Understanding human trafficking

Mt. Hood will host a special forum in the Town and Gown Room on Wednesday from 1 to 3 p.m. to highlight the grim reality of human trafficking.

Multnomah Co. Sheriff’s Dep. Keith Bickford, head of Multnomah County’s human trafficking task force, is the featured speaker.

He will discuss trafficking that is happening “not only abroad, but specifically here in Portland, Ore., as well,” said Jonathan Albi, ASG director of public safety at MHCC.

“It is a huge, huge concern,” Albi said. Bickford will cover “the whole gamut of human trafficking. Obviously, sex trafficking is a huge one, I think that accounts for the majority of human trafficking, but there are other elements to it as well.”

Albi said many don’t understand how serious the subject is. “I think a lot of people kind of have a contrived, made-up image or concept in their head of what human trafficking is,” he said.

Many get their ideas and information about human trafficking from movies such as “Taken,” he said. “We don’t really have a good grasp on just how real it is.”

A report issued by the United Nations Global Initiative to Fight Human Trafficking (UNGIFT) said “an estimated 2.5 million people are in forced labour (including sexual exploitation) at any given time as a result of trafficking.”

Most of these victims are between the ages of 18 and 24, and about 1.2 million of all individuals being trafficked are children, the report states.

“This hits close,” said Albi.

For example, within the past two weeks, 45 persons were taken into custody for trafficking and 16 young adults were “rescued in a two-week crackdown on prostitution in the New York-New Jersey area leading up to last Sunday’s Super Bowl,” according to an article published by the Reuters news agency.

Elsewhere, Texas judge Gregg Abbot called the Super Bowl (previously hosted in Dallas and Houston) the “single largest human trafficking incident in the United States.”

Albi said that Wednesday’s forum, which includes a Q-and-A session, will “be a great opportunity for not only MHCC students, but faculty, staff, and just the community around us to sit down, and hear what this man (Bickford) has to say.

“He’s an authority on human trafficking, and let’s all get informed and find out what we can do.”