L.A. Chief of Police Charlie Beck, Senior Counselor to Secretary Janet Napolitano Alice Hill, District Attorney Mike Ramos and U.S. Attorney Ben Wagner discussing legal action against human trafficking at a trafficking symposium on Nov. 16 (Sarah Zahedi/Neon Tommy).

When she was 17 years old, Ima Matul was trafficked from Indonesia into the United States for forced labor. Matul said she came to the U.S. when a woman offered both her and her cousin nanny positions in Los Angeles with a $150 monthly salary.

When she arrived in America, she was separated from her cousin and was forced into 18-hour workdays, seven days a week, taking care of the woman’s home and children.

 “My trafficker did not pay me," Matul said. "I was working for a salary that did not exist."

Matul’s trafficker led her to believe that if she escaped, the police would arrest her and put her in jail. She said her trafficker brutalized her, verbally and physically abusing her on a regular basis.

After three years of forced labor and abuse, Matul built the courage to escape. Without knowing how to write English fluently, she wrote a letter to a woman working as a nanny next door to her. The nanny took Matul to the Coalition to Abolish Slavery and Trafficking (CAST) in Los Angeles, where Matul was able to take shelter from her trafficker.

At CAST, Matul spent four years becoming fluent in English, learning computer skills and taking leadership and public speaking classes. She said the other survivors she took classes with became like her family.

“We all didn’t have family here so we became like sisters,” she said.

After graduating from the program, she was offered a position as a Survivor Advisory Caucus member for CAST in 2005. In September, she started working as a survivor organizer and has had the opportunity to work for various anti-trafficking organizations across the U.S.

Through her experiences at CAST, Matul said she gained a great deal of confidence. She works with other victims as a member of the National Network of Human Trafficking Survivors, encouraging other victims to realize their own strength to try to escape their circumstances. CAST established this national network for trafficking survivors to come together to mentor each other and connect with survivors around the world.

“We support each other," Matul said. "It is important for victims to speak up and know we have a powerful voice."

In working as an advocate on the Survivor Advisory Caucus, Matul said she hopes to encourage awareness of the issue in order to prevent human trafficking.

“It’s necessary to talk about human trafficking and teach individuals to be careful,” she said. “I didn’t know I was being trafficked until it was explained to me at CAST. I didn’t know what human trafficking was.”

Many other victims of human trafficking, like Matul, knew little about the issue before they were trafficked themselves.

Domestic Minor Sex Trafficking and Outreach Coordinator Donna Sarullo at the Mary Magdalene Project (MMP) is working to educate women in particular on the prostitution tracks in the Los Angeles area, hoping to prevent them from becoming victims of sex trafficking. MMP is a 32-year-old nonprofit organization located in Van Nuys, Calif., that provides services to victims of prostitution and sex trafficking, including a residential treatment program, a drop-in center, transitional living program, family reunification program and emergency intervention support services.

“When we do street outreach, we give information to the girls out there about our services and encourage them to stay safe” Sarullo said. “We also have survivors working with us to talk to the girls. Sometimes they know each other too.”

MMP also runs a program called My Life My Choice, an exploitation prevention program where MMP survivors share their experiences so they can spread awareness of the manipulation tactics used by traffickers.

Sarullo has worked at MMP since 2003. She has seen a number of victims go through major trauma after being kidnapped, raped and abused by their traffickers. She said that most of the survivors she has worked with didn’t know that they were being trafficked, especially since many fall into the trade at a young age.

“They have usually been abused sexually as a child," she said. "The women we see in this program are often romanced into prostitution. They’re manipulated by their traffickers because they’re in love with them.”

Sarullo said that victim services at MMP facilitate positive change for many women. Like CAST, MMP emphasizes the advantage of building a support network of fellow survivors for victims.

“They are associating with women who have similar issues," Sarullo said. "Everyone understands each other so it’s very beneficial. If they want longterm change, they can come through our home and our program.”

Sarullo said that the lack of educational programs, like the ones organized by MMP to spread awareness, is a major issue.

“More educational programs are necessary," she said. "If girls can understand traffickers’ tactics then we can hopefully prevent them from becoming victims. Prevention is key. Education is key.”

