How to spot human trafficking | Kanani Titchen | TEDxGeorgeSchool

Hi, about eleven thousand years ago, during the Neolithic Revolution, agriculture was invented, which meant that suddenly these guys became these guys, which meant we ended up with these guys because where you have a higher population density and a strong economy, what you do with agriculture and you have people who do the work and you have people who manage the people who do the work, so yes, I am here today to talk about slavery and about the choice that you and I have to perpetuate it or stop it. that's right Neolithic Revolution hunter gatherers farmers blah, blah, blah facts from eleven thousand years ago until today we no longer talk about slavery we are much more sophisticated than that we talk about

human

trafficking

human

trafficking

and human trafficking innocuous right to perfectly ordinary words to the Put them together, they form a harmless phrase used to describe a horrible reality: human trafficking conjures up images of people riding trains from city to city or people drinking their FRAP mocha and latte while sitting with ten thousand of their friends. closest on the i-5 bumper to bumper or the i-95 human trafficking now add the word sex, well now you have something to sell newspapers or conversations like this, human sex trafficking, we also call it commercial sexual exploitation of children.

That's a mouthful, we give it acronyms like SESAC or DMS T. I guess to hide its horror. Human sex trafficking we like to talk about numbers. Forty-five million dollars spent per year in the US alone for online sex trafficking. 21 million people enslaved around the world. 300,000, that's the number. of us children at risk of human trafficking every year, there are 300 of these slides with a thousand figures and it is enough to fill the park of a citizen bank almost seven times more than $200,000 a year is what a pimp can earn with a single victim 15 years old, that is the age by which most child victims are induced into sex trafficking 15 years old, that is, ninth grade, but I would like to stay away from the figures that are somewhat unreliable and that are probably the tip of the iceberg in many cases when we try to count these traffickers when we see them they disappear they disperse they transform they transform into the kind lady on the street or her uncle her boss her boyfriend they live among us and so do their victims so I am a doctor I knew about the human trafficking I read the news I read about the Bosnian sex trafficking ring run by UN peacekeepers in 2000 I read about sex tourism and Thailand I read Sheryl WuDunn and Nicholas Kristof's Pulitzer Prize-winning book Half the Sky good reading I knew about human trafficking for organs for labor purposes sex happened in other countries until I saw it in our operating room now my family my families my patients feel like my family the identities of my patients are obviously confidential and their stories They're not really mine to tell, but my patients are memorable and compelling beyond any number and have truly shaped the way I think about others.

So yeah, while I was in medical school I was in the operating room for what was actually a pretty benign and mundane surgery, except for the fact that this woman had needed the surgery eons ago, so she came in, they anesthetized her. and then we took her off to clean the incision areas and she had dollar signs tattooed on her groin, insults tattooed on her groin now, thankfully, neither of us laughed, neither of us were treated lewdly. comments about the patient, on the other hand, we looked at each other surprised and realized that each of us had our own thing, we missed it, I missed it, I didn't see it, I didn't see it, so lesson number one, it is said that the eye doesn't see what the mind doesn't know, no. we knew what we were seeing because we didn't know what we were looking at we didn't know the signs right in front of us the tattoos the late presentation to medical care these are typical signs of sex trafficking right in front of us and if we as healthcare professionals do not we deal with learning about human trafficking then we'll miss it every time so fast forward a year and now I'm a pediatrics intern in labor and delivery which means I have my nmd but now I'm training to be a pediatrician , a young woman is brought in from the street and she gave birth to her baby on the street when the ambulance couldn't arrive. there at the time when the baby came into my care it was cold but otherwise remarkably healthy the young girl was sitting on the bed quite composed fully made up beautiful hair manicured jeweled nails and there was a man standing in the corner I assumed it was the father, so I walked over to congratulate him and he stared at me, crossed his hands in front of his chest and didn't say anything, so I went back to the woman and asked her if she received any prenatal care and she said no.

I don't need prenatal care. I said, "Well, how long were you in labor?" She said that she had been having contractions for three or four days, but that she had to work, so she just took painkillers and kept working, so I asked her what kind of work would stop her. you came to the hospital to deliver your baby and she paused and then said she was a receptionist she seemed uneasy I felt uncomfortable I had three or four other births to attend to so I left I didn't follow up I didn't I tried to take her away from her alone intimidating male partner to ask more questions.

I was scared so I told a nurse that something was really wrong in that room and then I left lesson number two, it's not enough Look, we have to act and it's hard to act, it takes courage, it takes training, it takes support , it takes a team of people to help us help others and we have to stand up and intervene because if we don't then no one else may do it now there are some patients that I intervened on; there is the 15-year-old middle-class white girl who came to our emergency department after running away from her parents;

I had been homeless for about four days and I asked her some of the screening questions I had learned to ask after training with Gems Gems is Girls Education Mentoring Services, is a nonprofit organization in New York City that is specializes in working with women who are victims of sex trafficking, so I approached this patient and said, look, I'm a doctor, I don't want to offend you, but I've seen a lot of different kids in a lot of different situations and I just need to know when you're on the street if you had to exchange sex. for anything, for food, for shelter, for money, he shrugged and said yes, sure, I needed a place to stay and I traded sex for a happy meal once I assimilated this information without surprise or disgust, this was just his reality, fortunately that particular patient was not. be trafficked, but she was at risk seeing a third of runaway children are approached by a trafficker within forty-eight hours of running away, are approached in a park, at the bus stop in the mall, even at school, some children even continue to go to school while they are trafficked, live at home and go to school, so in my third year of pediatric residency I was in the emergency department and I heard An emergency doctor talking about one of the patients who had just arrived.

I walked into the emergency room and as I heard something ping, she gave some confusing answers to questions about sex and about the risk of sexually transmitted infection, so I told this emergency room doctor. Hey, I don't mean to pry, but it sounds like your patient. could be in life, which is slang for sex trafficking, he laughed a little and then looked at me like I had two heads and said oh oh, okay, so I said, look, would you mind if I did questions to your patients? and he said, sure, go ahead, so I did it and it turned out that this girl and her friends were being bussed into the city by her pimp every weekend to work in hotels to work at conferences and then they were taken on the bus back to school on Monday.

In her task they took care of her little brothers and sisters after school until mom gets home they come to see her doctors and are trafficked. This particular girl came to our emergency department with her pimp, who soon fled and then this girl told the emergency doctor. that she just wanted her mother, lesson number three, to be prepared to be ridiculed. People still roll their eyes at me. I have been mocked. I consider it a small price to pay for doing what I know is right, and I am happy to report that many of my patients have been connected to resources for housing, job training, and legal resources.

Lastly, I recently spoke at a medical school and the medical school student said to me, how come you see so many trafficked patients? I don't think I see anymore. trafficked patients than other doctors is that I have developed eyes to see them and I asked and I just want to close with some of the resources because people frequently ask me what I can do. Some of the resources I mentioned are gems, they are non-profit. Donations are a great help to this organization that shelters girls who are victims of trafficking. Path is one of the organizations that I helped found anti-trafficking doctors and we do a lot of research and spend our time educating medical professionals and then there are a number of other places Don's place here in Philadelphia, the sanctuary for Covenant House Families, which offers healing services for trafficked youth, is an academic resource for people in law enforcement and medicine working on the issue of human trafficking, and for your ultimate resource, go to the Polaris Project online.

I have all the updated statistics for the United States and globally thanks.