Successful Interventions For Toledo, Ohio: Third Largest City for Child Sex Trafficking and Slavery

If you think you have seen a victim of human sex trafficking - child or adult, even an infant - contact the following organization anytime toll free, 24 hours a day.

National Human Trafficking Resource Center: 1-888-373-7888

In cases of immediate life-or-death emergency, call 911.

A growing year-old church in Central Ohio, RockCity is most successful in helping families and individuals in need. Pastor Chad Fisher and his family, who came to Central Ohio from Toledo to start the church, made an announcement Easter Sunday 2012.

Beginning Easter 2012, the church donates funds to a local initiative that is established to work against the spread of human trafficking in Ohio and this surely will be supported by volunteers and prayer as well. RockCity donates one dollar to such initiatives for every attendee at its services each week - prior to Easter, this was already 600 per week, 800 thereafter. An organization in the initiative called www.GraceHavenHouse.org is the first in the State of Ohio to provide a group home for children and youth taken out of the human trafficking system. Previous to this, they had to be sent to jail by law.

Ohio Governor John Kasich took a firm stand and signed legislation in recent weeks to set up obligatory cooperation of state and local agencies and organizations to allow them to use their resources together for the good of trafficking victims and the elimination of the phenomenon in our state.

RockCity (RockCityChurch.tv on the web) reports that a trafficking corridor that especially needs attention extends from Columbus, north to Toledo and farther on to the Detroit. Other organizations in the Columbus OH are quickly joining the initiative against this illegal and hurtful "business." Post your organization's name in the comments and tell us what it's doing to help.

Sunday Services at 9:00am + 10:45am + 12:30pm
AMC Lennox Town Center at 777 Kinnear Road, Columbus OH 43121

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March 30, 2012

Governor John Kasich declared this week that the administration put more effort into ending human trafficking in the State of Ohio. He signed a declaration requiring State Agencies to cooperate in working together to capture and bring charges against perpetrators of trafficking. State statistics report:

Thirteen is the most common age in Ohio for children to become victims of human trafficking. An estimated 1,078 underage Ohioans are trafficked each year, and another 3,016 children are considered at-risk...roughly 1,000 American-born children forced into the sex trade in Ohio every year, about 800 immigrants are sexually exploited and pushed into sweatshop-type jobs. -- Ohio Human Trafficking Commission and Attorney General Mick DeWine.

How many children are trafficked, unknown to that statisticians or the State? It seems that nail saloons are a hot place for trafficking in the 2010s, workers being slavers, and the Governor is finding all the related facts he can. Public Service Announces will begin shortly on television and the Governor plans to approach President Obama for additional help.

Back on May Day 2010, I sat in a meeting of over 400 concerned Ohioans and visitors from other states and countries. We viewed a presentation and made a discussion about human and child sex trafficking/tourism in the USA and Ohio and what we can do to stop it.

Growing numbers of people have become concerned about this and all sex and labor slavery in America. Laws have been passed to put an end to these practices, but they are not always fully enforced city by city. We chose May 1 to begin adding our voices to the demand to end human sex trafficking, especially child sex slavery.

Toledo Supplies Las Vegas

Toledo is the third largest gateway city for child sex tourism and child sex trafficking in America. The City of Toledo has run aground of some hard economic times in recent years and the Underground Economy has grown a bit larger in response -- This includes anything from hair braiding without a cosmetology license to neighborhood auto mechanics working on a cash-only basis, to selling children as young as 6 months old into sex slavery.

Professor Celia Williamson of the University of Toledo chaired a task force for research into Ohio's contribution to the child sex trafficking industry. Initial results estimated Toledo in 4th place in this child sex trafficking in America, that this result was conservative, and that it may be actually worse. [Worse than we thought: 1,000 new American Toledo/Ohio children annually; Toledo a major site for foreign-born victims and a leading recruitment gateway for them all. Ohio AG Richard Condray's group found even hundreds more Ohio kids at risk yearly of such victimization in the Toledo Gateway. Toledo exhbits the highest per capita related victim rate in the USA.]

At least 1,800 people at any point in time in Ohio are held in trafficking bondage. Miami Fl, Portland OR, Las Vegas NV, and Toledo OH are the top 4 US gateway cities, but the Las Vegas child sex victims come mostly from Toledo, pushing it up to third place overall. It is incredible. Also incredible is that 6-month-old infants are used sexually and that men pay $1,000 for 20 minutes to use girls ages 6 months to 12 years in sex tourism.

While is Toledo, Ohio such a major gateway into this human rights violation industry? Many of the youngsters - not all girls, but some boys as well - are being groomed and offered to the sellers and pimps by grandmothers that had been prostitutes first, had guided or allowed their own children into the industry, and then began groom the grandchildren. This is third-generation human trafficking that is trapping grandmothers, daughters, and granddaughters as well as some men and boys.

During the evening event, our group completed short letters to both Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton and US Attorney General Eric Holder to ask them to continue and to strengthen their efforts in implementing fuller enforcement of human sex trafficking laws already on the books in this nation. Some people in the group decided to begin placing phone calls to the Secretary's and the AG's as well as to State and Local elected Officials to encourage them to implement stronger enforcement of anti-trafficking laws on the local level.

Numerous clubs, civic organizations, churches and other houses of faith are planning ways of increasing public awareness of the problem and asking elected officials to help.

The Office To Monitor and Combat Trafficking in Persons (G/TIP), led by Ambassador Ambassador Luis CdeBaca,

If you are interested, you can read the Office's freshest data gathered on this phenomenon in their free onlione 2009 Trafficking in Persons Report. It covers 175 different nations and reports upon the global efforts of all concerned governments that are combatting severe trafficking in persons. Broadcastig this information to others will promote and secure additional awareness and support for ending these practices. The US Federal Government uses this report to encourage partnerships with other nations to fight the institutions of forced labor, sexual exploitation, and slavery (labor, forced marriage, and sex tourism, to name a few).

WORLD DATA

The International Labor Organization (ILO) of the UN examines labor standards, employment issues, and protection agasint exploitation around the globe. they say that in 2009, at least 12,300,000 adults and children were held forcefully in forced labor, bonded labor, and commercial sexual servitude. About 1.39 million of these people, about a tenth, are in commercial sexual servitude, inter- and intra-nationally.

Human traffickers are recognized as preying on the weak and vulnerable in society. This includes starving peoples, low castes, orphans, and public assistance recipients. Recruiters frequently use fasle promises of a better life, good jobs, education, marriage, or other benefits attrative enough to lure victims into bondage. Visit this goverment site: Modern Slavery for specific first-hand stories.

Since May Day on May 1 in 2010; people around the nation have been communicating to the US Federal Government that they want to strengthen efforts toward ending Child Sex Trafficking and Child Sex Tourism. They have contacted the government by phone, snail mail, and Internet.

Toledo OH is the 3rd largest gateway city for this human rights crime and we are communicating with state and local leaders in Ohio in an ongoing conversation that seeks to end human rights violations in our state. Because Toledo is so close to Detroit and large Ontario Province cities, heavy trafficking flows through Toledo to other places, including Las Vegas and overseas. We want it to end.

For the larger effort, you can, if you wish, call, write, or email Secretary of State Hillary Clinton (http://www.state.gov/secretary/) or US Attorney General Eric Holder (http://www.usdoj.gov/ag/) to declare your support for strongly enforcing anti-trafficking laws and upholding human rights globally. Our friends from out of the country are emailing Secretary of State Clinton, because she is interested in ending this problem globally, for everyone.

On an individual level, we can remain alert to signs of child sex trafficking and report any signs that we see to the toll free number at the head of this page.