July 30, 2007, 6:00 a.m.

Enslaved in the U.S.A.
American victims need our help.

By Donna M. Hughes


A hypothetical, but realistic case: Eighteen-year-old Tammy is tired, broke, and desperate. Originally from a town in the midwest, Tammy left home with a man she thought was her boyfriend. He turned out to be a pimp. He put her on the street in a city in another state and ordered her to sell sex and make money. He takes every dime she gets. She’s been humiliated and hurt by johns. The pimp is even meaner, beating her up and threatening her every day with what will happen to her if she disobeys or holds back any money. Tammy is a victim of sex trafficking. If tonight, Tammy decides to break free and accept the offer of assistance from a street-outreach worker, will she be eligible for federal funds for food and shelter? No. Why not? Because Tammy is a U.S. citizen.

As public awareness has grown about global sex trafficking, Americans were shocked to learn that victims from places such as Mexico, Korea, and Ukraine were sexually enslaved in their towns and cities. In communities across the country, concerned citizens voiced calls for zero tolerance for modern-day slavery.

President Bush made combating human trafficking a priority. Both Attorney Generals Ashcroft and Gonzales have spoken out against trafficking in the U.S. and made the investigation and prosecution of trafficking a priority. Most of the focus on identifying and assisting victims and prosecuting offenders has been on foreign nationals trafficked into the U.S.

There are more American citizens than foreign nationals victimized by sex traffickers in the U.S., yet there are no federally funded services for them, particularly if they are over age 17.

Service providers who have requested funds from the Trafficking Victims Protection Act (TVPA) to assist American victims have been turned down repeatedly by government agencies. The recent attorney general’s report states that TVPA funds are dedicated to non-U.S. citizen victims. Therefore, if you are a victim of sex trafficking in the U.S. from Mexico or Ukraine, there is money for immediate services ($1300 a month), but there are no funds similarly available for an American victim.

This denial of services to U.S. victims has real consequences. An FBI agent recently told me he found a 12-year-old American girl while investigating a sex-trafficking case. Because of lack of resources, he had nowhere to put her and had to send her home. (The biggest reason girls run away and get picked up by pimps is because they are abused or neglected at home.)

The neglect of U.S. citizen victims has occurred for several reasons.

First is the lack of identification of victims. Sex traffickers have avoided scrutiny of their criminal activities by operating under the social stigma of prostitution. Few people realize the brutal control these predators exert over their victims; instead, people believe myths popularized by Hollywood movies and TV documentaries about empowered sex workers, or they condemn women and girls for their “immoralâ€