Human trafficking awareness is essential to prevention, and college students can be at greater risk of victimization, Minneapolis and Hennepin county advocates said.

Minneapolis passed a resolution recognizing January as Human Trafficking Awareness Month while highlighting the laws and organizations working to prevent future trafficking and provide healing to trafficking victims. 

Lauren Martin, the former director of research at the University of Minnesota’s Urban Research and Outreach Engagement Center (UROC), said a desire to belong is a root cause of being recruited into human trafficking.

“But the trade-off for that belonging is, it’s a high price to pay for feeling like you belong,” Martin, who led UROC’s sex trading, trafficking and community well-being research initiative, said. “That just tells me as a society, we are really missing the mark on making sure that everybody feels like they have a place and that they’re worthy.”

Minnesota’s Safe Harbor Law, passed in two parts in 2011 and 2014, increased the age someone can be labeled a victim of sexual exploitation from age 18 to 24. 

The law also led to the creation of organizations like Hennepin County’s No Wrong Door and Minneapolis’ The Link. Both organizations work to prevent, respond and care for sexually exploited youth and young adults.

Kelly Reeves, the supportive services manager at Safe Harbor’s The Link, said the city’s resolution and growing the law’s victim age range helps increase intervention in sexual exploitation cases.

“As many people as we can get in that age range the more we can help them find stable housing, get a job, build that safety plan, finding a healthy community and hopefully making sure they don’t get back into the life as a victim of trafficking,” Reeves said.

The Link offers shelters, housing, therapy and healthcare resources to sexual exploitation survivors up to age 24, Reeves said. The organization also has survivor advisory committees where survivors can counsel one another. 

College students can be uniquely at risk for being sexually exploited, Martin said.

“There’s this almost stereotype that college kids are somehow that this issue doesn’t impact them or that poverty isn’t a problem for kids who are attending school,” Martin said.

Martin added that understanding the scope of sexual exploitation’s impact on college students is difficult because there is little research on it.

Tia Joy-Peterson, the program coordinator for No Wrong Door, said first-year students, living on their own and making their own choices for the first time, dealing with financial stressors, and failing to meet basic needs are some characteristics unique to college students that make them especially vulnerable to sexual exploitation.

Recent migration or relocation was the most common risk factor in likely victims of sex trafficking, applying to around 54% of victims in 2021, according to data from the National Human Trafficking Hotline.

No Wrong Door partners with community organizations, law enforcement and hospitals to ensure that young people being sexually exploited can reach out to anyone in their community for help.

Some red flags of sexual exploitation students can look for are sudden changes in appearance like getting new clothes or jewelry, their hair or nails done, having an unexplained amount of money, being unusually anxious and being scared of their dominating relationship, according to Reeves.

“Their facts don’t line up and they sometimes could be lying about maybe where they were, how they got there, an unexplained black eye or something and their stories seem to be kind of not making sense,” Reeves said.

Joy-Peterson, who used to work at the University of Minnesota’s Aurora Center, said there are not sufficient resources on college campuses about sexual exploitation and schools need to implement more programming about what healthy sexual relationships look like.

“It’s on universities to really start exploring different ways that they can have those conversations with college students,” Joy-Peterson said. “It’s on them to get more education on that high need.”

Reeves said she would like to see Safe Harbor laws apply to people of all ages, and spreading awareness about sexual exploitation and trafficking helps The Link and Safe Harbor achieve that.

“To be honest we’re trying to work ourselves out of our jobs as much as we can to fight to end sex trafficking and human trafficking here in Minnesota,” Reeves said.

If you are a victim of sexual exploitation and need help call 612-232-5428 for The Link’s crisis line. Call 1-866-223-1111 or text 612-399-9995 for the Day One Crisis Hotline.