by: Jesslyn Griffith, Community Engagement Coordinator at SWITCH

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South Carolina has a pretty dark history. In Greenville County Schools, third-graders learn about the slave trade, states’ rights, and the Civil War and its aftermath. I watched each of my three daughters struggle with the fact that slavery existed. We had many conversations as they grappled to understand the inhumanity of owning people, forcing them to work without pay, and taking away their choices and freedoms. We’ve been to plantations in South Carolina where slaves’ quarters still stand and their stories are shared. As we continue to confront this history, we are often led to believe that slavery in the United States is exclusively a thing of the past. But the truth is that modern-day slavery exists in this country; it’s called human trafficking.

Human trafficking is “the use of force, fraud, or coercion to obtain some type of labor or commercial sex act.” Whether it is labor or sex trafficking, modern-day slavery occurs in the Upstate. Almost half of South Carolina’s sex trafficking cases are in Greenville County, according to the South Carolina Attorney General’s Office. Since the Upstate is located along I-85 between Atlanta and Charlotte (two of the top cities for reported cases of trafficking) our region has become a new hub for traffickers.

Sex trafficking is a lucrative multibillion-dollar industry. Traffickers are adept at finding victims to meet the demand for commercial sex. Traffickers find those with vulnerabilities, promise to meet their needs, gain their trust, groom them while isolating them, and turn them out to have sex commercially. These tactics ultimately place victims in a cycle where they become increasingly dependent on their traffickers as they continue to be sold for sex.

This is a growing problem, in part, because online pornography is fueling the demand for commercial sex. And pornography is not a “victimless” crime. Sex trafficking victims report that they have been coerced into participating in the production of pornography; a 2003 survey of 800 women and children in nine different countries (including the United States) reported that 49% said pornography was made of them while they were trafficked.

Given how widespread sex trafficking is, it may seem like an unreachable goal to turn the tide on this growing epidemic, let alone end it. I think of what my daughters learned in school and how impossible ending slavery must have seemed to abolitionists. However, they persevered, and with the collective voice of many people over decades, they gained momentum, created paradigm shifts, and changed cultural norms that led to emancipation.

Every time I speak to a new group of people on behalf of SWITCH, I see how their hearts are moved, and it gives me hope for change. When enough people are inspired to act, the light will pierce the darkness, and modern-day slavery will be no more.