Doctors and other health care professionals are missing signs of human trafficking in their patients — a problem that a new project at The Center for Violence Prevention and Recovery at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center is aiming to solve with grant money from the U.S. Office of Victims of Crime.
“Victims are oftentimes threatened with severe consequences for disclosing anything about their situation, so they are not going to necessarily be proactively offering up that they are being exploited,” said Cynthia Kennedy, project lead for the initiative called the Trafficking Intervention Project.
The project, in partnership with Brigham and Women’s Hospital, aims to expand support services to victims of labor and sex trafficking and train health care providers to identify potential signs of trafficking.
Boston native Jasmine Grace, a sex trafficking survivor, said, “I saw my primary care physician all the time and while I wasn’t able to leave my situation, I believe they did plant seeds of hope.”
Research published in the Annals of Health Law shows that as many as 87% of trafficking victims report seeing a doctor during their trafficking situation.
But, according to a survey report from the Coalition to Abolish Slavery & Trafficking, very few individuals are identified as trafficking victims by their health care provider.
Kennedy said that could be because trafficking can manifest in many ways and doctors have time constraints with patients and may not recognize the signs such as branding, bruises, malnourishment, unmet medical or hygiene needs, or vague responses to personal questions.
“It’s pure ignorance, if you don’t know you don’t know,” Grace said. “Just like regular people who are driving around their communities don’t spot the massage parlors.” She added that victims will often hide or deny signs of trafficking.
“It’s so hidden in plain sight you just miss it,” said Grace, whose organization Bags of Hope is partnering with BIDMC to help with the Trafficking Intervention Project.
As part of the project, advocates and a peer specialist will support victims with medical care, substance use recovery, housing, counseling, legal advocacy, training, employment, food and clothing.
RIA House, a Massachusetts organization that provides services to women who have experienced sexual slavery, will also partner with and advise BIDMC’s project.
Executive director Heather Wightman said she has seen many clients who don’t feel comfortable sharing their experience with their doctor, but who also say they had been to the doctor several times during their trafficking experience and were never asked about what they were going through.
“Providers are often so regimented to only do specific things,” said Wightman. “People can get overwhelmed pretty quickly, you don’t ask anything that you don’t want to hear the answer to.”
The National Human Trafficking Hotline says it receives an average of 150 calls per day.
According to the International Labor Organization, 1 in 4 victims of modern slavery are children. Women and girls account for 99% of victims in the commercial sex industry, and 58% in other sectors.
“There’s so many people that are suffering and you can make that assumption when you look at the billions of dollars being made by the market itself,” said Wightman.
