Interview with Aaron Cohen, Co-Author of Slave Hunter: One Man’s Global Quest to Free Victims of Human Trafficking
Interview by Ivana Kvesic

Aaron Cohen is the co-author of Slave Hunter: One Man’s Global Quest to Free Victims of Human Trafficking. Aaron recently spoke to PGI about his experiences and perspectives on human trafficking.

PGI:  As you just returned to the United States from Haiti and the Dominican Republic, could you discuss with us some of the human trafficking concerns that arose during your time there? How has the earthquake and devastation made more Haitians vulnerable to trafficking? In what way?

Aaron Cohen: Yeah, you know when you have a natural disaster in the magnitude and scope that they’ve had in Haiti one can’t help but instantly feel a sense of compassion for children who are the most vulnerable in a situation like that. And since I have worked previously there on human trafficking trends in the Caribbean, I knew from my experience that Haiti was a transit location. In other words, girls that were taken from Colombia or the Dominican Republic were often times taken into Haiti but they would be transited to other locations such as Europe, the Bahamas, Jamaica, Latin America or the Middle East or what not. So Haiti had this distinction of being the worst place for slavery in the Western Hemisphere.

Prior to the earthquake there were some 250,000 thousand domestic servants- slave children. They called them restaveks. The word restavek is an interesting term, it means “to live with” in Creole. And what happens is they have these large extended families in Haiti, and you know a family may have nine children, and of the nine children one may become wealthy, and six or seven of the descendents will be poor but they all still have nine kids each.  The poorer ones end up essentially selling their children to the wealthier family members who then take guardianship of the minors. Culturally in Haiti, that generally happens around two or three years old and in their tradition and in the way their laws have been set up since the 1803 revolt, these children have to work until they are 14-15 years old. At that point they are required to be paid, so they are generally set loose. So when the earthquake happened it was sort of a no-brainer to figure that since there is already around 250,000 child slaves there, that these children after having all the houses and offices of their employers destroyed would become the ones that are the most vulnerable; the ones that would be required to clean up the mess, and certainly in Haiti I was expecting to find that.

I knew there would be a lot of scrutiny on Haiti because of the amount of international attention it was receiving. So I wanted to see how the dynamics had changed. Was Haiti still a transit location for human trafficking, and how had it changed? What countries were going to become transit locations since Haiti was now obviously under so much scrutiny it wouldn’t make sense for organized crime groups to use Haiti as a transit location? So essentially, I went to Haiti with that in mind, trying to figure out what the new dynamics were. I began our trip in the Dominican Republic and started by looking at the trends of trafficking. I had some informants there that I had worked with previously who were drug dealers and I followed them along on their runs throughout the city.  I could easily see that there was an increase in the amount of capital coming into the Dominican Republic, and that the restavek slaves, the domestic servants, were pouring into the Dominican Republic for the purpose of adoption. Organizations are bringing the children in and trying to adopt them out, because you can make a lot of money off that; it is lucrative. We all know the story of the missionaries that were charged with human trafficking for the same thing.

So initially, my findings sort of made sense.  I discovered there that the transit locations were changing, that Cuba and Venezuela figured prominently into the transiting location now and that Haiti was no longer the transit place for the majority of sex trafficking victims. The interviews I conducted with prostituted women were very informative in the sense that I asked them exactly where their friends were going, where they had been offered to go, and a number of locations came up. I am not at liberty to discuss all of the findings because they are very confidential in terms of our report.  But the dynamics have absolutely changed. The thing that I discovered is that the organized crime groups that were previously working out of Haiti are still there and they are benefiting from the disaster.

Is it difficult to move the children across the border from Haiti into the Dominican Republic?  Is the Dominican Republic administration properly addressing this issue?  Are they aware of it?

It is not difficult because you have this border that is not well protected or guarded. You can imagine, both countries have economic issues that are long standing. It would cost a lot of money to guard the borders and they certainly don’t have the resources to do that.

What I found in the Dominican Republic [DR] was shocking; I found a government that essentially had been practicing an agenda that was moving towards apartheid. In other words, they had passed laws that said that if you were black or if you were of Haitian descent, even if you were born in the DR, they could remove your citizenship. They had been moving in the direction of apartheid before the disaster. Now in that sense, the disaster put them in a different direction because they would be viewed as very cruel in the wake of the disaster to continue with those polices. Nonetheless, those policies are still being pursued in the  Dominican Republic.

