Hiding in Plain Sight: Human Trafficking in Williamsburg
This past summer, human trafficking manifested less than a mile away from the College of William and Mary.
Sex trafficking suspect Evan Anthony Cole was taken into police custody July 11 following a lockdown at the Travelodge motel on Bypass Road, with police lingering in the Cracker Barrel parking lot across the street. While Cole has been apprehended by police, the proximity of his capture to campus calls into question the prevalence of human trafficking in the Williamsburg area.
The Williamsburg area police departments and surrounding counties are taking action to alleviate human trafficking’s presence throughout Virginia, which ranked 15th in the United States in 2017 for the most reported cases of human trafficking for sex and cheap or free employment according to the human trafficking hotline. There were 198 human trafficking cases reported in Virginia in 2018, with 143 reported sex trafficking cases. Virginia Beach ranked 71st for calls per capita while Norfolk was 77th.
Human trafficking is defined by the dictionary as “the action or practice of illegally transporting people from one country or area to another, typically for the purposes of forced labor or sexual exploitation.” To further break down the definition, labor trafficking involves the use of force, coercion, or fraud to make an individual perform certain labor against their will, and sex trafficking exploits individuals by making them perform sexual acts without their consent or sell the individual for sexual activity.
The Hampton Roads Human Trafficking Task Force was formed in 2017 to combat trafficking throughout Hampton Roads. The Virginia State Police and six local police departments are part of the task force, which is also partnered with the Commonwealth’s Attorney General, the U.S. Attorney General and the Samaritan House. Investigator Alexander Willets joined the task force earlier this year. Before he arrived in 2018, the task force conducted 89 new investigations, made 32 arrests and confirmed 61 survivors.
Willets’ task force employs retrospective and proactive policies in order to curtail trafficking in the area and they are attempting to strike a careful balance between supporting survivors and preventing future crimes. A key facet of their proactive, community-based approach is their use of hotlines and other communication-driven resources, including the nationally used Polaris Project hotline. The Polaris Project is a non-governmental organization that combats human trafficking and other forms of modern-day slavery.
“We can kind of come into it via good, street-level, proactive police work, that is definitely an avenue where it is not necessarily reported to us; we find it on our own,” Willets said. “That is definitely one of the benefits of being a more proactive department because unfortunately some of these populations don’t really feel comfortable calling the police for a variety of reasons, so sometimes, it’s just easier for us to kind of do surveillance, use observations and find it on our own.”
At the College, an annual event called Tribe Against Trafficking focuses on spreading awareness about human trafficking and related humanitarian issues. Recognizing that human trafficking transcends demographic and socioeconomic boundaries, event organizers Gracie Harris ’21 and Anna Rader ’20 center their human trafficking activism on analyzing the impact sex trafficking crimes have in Williamsburg and surrounding counties, as well as at the College.
“Overarchingly, we kind of have a mission of bringing education awareness and action to campus and getting people to understand a little bit more about this issue, getting people thinking about it and also what they can do about it, because I think all of these things are very tightly linked,” Rader said.
Each year, collaborative teams from organizations devoted to preventing human trafficking sit down and decide on what messages they will strive to emphasize and what objectives they believe will resonate most with members of the College’s community.
“This past year, we had two specific goals, but one of them was what in your career can you do to kind of end trafficking or prevent trafficking, so we looked at different careers,” Rader said. “So like, in medical professions knowing that you should be able to identify victims of trafficking, and that’s a really big push because I think — I don’t know the statistics off the top of my head — but there is a decent number of victims that you see, I think it is like one a week, especially primary care physicians.”
In addition to their role with Tribe Against Trafficking, Harris also works part-time at Latisha’s House, a Williamsburg non-profit organization that supports individuals affected by trafficking.
“Latisha’s House in Williamsburg is a safe house, but it’s more than just a home or temporary place; it’s a full program,” Harris said. “Residents are at the house from typically six months to 18 months just depending on situations. It’s everyone’s own personal journey.”
Harris volunteered at Latisha’s House over the summer while staying in Williamsburg and gained an invaluable personal glimpse into the impacts of trafficking and its presence in throughout Tidewater Virginia.
