http://www.newsobserver.com/141/story/569253.html

Kristin Collins, Staff Writer
A woman was locked in a house for two years as a servant. Another woman was held in a hotel and made to prostitute herself.
Both cases unfolded in North Carolina, say legal aid lawyers and advocates for the poor.

Human trafficking, a practice that some call modern slavery, is one of the fastest-growing crimes in the world. The State Department estimates that 600,000 to 800,000 people a year are trafficked over international borders.

North Carolina is home to some of the victims as well as some of the perpetrators.

For years, the crime has been unknown and rarely prosecuted. Victims, most of whom are foreign, are often deported when they are found, and their traffickers are never investigated, according to advocates for the workers. Many in North Carolina, including state Rep. Ellie Kinnaird, are working to bring human trafficking into the spotlight.

"These are not illegal immigrants," said Kinnaird, an Orange County Democrat. "These are kidnap victims. They are refugees. We've got to train police to probe, to investigate further."

Last year, Kinnaird sponsored legislation that made human trafficking a crime for the first time in North Carolina. Until then, it could only be prosecuted by federal officials. Now she is sponsoring a bill that would pay for training for law enforcement and services for victims, such as shelter and legal representation.

Others are focusing attention on human trafficking. Last weekend, the Carolina Women's Center at UNC-Chapel Hill held a conference on sex trafficking. This past weekend, a Raleigh church encouraged people to sleep on the state Capitol lawn to draw attention to the issue.

The law defines human trafficking as holding people against their will, whether by violence or intimidation, and forcing them to work under conditions to which they did not agree. Women have been trafficked for sex work. Trafficking victims also frequently do farm or factory work.

Increased awareness in North Carolina resulted in one recent case in which 22 Thai workers were found held captive on a Johnston County farm. The workers, who paid $11,000 each for the chance to do farm work in the United States, sued their captor under human trafficking laws. The case, filed by Legal Aid of North Carolina, a federally funded program that provides lawyers to the poor, is pending in federal court.

Advocates say that many cases are never discovered. Several law enforcement groups said they don't know of anyone prosecuted under the state's new trafficking law.

"It's happening under our noses," said Deborah Weissman, a UNC-CH law school professor who has become a trafficking activist. "We just don't know."

Some cite recent busts at brothels in Raleigh and Durham. After the Durham bust in August, an FBI investigator said the prostitutes had been brought from Central America and Mexico on the promise of jobs that never materialized. He said they were in thousands of dollars of debt for their journeys. But the investigator said there was no evidence the women were being held against their will, and they were not treated as victims.

They were charged with crimes and put into deportation proceedings.

Many advocates say they wonder whether investigators pressed hard enough to find out the truth. They say they suspect that the women were victims of trafficking.

"We never got a chance to interview them," said Kate Woomer-Deters, a lawyer with Legal Aid.

Woomer-Deters represents the Thai farmworkers. She said she found those men only because Legal Aid makes regular visits to farm labor camps. One night at a hotel in Johnston County, which serves as a home for migrant farmworkers, she ran across the Thai workers.

But she said women who are held as servants or prostitutes may never be found.

David Munday, a retired major in the state Highway Patrol, said he had barely heard of human trafficking before he was asked to serve on a state task force two years ago. Now he is working to have human trafficking included in basic law enforcement training.

Munday said he sent surveys to all 100 sheriffs in North Carolina, and nearly all thought human trafficking was not happening in their jurisdictions.

Dozens of cases seen

Mark Kadel said he knows that's not true. Kadel runs the High Point office of World Relief, an evangelical Christian group that helps refugees.

He said he has seen dozens of trafficking cases in North Carolina. To protect the victims, he did not give details about the victims' home countries or the locations of the incidents.

In one case, a woman was brought to the United States and told she would be a nanny, Kadel said. Instead, he said, she was forced to marry an American and then locked in the house to do housework. Before she left her home country, she was promised she could send for her young daughter, but that never happened. She finally escaped after two years.

In another case, Kadel said, a woman was promised a job modeling. Instead, she was locked in a hotel room and forced to become a prostitute, he said. She finally escaped out a bathroom window. She asked a man on a rural road for help, and he took her to his home and locked her up for several months before she escaped again, he said.

Even when victims are found, prosecuting their traffickers can be difficult. Sometimes victims are afraid to testify against their captors or to tell authorities what is happening, Weissman said. Other times, they don't know where they've been, and their traffickers can't be found.

Kinnaird's bill would provide state funding to train law enforcement officers and others, such as hospital and domestic violence shelter workers, who might come across trafficking victims. It would also assure that every victim has a lawyer and a place to stay as well as other basics such as medical care, counseling and help finding jobs or learning English.

Advocates say those measures are needed.

"If you start to ask people to reveal themselves, and to overcome the trauma and the fear and the coercion," Weissman said, "you best be prepared to serve them."