Human Trafficking

LA OFFICE OF HUMAN TRAFFICKING PREVENTION
The State of Trafficking in Lousiana 

• Definition: the act of recruiting, harboring, transporting, providing, or obtaining a person for compelled labor or commercial sex acts by force, fraud, or coercion.  It can include, but does not require, movement (trafficking can occur within the hometown). Women, children, and men are bought and sold, beaten, abused, and sometimes killed as they are traded like commodities on the invisible trafficking markets worldwide.
• Nationwide more than half of the victims are female. Women and children are often used for sexual exploitation while men are likely used for forced labor.
• According to the Governor’s Human Trafficking Prevention Resource Center, in Louisiana between the years of 2017 and 2022, more than 85% of the human trafficking victims were female and 70% were under the age of 17. The average age of a trafficking victim is 13. 
• National statistics show that one of the busiest trafficking corridors in our country stretches along I-10 from New Orleans to Houston. 
• Human trafficking is everywhere; it is both a domestic and international crime. Victims are trafficked within their own cities and countries, to neighboring countries and to distant places.
• Human trafficking is a lucrative industry generating ~$150 billion in illegal profits annually, most coming from sexual exploitation.
• A common belief is that victims of human trafficking are kidnapped, chained, drugged, and then shipped to other countries.  The reality is that many of the victims are “groomed” with gifts and promises. They are manipulated into believing they have found a loving relationship only to be isolated from others and then forced or coerced into this type of slavery.

The Pontifical Council for Justice and Peace and the International Union of Superiors General have dedicated February 8th as a day of prayer and awareness against human trafficking.  February 8th is the feast day of St. Josephine Bakhita who died on this day in 1949.  She was kidnapped as a child and sold into slavery in Sudan and Italy. Once Josephine was freed, she became a Canossian nun and dedicated her life to sharing her testament of deliverance from slavery and comforting the poor and suffering. She was declared a Saint in 2000.  
 
Pope John Paul II, Pope Benedict XVI and Pope Francis have all spoken strongly against human trafficking calling it a “shocking offense against human dignity”, “a scourge upon the body of Christ”, and an illegal industry profiting “where opportunities to improve the standard of living or even to survive are limited.”