Hidden numbers: Accurate picture of trafficking during oil boom difficult, but agencies strive to recognize it

DICKINSON — Darianne Johnson and her staff look back at the women who have come through the Domestic Violence and Rape Crisis Center in Dickinson and realize some of their clients were human trafficking victims. 

Escaping the clutches of sex trafficking in Thailand An Uzbek woman who was trafficked to Thailand and forced to sell sex shares the story of her escape.

It's nearly 10pm and Umida* is cooking dinner - a simple meal of rice and meat for the 11 members of her household who have been stuck inside the house all day due to Uzbekistan's intense summer heat.

Since emerging as an independent nation in 1991, after nearly 200 years of Russian and then Soviet rule, Uzbekistan has slowly seen some economic progress. But poverty and unemployment remain high and many Uzbeks travel abroad for work. This leaves the men, women and children vulnerable to forced labour and sex trafficking.

"My older sister works in a hospital in Moscow, so I look after her children," Umida says. "She's the only one who understands what happened to me in Bangkok, I have told nobody else." 

Born into a large, impoverished family, the 36-year-old says life was difficult growing up. Her mother died in 2000, leaving her father, a builder, to care for his four children. "It was hard without my mother," she recalls, "the families in my town with two parents had more money."

When she was 28 years old, Umida says she met a local Uzbek woman who promised her profitable work in Thailand. Umida doesn't say whether she knew the specific nature of this work, but explains that with the hope of providing for her son who was then six years old, she agreed to travel to the Thai capital, Bangkok.

But, when she arrived in Thailand, she realised that she had been deceived. The woman who had made the arrangements destroyed all of her documents. "She was a very bad lady. She gave me no food, no money. I could only go outside to work every day," Umida says quietly. The woman forced her to work as a prostitute on the streets of Bangkok.

Trafficked for sex

Many downtown Bangkok streets are lined with women, shifting from one foot to the other, whispering to passers-by, hoping to attract their next customer. Statistics from the Thai Ministry of Public Health and from NGOs indicate that there are more than 120,000 people working in the Thai sex industry.

Human trafficking: A terror run for her life

Nomsa* still cannot believe that the police did nothing after she told them she’d escaped from a gang of human traffickers.

After she escaped from the boot of a car – traumatised and petrified – the young South African woman immediately told the police about her ordeal and informed them about the other young girls who had also been kidnapped.

But the response from the authorities was cold. Indifferent.

kenyans-lured-with-jobs-but-end-up-in-forced-labour-and-sex

Corruption within law enforcement and lack of funds continue to fuel human trafficking in Kenya, a recently released report by the United States Department of Justice has said. The Trafficking in Persons Report says despite some marginal gains made in recent years, the country is still a major transit and conduit for victims and traffickers. “Corruption in sectors of the government perpetuated traffickers’ ability to obtain fraudulent identity documents from complicit officials, the report says.

I-94 Project spotlights human trafficking By JULIA FAIR jfair@kenoshanews.com

When Nancy Yarbrough was 17, she worked at a truck stop in Rockford, Ill., selling sex in order to meet her pimp’s daily quota.

“They see the vulnerabilities in you,” said Yarbrough, now 48, looking back at that time in her life.