Help me sort through the confusion...

During January, which is National Slavery and Human Trafficking Prevention Month, I had numerous conversations with people that wanted to know more about human trafficking and what they could do to get involved.?How to get involved is another conversation, but many told me that they would like to provide financial support for an organization, but they had no idea where to get started.?I do not like to specifically tell people who to donate their money to, but I will provide them some options and give them further advice about doing some research to find an organization that they feel comfortable with.?Here is some of the basic advice that I also provide:

Non-Profits and NGO’s:?

Most non-profits and NGO’s do amazing work, sacrifice to help others, and spend countless hours helping their community for little or no money. Unfortunately, there are also many that do not.?I have seen non-profits tip off suspected traffickers that they were being investigated. I have seen non-profits take advantage of the very persons they are charged with helping, take credit for the work of another, and seen some provide outlandish statistics and information that cannot be verified - all in an attempt to increase donations.?For example, I am aware of one non-profit that posts on their website that they have rescued 25,000 victims of human trafficking since they began doing this work 15 years ago.?That means they would have to rescue 1,666.6 victims per year, or 32 victims per week, or 4.5 victims per day for 15 years straight.??Does anything think that this is even remotely possible??Of course this is not possible, but there are clearly some people that do not think about these numbers logically and donate their money.?

Positions of Authority:

When we are looking for input or answers, it is normal to look at positions of authority to help us find the knowledge that we are looking for.?After all, if the government has put these people in these positions they must be “experts” right??First, while I have heard several others discuss this, I agree, the only experts in human trafficking are the “traffickers” and the “survivors”.?While there may be some people who have tons of experience investigating human trafficking, prosecuting human trafficking, or working in the human trafficking field, it is not the same.?Therefore, I am not a fan of people using the term “expert” which I think is highly overrated in many fields.?Secondly, should we be looking for advice, expertise, and guidance from all these people the government has put into these positions of authority??Clearly that answer is no.?Some of these people are amazing and sacrifice for God and Country and work tirelessly to help victims and are in these positions because they clearly deserve them.?There are also others that are in the positions for a host of other reasons.?For example, I am aware of at least two director positions for state human trafficking task forces that have no previous experience working in the human trafficking field, no prior law enforcement or prosecutor experience at all, no former work of any kind in human trafficking and in fact have never even received any training in human trafficking, no qualifications for the job whatsoever. Yet, they are in positions of authority as the director of a statewide human trafficking task force!?The same can be true for many people involved in the federal government.?You can pick any three-letter alphabet federal agency and find the same thing. ?There are also plenty of police officers who teach human trafficking who have very little to no experience in human trafficking, or perhaps have experience but have no record of success, and yet they are “experts” just because they are the police? People should know that just because someone was in law enforcement does not mean they know anything about human trafficking. Most agencies nationwide do not provide quality human trafficking training to their officers and many officers have never investigated a single case of human trafficking. ?This would be like going to a dermatologist for a heart condition.?They are a doctor, but they have no specialized training in heart disease, or heart surgery.?Just like the heart surgeon is not trained to look at the discolorations on your skin to determine if you might have skin cancer.?Police need specialized training and experience just like doctors.?

Military and Intelligence:

A career in the intelligence community or the military also does not mean you know anything about human trafficking.?Generally, our military does not receive training on human trafficking and our intelligence community have many other things that they are tasked with, and due to intelligence rules and the law they may not even have authority and thus leave these issues to law enforcement.?Yet, there are some former military and intelligence community members that proclaim they are “experts” in human trafficking.?Some of these individuals may have decided to get into the human trafficking prevention arena after their service and educated and emersed themselves into the field. ?I support this, but intelligence and military service alone does not equip you for work in human trafficking.?For example, I know of a former intelligence community person that teaches human trafficking to civilians all around the United States.?Part of the training includes surveillance work and setting up an operation to help rescue a victim.?These are both really bad ideas.?If you have information about trafficking, you should report it to the police. Conducting surveillance or an operation on your own as a civilian is very dangerous, opens up the possibility of many bad scenarios, including possible civil and criminal liability, severe injury and even death.?

Final thoughts:

This seems so complicated; how do we decide what to do and who to support??First, if you know anyone in the anti-human trafficking community that you trust, ask them.?The anti- trafficking community is not large and most people either know one another or have heard of one another and can generally point you in the direction of who to stay away from.?You can do things as simple as read posts on LinkedIn and get a good idea about what organizations are doing and how effective they are.?Second, read their website and social media pages.?Are they making claims that seem impossible or improbable??You can usually get an idea of the people that are doing good work and the people that are FLUFF.?Third, just use common sense and go with your gut.?Our intuition is usually a good indicator.?

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