So the DR for good reason tries to keep the criminal element out of their country, but they had gone so far prior to the disaster that one can make the argument that they were virtually moving toward an apartheid system of governance. After the disaster it’s clear that they have provided a lot of aid and a lot of humanitarian support. But Haitians who are living in the Dominican Republic are not able to get legal status; they are not recognized as refugees, they are not recognized as Dominicans, and even if they are born in the Dominican Republic second or third generation, they can still lose their property. In the Dominican Republic today you have doctors and lawyers who are educated and going to lose their property because they are second or third generation Haitian. There is a tremendous amount of rivalry and long standing historical resentment that exists from the different revolts and revolutions that have happened.

In your experience, which countries have been more successful than others in combating trafficking and why?

That is a really good question. In my view when you look at the Scandinavian countries like Sweden and Norway, you can even include South Korea in there, and at some of the latest model legislation that has been developed, what they’ve done is tried to attack demand in their legislation. The way they attack demand is by criminalizing it. I think that the most successful legislations are those that criminalize demand.

If you look at the United States for example, we were the pioneers; we lead the charge in getting the first legislations out there, such as the Trafficking in Victim Protection Act (TVPA) – it is a historical piece of legislation, á la the Emancipation Proclamation; it is something that will go down in the history books as a very important law.

Unfortunately, we have not gone so far in our country as Sweden did, as Norway did.  What they did differently was they looked at the demand and they said let’s move to criminalize the demand more and move to decriminalize the victims. Now a debate has arisen because what they did in Sweden made prostitution illegal there. This is really important for combating human trafficking. Where prostitution is legal, human trafficking flourishes and children are exploited. What they did in Sweden was to decriminalize the actual prostituted women. So a woman is brought into the station if she is prostituting, and she’s questioned to try to develop information for the case. Then the John is arrested and put into jail, the trafficker is arrested and put into jail, and the pedophile is arrested and put into jail, but the victims are decriminalized and put into shelters and given services.  The detractors of this law, the people who say Sweden has gone too far, say that well you have handcuffed law enforcement so there are no cases in Sweden. Their organized crime works underground there because the women have no leverage with them. They don’t testify so the trafficking is underground.

If you speak with member of parliament Anthony Stein or if you speak to high ranking officials at the Department of Justice they’ll say, “Look, Sweden did a great job in decriminalizing victims, but they went too far because you need to give the prosecutor the leverage with the prostituted women so that she’ll[sic] testify.” I am on the fence about this issue. I think in all cases you want to have everything on the table; you want to have all of your options open to you.

If you look at Amsterdam, which has legalized prostitution and who obviously does not criminalize the demand, you see the worst statistics for AIDS, for abuse against women, for drugs, of organized crime growth; the murder rates have increased statistically since the establishment of these loose new-age style laws. But if you compare Amsterdam to Sweden, you’ll see a reduction in Sweden of organized crime, in the murder rate, in exploitation of women, in exploitation of children. So clearly, criminalizing the demand and decriminalizing the victim is the best way to go. To answer the question, I look at the Scandinavian countries and I see that their legislations are more effective than other legislations around the world.

Have you had any experience exploring the demand side of the sex trafficking issue?  Do you ever interact with the men that are exploiting sex trafficking victims? Are they aware of the exploitation trafficking victims are enduring?

Of course I understand the demand probably better than most people because I am in these brothels and I am with these men. Feminists use an expression called “male privilege” and male privilege I think is a very important expression because it demonstrates something that’s wrong with our society. I saw Kim Kardashian recently talking about something being “real pimp” and I saw Demi Moore sort of correct her usage of the term “pimp” publicly. I thought. “Wow, how great Demi Moore is to do that.” because what’s wrong in our society is that we’ve normalized the exploitation of women. When we make it very Hollywood and very popular for young people to think it’s glamorous to be a pimp, all of the sudden were moving in the wrong direction. The idea of exploiting women is not cool; it just is not.  Women are the protectors of children.

Our society is moving that way; you see it when you’re with men and they are out together in a group. I saw this in Haiti: you’re with a group of soldiers, riding on the town; it’s hard work and then all the men are at the bar at the very end of the day. There are some women around all of the sudden; the men begin to work in the pack mentality, and it’s the pack mentality that feeds this demand. What we need are strong male role models.

What we need is men out there doing this. We need Ashton Kutcher, Ricky Martin, Sean Penn, George Clooney, men who are respected among men need to be out in society saying, “Hey guys, exploiting women and treating women in a debased way, in an unequal way – gender biased and gender inequality -  is not good for society.” When you make it cool, sexy, and glamorous, it sends the wrong message to men so that they become confused and think that it’s ok to be that ‘John’. So I think the answer in terms of how men react to each other in that environment is they don’t really understand how they are creating the demand through their own culture.  What needs to be addressed here is “man culture”, and for lack of a better term “male privilege”.

