Rep. Toby Overdorf, who represents Tradition in the Florida House, will speak at the next general meeting at the Human Trafficking Coalition of the Treasure Coast and Okeechobee later this month. Jamie Bond, vice chairwoman of the coalition, said Overdorf was instrumental in gaining new protections and help for victims of human trafficking.
“He helped sponsor a bill with (Sen.) Gayle Harrell,” she said. “It was the final bill passed in the session this year. We asked him to come and update us on the session.”
Harrell represents St. Lucie County in the Florida Senate. Gov. Ron DeSantis signed the bill (HB 851) on June 26. Among other things, the legislation creates a direct-service organization to the Department of Legal Affairs, requires certain professionals and businesses to post awareness signs, and for the Department of Law Enforcement to establish training programs. The bill provided appropriations for these things.
One of the most publicized provisions in the bill is training for hotel and motel workers to help them spot signs of human trafficking and know how to report it. Law-enforcement and medical professionals will also, under the bill, get training to work with victims of sex trafficking.
Among those who gave public testimony and comments during the bill’s progression through the Florida Legislature was Savannah. While she’s been public about her story, St. Lucie Voice is withholding her last name because it’s unable to reach her for permission to publish it.
“She was entered into trafficking when she was 10 years old,” Bond said. “She knew something was wrong, but she didn’t realize this isn’t the life all little girls live.”
Savannah told the legislature her mother’s drug dealer coerced her into multiple sexual relationships in central Florida. The local coalition has a documentary it shows on request to organizations called “Invisible.”
“She is in that documentary,’ Bond said. “She explains in that video that she’d request to stay (after) school in detention all the time, and nobody thought that was unusual.”
Or at least, no one seems to have acted on any suspicions about the girl trying to stay at school longer even if it meant accepting punishment for no infractions.
“She was self-harming,” Bond said. “She was miserable in pain and hated life, but she didn’t know that was abnormal.”
The coerced sex work continued for 14 years. Savannah got out of it seven years ago. Bond said her story helps highlight the pervasiveness of human trafficking even in affluent areas.
“The problem … is people are uneducated on what is human trafficking,” Bond said. “Anyone is at risk of falling victim of human trafficking.”
Bond explained that while coerced sex work is a flagrant form of trafficking all recognize as such, some are less visibly victims of coerced unpaid, or dramatically underpaid, labor. She said unscrupulous operators of advertised rehabilitation centers are sometimes instead running unpaid labor facilities. She said one man reported to the coalition he’d entered an advertised drug rehab facility which promised job training that turned out to be unpaid labor.
“A gentleman stepped forward and said, ‘I had no idea I was trafficked,’” Bond said.
Even senior citizens can be trafficked by criminals who get paid for providing services to them that they don’t.
Bond said while everybody is vulnerable at some time in some way to being trafficked, especially among sex traffickers there are easier targets. In general, the more invisible a person is in society, the more vulnerable she or he is to trafficking; for example, people with disabilities and conditions such as autism, those in the LGBT community, and others. Some groups are less inclined to complain, or even to recognize they’re being trafficked.
“Boys – there’s a stigma about trafficked, especially sex trafficking,” she said.
Because victims of trafficking often don’t realize it, or are reluctant or unable to report it, no one is certain how large the problem is in Florida and on the Treasure Coast. “It’s hard to pinpoint an accurate number of people trafficked,” Bond said.
But in the judicial circuit that covers St. Lucie, last year there were 44 children or youths under the age of 18 who’d reported being trafficked. The vast majority were 12 to 16. At the last reporting, law enforcement had verified 18 of those reports.
“These numbers sound small, but we’re talking about minors and verified cases,” Bond said.
She added that there’s a growing body of evidence human trafficking is growing in the United States.
The meeting will be on Wednesday, July 17, at 10 a.m. at 4700 W. Midway Road, Fort Pierce, the St. Lucie County Sheriff’s Office.
More about the coalition is at www.humantraffickingcoalition.com.