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More Forbidden Freedom: Slavery in Southwest Florida

• Family accused of enslaving workers at Immokalee camp
• Human trafficking on Marco Island?: Islanders learn warning signs of ‘underground slavery’
• Immokalee sets stage for international talk on human trafficking

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Radio ads in several languages and dialects are airing across Florida warning about the dangers of modern-day slavery. High-profile examples of the crime have brought documentaries and movie-makers to the state. Heads of local social service agencies recall the victims they’ve found, and saved, in just a year’s time.

There is a lot of talk about human trafficking in Florida, just not a lot of testimony.

Though those who have been held captive here continue to be certified by the government as victims, comparatively few of the cases are making it to the state court system.

One trafficking expert, though, says that’s about to change.

Starting in January, new Florida legislation will require law enforcement officers and prosecutors to have at least basic training in the crime of trafficking, and the state’s law’s against it.

Terry Coonan, executive director of the Center for the Advancement of Human Rights at Florida State University, said Tuesday the change should be instrumental in bringing more of the cases before judges and putting more traffickers behind bars.

Speaking at the spring meeting of the Coalition Against Human Trafficking in Southwest Florida, Coonan predicted that where federal agents and courts have typically been involved in such prosecutions in the past, local law enforcement agencies will soon start to take the lead once they are better educated about the crime, simply because there are more of them.

The Lee County Sheriff Office is a rare local agency in the country to have made such an arrest, last May taking into custody Fernando Pascual Francisco. Accused of raping, beating and holding a teen against her will in Cape Coral, Francisco has been the area’s most recent high-profile trafficking prosecution. He pleaded guilty in March to federal charges of smuggling the girl and making her participate in “commercial sex acts.”

Though Florida has had laws on the books since 2002, those cases that have made it to court locally have been argued by the U.S. Attorney’s Office.

Coonan said the newly passed legislation puts teeth in the state laws, adding racketeering to the list of offenses that can be prosecuted. It also gives trafficking victims a way to get money from those who have used them. Those who have been forced to work in brothels will be eligible to get three times the profit the pimps cleared from their efforts, he said.

Coonan estimated about 45 percent of human trafficking cases involve sexual exploitation.

The training component of the law is an unfunded mandate, Coonan said, but he added that having it on the books is still progress.

The Florida Department of Law Enforcement is working with FSU to create a trafficking curriculum, he said. Efforts also are being made to reach out to other large groups that could have access to trafficking victims, he said, such as those who teach English as a Second Language (ESE) in public schools.

Understanding about human trafficking is not evenly distributed around the state, he said, though he praised Lee County’s efforts.

The county is home to the Coalition Against Human Trafficking in Southwest Florida. It, along with the Lee County Sheriff’s Office’s trafficking unit, has done training for law enforcement agencies around Florida and has worked internationally to bring attention to the issue. Both groups work closely with Managing Assistant U.S. Attorney Douglas Molloy, who has been prosecuting trafficking cases in Lee and Collier county for years.

Nola Theiss, chairwoman of the Coalition Against Human Trafficking in Southwest Florida, estimated that among the three agencies, thousands of people in the region have been educated about trafficking.

Those efforts are not stopping.

The Coalition announced Tuesday a new round of training for August that will target social services agencies that hope to partner with Florida Coalition Against Human Trafficking, a separate nonprofit agency based in Bonita Springs, to aid trafficking victims.

It also has made the first steps to create memorandums of understanding with the agencies. Those documents would link the coalition and the Sheriff’s Office with groups that could potentially provide shelter and outreach services to people who have been identified as trafficking victims.

Hopeful that money earmarked in Florida’s budget for a statewide task force also will be given the go-ahead by the governor, the Southwest Florida coalition and the Florida Coalition Against Human Trafficking’s founder, Anna Rodriguez, next week will meet with other similar agencies to start work on founding the effort.

Like the coalitions born in Lee County, the statewide task force would bring together law enforcement officers with community members and social services agencies to tackle trafficking.

Rodriguez said she believes progress is being made.

A 16-year-old girl she thinks will be the coalition’s eighth certified trafficking victim was found several weeks ago, she said. “We’re out there,” she said. “The outreach is working. We are finding them.”