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Ohio Attorney General Mike DeWine just released a new report on the scope of trafficking in Ohio. This is something that people need to become more aware of since there are many who still believe that trafficking or slavery only happens in developing countries. If your friends ever ask you whether trafficking exists in America, or in Ohio, you can definitely say “yes,” and now you can point them to this study. The full report is 69 pages long but here are some key points from the executive summary.

Law enforcement data and newspaper reports make clear that both sex trafficking and labor trafficking exist in Ohio. It is also clear that victims are native born as well as from foreign nations.

That much was known before the study was done. the team working on the project developed a research approach and methods to make some estimates on numbers in Ohio. Again, you can read the full report for details on how they did this, but here are some of their findings:

Our model allows us to estimate that there are 3,437  foreign born persons in Ohio who may beat-risk for both labor and/or sex trafficking, 783 of which are estimated to be trafficked into the labor or sex trade in Ohio.

…The team estimated that of those American born youth in Ohio, 2,879 are at-risk for sex trafficking, and another 1,078 youth have been trafficked into the sex trade over the course of a year.

If you want to learn more about trafficking in America this MSNBC web page has some interesting content, or you can read Theresa Flores’ book, The Slave Across the Street, which tells about her life as a sex slave in the Midwest.

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