In your opinion, are governments in developed countries adequately dealing with this issue? If not, what more could or should be done?

Well you know Ivana, I don’t think governments in developed countries are adequately dealing with issue and I don’t think governments in developing countries are adequately dealing with this problem, either. Human trafficking is the fastest growing illegal business. When you look at the statistics of pornography and prostitution you have to come to the conclusion that human trafficking is related to prostitution. Most prostituted women enter exploitation at age eleven or twelve.  When a woman  enters at age nine, ten, or eleven, she’s forced into it and that’s all she knows in her life. One cannot conclude that this is the life she has chosen.

But somehow in our society we are perpetuating this myth that this is the case. I think it’s time we move away from the understanding that we are adequately dealing with this problem, because we are not. We need to redefine prostitution in our minds as a form of female exploitation, because women don’t choose to become prostitutes. It’s not a young girl’s dream to grow up and be a prostituted woman. What happens is that they are exploited early on and they have no options; because of their lack of options, they end up in a position of vulnerability and that vulnerability then impacts the children and the dynamics around that particular woman.

We are failing to address and redress prostitution in the context of sex trafficking. You know, I mentioned earlier that human trafficking is the fastest growing illegal business and it has already passed arms sales. Now some people will say there’s no way it could pass drug sales, but other people will say that it is in a position to pass drug sales if you factor in prostitution and pornography which are these multi-billion dollar industries. When you look at the human trafficking influence on pornography and prostitution, when you look at it from that framework, one can come to the conclusion that human trafficking is in the position to pass drugs and become the number one illegal business in the world.

So no, I don’t think we are dealing with the problem adequately in either developing or developed countries.

In Slave Hunter you advocate a victim-centered approach; can you elaborate on that?

Yeah, the reason I say that is because I have been involved in a number of cases in Cambodia and the Dominican Republic where I’ve seen well intentioned NGOs and law enforcement officials walk over victims to arrest pedophiles and traffickers, meanwhile, those victims are not receiving services or being cared for. I think it’s important to arrest the bad guys, the traffickers and the pedophiles, and it’s important to criminalize the demand with the Johns. But when we make arresting the pedophile the number one priority, and arresting the trafficker the number two priority and leave victim advocacy at the bottom of the list, then what happens is that we might be arresting bad guys, but we are not dealing with the demand or the victims, the supply. (The supply is the girls.)

If we are not taking the girls out of the system and reducing the supply and working on criminalizing the demand then we’re not really addressing the problem on a long-term basis, on a macro scope. So I think that it’s important to put victim advocacy very high on the list, just as high and important as getting the arrest of a pedophile or a trafficker. I would love to see our law enforcement agencies have kudos or some sort of praise for rescuing victims. When a law enforcement official gets an arrest on a pedophile or trafficker it builds their career. Why don’t we provide the same incentives for rescuing victims? I think we should.

What has been the public’s reaction to your book?

I’m just overjoyed that the public has embraced the book and that it did really well. We’re one of the best selling human rights books and it looks like it is going to continue like that. People like the book and sales are increasing as word of mouth circulates, so I am just delighted. I have a wonderful co-writer, Christine Buckley, who did a magnificent job, and my publisher at Simon and Schuster was very hands-on in the book. I couldn’t have had a better team and I am just delighted at the success of the book. I just feel blessed by God that it has done so well.

How has having a critically acclaimed book affected your work? How has it encouraged you to continue the work you are doing in the field? Are you more recognizable to traffickers than before?

That’s another good question. The success of the book has been good and bad for me. On the one hand, I am doing better in terms of getting my messages out. On the other hand, I am more of a target for scholars who are looking to make their career by criticizing policy points that may or may not be wrong. For example, when we first started the book, before there was any legislation at all, we used to try to prove slaves existed by buying slaves and we would document that process. After that, the Trafficking Victims Protection Act came, and then 120 laws around the world came, and we realized that buying slaves was a bad policy.

I think scholars misunderstand and think that I am somehow advocating the policy of buying slaves, but I’m not at all. I don’t think buying slaves is a policy for dealing with human trafficking one bit. It’s an investigative tactic for obtaining access to organized crime groups, that’s all it is. I wish that I had addressed it in a more transparent way in the book and made a stronger statement against buyouts. Buyouts provide incentives to the organized crime groups to continue enslaving people. So whether you are in Sudan or whether you’re in Cambodia, buyouts are not a policy for human rights; they’re a tactic for penetrating organized crime groups.  One can say that the success of the book has been bad for me because I get criticized by people for my policy positions, but on the other hand, it’s been good because it has brought some of the best minds in the country, like Norma Ramos from CATW (Coalition Against Trafficking of Women), Kevin Bales from Free the Slaves, or Ben Skinner, to review my ideas and critique my analysis. And having the top minds in the country critique my analysis can be painful at times because I learn where I’ve made mistakes.

