YOUNGSTOWN — Advocates in a human trafficking task force said there must be a paradigm shift in the criminal justice system and in public perception in order to rescue girls and young women from a life of coerced sexual servitude.

Myths about human trafficking must be dispelled so resources can be accurately targeted, police departments can concentrate on disrupting trafficking networks and the young people caught up in trafficking rings can connect to services and find a new life.

One of the biggest myths about human trafficking in the region is that it is a problem because of the Mahoning Valley’s position in the United States highway system, said Patty Amendolea, a court liaison case worker with Mahoning County Children Services.

In reality, most victims of human trafficking are from the area they are being trafficked in.

“Most of these girls were born in Mahoning County, they are trafficked in Mahoning County by Mahoning County men and the johns are from Mahoning County, too,” Amendolea said.

The same applies for the girls trafficked in Trumbull County, said Mike Altiere, a Warren detective in the Mahoning Valley Human Trafficking Task Force.

Altiere, Amendolea and Mahoning County Sheriff’s Deputy Bill Cranston were at human trafficking seminar Tuesday at the children services building, presented by the state.

PERCEPTION

One of the most difficult paradigm shifts necessary is how the victims are perceived, and how they are handled in the criminal justice system.

Many times, the victims of human trafficking don’t even realize they are victims, but they are usually coerced into prostitution at an early age, after suffering years of sexual abuse, and forced to continue in it because they are manipulated in one way or another, Cranston said.

“They come to think it is normal,” Cranston said. “But they are being coerced in some way. A pimp is completely controlling — with force or more subtle psychological tactics. Often they get them addicted to opioids or another drug and then give them just enough not to be sick. There is compulsion there, and prostitution is using force, fraud or coercion to compel someone to do a sex act for money.”

Cranston said increasing the penalties for johns and pimps is one step forward, along with reducing the number of people willing to pay for sex with undercover stings and information campaigns.

Compelling or soliciting prostitution should be a felony, not a misdemeanor, Altiere said.

But the area also needs police, judges and prosecutors to look at the people coming before them to see if their alleged crimes are the result of being a victim of human trafficking, Cranston said. The judge and prosecutors should try to find out why someone committed a crime so he or she can be directed to help, Amendolea said.

The girls, and some boys, often come from backgrounds of abuse, but if they are paired with services such as trauma therapy and other rehabilitation efforts including substance use treatment, job placement programs and housing support, they have a chance of climbing out of a cycle of abuse, Cranston and Amendolea said.

VULNERABILITY

Some of the most vulnerable to sex trafficking are kids in the custody of children services, Amendolea said. Children in the system are more likely to have gone through emotional and physical trauma, and if they are living in a group home, they aren’t held under lock and key.

“They run away and are vulnerable to someone looking to exploit them. Then they are exchanging sex for basic needs, they have to sleep somewhere, so it becomes survival sex. If they need somewhere to sleep or something to eat, but have nothing else to give, that is all they have to exchange. They eventually meet a pimp and enter the world of controlled prostitution,” Amendolea said. “The past abuses they suffered make them primed and ready for predators.”

One woman rescued from a local trafficking ring was expected to see 20 to 30 men per day at a Trumbull County hotel, for nine months. After getting picked up by police, she was placed in a home for trafficking victims in Akron called Rahab Ministries, where she stayed for 17 months, earning her high school equivalency, a certificate for a job-training program and then got her own apartment.

The task force may arrest the victims, but it strives to get them into programs like that.

The area needs more community-based homes and programs to treat the women, Amendolea said, and a quicker response in the court system so the time between court dates doesn’t lead to relapses into the life they are trying to leave.

It can be hard to win convictions against human traffickers because the victims are often reluctant to testify against pimps who may kill them, Cranston said.

“Girls end up in trash cans,” Amendolea said.

rfox@tribtoday.com