“I have already done my own research into what trauma is, how it affects your brain, and what survivors go through, but having so much one on one experience with everyone in the house really taught me a lot about how different it is for every person,” Harris said. “You really have to meet people on their level.”
Post-traumatic stress disorder is common among trafficking survivors, and Harris developed effective ways of interacting with and supporting individuals struggling with PTSD while working at Latisha’s House.
“It’s very rare that we get a resident who isn’t struggling with PTSD, just because of the nature of what everyone’s been through,” Harris said. “All of those experiences in such a small space blows up from time to time, and you just have to know how to manage that and know when to call for backup and all of those things.”
Along with her role with Tribe Against Trafficking, Rader also works with the organization Human Engagement and Response to Trafficking. HEART was founded by five undergraduate women in January 2017 following a Branch Out alternative break trip, a program at the College that allows students to work with different organizations during their school breaks, in Baltimore, where they worked with an anti-sex trafficking organization. Rader joined HEART the spring of her freshman year and started Tribe Against Trafficking a year later partially from the formative experiences she had gained while working with HEART.
HEART also seeks to uplift people and establish their own self-worth because human trafficking at its most basic definition is an explicit form of denigrative exploitation, according to Rader.
“This is something that I have been really passionate about since middle school,” Rader said.
Willet believes that his task force can play an instrumental role in supporting survivors who have endured trafficking-related crimes.
“It’s a really cool opportunity to work on a crime that has really real victims, which is near and dear to my heart,” Willets said. “Not saying some crimes are more important than others, but it’s fulfilling on a personal level to work on some cases where you have someone who is really truly in need, someone who really truly is in danger.”
According to Harris, victims of trafficking do not conform to a specific mold, and public perceptions of what trafficked individuals “look like” can make it more challenging for survivors to realize that they are being trafficked. This cyclical relationship of denial decreases the likelihood that trafficked individuals become aware of their status and inhibits them from seeking steps to alleviate the situation they’ve been coerced into.
“Trafficking is a really interesting narrative; you often won’t realize that you’re being trafficked,” Harris said. “I think a lot of the narrative feels like it might be problematic and that’s something that you have to grapple with, especially once you start working on an issue like this. Agency is the most important thing. People that are in the life, they often don’t have a lot of agency, and it’s not your job to tell them, ‘you don’t have any agency, come with me.’ They have to come to that conclusion on their own.”
Willets’ department emphasizes a survivor-centered approach when dealing with human trafficking incidents by making the process as comfortable as possible for survivors and encouraging facilitation with organizations throughout the Williamsburg and greater Hampton Roads area that can assist survivors through all stages of their legal case processes.
Part of Willets’ role on his task force is to improve education to bolster awareness about human trafficking. Willets urges members of the Williamsburg community, including students at the College, to confront their biases regarding human trafficking and to acknowledge the diversity of those affected.
“It kind of transcends ethnographies, demographics, stuff like that,” Willets said. “It’s kind of hard to put a finger on it and say ‘it’s this woman, it’s this man, it’s these children.’ It’s all of the above. So, it’s many people with different socioeconomic backgrounds. You also have to consider that there are different types of trafficking.”
Willets explained that human trafficking can constitute either sex trafficking or labor trafficking, where a person is held against their will in a job and has no freedom to seek alternative occupation. Willets also noted that his department has increasingly dealt with more cases involving women and individuals afflicted by mental illness.
Staying Informed: Tips to Avoid Human Trafficking
Practice situational awareness
Know your friends
Be aware of people’s motives
Don’t travel with strangers
Look out for friends
Rader believes that understanding human trafficking provides an important lens for attempting to understand and address other social issues. Given the plethora of forms trafficking can take — including guerilla trafficking, sex trafficking in prostitution and pornography, tourism trafficking and social media trafficking — devoting effort to preventing trafficking-related crimes allows for a broader understanding about how to effectively combat social ills.
“I really think of it in a lot of ways as a really culminating, just like horrific thing that happens to someone when nothing else has kind of gone right,” said Rader. “So, it is a really interesting paradigm to look through a lot of other social issues at because so many of them can feed into that. And like I said, it can happen to anyone, but you can look at issues of immigration, prison issues, you can look at LGBTQ+ issues, women’s rights, children’s rights, foster care, any of these things can play into it at such a deep and intricate level.”
