Kaylee Newton, a graduate student in the School of Social Work, has worked with individuals who have been trafficked. She said the issue is more prevalent in Alabama than people think.

With a three-year grant from the U.S. Department of Justice, The University of Alabama School of Social Work is conducting a study on human trafficking.

Newton said she has learned a lot from Christian Lim, Alabama statewide human trafficking protocol project administrator and a team member in conducting the study.

“I’m really thankful for what Mr. Lim is doing,” Newton said. “Raising awareness is really important because people think you have to go to New York or California to see this kind of stuff, and that’s not the case at all. I’m positive there are students on campus who are victims of this, and even if it’s not the exchange of money, it’s the exchange of something.”

The study is led by Javonda Williams, associate dean for educational programs and student services for the School of Social Work, with team members Lim and Valerie Trull, the research coordinator for the center of advanced public safety.

The purpose of the grant is to enhance training and education around the state about human trafficking, provide training and resources to professionals, create a statewide human trafficking protocol and create an online platform to promote awareness in the general public.

“We’re excited because this is an opportunity for us to bring the state together in a more collaborative fashion so that we can work synergistically together so that we’re all being more effective,” Lim said.

One of the main ways human traffickers traffic their victims is through posting ads online that offer them for sale, Lim said. There were 641,000 human trafficking ads posted in the state of Alabama in 2017. These ads only represent part of the problem, as they only represent victims of sex trafficking and do not address victims being trafficked in agriculture, farming, restaurants, massage parlors, nail salons, hotels, organized begging or familial trafficking, where a family member sells his or her child into trafficking for money.

Through a series of 20 different focus groups, including 114 professionals throughout the state who may have dealt with victims or potential victims of human trafficking, Lim and Trull found there were about 617 potential victims that the group of professionals dealt with, 354 of which were probably minors.

Lim said traffickers can attract victims in a variety of ways but primarily do so by using online communication to entice potential victims. Human traffickers also take advantage of immigrants, taking their passport or Visa away from them so they no longer have any form of identification. Traffickers will hold immigrants hostage so they overstay their Visa, and then they will use the fear of being arrested as a threat against them.

Despite being so prevalent, Trull said law enforcement often struggles to find human traffickers, as they can hide in plain site. Victims are often manipulated by their captors or too afraid to speak up about what is happening to them.

“All the risk is on the person on the front end of it, so it makes it really hard to identify who the traffickers are,” Trull said. “Victims are also very much manipulated, so they won’t give their traffickers up. They think they’re in love with these men, and if they are over that illusion then they’re terrified of them, so traffickers have a lot of protection and very little vulnerability.”

In addition, Trull said victims who were brought into the trafficking world from a young age may not know any other reality, preventing them from recognizing that there is a problem with their situation.

While every state has a human trafficking problem, Lim said Alabama’s issue is worse than other states due to its proximity to major human trafficking hotspots.

“Alabama’s not one of the hotspots for human trafficking, but we’re right around some of the hotspots,” Lim said. “Atlanta is one of the hotspots, down in Florida there’s a lot of trafficking, in Tennessee there’s a lot of trafficking and so all the states around us have a good deal of trafficking as well. Traffickers don’t honor any borders or anything like that, so they pass from one state to another.”

To combat human trafficking in the state, the team hopes to establish processes through which professionals can work together to help eradicate the issue, including training and education to help people better understand what trafficking is.

“We really want to be an example to other states about how to address the issue of human trafficking,” Lim said.