Human trafficking victim advocates are also working to spread awareness of trafficking in the U.S. to inspire individuals to take action.

University of Southern California student Michelle Lau is the founder and co-president of World Vision ACTS, a student organization that encourages political activism to raise awareness about social issues.

In November, Lau ran a series of human trafficking awareness events on the USC campus, including a three-day interactive walk-through activity and art display that featured information about human trafficking on a global, national and local scale. 

“It was an informative and engaging activity," she said. "Our organization was there as a source to guide them through a discussion of the issue."

Over 100 students attended the event, yet Lau said that few knew that human trafficking was an issue in the U.S.

“In America, we are not really exposed to the issue," she said. "Most of us don’t know people who have been involved and many victims are scared to talk about it because they are probably being manipulated by their traffickers." 

Lau said that educating Americans about the issue of human trafficking might eventually persuade them to endeavor to reverse the problem.

“The lack of awareness among Americans about the issue makes it hard for them to connect and empathize with the victims,” she said. “Awareness is the first step. It might not guide them directly to action but the more people talk about it, the more it will lead to people doing something about the issue."

Meanwhile, advocates like Matul and Sarullo are hoping for more extensive legal action to combat and prevent human trafficking and support victims in America.

Sarullo hopes legislators will take initiative on the statewide level to provide greater funding to trafficking prevention and victim support programs like those at MMP. She said increased funding will allow these advocacy organizations to help more victims.

 “The lack of resources is staggering," she said. "There are not many places for these victims to go, especially in the Los Angeles area."

Furthermore, as a member of CAST’s Survivor Advisory Caucus, Matul hopes to push legislators on the national level to reauthorize the Victims of Trafficking and Violence Protection Act of 2000, which provided tools to combat trafficking in persons and assisted in the coordination of anti-trafficking efforts worldwide and domestically.

Matul stressed that education on a global level is one of the most important methods to combat human trafficking.

“People need to be educated from a young age, especially because social media is being used to recruit victims and almost everyone uses social media,” Matul said. “Any social media user could be a target.”

This form of technology-facilitated trafficking has become a more common issue around the world. There have been cases of traffickers targeting victims via Facebook, as well as cases of traffickers advertising and bragging about their trade.

Research Director and Deputy Managing Director Mark Latonero at the Annenberg Center on Communication Leadership and Policy conducted research on the role of social networking sites and online classifieds in human trafficking.

“What we found through our research is that sites that we use every day have been used for trafficking such as social networking sites and blogging sites,” Latonero said. “For example, we discovered cases of traffickers using sites like Twitter to brag about how they exploited minors, and others using Facebook and online classifieds to recruit and advertise.”

Nevertheless, Latonero said that administrators of these sites that are being abused by traffickers are taking it upon themselves to innovate around the issue.

“Private technology services want to become aware that their sites are being exploited,” he said. “For example, Facebook and Microsoft are doing great work in developing technology to identify and rid of human trafficking from their sites.”

Latonero is also pleased that California state officials have taken the initiative to address and combat human trafficking.

“California is way ahead of many states, particularly because California Attorney General Kamala Harris has been such a leader in this case,” he said. “On the 2007 report on the state of human trafficking, the Internet was barely mentioned. The 2012 report focuses quite heavily on technology-facilitated trafficking.”

Harris released a 2012 report on human trafficking in California Nov. 16. The state is listed as one of the nation’s top four destinations for human trafficking. It is believed to be a $32 billion a year global industry. According to the report, California’s human trafficking task forces identified 1,277 victims from mid-2010 to mid-2012.

Latonero said that researchers and legislators could work to combat technology-facilitated trafficking with technology as well. Through his research, he concluded that authorities could analyze websites and mobile phones to extract information on traffickers in order to prosecute them, to monitor potential cases of trafficking and to spread awareness of the issue through social media. In addition, technology can be used to create a support network of trafficking victims and survivors, like that instituted by the National Human Trafficking Resource Center Hotline.

“With any sort of technology-based communication, a digital fingerprint is left behind," Latonero said. "If there’s a problem with technology and trafficking, the solution to that problem lies in technology itself too."

Reach Contributor Sarah Zahedi here. Follow her on Twitter here.