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    Not In My Backyard: The Reality of Human Trafficking and 5 Steps to End It

    by Celeste Orr Feb 18, 2020 6 minutes
    Not In My Backyard: The Reality of Human Trafficking and 5 Steps to End It by Celeste Orr. Photograph of a girl with her hand over her face by Makenna Entrikin
    Photograph by Makenna Entrikin

    Revealing the ugly underbelly of human trafficking, one woman answers the question: What can we do?

    —

    ‘Human trafficking’? That can’t possibly be a real thing happening around me…

    Or could it? 

    Those were the questions running through my mind as I sat on my friend’s couch in Sydney, Australia back in 2008 listening to her tell me about a new nonprofit where she was volunteering in the fight against human trafficking. She told me how thousands of young women and men were being lured away from their families into false jobs or false relationships and sold as sex slaves or forced labor — never to see their families again. She also said there were organizations starting to do something about it in many countries, and the need was tremendous. 

    I left her house that day with a heavy heart and a scrambled mind, wondering if what she had said was really true. My first impression was likely not uncommon to most when they first hear of it —  It just didn’t seem possible. I was 26 years old at the time with two babies and a husband,

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