Critique Of The Article “The Mordern Day Slave Trade”
The Modern-Day Slave Trade, an article published by the monthly magazine Monitor on Psychology, a publication of the (APA) American Psychological Association. Published in May 2011. Written by Rebecca A. Clay. In this article Rebecca explains how in todays day and age Human Trafficking/Slave is a global and growing issue. Human trafficking has different forms and human trafficking is the second fastest growing illegal criminal act, this is ranked right next to selling illegal fire arms. The one illegal crime that is ranked in first place is drug trafficking. Some forms of human trafficking include, by force, fraud, prostitution, domestic servants, field hands, factory workers. When taken by force it is the act of abducting an individual by force and taking this person to a foreign country, once in a foreign country the are forced to do non stop labor, or prostitution with threats of harming their families if they intend to escape. When taken by fraud perpetrators target young females in poor countries, these young girls are convinced of a bright future with lots of money and modeling opportunities in the United States. But the reality is that once they are convinced and in U. S. land they are crushed with a cruel reality, instead they are forced to work as strippers, as massage therapist to perform sex acts, as well as prostitutes. They are told that they will work in such trades to pay back debt they inquired for bringing them to the U. S. and of course that debt is so massive it takes them a lifetime to repay so they find themselves in slaved.
Domestic servants are usually taken place among our own neighborhoods, this situation usually presents itself when a female undocumented foreigner accepts work as a servant worker, since they fear deportation to their homeland, they end up accepting jobs that are unfair and disadvantaged. They accept a situation where they live in some one’s home, if their employers have children their work load is even heavier, they usually work Monday through Saturday with their schedule starting at early as five or six in the morning, through out the day they take care of babysitting, doing all the house cleaning, doing laundry, cooking, and many other tasks. By the time their day is over they have worked a range of between 12-16 hours per day. At the endo of the week their compensation is only between $200 - $300. This is very little compensation after working an average of 72 to 96 hours per week. Rebecca A. Clay clearly states her personal stand point on this issue. She indicates how prostitution is the oldest trade in the world, this has been going on for centuries and even in some parts of the world it is looked as if it is just as normal as working as a carpenter or a business person. We don’t even have to look very far away, on our own home land in the state of Nevada prostitution is legal. She the moves on to explain how our own society has fallen into being oblivious to human trafficking. We walk among individuals who are being enslaved on a day to day basis, and yet we have failed to identify this issue at a glance, we might have an interaction with an individual everyday and we are not able to engage in conversation and get to know one another. It does not help that these individuals live in constant fear and abuse that they do not have enough courage to speak out and try to find a way to escape their captors, this is due to the fact that they are constantly threaten by their captors, those threats include harm to their family and loved ones back home, another threat may include denial of basic needs such as food, water, or a safe place to sleep.
The United Nations Office and Drug and Crime calculates that there are as much as 2. 5 million persons being trafficked around the world. In the United States the Department of State has an estimate of 14,500 to 17,000 people are trafficked into the United States and are forced to work as sex servants, this includes women, men, to young girls and as well as young boys. On the other hand, a new task force has been created, APA Task Force of Trafficking Women and Girls. This organization has taken the task of initiating a different approach to this issue, they have started to conduct research, to review literature, summarize findings and come up with recommendations for future, research, training and policy. Nancy M Sidun, PsyD, supervising clinical psychologist for Kaiser Permanente in the Hawaii region, states that the traffic of humans is compares to a silent epidemic. Her own state of Hawaii in 2010 was the place where the largest operation of human trafficking in history was shut down by the FBI and U. S. authorities, it was uncovered that traffickers had lured farm laborers from Thailand and brought them to work in the Hawaii farms as well as the main land, it was found that these workers worked long hours for little or no pay. Sidun states that psychologists are so far behind on the issue of human trafficking.
Currently the focus is to prosecute all those perpetrators who are caught, victims are provided with basic needs and essential medical help. But what psychologists have failed to identify, and treat is the cause or what keeps these victims from escape. And it is quite simple, coercion tactics, isolation, verbal and physical abuse go hand in hand, threats and failure to provide basic needs. After the perpetrators are convicted victims till fear for their families and develop PTSD. It is now clear that victims of human trafficking are affected by these experiences in many ways and they must carry with these memories and scars for the rest of their lives. These victims are left with psychological issues, as well as the lack of many basic and essential needs, some of those needs include a safe place to sleep, help with school and job training as well as job placement, and not to mention legal and immigration help. When it comes to immigration there is an evaluation conducted by a psychologist, it consists of the finding of what type of situation the victim was involved, finding details of the use of force, fraud, coercion, and then the psychologist must build a report from his finding and state a recommendation for the said victim. For psychologist to be capable of conducting these evaluations they must be submitted to specialized training to be capable of dealing with these cases. In the case where a person is to be found and classified as a victim of human trafficking, and they decide to cooperate to testify help convict these perpetrators, they are now entitled to additional benefits and conditions. They are eligible for what is called a T visa, they are entitled to process visas for their family members, federal services are included as well, such services include Medicaid, refuge money assistance, job training, employment program, food stamps and victim compensation.
Some of the things that are being implemented include prevention, this is in the form of educating vulnerable individuals, teaming up with high schools, faith-based organizations. This is done through workshops that focus on healthy relationships, safe dating, make potential victims aware of the red flags, focus on youth especially because the access to them is very easy and as simple, a brief one on one conversation to reaching out to them through social platforms. The threat can come from anyone, for example a woman posing as a good person can easily recruit, by gaining their confidence and make them think that she has the best interest and will not lie, as well as a boyfriend asking his girlfriend to prostitute because he needs help financially, promise of a good life in the U. S. but with the condition of first working as a stripper to help cover the debt they have incurred. Melissa Farley PHD, funder and director of a non profit advocacy group called Prostitution research and education is working hard to fight this issue. Melissa states, “If you want to stop human trafficking, you have to stop the purchase of sex”. She has conducted extensive research and interviews with actual Johns who pay for sex, she has interviewed as many as 327 individuals from England, Scotland, and the U. S. , her findings include that these men are aware or have knowledge that these girls have been trafficked or tricked in to the trade, they stated that sometimes these girls are not able to speak English, that they have traces of bruising on their bodies from physical abuse, and the worse is they noticed a look of terror in their eyes.
Melissa states that policy can make a significant difference, she also applauds and supports senator Harry Reid’s call to terminate prostitution in the state of Nevada, his biggest argument toward this call is that prostitution will always be linked to human trafficking. An example that legislation works is Sweden, in Sweden their focus is to go after the men who purchase sex rather than going after the prostituted themselves, these criminals are arrested and charged with felony, then they turn and assist prostitutes with counseling services, medical help, housing to assist them to exit the trade. This kind of approach has given Sweden the tittle of being the country with the lowest rates of human trafficking in the European Union. Rebecca A. Clay has done an exceptional job with this article, this article has all the components for a well written document, she was able to give a clear idea of the issue at hand, she gave plenty of information that included the background of human trafficking, her resources are credible and very well chosen, she used actual people who are in the field of psychology and are active member of organizations that are actually doing something to fight human trafficking. Rebecca also presented the reader with an optimal solution to the issue by giving us the example of what Sweden is doing to fight human trafficking. To conclude I want to say that I learned a lot from this reading and now have a much clear picture of how devasting this issue is and how vulnerable everybody is, these perpetrators are among the general public and that is what makes this dangerous and makes all of us vulnerable because anyone can fall victim to these predators.
References
- Clay R. (2011, may) Modern-day Slavery. Monitor on Psychology, A Publication of The American Psychological Association, 72 (4).
