Films have been made with titles like “Escape” and “Daughter for Sale” and “She Has a Name” and, of course, “Taken.”
Yet the topic of human trafficking still is not as popular as it should be in the Upper Ohio Valley, and that’s for two reasons, according to IGNITE Hope founder Stacy Gilson. One, not every swiped-away young girl has a secret-agent father to save her, and two, because human trafficking – in many unfortunate forms – takes place right here and right now without detection.
“We tend to ignore tragedy until something directly affects us,” Gilson said matter-of-factly. “It’s human nature, but this is an issue we need to address.”
It was the film “Sound of Freedom,” a movie that reported human trafficking as the fastest-growing criminal network in the world that alarmed her so much so, she created IGNITE Hope. The community organization already has donated $7,000 to YWCA Wheeling and the Ohio Valley Sexual Assault Help Center.
“Since watching the movie, I have been involved with a lot of conversations here on the local level, and what I’ve learned is that we’re fighting human trafficking right here where we live. I’ve learned that it takes place right here,” Gilson explained. “I’ve also learned most people have no idea how to recognize it, and that they don’t know that when kids are couch surfing, they could be in a trafficking situation.
“When our young people are couch surfing, they may go from place to place because of a situation with their own family, and there might be times when they are asked to do sex acts with adults,” she said. “That’s a form of human trafficking and the kids are unaware, and they just go to another place; another couch. They don’t think they’re being trafficked, but they are.”
Child sex trafficking, according to CHILDUSA.org, is “the recruitment, harboring, transportation, provision, obtaining, patronizing, or soliciting of a person for the purpose of a commercial sex act.” The non-profit organization also reports one in five girls and one in 13 boys are sexually abused before they are 18 years old.
The National Human Trafficking Hotline was established in 2007, and since its inception and through 2021, the organization has identified 246 cases of human trafficking in West Virginia. At least 550 Mountain State victims were identified in these cases. In Ohio, the Human Trafficking Hotline has identified 3,102 cases and 6,013 victims were identified in these cases.
What that description looks like and the criminal activities looks like, however, is nearly impossible to describe because the activities takes on my forms.
One popular example, according to Gilson, takes place when a parent kicks out a child gets from his or her home because of behavior.
“That’s right,” the Wheeling resident said.
Then the child moves in with a friend, and often is assigned the couch?
“Correct,” she confirmed.
And sometimes that child is asked to “earn their keep”?
“Exactly,” Gilson insisted. “And that is happening here in the tri-state area. And from one organization that I talked to, that is the biggest issue they’re fighting right now, and we’re trying to find solutions to help these young kids out.
“It’s couch surfing that is probably the biggest issue we have now,” she said. “And it’s sad because it completely preventable, but because of the situation those adults know the kid’s parents aren’t going to check up on them. One of the statistics that surprised me is that over 80 percent of victims know their handler, and they knew them prior to being handled.”
Movie Make-Believe & Real-Life Reality
Filmmakers have portrayed many times a form of human trafficking that takes place behind closed doors with victims transported inside tractor-trailers to dark, abandoned factories where protected-by-payoff brothels operate.
“I’m sure there’s some proof to those movies, too,” Gilson said. “I think that’s become the stereotype, though.
The IGNITE Hope director feels that way because of the ongoing question-and-answer process she’s instigating the past several months. Gilson, in fact, has organized a few fundraising events in an effort to raise awareness.
“I have learned that here in this area there have been cases when a young person was being followed either in a store or by a car in normal-looking traffic,” she said. “This just happened not too long ago to a friend of mine and, even though there wasn’t an arrest, the police did ask the driver a lot of questions and scared them away.
“Sometimes, trafficking takes place in a business’s parking lot, but it’s nearly impossible to identify because those lots are always so busy with customers. The traffickers know it, too,” Gilson explained. “Again, there’s just too much chaos to notice anything nefarious, and that’s why our children need to be taught to pay attention to their surroundings and not to take anything for granted. It’s anywhere and everywhere.”
With Ohio Route 7, Interstate 470 and I-70, and WV Route 2, more than 100,000 motorists pass through the Wheeling area, according to statistics provided by the W.Va. Department of Transportation.
“From what we have learned, authorities do suspect there are major exchange sites in this area, and that means human trafficking, in that form, does take place here in the tri-state area,” Gilson said. “As far as we know, it happens pretty much everywhere and anywhere because it’s all very simple. Someone pulls up, and a person goes from one vehicle to another.
“Just like that, the exchange of a human being has taken place. It’s that simple in that form,” she said. “It appears so normal no one thinks twice about it, and the traffickers know that.”
Mothers Know Best
April Brock is Gilson’s assistant with the IGNITE Hope organization, and she’s the mother of a 15-year-old.
And yes, she protects her teenager through conversation and investigation.
“She has come home and told me some of what is taking place with some of the people she knows at school. We do talk about it, and she does tell me some of these horror stories,” Brock reported. “But I am one of those mothers who will check her daughter’s phone, and that’s how I find out even more. I am up in her business.
“I have the passwords to every single one of her apps and all of her accounts,” she said. “And I think as parents, if you’re not doing that, you’re missing most of the picture of what’s going on in their lives.”
Apple did not introduce the iPhone until early 2007, and, according to Wired.com, today there are more than 5 million smartphones worldwide. Brock, however, recalls growing up with dial-up internet service at her parents’ home.
“Because my daughter carries the Internet with her thanks to our smartphones these days, her world is much larger than mine was at her age,” Brock explained. “When I was growing up, you had to tell your parents whenever you wanted to take up the home phone line, but that’s not how it is today and that’s why I am so careful with her cellphone activity.
“My daughter and children today can talk with anyone in the world at any time of any day,” she insisted. “That’s not how most of us adults grew up so we’re probably not aware of the dangers that our kids face every day. For them, the world is a much smaller place than it was for us, and that’s a scary fact because most of them are not wise enough to handled it.”
Gilson’s children are grown adults, and the technology did not allow for anything beyond neighborhood-based mischief. Because she’s become so aware of what is possible today, though, she is trying to sound the local alarm as loudly as she can.
“I’m sure bad people were doing bad things when my kids were actually children, but I doubt it was as often as it is now,” Gilson said. “I think it’s gotten so much worse because of all of the chaos that’s caused by the economy and the rising cost of simple survival. People have to work all of the time and technology just keeps moving forward. There’s just so many variables anymore.
“When we were raising our children, we were parents. We knew everything they were up to, and they had curfews. You knew where your children were and what they were doing,” she added. “Our kids might have thought they could get away with some things, and I’m sure they did at times, but it was nowhere near what it is today. We talked with our children because that’s what parents have to do, and I hope we can help them realize the dangers that are out there.”
