Ashley McAree isn’t on Facebook, but she doesn’t have to be to keep up-to-date on viral stories about human trafficking spreading on the platform. Her friends often text her posts written by people who think they were the target of a trafficking scheme because they found a zip tie or a pair of sunglasses on their car in a parking lot. McAree, a forensic nurse at Towson’s Greater Baltimore Medical Center and human trafficking liaison for the hospital’s Sexual Assault Forensic Examination, Domestic Violence and Child Protection Program, has mixed feelings about these sorts of posts.
“Any awareness is good about, you know, human trafficking is happening here,” she said. “However, it actually harms victims, because when we think human trafficking should look this certain way or fit in this little box that’s preconceived, we’re going to miss actual signs that we could look for or actual red flags for true victims.” “The truth is that human trafficking, it is happening all around us.
It’s happening to so many different populations of people,” she continued. “Sometimes they say it’s ‘hidden in plain sight,’ because it’s not what we’re going to see in the movies.” Educating community members, from teachers and court-appointed special advocates to naval officers and school resource officers, about what human trafficking is and what it’s not is a vital role that GBMC’s Anti-Human Trafficking Initiative plays in Baltimore County and elsewhere in the state, McAree said.
After getting a $50,000 boost from the federal government, McAree and her colleagues hope to expand the reach and impact of the program. The U.S.
Department of Health and Human Services selected the local initiative late last month as one of 18 winners across the country of its to prevent human trafficking among women and girls. Human trafficking — the use of force, fraud or coercion to compel a person into labor or to participate in commercial sex against their will — often involves extensive grooming and victimizes vulnerable people, like those who are addicted to drug or alcohol, have mental health problems, are recent migrants, or are children who have run away from home. Trafficking can take the form of an organization — like in the , where a Baltimore woman is accused of forcing women to perform sex work in exchange for drugs in hotels across the state — but it doesn’t have to, McAree said.
It can also look like a boyfriend using emotional abuse or threats to force his girlfriend to perform sex work to buy drugs or pay the bills. And since people under 18 are not able to consent to commercial sex work under federal law, all instances of children engaging in sex work are considered trafficking. Because of how complicated situations involving human trafficking can be, it’s not an easy problem to quantify.
But researchers agree that the majority of victims and survivors are women and girls. According to the , which is run by Polaris, a nonprofit that advocates for survivors and provides financial support to them, about 84% of people in trafficking scenarios are female. That can be at least partially explained by the fact women are more likely to experience sexual assault, intimate partner violence and other types of abuse — a risk factor that can make them more vulnerable to trafficking.
Black women and girls and LGBTQ people are also especially vulnerable, McAree said. The Department of Health and Human Services launched the Innovation Challenge to identify and reward programs that have proved to be effective at preventing human trafficking and improving health outcomes related to trafficking, according to a news release from GBMC. “Concentrating on human trafficking among women and girls requires a multifaceted approach that combines prevention, education, and support,” Dr.
Dorothy Fink — deputy assistant secretary for women’s health and director of the Office on Women’s Health — said in the release. “We commend the challenge winners for their dedication and demonstrated success in addressing this critical need.” Related Articles Last year, McAree and her colleagues trained more than 9,000 people on a variety of topics related to human trafficking.
Beyond outreach, McAree said, GBMC’s SAFE program provides free care to survivors and victims of all ages, including trauma-informed forensic and medical exams, peer recovery support, advocacy and education. The program works with community service providers and has a close partnership with the Baltimore County Police Department, victim service agencies and the local state attorney’s office. However, even though nurses are legally required to call the police if they suspect child abuse or neglect, they need an adult survivor’s explicit consent before they involve law enforcement.
Last year, Lt. Gov. Aruna Miller praised the SAFE program after a visit to the hospital.
“Anyone that’s going through this horrific trauma in their life should be able to come to a place like this, where they’re received with comfort and warmth and understanding and patience,” Miller said in the GBMC news release, “and I think that’s the first step toward healing.” McAree and her colleagues have a lot of plans to expand the hospital’s anti-human trafficking initiative, now that they have an extra $50,000 — an amount that might increase by $100,000 under phase two of the contest, if they’ve successfully grown their program by next summer. They hope to add in-house mental health support for survivors, allowing them to bypass long wait times.
They also hope to grow support for sheltering resources they offer to survivors and provide more advanced training to law enforcement agencies GBMC partners with and hospital employees. They also want to replicate the SAFE program’s anti-human trafficking initiative in other hospitals and health centers across Maryland, McAree said. She wants there to be a similar program in every jurisdiction around the country.
Even though SAFE won the extra money through a contest, McAree said she and her colleagues aren’t in competition with other health care providers. “We want every single program to be tied for number one,” she said..
