t’s been 15 days since Colleen Rud heard from an underage human trafficking victim she knows in the Abilene area. The girl is moved around often. As a case management advocate for the Regional Victim Crisis Center in Abilene, Rud tries to contact victims once a week, but they don’t always respond. She constantly checks her phone waiting for a call or text, hoping in the meantime that they’re safe.

Human trafficking happens in West Texas. It’s happening in your city, and it could be happening to someone you know. It destroys families, is connected to other criminal activities, impacts social services, affects the rule of law and national security, and impacts health.

The human trafficking advocacy movement gained traction two years ago when state legislators declared human trafficking a public health issue, and HB 2059 became law. (See The Bill Breakdown.) The legislation mandates training for anyone with direct patient contact — including those who work the front desk.

To provide resources and support to the community, university leadership turned to Julie St. John — and colleagues Heather Guest, Pearl Merritt, Colleen Rud and Kelli White — to build a compliance strategy, implement the new law into university protocol and provide community outreach and education.

In the process, St. John discovered many different departments, community organizations and clinics working independently to combat human trafficking. The TTUHSC Human Trafficking Collaborative (HTC) was established to pull these groups into one central hub of synergized effort — a unique approach that engages community partners.

While the effort began in Abilene, it has expanded to include every TTUHSC campus.

HTC has approximately 40 members and also includes representation from Texas Tech University and community stakeholders such as Rud and White, a family nurse practitioner at Neurosurgery Associates of West Texas in Abilene.

HTC members are divided into four working groups — prevention, education, research and survivor services. Some of the members are also working on human trafficking task forces at the state level.

According to St. John, putting human trafficking through a public health lens decides:

• Who’s involved in the fight.
• How those people are involved.
• Ways to identify changes to reduce enabling factors.

To many, human trafficking is victims taken to other countries as sex slaves — because it’s what they’ve seen in movies, like “Taken.” And while that’s true, it’s not the most common form of trafficking and not primarily what’s seen in West Texas. The majority of victims in Rud’s caseload have been trafficked by someone they know or met onlin who gains the victim’s trust. Someone who has or develops a relationship with them — a pastor, a relative or a family friend.

The average age of people brought into sex trafficking is between 12 and 14 years old, according to the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. Although most victims are female, now younger boys are also being trafficked — regardless, all victims are groomed and controlled.

Trafficking usually begins as a relationship between the victim and the person who’s earned their trust. The trafficker learns the victim’s vulnerabilities and capitalizes on them through trafficking. The victim’s family may be poor and nee help paying bills, for example, or the victim may want a new car or new clothes. Many of the victims have high-risk factors like sexual assault or family violence. They may also have prior experience with the Texas Department of Family and Protective Services, Rud added.

Sometimes it’s parents themselves who traffic their children, St. John said. Americans hear about this happening in other countries, but it also happens here. Parents who need money or a drug fix look the other way when someone takes their daughter for a few days to be used for sex in exchange.

But some victims come from a stable family and are just curious.

The U.S. reported 11,500 cases of human trafficking in 2019, according to the Human Trafficking Hotline. Texas made up 1,080 of those cases, but many cases are never reported. Three years earlier, a study out of the University of Texas reported 79,000 victims of youth or minor sex trafficking at any given time. The statistics don’t add up. “There are different numbers depending on what source you use,” White explained. “The discrepancy in data is why there are now research teams specifically dedicated to Texas. This is another goal of the HTC, to start accumulating accurate data statewide and locally.”

St. John said Houston, Dallas and El Paso are the hotspots in Texas, along with the Interstate 10 and 20 corridors, convenient routes for traffickers to move victims throughout the state, making Abilene a popular location as well.

There are many reasons it’s hard for a victim to step away from a trafficking situation:

• It’s a better situation than their home, where there was abuse, or they’re now eating regularly and have a place to sleep.
• They may not realize they’re being trafficked. Trafficking is like domestic violence, and it takes an average of seven times before the person being trafficked has a light bulb moment.
• Crippling drug addiction.
• Threats. One girl wouldn’t leave a situation because the trafficker said he’d kill her family. Her mom contacted White, who told the mom it’s a lot easier for the trafficker to move on and find another victim, but the threat was very real to the girl. Eventually, White helped the mom rescue her daughter
• Laws still penalize the victims for drug offenses, prostitution and other crimes, which adds to their trauma and makes them hesitant to talk to law enforcement to help prosecute the trafficker, said Rud. Often traffickers even let victims go to jail so they can recruit more victims.

Convincing elected officials to even agree sex trafficking happens within the areas they represent has been a challenge, said Rud. People don’t want to think sex trafficking happens in their communities.

Members of the HTC say there’s a gap between what elected officials believe and what the people working daily with human trafficking victims know. That gap is closing with legislation like HB2059 and HB390. Signed by Gov. Greg Abbott in May, HB390 mandates that hotels and motels train their staff on human trafficking and employees who report it cannot be terminated.

And in this year’s legislative session, four bills were proposed to toughen laws, improve investigative and prosecution tools and protect victims. HB1540/SB1036 was the only one that made it to the governor’s desk.

Human trafficking may never be eradicated, but Rud will keep working with victims. She knows she may be the first stable person they’ve had in their lives and works to build caring relationships with them.

If they need someone to listen, answer questions or be an advocate at a hospital, she’s there.

“It’s a stressful job,” she added. “I do arts and crafts to relax, but sometimes I don’t have the energy to do that. I just had a tough week, and it was all I could do to get my nails done and just sit there,” she said.

But every now and then, there’s a happy ending.

The underage girl being trafficked around the Abilene area was rescued. Rud can’t share details because it would put the investigation at risk. As draining as Rud’s job can be, when someone is rescued from human trafficking, she’s rewarded.

Then her phone rings.