Harris feels that Tribe Against Trafficking is an important initiative for increasing student awareness and creating a space for more conversations about trafficking, as well as antecedent social issues that facilitate the perpetuation of trafficking. Last spring, they held various awareness events, including tabling, promotion and fundraising for organizations supporting survivors such as Safe House of Hope, Butterfly House and Latisha’s House.
“Through Tribe Against Trafficking, we try to raise awareness, because there are always individual choices you can make to help solve the issue, but also knowledge of the issue on a greater scale leads to broader social movements that dismantle the systems that create trafficking,” Harris said.
Tribe Against Trafficking also helped coordinate a social justice symposium in Lodge One featuring various on-campus clubs including Amnesty International, Someone You Know and UndocuTribe. The symposium aimed to explore the variety of forms that trafficking can take, as well as how certain groups, including undocumented individuals, may be especially vulnerable.
“People that are immigrants and don’t have documented status are super vulnerable to trafficking, because there’s an inherent power dynamic between anyone who is a citizen and anyone who isn’t,” Harris said. “That’s typically — especially in the workforce — very easily exploited.”
Rader also stressed the importance of education and awareness in combatting the issue of human trafficking. She said she believes that attending events like the ones held by Tribe Against Trafficking provides students at the College with a more comprehensive understanding of how trafficking affects Williamsburg, even if it does not affect students directly.
“Overarchingly, we have a mission of bringing education awareness and action to campus and getting people to understand a little bit more about this issue, getting people thinking about it and also what they can do about it, because I think all of these things are very tightly linked,” Radar said.
According to Willets, the Hampton Roads area is frequently placed as the 13th highest for human trafficking in the country. However, he has noticed that awareness around trafficking has improved over the years, which he hopes will help reduce trafficking cases in the future.
He credits the tourism industry of the Historic Triangle area as a predominant influence on why trafficking occurs more frequently than elsewhere in the country, as well as the predominance of highways and hotels in an area.
“Definitely think about hotels, motels, venue — you need a venue for these crimes,” said Willets. “What are the motives; are there major highways cutting through, and what is the population? Is it a transient population? You know, Hampton Roads is a military, transient population. All that stuff can relate and encourage human trafficking in some ways. … It is credible enough where my bosses have obviously said we should sit down and assign someone to do this task force.”
Around the College specifically, Willets explained that the Colonial Williamsburg area is usually not a hot sport for human trafficking because the College is situated in an area that is relatively disadvantageous to traffickers. Willets added that he is not aware of any active cases around the College currently.
“You have to look at the things that are advantageous to traffickers: cheap housing, which you are a pretty good distance from,” Willets said. “We have a pretty sizeable hotel motel population in this city, and you are pretty far from those… So William and Mary, specifically, is it possible right up around here? Absolutely — again there is variety of trafficking that can take on specific forms.”
Similarly, Harris said she believes that college students are typically less vulnerable to trafficking because of their age and privilege, but stressed that it is important to be vigilant and stay educated.
“The average age for entry into trafficking in the U.S. is somewhere between 13 and 16; it’s a lot of people who are in the foster care system that don’t have stable home environments, that already have a history of trauma that leaves them more vulnerable to be exploited by pimps and traffickers,” Harris said. “It’s looking out for each other in a lot of ways, I think, more than looking out for yourself.”
Harris encourages students on campus to stay up to date and educated on trafficking, as well as to keep in mind the intersectional aspect of the issue.
“Educate yourself, but also work to educate those around you,” Harris said. “It’s such an intersectional issue. You need to advocate for the myriad of ways it affects people. People of color are at a higher risk, trans people are at a higher risk … and so, how do we change the system to better support those people to lower the vulnerabilities, which is the most important thing.”
A previous version of this article misrepresented an interviewed person’s gender identity/pronouns. The Flat Hat Magazine takes self-identification seriously and works to rectify any mistakes when possible. Message the editor with any concerns should the need arise: editor@magazine.flathatnews.com.