Tina Frundt - Human Trafficking Events Recap

Tina Frundt - Human Trafficking Events Recap

Last week was a powerful week sharing the expertise of Tina Frundt with our community. Here are the numbers of attendees:

Luncheon event - 150+

Junior League event (Monday evening) - 80

Workshop (Tuesday) - 75

Drake event (Tuesday evening) - 150

2 law enforcement meetings (Department of Public Safety, Department of Criminal Investigation) - 100

Ankeny forum (Wednesday evening) - 270

Quad Cities forum - 52

Chrysalis office discussion - 15

Tina told us that at each public event, trafficking victims approached her afterwards and asked for help. She and Mike Ferjak have coordinated appropriate responses for approximately 10 local victims.

From both Tina Frundt and from Vanessa Chauhan (Polaris Project), I learned a number of "new" pieces of information about this issue, including:

  1. In addition to sex and labor trafficking, persons are trafficked for organ harvesting.
  2. An estimated 30,000 victims of sex trafficking die each year in the US - from abuse, torture, and neglect.
  3. Trafficking of pregnant women is increasing for the sale of the newborn baby.
  4. Major commodity producers (beer distributors, UPS and FedEx are just a few) have been found to use the vehicles for trafficking purposes.
  5. Major professional sports teams have taken buses of young men to high-trafficking areas or to a site where trafficked girls are located for "services."
  6. High numbers of children are picked up for trafficking at the site of a natural disaster, such as an earthquake or hurricane.
  7. College students increasingly report selling sex for money to pay tuition.
  8. Some traffickers specialize in young girls with a disability - such as Down Syndrome.
  9. Airports are often used by traffickers to hold "slave auctions" where women and children are sold into prostitution.
  10. In 54% of trafficking cases, the recruiter is a stranger; in 46% of cases, the recruiters know the victims.
  11. 42% of traffickers are female, 52% are male, and 6% are couples/families.
  12. Trafficking of young boys is rapidly increasing as the demand increases.

Because our mission is to ensure the safety and security of women and girls, trafficking is an enormous risk to the women and girls served by our grantees and schools, and to the women and girls of Iowa more broadly. We have reached out and will continue to involve community partners in this work.

A new documentary featuring Tina Frundt will soon be released.