Human trafficking affects Maryland

This week saw a series of events on campus designed to draw attention to the issue of human trafficking. The series, entitled “My Generation Will Be Free,” was sponsored by the Christian Fellowship and SEED. It included a number of events with a religious focus, such as a 24-hour prayer session and a discussion of God and human trafficking. These were also accompanied by a number of speaker events and other efforts to raise awareness.

This page agrees that human trafficking is an important and often overlooked subject on campus as well as in Baltimore and around the world. The use of a religious context to examine the issue is an interesting choice, and this page looks forward to seeing if these events lead to any further action to combat human trafficking.

Maryland has made some recent strides toward addressing this problem, but continues to fall short in many respects. In 2007, trafficking minors became a felony crime, but trafficking adults remains a misdemeanor, as does abducting a minor under the age of 16. An initiative to allow posting of information for crisis hotlines for trafficking victims at truck rest stops, bus stations and similar locations only narrowly passed the state legislature.

Other bills still under consideration include efforts to allow those who have been trafficked to seek compensation as crime victims, to change abduction of a minor under the age of 16 to a felony, and to declare that a suspect charged with sex with a minor cannot use the claim that they did not know the victim was a minor as a defense.

Efforts to pass a law allowing for the seizure of the assets of convicted traffickers have repeatedly failed in the Maryland legislature, although similar laws exist regarding the assets of convicted drug traffickers.

The National Human Trafficking Resource Center received 265 calls from Maryland in 2011, although it was only able to confirm 22 victims. Of those calls, a majority came from Baltimore.

Since last fall, the FBI has also rescued 16 minors forced into prostitution.

These numbers represent only a small number of the victims caught up in trafficking rings. They reflect the difficulties law enforcement faces in addressing this problem and the challenges inherent in finding and assisting victims.

Hopkins students can tend to stay within the protective bubble of the University, but maybe if we move toward a greater sense of community with our adopted city, we can also move toward becoming a greater voice for needed change within it.