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Help center fights against human trafficking

WHEELING — With U.S. Attorney Bill Powell’s office and others teaming up to create an anti-human trafficking website, Megan Palmer of the Upper Ohio Valley Sexual Assault Help Center holds hope that more will be done to help victims of sexual assault and human trafficking.

The help center is a member of the West Virginia Human Trafficking Task Force and is the main crisis center serving this area.

“We are going to be the ones first responding to the victims of human trafficking and so the Attorney General’s Office and the task force has made huge strides in combating and identifying and serving victims of human trafficking,” Palmer said.

The U.S. Attorney’s Office is joining forces with local law enforcement officers, service providers, victim advocates, educators and representatives of the West Virginia Attorney General’s Office to unveil a website, stophumantraffickingwv.org, dedicated to ending human trafficking. The task force will add more content to the web page as the year progresses.

Palmer commends all involved for getting the program up and running in addition to progress from last year, including legislation clarifying the definition of human trafficking.

“It used to be you had to traffic two or more victims and now it’s just one. That was a huge, huge battle just to identify the people that are doing this, and in our state specifically. It’s a lot of familial trafficking,” Palmer said, adding in some cases parents sell their children for sex out of desperation because they no longer can afford to feed their drug addiction.

Palmer hopes to continue the positive momentum in 2018 toward improving victims’ rights — including passage of a “sexual assault victims’ bill of rights” in the West Virginia Legislature. A similar bill was introduced last year but did not make it through both houses before the session ended.

With only 21 out 8,000 human trafficking cases reported to the National Human Trafficking Resource Center Hotline coming from West Virginia, federal law enforcement officers believe the figure underrepresents the seriousness of the issue in the state.

“I think as the awareness kind of increases, it’s going to start to increase people coming forward,” Palmer said.

According to Palmer, the Ohio Valley is a prime area for such crimes to take place.

“We are considered a high-intensity drug trafficking area, so a lot of the drugs flow through here,” she said. “Therefore, so does the trafficking because we’re on Interstate 70 … . As wonderful as Wheeling is, it really is a breeding ground, unfortunately, for some of the seedy activity.”

Palmer said there are numerous telltale signs that human trafficking is taking place of which the public should be aware — including malnourishment, evidence of physical abuse, or a lack of identification documents, to name a few. Sometimes, she said, traffickers will brand their victims with tattoos.

Other signs of a person being sexually abused or trafficked, according to Palmer, are avoiding eye contact or interaction with authority figures such as law enforcement, and being unable to speak for themselves.

“You might see those things in truck stops, rest areas, restaurants and sometimes if you see a man with a bunch of younger girls with him and it looks out of place to you, our general rule of thumb is call and they’ll screen it out to the proper authorities,” she said. “And if it’s nothing, then it’s nothing — but at least if you feel that something is up, then try and do something about it.”

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