Community Corner
‘Girls and Women … Disappear and Nobody Knows or Cares’: Human Trafficking in Michigan
"... We do a survey asking women how they got into the life," says a Detroit area advocate for at-risk girls. " ... On their 13th birthday, they got a crack pipe and revealing outfit and (were) told that it was time they start making a living."
Human trafficking, the trade of humans for the purpose of sexual or labor slavery, is an uncomfortably big problem in southeast Michigan.
According to a report by the National Human Trafficking Resource Center, from Jan. 1, 2013, to June 30, 2013, there were 262 calls made to the organization from Michigan, many in the Metro-Detroit area. Sixty-three of the calls made to the hotline were classified as a potential human trafficking case.
Find out what's happening in Plymouth-Cantonfor free with the latest updates from Patch.
Deena Policicchio has spent 19 years working with female victims of trafficking, 14 of those years she has served as the director of outreach and education services of Alternatives for Girls, a non-profit based in Detroit that serves at-risk women.
Policicchio said that human trafficking is very prevalent in Michigan and around the world, but there is no way to determine how many incidents occur.
Find out what's happening in Plymouth-Cantonfor free with the latest updates from Patch.
"Some people's stories are not paid attention to," Policicchio said. "Girls and women we have been rescuing for years from the sex industry will disappear and nobody knows or cares."
>>> Read Arielle Hines’ full blog post on Plymouth-Canton Patch.
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