Human trafficking in Salt Lake City

In a highly religious community with low crime rates, many residents assume Utah is exempt from the insidious effects of underground crime. But even in Utah, human trafficking, one of the world’s top three most profitable hidden industries, has reared its ugly head.

DeWayne Hopkins, a 27-year-old Salt Lake City resident pleaded guilty in May to conspiracy to commit sex trafficking of children. The charge was part of the first case taken on by the newly formed Utah Human Trafficking Task Force.

The sex trafficking industry is an underground epidemic that is now considered the third-largest and fastest growing criminal industry in the world, according to the Polaris Project human trafficking cheat sheet. It is the modern slavery industry, and it rivals illegal arms and the international drug trade in profitability.

“People need to learn about human trafficking because they might themselves be seeing human trafficking situations,” said Karen Stauss of the managing legal and policy council of the Polaris Project.

Stauss said the biggest problem is a widely held misconception about what human trafficking is.
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However, in a February, 2006 ABC News article it states, “The FBI estimates that well over 100,000 children and young women are trafficked in America today.”

Could the FBI’s estimate be more accurate than the Department of Justice’s 1,200 “reported” cases?

The level of apathy towards education, prosecution and punishment of these crimes is dismal. I have to wonder if our own police officers, local officials, or politicians are not making an issue of this crime because “money talks”? Think about it. Sex traffickers yield profits of over 32 billion dollars a year. That makes drug and weapons traffickers look like kids with a lemonade stand.

Difficulties in Prosecution
The trafficking industry thrives because it is hard to prosecute. The women who are victims need to serve as witnesses and testify in court in order for the prosecution to prove their case against the perpetrator(s). These women don’t come forward not only because of the “re-victimization” in court, but also the threats made to them by their traffickers. They have been burned with acid, “disappeared”, or have had their families threatened or murdered.

“We have to explain the woman’s mind-set—that she’s often unsophisticated, comes from a country with a corrupt government and would believe her captors’ lies that if she flees should could get arrested by the police…Juries have a hard time. They wonder: If the door was open, why didn’t she just run?”