Unnoticed crime lurks in Maine

Many of us in the media have taken a swipe at a task force or two during our careers. We have rolled our eyes at what we often see as an easy political response to something that’s got the public’s dander up.

Task forces generally involve hard work from well-meaning people who draft thick documents with scads of ideas on how to solve a particular problem, from revising sex offender laws to reducing the state’s prison population.

Search in the nooks and crannies of the Capitol closets and I suspect you could wallpaper the place with task force reports gathering dust there.

I have to admit, therefore, that when my editor called me this week to propose to me a column idea on the latest task force, he was met with a healthy dose of skepticism. This wasn’t just any task force. It was the first meeting of the Human Trafficking Task Force.

That’s right. Human trafficking, the slavery of our modern day, he said.

I have to admit it was something I didn’t know a lot about, and neither, it appears, did most of the dozen or so task force members who gathered in Augusta on Tuesday morning.

“I guess I have to ask first of all if this a problem here? Do we actually have cases occurring here?” asked one task force member near the beginning of the day-long meeting.

Geez Louise! I thought to myself. I not only have to listen to a task force meeting, I’ve got to listen to a task force whose members don’t even know whether the issue they’re examining is even a problem.

This was not looking promising.

Most police departments around here will tell you they’ve never really investigated a case of human trafficking, and Maine’s U.S. attorney, Paula Silsby, just last winter said there had never been such a case prosecuted in the state.

Enter Larry Gilbert, the assistant director of the Maine Institute for Public Safety Innovations and a member of the task force. It became clear very quickly that Gilbert is the man who knows about the subject of modern-day slavery, and he did not hesitate Tuesday to answer the task force member who inquired as to whether it was occurring in Maine.

“It’s a crime that has lurked beneath the surface for too long,” Gilbert said, “but it’s here, no doubt about it.”

Human trafficking involves people, generally impoverished from other nations, being coerced across borders with the promise of jobs and economic opportunity. Once in this country, officials say, they are often held against their will, have their documents taken away and are told they will have to work to pay off travel expenses incurred during their trip. Forty six percent of the victims of human trafficking are forced to work as prostitutes, according to data from HumanTrafficking.org.

According to Gilbert, a lot of women end up working in brothels billed as massage parlors, spas or healing rooms.

Does anyone remember the Asian Therapy Center that was operating on Hammond Street, near the Union Street intersection in Bangor a couple of years ago? Neighbors related tales of young Asian women living at the brick house, but never leaving the yard. When I inquired inside, a barefoot Asian woman told me her manager was not available and she did not speak enough English to talk with me.

Often victims in human trafficking schemes are trapped not only by fear, but by their inability to speak English, Gilbert said.

Come to find out the owner of the Asian Therapy Room also owned similar parlors in Lisbon and South Portland that were raided by police. Two women, including the owner, were charged with prostitution and promotion of prostitution.

There also have been similar raids in Old Orchard Beach. Last summer a Hartland man was convicted of smuggling two teenage girls from Malaysia across the Canadian border into Maine. The federal judge acknowledged his suspicion that the case may have gone far beyond smuggling and into the arena of human trafficking.

It became apparent this week that human trafficking is most definitely occurring here. It’s happening in businesses with beautiful relaxing names that operate in strip malls and in residential neighborhoods. The problem is that the cases are not being investigated and they are not being prosecuted for what they are.

The task force hopes to come up with some state legislation that could buffer the already existing federal legislation.

They should also encourage federal prosecutors to use the federal law on human trafficking instead of falling back on smuggling laws.

That a case of human trafficking has never been investigated or prosecuted here may just mean that we’re not paying attention.

A state law is fine, but there already is a federal law on the books and it should be used when warranted.