The Politics of Helping Victims
Posted by yabastablog on July 31, 2009
It really is too bad that there has to be politics involved in helping victims of trafficking. I have found in my time of working in this field, that it is not just about helping the victim. What this line of work truly entails is politics as usual: who you know, who has the money, who has the power, and what you can do for me.
There is also another unique obstacle to working in this field: not every person working to help victims and fight human trafficking defines it the same way! For example, the law is quite general in stating that one must prove that a “severe form of trafficking” has occurred. If I know that one law enforcement officer will comply with my definition of a severe form of trafficking, I will connect with this law enforcement officer to help me. I will not contact the law enforcement officer who thinks that all trafficking cases are smuggling cases and does not put the victim first. It involves building relationships and using those relationships to help the victim, and this sometimes means you have to ostracize others that are also working in the field because they may hurt your chances of helping the victim.
All of these things hinder our ability to serve victims. Unfortunately, here in San Antonio we have had some problems in determining who has “the right” to serve the victim first. Why does there have to be infighting among our social service agencies? We all belong to a human trafficking coalition, so why can’t we work together? After all, the end goal is always to serve the victim. Why should it matter who has the money, or who has the grant? Private agencies belong to the coalition all the time – they fill in the gap in the areas where the government funded agencies can not go. For example, private agencies can help victims who do not qualify as victims under the human trafficking law. They are extremely useful in our coalition because they have extra funding that government funded agencies do not have.
I guess corruption and power will always get in the way, even when it comes to working together in a field that involves helping victims. It still is so surprising to me, even though I have seen it happen in international organizations in Thailand, to grassroot organziations in Europe, to governmental organizations in the US. Even though we are all working for a good cause, the search for power, acknowledgment and prestige always get in the way of our true goal: getting help to a victim of slavery.
Blasi Di said
It’s awful there are law enforcement that you cannot rely on to help fight trafficking. What is the ideal role that law enforcement can play in helping trafficking victims and working with social service agencies? Is their cooperation sometimes essential, and what can an advocate do if they refuse to cooperate? What kinds of changes to the law can we all demand to give law enforcement less discretion to ignore trafficking victims?
As for social service agencies failure to cooperate, have you noticed any factors that improve coordination over competition between social service agencies? Do some trafficking social service communities do a better job of working together, and, if so, what do they do better?
yabastablog said
Thanks for the comment! You have asked some very thoughtful and useful questions.
For me, the ideal role of law enforcement is to help the victims. This entails employing a victim-centered approach. For example, many law enforcement expect the victim to cooperate with their investigation the same day they bring him or her in to be questioned. Most of the time, this is completely unfeasible. Victims need time to heal and time to completely understand the consequences of participating in a law enforcement investigation. We must always put the needs of the victim before all other factors. Law enforcement can ideally work together with social service providers by allowing social services to make the victims feel comfortable and safe and help him or her to trust enough to share their story. Once social services have confirmed that the victim is ready to talk, only then should law enforcement take his or her statement and begin a thorough investigation. This can be quite frustrating for law enforcement because they want to catch the perpetrators as fast as possible, but sometimes victims are just not ready to talk. So this victim-centered approach applied by both social services and law enforcement working together is always best. Social services need to make sure their law enforcement contacts have the same ideological attitude toward human trafficking–they must have the same definition at the very least.
If advocates or social services do not have a trusted law enforcement official at their disposal, they should find other means to help the victim. Advocates can turn to other governmental agencies to help with the investigation of a human trafficking case. For instance, the Dept. of Justice, and the Dept. of Labor are two agencies that can step in when contacting law enforcement is not practical. In most instances, advocates are urged to contact an attorney before making any decision to go to law enforcement, especially if the victim is foreign born and could be deported. For a T Visa or trafficking visa, law enforcement is not required to sign off on the paperwork, but their cooperation does help. However, there are always other ways to help the victim if law enforcement will not cooperate, like contacting the Dept. of Justice.
I believe, as far as the law is concerned, that the definition of human trafficking should be streamlined so that ALL agencies working on trafficking cases have the same idea of what human trafficking is. Different agencies have different ideas of what makes a trafficking case, and if these definitions are not streamlined, inter-agency cooperation will never occur.
As far as the cooperation between social service agencies goes, it all depends from community to community and town to town. Some agencies work amazingly well together and have no problems with competing for victims–they have a common understanding that they are there to cooperate together to best serve the victim. Some personalities make this cooperation difficult, and there is not much you can do about that unless you want to cause more problems. So, I think augmenting the availability of grants geared toward the different ways in which we help the victim will help. For example, more grants will be coming out for helping US citizens who have become victims of trafficking. Other grants are just for foreign nationals. The more grants for providing different types of services to victims will help in keeping social service agencies from competing as much. They may be forced to work together, and no one agency will have the monopoly. I believe the agencies in Austin work the best together. There is no competition and no one person or agency has a power trip of any kind. All those involved are very knowledgeable about the problem and they know the role they must play to help the victim. This makes serving the victim so much easier than in other communities.