WS green-lights Human Trafficking Summit

We are taught in school that the Emancipation Proclamation officially ended slavery, but it is estimated that 100,000 children are enslaved today in the US human trafficking market.
Fairfax County is the fifth largest human trafficking hub in the nation, and this situation will continue to threaten the lives of our young students until we raise awareness and spread the word.
In January, a summit to raise awareness about the dangers of human trafficking took place in the WS auditorium. Many experts on the subject came to speak to parents and students from around the county about the growing issue and how we can work to prevent it in our area and beyond.
First to speak was Detective Bill Woolf, lead investigator for the Northern Virginia Human Trafficking Task Force. Woolf has been avidly working to stop human trafficking since he found out how large this enterprise has grown in the past couple of years.
“I hadn’t realized how big the numbers actually were,” said Woolf.
He explained to the parents that one of the major problems was that many people who have been trafficked are afraid to come forward and seek help. Victims’ traffickers use techniques to guilt them into doing horrible things, then threaten them with what they have done to ensure they don’t try to get help.
“We have to stop viewing them as prostitutes and start seeing them as victims because that’s what they really are, victims of a horrible enterprise,” said Woolf.
Elizabeth Payne, Director of Health and Feminine Life Curriculum in schools K-12 for Fairfax County, spoke after Woolf. Payne first found out about the growing problem of human trafficking when Woolf shared a case about a young girl who had been trafficked in the school system within the community.
“The case that Detective Wolf brought to light in the community alarmed a lot of people. I knew that, working in the instructional services department, I needed to get ahead of it. I had no idea what was really going on,” said Payne.
Once Payne realized how much of a problem trafficking really is, she and Woolf started working together closely to bring attention to it. Even with all the progress made in promoting awareness, people still don’t understand that Fairfax County is one of the major hubs. The summit was organized to educate parents and students about trafficking in our area.
“I think this will help more people understand what’s going on and break down that myth that it doesn’t happen here,” said Payne.
The people who attended gained valuable information about human trafficking and how to stop it. They were given pamphlets with information and how to volunteer and had the opportunity to donate money to Spartans Against Human Trafficking, a club here at WS. At the end of the night people from all over the county left feeling the gravity and urgency of the situation and a desire to make a change.
“I hope that teens and parents get a better understanding of what to look for and knowing the signs. It may not be a case of human trafficking, but then it could be a case of domestic abuse or something else,” said Payne.