more and more.”

She said that while the Hamden Board of Education has had discussions with school personnel, faculty and staff about the issue locally, it is difficult to get it any farther.

“As far as disseminating into the classroom, it’s a good question,” she added. “Are we talking about human trafficking enough? Are we talking about it at all? I really don’t even know. And I think that’s something worth continuing to push for in our classrooms. It’s very much higher up right now, and not something on the ground yet—which is where it needs to be.”

It seems many would agree, despite the overall hesitation to see human trafficking as a proximate issue.

House Bill 6113 was signed into law by Governor Lamont on June 24, and requires the Governor’s Task Force on Justice for Abused Children to collaborate with adult survivors of child trafficking to develop prevention guidelines and accumulate educational material for many towns, businesses, and youth athletic and camp directors to present to families starting January 1, 2022.

The mandates passed with a unanimous vote in the House, with just four representatives absent and not voting, and a unanimous vote in the senate during the last legislative session. It is one of the most recently passed legislative initiatives in the state for human trafficking prevention.

The law stipulates that the Governor’s task force on ‘Justice for Abused Children’, along with the ‘National Association of Adult Survivors of Child Abuse’, will develop guidelines that they will then send to youth coaches and programming operators. Amry Shelby, a Parks and Recreation supervisor and others around the state will then need to take these materials and share them appropriately with the families they work with. 

“I am hopeful that these conversations — and any material we provide to our families — begin a downward trend in the number of individuals affected by human trafficking,” she said.

Governor Lamont said the bill was just “one step in addressing trafficking in Connecticut,” when he signed it into law June 24.

Tedeschi, along with others who have dedicated themselves to the cause after learning about trafficking in Connecticut and their communities, see the importance of starting these conversations young.

“Education for children is key,” Tedeschi said. “It’s important to educate students so they can develop skills to navigate potential… and existing exploitative situations.”

“As a parent, I have never received any notice, any literature making us aware or providing us with information to have conversations with our children or even ways we can strategize to protect our community,” added Kaplan. “I think there’s no greater disservice, this is our children’s safety on the line.”

Rob Morris, a Hamden native and co-founder of Love 146, started the now global nonprofit that leads trafficking prevention and survivor care programs around the world and in New Haven.

“We deal daily with the internal tension that exists between the time that it takes to think through solutions that will be effective and sustainable, and the factor that while we are thinking through solutions, children are being exploited and trafficked every day,” he said at the 2019 National Roundtable on Safeguarding Children and Prevention Education in Washington, DC.

Morris ended his speech on prevention by recalling a conversation he had with their organization’s executive director in the Philippines. He recognized that what she said to him over a decade ago shifted one of the most notable human trafficking organizations globally from prevention as an afterthought to one of their priorities.

“Her statement in [that] meeting just levelled me,” said Morris. “She said, ‘survivor care exists because of failed prevention.’ I was gutted.”

Love 146 supported HB 6113 in Connecticut, and other legislation surrounding trafficking awareness, in a constant effort to get any prevention education in front of people.

“We have evidence-informed curriculum and knowledge to share,”  Love 146 Prevention Training Program Manager Daniella Perez said. “We just need someone to bring the right people together to learn from it.”

Tedeschi and the Stop the Traffik initiative have been attempting for over a year to get educational curriculum or materials, including Love 146’s training, into local Connecticut schools, but have experienced pushback.

He said that open conversation within families is the only way child trafficking can be prevented in communities like Hamden when schools are hesitant to have these conversations in the classroom.

“Local school officials across the state have told us that issues pertaining to human trafficking are taught as part of the high school health class,” said Tedeschi. “I have been personally asking high schoolers around town if they know what human trafficking is, and the answer has been a resounding ‘no.’ Our attempts to bring in curriculum are being ignored. Education should be beginning even in the middle schools.”

Tiffany Quinn, who has been working as a director in Parks and Recreation in Connecticut for almost 25 years, said that HB 6113 requiring this education to be distributed within town-wide youth programming, is a critical step forward.

“Together we can build that stronger safety net with a goal of always ensuring all children have empowered, educated adults in their lives that will stand up for them and report any suspected abuse,” said Quinn.

While an important component of the legislation is providing means for parents and anyone that works with children in state or town sponsored activities to educate themselves on human trafficking, Kaplan said, as a member of the Board of Education, a teacher, but most of all, a parent, the conversations that would result from programming are paramount to safety.

“When you make something taboo it exacerbates the problem in terms of shaming, not being aware, not feeling that they can ask questions or talk about it,” she said.

We need to normalize these conversations, give our children the framework and language to talk about it do they know it’s happening and so they can work as advocates for each other.

Melissa Kaplan, Hamden Board of Education representative

Tedeschi echoed other trafficking awareness advocates saying that these conversations are a matter of exploitation or safety, and at times life or death. 

“Without having awareness training for our students, that’s what the exploiters and rapists rely upon in order to continue to make their money off of kids and exploit them or worse,” said Tedeschi. “Support for HB 6113 legislation and others like it just makes sense.”

Sameed Iqbal, a Hamden resident, says that he is concerned for his niece’s safety from trafficking. Despite recognizing the realities of trafficking in Hamden, he says he wrestles with whether it is right to expose children to them.

“They are so young,” said Iqbal. “I don’t know how parents talk to their kids about that. They’re just so young.”

However, some feel that age isn’t more important than knowledge.  

“I don’t want [my children] to live in fear, but I also want to educate them in a way that’s empowering,” said Kaplan.

She said as a parent and educator she’s learned that conversations on the level of “your body, your space, your consent, and being aware of your surroundings” can be effective. But she recognizes that as her children grow up, there is room for harsh reality.

“My daughter, who is now a freshman in high school, our conversations are a lot more frank, a lot more explicit,” said Kaplan. “And I think they need to be. I think when you treat children with respect and have these kinds of tough conversations it builds that relationship with them, and makes them feel safe coming to you if something were to ever happen, or if they had questions.”

Others believe there is a more sensitive way to approach the topic with children. 

“We need to do it in a gentle, informed manner,” Curello said. “We need to make them aware, but not afraid to experience life and grow into their own person too.”

And yet, some still believe that it might not be meant for children’s ears at all. 

“Obviously my niece, who is 2, is someone who is too young to hear about trafficking, but what even is the right age for that?” questioned Iqbal.

There might not be one. But there isn’t an age limit to be trafficked, so how can there be an age limit for prevention?

The two youngest victims on record in Connecticut are a 2-year-old child and then a 4-year-old boy.

Yvette Young, Human Anti-Trafficking Response Team member in Connecticut

Hearing about cases like these, Kaplan said the Board of Education and the Hamden community don’t have a choice, or much time, to prioritize prevention. 

“Ignorance might be more dangerous than the trafficking itself, it’s what allows it to keep happening,” Kaplan said. “I think this bill and its role in educating our children is needed. It’s not just ‘what’s best for my child?’ and instead, it has to be what’s best for all children in our community… that is what is best for my child.”

The National Human Trafficking Hotline, operated by Polaris, is 1 (888) 373-7888 and is available 24 hours a day, 7 days a week for any reports.

Love 146 has continually updated resources on their website and is active on social media with prevention tips, statistics, and ways to get involved.