Last week’s program at the McComb Rotary Club was a good example of how important information is failing to register with people. Specifically, with me.
Lori Hill, the Mississippi Bureau of Investigation’s state human trafficking coordinator, was the speaker. In 35 minutes, I learned more about Mississippi’s trafficking problem than I ever have.
For example, I naively figured that trafficking in the state involved people from out of state bringing young people into the state for prostitution. I was wrong.
Hill said people tend to think of trafficking as what was portrayed in “Sound of Freedom,” a 2023 movie about busting up a global child sex ring. For Mississippi purposes, that is wrong, too.
“That is not typically what it looks like in Mississippi,” Hill said. “That’s not what we see in Mississippi.”
Those incorrect views of human trafficking give us a distance from the problem. It’s not here, we might think, and it’s not something we have to worry about.
Hill popped that bubble.
“I promise you it’s happening here in McComb,” she said, adding that trafficking, for either sex or labor, is a problem in rural areas.
“What it may look like, it may look like a kid, exhausted at school, putting their head down on their desk and sleeping,” she said.
“It may be that they are having to do things at night, like favors for friends of Granddaddy.”
A second common example is when someone gets a young person hooked on drugs and forces them into the sex trade by promising to supply their habit. Hill said this is what happens to many women with a sunken face and missing teeth who are arrested for prostitution. She reminded us they’re not doing it of their free will.
She also told a couple of stories of teens who had been manipulated online into running away from home.
Bottom line, most of the human trafficking in Mississippi is being done by people who live here, and their victims also live in the state.
So here’s my question: Why doesn’t this get more attention? Adults and children are being abused, and it seems like no one’s concerned.
Maybe part of it is the “ick” factor. Coercing people, usually vulnerable women, into prostitution is uncomfortable to discuss.
I should apologize to Hill here, because after taking the picture that was on last Saturday's front page, I complained to her that law enforcement agencies like MBI are not getting enough information about trafficking out to the public.
MBI regularly sends emails. Many of them are about “officer involved shootings.” They provide minimal information and always include the sentence, “No further comment will be made.”
Which is fine. You don’t have to put your whole case online. But I checked a year of MBI emails, and if there was one about any human trafficking case, I missed it. Does this mean nobody is being arrested for a problem that we are told is statewide?
It’s not just MBI. Other agencies don’t go into the details either. In August, a press release from Attorney General Lynn Fitch’s office noted the conviction of a Gulfport man for promoting prostitution.
Well, was this trafficking? How was the guy doing it? No information at all.
There are fewer reporters today, which means we have less time to explore difficult topics like trafficking. Law enforcement agencies that go after these cases need to do a better job of alerting the public to the scope of the problem.
Hill explained it clearly. Her peers need to provide details. The public won’t be compelled to address a problem unless they know about it.
