For the past three years, Commissioner Echols has hosted a bus tour for legislators and advocates through the parts of the city that are most notorious for human trafficking. Participants get to see firsthand the types of environments that breed trafficking activity, and local advocates and law enforcement officers tell the stories of the victims they help. Kasey McClure, founder of the rescue group 4Sarah , leads the tour. They offer safe housing for women and their children to escape pimps, and they coordinate intervention programs to get women the help they need to begin a new life.
The 4Sarah scholarship program funds GED courses and higher training so they can find a job. Kasey was the perfect tour guide, and along with law enforcement officers from DeKalb County and Conyers, she put faces and stories to the dry statistics that shape public policy.
Once on board, our first stop was the Greyhound bus station about six blocks from the Capitol. The bus station is often the first stop for girls and women who find themselves trapped in human trafficking.
Some who step off the bus here are runaways. Some have been lured here by traffickers, and some are just looking for a fresh start and a new life in the ATL. That new life is not always what the girls may have imagined. Kasey told us the bus station is often a pipeline directly into the club. The women get off the bus with little money in their pockets and find themselves in the sex industry almost immediately. DeKalb Police Sergeants Torrey Kennedy and Hubert Brannon took the microphone and talked to us about how technology has changed sex trafficking in recent years.
There are still streetwalkers, but the majority of prostitution solicitation is taking place online. Craigslist knockoffs that specialize in adult entertainment have sprouted up. Although they claim not to allow ads for illegal activity, those ads are there nonetheless, and they are prolific.
