MASIE works to rehabilitate trafficking victims. They offer mentors and referral services for housing, health care and legal issues.
Trafficking Information and Referral Hotline
1-888-3737-888
Federal hotline connects human trafficking victims with nongovernmental organizations in their area.
By Kim Gengler
Chong Kim, an American citizen, was bought and sold within our country’s borders. Tortured and forced to have sex with strangers, Kim was a victim of human trafficking for four years. Human trafficking—the transportation of people for forced labor, sexual exploitation and other illegal activities—is a global issue that affects mostly women and children. It is also a growing issue in Minnesota.
According to the Central Intelligence Agency, as many as 50,000 women and children are trafficked throughout the United States each year. They work as prostitutes, laborers and servants. The Twin Cities is the 13th most heavily trafficked metropolitan area in the U.S., according to the Justice Department, but the actual number of people transported to and through Minnesota isn’t known. Many trafficked individuals come from other countries, but, as in Kim’s case, U.S. citizens can also become victims of trafficking. Some of them come from rural Minnesota.
Born in South Korea, Kim came to the United States when she was just a toddler. She was 19 and living in Dallas when a young man who said he was in the military romanced her and convinced her to go with him to Florida. The couple never reached Florida; they ended up in an abandoned house in northern Oklahoma instead. There the man handcuffed Kim and destroyed her identification papers. After escaping, Kim said, she couldn’t find assistance without identification. A woman from an escort service approached Kim and offered to help. She told Kim the escort service just provided dates for men and Kim wouldn’t have to have sex with them. Kim accepted the job, but shortly after was raped and sold to someone in Las Vegas.
Once in Las Vegas, Kim was transported with 40 to 50 other girls from warehouse to warehouse, state to state. Many of the other girls were 16 or younger and didn’t speak English. Kim watched as other girls were beaten and even shot when they got sick or didn’t move fast enough. “To this day I still hear screams. I still see their faces,” she said.
Kim’s captors also tortured her by burying her in a bathtub full of ice. To escape the abuse, Kim said she tried to commit suicide. “I wanted to die. They loved torturing me because they knew I wanted to die,” she said.
Ultimately Kim determined the only way to escape was to be bought by one man and convince him she wanted to learn how to become a trafficker. After she gained his trust, Kim ran away. With the help of a local center for women in prostitution she came to Minnesota to rebuild her life.
At first Kim was afraid to share her story; she thought people wouldn’t believe her. “It took me nearly 10 years to come out with my story. I didn’t even know what it was called,” she said. But after hearing an official at a conference on human trafficking say U.S. citizens weren’t being trafficked, Kim decided to speak out. “I felt like I had to stand up and do something. I can’t do nothing,” Kim said. “I feel every time I speak I speak for the 1,000 voices that were tortured and murdered.”
Kim also founded a nonprofit organization to help victims. Minorities and Survivors Improving Empowerment (MASIE) assists victims with housing, connects them with legal services and helps them to get help for drug addiction and mental illness.
As recognition of the scope of human trafficking grows, other organizations are working to meet the needs of victims locally.
Civil Society, a local nonprofit organization, received a grant from the Department of Justice to set up the Minnesota Human Trafficking Watch. The project will educate the public, provide services to victims and collaborate with law enforcement to help identify victims and make sure they get the resources they need. Civil Society has already provided assistance to 24 international victims of trafficking found in Minnesota.
State cracks down
Last year, the state Legislature made human trafficking a felony punishable by up to 15 years in prison and required that the Department of Public Safety compile and analyze data on human trafficking in Minnesota.
In January, Gov. Pawlenty proposed increasing the maximum sentence for human trafficking from a 15-year to a 20-year felony when the victim is under 18. The governor’s proposal would also increase the maximum sentence for misusing documents for trafficking purposes from five years to 10 years. Pawlenty also announced a task force to work on strategies to catch and prosecute traffickers.
“We’re really glad to...have legislation,” said Lauren Gilchrist, the outreach coordinator at the University of Minnesota’s Deborah E. Powell Center for Women’s Health. The center works to educate health care professionals about signs that may indicate a patient is a victim of trafficking: if a patient comes in with someone who refuses to leave the patient alone or who won’t allow an independent interpreter; has untreated medical conditions; or doesn’t know where they live or work. “At this point in Minnesota we need to be educated,” Gilchrist said. “Our message is that this is a global issue in Minnesota.”
The victims of human trafficking
• Approximately 50 percent of all victims of trafficking are children.
• Sex trafficking is the most lucrative sector of the trade in people. It involves force, fraud or coercion for the purposes of commercial sex.
• Trafficking victims are often involved in industries where they are “invisible,” including domestic servitude, sweatshops, restaurant and hotel businesses, farm work, construction, begging and peddling, the sex industry and servile marriage.
What to do if you think someone is a victim of trafficking
• Do not intervene, because you could put the victim in jeopardy.
• Contact law enforcement or organizations like MASIE or Civil Society.
Source: Civil Society
Reader Comments
Posted: Wednesday, July 08, 2009
Article comment by:
Sandra Page
I have know Chong for most of my life and let me tell you she is truely an amazing woman. I think she must be the strongest woman I have ever come across. I just want her to know just how proud I am to know someone like her! Your strength and courage amaze me!
Posted: Monday, November 12, 2007
Article comment by:
JG
I have had the opportunity to Meet Ms. Kim this last weekend downtown. and let me say that I have more respect for this woman that I ever have had for an other human being. She was such a delightful, strong, proud woman who didn't hesitate to share her story with anyone. I wish the best to her!!
Posted: Wednesday, April 05, 2006
Article comment by:
Lani Suarez
I work for PRIDE (from PRostitution to Independence, Dignity and Equality), a program of Family & Children's Service. PRIDE is a nationally recognized and highly successful program that helps women and teenagers to get out and stay out of prostitution. The program also works to change attitudes and systems that perpetuate prostitution. PRIDE is based on self-help, advocacy and support for women and teenage girls. Outreach and assistance to the children of prostitution victims is also offered in jails, correctional facilities, district courts and other agencies. PRIDE has been around for more than 27 years. It is testimony to how much our society values women and children that this problem still exists in this day and age. For example, we can send a man to the moon, but we can’t stop human trafficking. I read Kim’s story per Rosalie Sundin’s comments and she is correct. Minnesota women are being exploited and trafficked every single day from state to state.
Human trafficking is a serious problem. It is another form of human slavery. I strongly agree with Lin Chew. If we are going to make a difference in preventing trafficking and exploitation of women and children, we must all come together and find ways to address the issues by collaborating with local organizations that are concerned and take this issue seriously.
Lani Suarez, PRIDE Program Supervisor
Family & hildren's Service
4123 East Lake Street
Mpls, MN. 55406
(612) 728-2064
Fax: (612) 729-2616
Lani.suarez@fcsmn.org
www.everyfamilymatters.org
Posted: Monday, March 27, 2006
Article comment by:
Linda Miller
I believe that the federal hotline number connects victims who call to an organization in Chicago.Victims need local legal services, shelter, medical, dental,mental health services, food, translation and transportation which Civil Society can provide.
Posted: Thursday, March 23, 2006
Article comment by:
Rosalie Sundin
Minnesota citizens have been trafficked for sexual purposes long before Kim Chong was even born. Sexual trafficking of MN citizens is common, goes on every day through the so-called "strip dance circuit" and through one-one contacts with pimps. Unfortunately, this is old history. What is needed is not newer laws, it is enforcement of existing ones.
