According to the Governor’s Office for Children and Families, Atlanta is one of fourteen cities in the nation with the highest incidence of child prostitution. Every month, approximately 400 girls between the ages of 12 and 14 years, on average, are commercially exploited for sex, throughout Georgia. Meet Justice is an agency whose mission is to raise awareness in the media regarding Georgia’s sex trafficking problem.
“As of 2001, pimping a minor was a $50 fine. So, the girl would go to jail, and whoever she was with would fork over fifty bucks and walk free,” said Meet Justice’s Operations Manager, Jessica Reis. “Georgia has the most active awareness campaigns regarding sex trafficking and is the only state in the Southeast that has seen a drop in monthly victims.”
Reis will be visiting SCAD Atlanta on Friday, April 15, to follow up on the successful presentation of the “Vagina Monologues.” Proceeds from the show were donated to Innocence Atlanta. She said that students can meet her in front of the main SCAD building to ask questions about internship opportunities, student involvement and spreading awareness about the problem Atlanta doesn’t always seem to want to talk about.
Every year, 28,000 men knowingly, or unknowingly, pay for sex with adolescent females in Georgia. Nearly 10,000 of those do so multiple times a year, according to a recent study by The Schapiro Group. The study involved placing simulated ads on Craigslist and other sites regularly patrolled by men looking for commercial sex. By asking covert questions to the men that responded, the controlled study showed that despite being warned three times about the girls’ ages, 47 percent of responders wanted to continue to pursue the staged transaction.
“Innocence Atlanta is one of our awareness campaigns, and it’s centered specifically around the issue of child sex trafficking,” said Reis. “Human trafficking can incorporate exploitation for sex or exploitation for labor, and sometimes the line between them is blurred, but Innocence Atlanta wants to create a place of dialogue over this issue — a place where people can get involved.”
Meet Justice has recently released an awareness initiative known as the Rescue System. It aims to recognize, respond to, review and restore victims of sex trafficking. This is accomplished through articulation of the issue, intervention for the victims, provision of refuge, pursuit of the criminals, collection of resources, rehabilitation of the victim and rejuvenation of the community.
“Another awareness campaign that we run is called Meet Justice Medical, and that’s an awareness group specifically tailored to the medical community,” said Reis. “It’s the point of intervention. A victim comes to a clinic, and they are sick, because they’re being exploited, and the doctor starts noticing that the person that brought the patient in is answering all their questions for them, won’t leave the room and is aggressive or violent toward the patient. What we’re doing [through Meet Justice Medical] is equipping doctors and nurses to step back a moment and realize that this might be exploitation or trafficking.”
Recent evidence has suggested that minors under the age of 18 now make up the largest percentage of trafficking victims in the country, according to the Governor’s Office for Children and Families. In Atlanta, the majority of these children are runaways seeking shelter, food or money. Because Atlanta is an international hub, the problem is as simple as basic economics — supply and demand.
“If [a victim] ran away from home at 12 and was coerced into prostitution, then maybe at 17 or 18 they present in the hospital with scarring from too many abortions or an STD. They’ve missed their entire middle and high school careers,” said Reis.
On March 29, proposition HB 200 was passed through Georgia legislature amending the former code regarding sex trafficking. The act will provide greater opportunities for victims and more strict punishments for violators. The bill expands the definition of coercion to include causing or threatening financial harm. It prohibits traffickers’ use of the victim’s sexual history, family status, age of consent or ignorance of the victim’s age, in their defense. The legislation also enacted drastic changes to the current penalty for human trafficking, changing the sentence to 10-20 years in prison (25-50 years or life in prison for traffickers to abuse under-age victims), a fine up to $100,000, or both. Aside from addressing the violators, it also delivered new hope for victims by making law enforcement responsible for addressing trafficking incidents, providing detention or alternatives to detention for victims and providing information on social service organizations.
“It’s not just women and children. There’s lots of young boys and men involved in this, too,” said Reis. “It’s such a new concept to people that there has been limited research on it, but it’s a very real thing; it’s by no means exclusively females.”
According to the Georgia Department for Families and Children, the number of adolescent girls in the sex trade increased from 251 to 492, between August 2007 and February 2010. A major problem facing anti-trafficking advocates is the number of girls being trafficked over the Internet, which had increased from 106 to 354, by February 2010. Reis suggested fighting the problem with the same tools as the adversary. In an era of exponential connectivity through social media, she spoke of the importance of talking about the problem, as well as being aware of it. Posting, blogging and even tweeting about this fight can have a viral effect that will make an enormous difference in the battle against child sex trafficking.