The house where the South Korean women were kept was an upscale home in an affluent Mid-Cities suburb. Upstairs, they spent their days locked in a room monitored by surveillance cameras. They had come to the United States on the promise of a good job, but instead were used as props to increase alcohol sales at a nightclub. Every evening for several months, they were loaded into a van, driven to a club and ordered to socialize and dance with the customers. At 2 or 3 a.m. they were returned to the house and locked in the room.

Finally one of the women took a chance and jumped from the second-floor window and ran to a church. A staff member helped her get in touch with Mosaic Family Services, a Dallas organization that helps refugees, immigrants and other survivors of human trafficking rebuild their lives.

“The neighbors knew the young women were there, and some of them thought it was strange,” says Laura DeMoss ’10, assistant director of Mosaic’s anti-trafficking program and coordinator of the North Texas Coalition Against Human Trafficking. “But nobody thinks this kind of thing can happen in their neighborhood.”

DeMoss’ job is to open people’s eyes to the trafficking that happens in all kinds of neighborhoods. Human trafficking — also called modern-day slavery — is, “one person controlling another person for economic gain,” DeMoss says. “Someone’s freedom has been taken away, and someone else is making money off of it.”

More people are enslaved today than at any other point in history, she says, though the number is hard to pinpoint because the crime is so difficult to detect. The United Nations’ Office on Drugs and Crime estimates 2.5 million victims worldwide; the International Labour Organization suggests 21 million; the U.S. State Department, 27 million.

In the past decade, Mosaic has helped almost 400 survivors of trafficking in North Texas. Victims had been forced to work in dry cleaners, restaurants, massage parlors, hotels, farms and in people’s homes for little pay and without the freedom to leave.

“Trafficking” doesn’t necessarily imply movement over borders or human smuggling, but it does often involve deception. Trafficking victims from other countries usually come to the U.S. voluntarily, lured by the promise of a good job. A woman might be given a visa and offered a full-time job as a nanny but end up cooking and cleaning for a family 18 hours a day, making almost nothing and sleeping in the garage. Or she might be promised a job waitressing but end up forced into prostitution. To keep their victims from reporting the crime, traffickers instill fear by threatening to harm family members back home, saying the police won’t believe the victims, and taking their passports and ID away.

Whether forced into labor or prostitution, trafficking victims share common characteristics. They tend to come from poor communities with very few opportunities; those from overseas are made more vulnerable in the U.S. by their lack of language skills and social networks. Mosaic has also helped trafficked U.S. citizens, often runaways who were desperate to leave an abusive home life.

“Most often [victims] are in a really vulnerable situation and know that they’re taking a chance by going with this person, but it may be the only option they feel like they have,” DeMoss says.

Sex trafficking tends to get more attention, but 60 percent of those who Mosaic has helped came from labor trafficking situations.

“Trafficking happens in every single industry,” she says. “People see it as a business model and a way to cut out the labor costs.”

Traffickers sometimes abuse the guest-worker visa program, which allows employers to bring in foreign nationals for jobs they’re having trouble filling with U.S. citizens. Some of the international workers end up in exploitative situations but feel unable to leave because their visa is tied to one particular employer.

Corporations sometimes indirectly benefit from trafficking in their supply chains.

“We’ve all heard about sweatshops,” DeMoss says, but child labor and trafficking are also common in the chocolate industry and in mining for the minerals that go into cell phones. “In that sense there’s trafficking around us, not just in the community of people we interact with every day, but also in the products that we use, in the clothing that we wear, in the technology we depend on,” she says. Purchasing fair-trade certified goods is one way to fight back, but DeMoss says holding all companies accountable is a more sustainable solution.

DeMoss, who interned with Mosaic while at TCU, majored in Spanish and Hispanic studies and earned a certificate in international studies. After graduation she returned to Mosaic, initially working with survivors before shifting her focus to outreach and education.

Outreach involves everything from presentations at social work conferences to putting up fliers in laundromats. DeMoss’ team focuses on training people on the front lines — police, firefighters, paramedics, healthcare providers, school counselors — to recognize signs that a person they’re working with might be under someone else’s control. One of the more unusual people on the front lines was a pest control worker who noticed something wasn’t right about the domestic employee in the home he was treating. He called Mosaic for help and coordinated with the woman for a taxi to take her to Mosaic.

The organization also tries to communicate directly to victims, which is challenging because of their isolation and lack of English literacy. Frustrated with text-heavy printed materials, DeMoss researched other countries with low literacy rates and discovered their official communication — like ballots — uses pictures instead. She worked with a Dallas artist to create wordless comics to publish in foreign-language newspapers. The comics depict trafficking situations and provide a hotline number for victims who recognize their own situation in the pictures.

Some of DeMoss’ most important outreach work is for the general public, who have opportunities to spot victims that law enforcement doesn’t. If the victim gets to Mosaic, the first priority is support for a traumatized person whose freedom has been taken away. This means free counseling, shelter, legal assistance, case management and job training so the survivor can build a new life.

“The criminal aspect is important, but our human rights approach focuses on the dignity of every trafficked person,” DeMoss says. “We want to see law enforcement get involved and the traffickers come to justice, but another side of justice is making sure that the person has adequate opportunity to heal.”

On the Web:
Mosaic Services — www.mosaicservices.org