‘These are people’s lives that we’re talking about’
Human trafficking training law not enforced, advocates say
A 2016 state law requiring all hotel employees to receive human trafficking awareness training is not being enforced, experts say.
Due to a lack of resources, the legislature did not set up an enforcement mechanism when it passed the mandate five years ago, said Rep. Jillian Gilchrest, D-West
Hartford, chairwoman of the state’s Trafficking in Persons Council. Experts also are concerned that many state residents are not aware of the issue of human trafficking and lack of resources contributed to lack of enforcement.
The final version of the bill mandating the training simply asked businesses to
internally track their employees’ training records.
“I’m frustrated because these are people’s lives that we’re talking about, and we enact policies because they have the potential to save people from experiencing significant trauma,” she said.
“When we don’t have the means to enforce those policies … we know that that means lives are being jeopardized,” Gilchrest said.
Experts worry most members of the public are unaware of Connecticut’s human trafficking problem. Though human trafficking tends to be underreported and relevant data is limited, the available numbers are alarming, they say.
Between 2016 and 2018, the state Department of Children and Families received roughly 200 reports annually of suspected cases of child trafficking , according to Quinnipiac University School of Law’s Human Trafficking Prevention Project. The program conducts awareness campaigns and offers training on how to spot signs of trafficking.
According to the National Human Trafficking Hotline, there were 40 Connecticut human trafficking cases reported to it in 2015 and 52 cases reported to it in 2019.
But the exact number of child trafficking victims is unknown “and likely to be significantly higher than the reported rate given that it continues to be difficult to identify victims due to lack of selfidentification and recognition as victims, the hidden nature of human trafficking, and the use of the internet in its facilitation,” according to an antitrafficking report by DCF.
Connecticut “is an attractive location for trafficking activities given its high-density interstate highways connecting New York and Massachusetts,” the report notes.
Kaylyn Fagan, a third-year law student and the project’s executive chairperson, defined trafficking as “making someone do work by using force, fraud or coercion.” Perpetrators may, for example, threaten their victims’ families or use blackmail, she said.
Trafficking does not always involve smuggling people across borders, according to Fagan, who said trafficking can happen to anyone but disproportionately affects immigrants and communities of color.
While trafficking takes place across service industries, sex traffickers often target hotels for use in their operations, experts said.
“In sex trafficking, transient locations ... are key,” Fagan said. “If you think about it, how often are you paying attention to other hotel guests? … That’s a place where trafficking can be happening right in front of your eyes.”
Between 2016 and 2020, 400 of the country’s 499 federal criminal cases involving sex trafficking listed hotels as sex act locations, according to an email from Lindsey Roberson, director of legal engagement at the Human Trafficking Institute.
When Connecticut’s hotel employee training mandate was proposed, it included language enabling the state to fine noncompliant operators of hotels, motels and other lodging businesses. The revenue would go toward police investigations of prostitution and human trafficking, the bill said.
But since the state could not find the capacity to carry out enforcement, Gilchrest said, the final version of the bill omitted an enforcement mechanism.
“There just never has been the follow-up,” she said, noting that a government entity would need to be responsible for maintaining a database tracking compliance.
Five years later, the resource dilemma remains.
Support
At the time the bill passed, the Permanent Commission on the Status of Women was a likely candidate to track compliance, according to Gilchrest. It since has been consolidated with five other commissions and had its resources slashed, she said.
Gilchrest hopes Connecticut will update the legislation.
“Where we’d like to go in the future is that that fine (for lack of compliance) …would go to support victim services,” she said. “It would be great if we could get the enforcement mechanism in place.”
Even if compliance rates are unknown, those familiar with the issue believe the training and other forms of awareness campaigns are making a difference.
Sheila Hayre, faculty adviser to Quinnipiac’s Human Trafficking Prevention Project, said reports of trafficking have “exponentially increased” in recent years.
The trend likely is an indication of higher awareness around the issue rather than rising trafficking levels, she said.
In Connecticut, for 2013 through 2018. there were 513 human trafficking-related arrests, from 141 arrests in 2014 to 58 arrests in 2016, according to the Office of Legislative Research.
The Connecticut Lodging Association, or CLA, works with the DCF’s Human Antitrafficking Response Team to connect hotels, motels and similar businesses with training resources, according to CLA Executive Director Ginny Kozlowski.
(In addition to Quinnipiac’s program, HART holds offers training sessions.)
Especially when it comes to brand hotels, much of the lodging industry long has been battling to keep trafficking out of its facilities, Kozlowski said. Still, the mandatory training has “without a doubt” made some businesses and front-line employees more cognizant, she said.
She thinks training should be brought to a wider audience.
“I think there isn’t a broad recognition of how significant this challenge is. … We’ve been
doing this training for several years (but) it’s not as if the problem has stopped,” she said. “(There’s) got to be widespread education.”
If the state were to start tracking compliance, Kozlowski said, training should be mandatory across other sectors.
Experts agree awareness is a problem, particularly around labor trafficking, victims of which may be forced to work in restaurants, homes and other locations for little to no pay.
Trafficking can happen in any context where services are performed, according to Alicia Kinsman, an attorney for the Connecticut Institute for Refugees and Immigrants.
On any given year, CIRI represents between 50 and 100 human trafficking victims, according to Kinsman. Most of those cases involve labor trafficking and not sex trafficking, she said.
She named examples of clients forced to work as domestic servants and threatened with serious physical harm if they did not comply. And the restaurant industry has seen instances of workers being threatened with deportation, she said.
In other cases, traffickers recruit victims through legal visa processes, but “once they get here their employer confiscates their passport (and) pays them very little or nothing at all,” she said.
“In the United States … people are less aware of labor trafficking even though the numbers are probably much higher” than sex trafficking, said Hayre, the Quinnipiac Trafficking Prevention Project’s faculty adviser.
The project’s latest awareness campaign focuses on labor trafficking, which also could become a subject of future legislation.
This month, the state’s Trafficking in Persons Council is launching a subcommittee to address labor trafficking, according to Gilchrest.
“We haven’t even begun to scratch the surface of” that problem, she said.
The National Human Trafficking Hotline provides referrals for human trafficking victims and fields tips about potential trafficking cases. It can be reached at