What are your plans for the future with regards to human trafficking?

I work for an organization called Abolish Slavery and one can gather from that name that somehow I think we’re going end slavery in our lifetime. But if you look at the statistics of the pornography industry and if you look at the statistics related to prostitution and human trafficking, it’s easy to come to the conclusion that we are not doing that; in fact, the exact opposite is happening. We are on the verge of the greatest enslavement of all human history. So while I appreciate the optimism of certain scholars who get out there and talk about slavery and what we should do to end slavery, I’m more of a pessimist.

I don’t see us ending slavery; I see slavery as a signpost to something else that’s happening in our world. For me I see the human trafficking movement as a vehicle, it’s like a car and I’m driving that vehicle the best that I can to the geopolitical clash of societies.

We are on the verge of an incredible conflict between Iran and Israel. This is a conflict that can envelop the entire world. So the way I see this movement going, for me in particular, is that I would like to do my work around that theater, around that conflict. The countries involved are Russia, Republic of Georgia, Chechnya, Syria, Jordan, Israel, Lebanon, Iraq, and Egypt. Those countries, I believe, are the dime, and the entire world turns on a dime and if we don’t keep our attention on those countries and build bridges of peace, all the freedoms that we enjoy today: our freedom to work, the freedom to have a career, the freedom of women to travel and do what they want without having to fear being exploited or victimized; all these freedoms become vulnerable if the world turns on that dime. If we move into a greater conflict in the Middle East where everybody chooses sides over the dilemma between Iran and Israel then we could lose all of our freedoms and very easily become enslaved in a government-style situation where we are living under martial law. That could very easily happen. It’s not doomsday speak; it’s not prophecy; it’s current events. The Russian army moved through Chechnya into the Republic of Georgia; they have an arms agreement with Turkey. Iran is developing and pursuing nuclear weapons; Burma is producing the yellowcake uranium for those weapons. The entire world could turn on that dime if we don’t address it. So for me, the future of human trafficking is to move a vehicle of peace for human rights. Something that people, even enemies, can get together and work on. I see using the human rights issue as a way to build bridges of peace in the Middle East to advert catastrophe. So for me, I’m trying to drive the human rights movement as best I can to the geopolitical clash of societies for the purpose of world peace.

What do you think would be the most powerful tool to stop slavery?

Of all the things that we’ve discussed something that’s really important is criminalizing the demand.  What has happened is that society has made a commodity out of women and children. What we have to do is reduce the supply and demand by attacking them. We should give kudos to law enforcement for rescuing victims, and rescuing many victims should make their careers. Let’s take the victims out of the system and reduce the supply, a victim-centered approach.

Let’s also increase the watchdog groups. For example, there’s a magnificent gentleman, Justin Dillon, that has created an abolitionist movement, and he recently did a film called Call + Response.  So if we criminalize demand and demand as a society that corporations do not use slave labor; if we demand as a society that pimps are not glamorous and venerated as the social norm, and in fact we criminalize that element and look down on John culture, I think that then we will attack supply and demand and have an impact. Otherwise, we can look at slavery as an omen of something that’s happening in the greater world and get ready for a global conflict unprecedented in all of human history. Human trafficking is a “save the world” issue. The way we save the world is to drive it to the geopolitical clash of societies, attacking the supply, attacking the demand, and building bridges of peace so people can come together in unity for the right reasons, for humanity, for oneness, for seeing our societies as interconnected rather than disjointed.

If you could offer one piece of advice in combating human trafficking to the current generation of graduate students what would it be?

The advice would be to start where you are and look at yourself. Determine in yourself what your strengths are.

In combating human trafficking there is a thing called the 3 P’s, and if I can take the liberty of adding a fourth P as Hillary Clinton did. The three P’s are prevention, protection, and prosecution. In prevention you have public service announcements, and community outreach; in protection, shelters and counseling. In prosecution you have investigations, criminal arrests, and retrievals of victims. All of these things are important, but the fourth P is where I think graduate students can have the greatest impact and that’s partnership. It starts with you and the circle around you of your immediate friends. What I did, is I went through the music business. We had a concert festival and I looked around and saw a number of important musicians in my sphere of influence. I created a circle of those musicians and we started to do concerts and created awareness. Then I started on prevention, went from prevention into protection, followed by prosecution, and from prosecution into partnering.

Look at your immediate group of friends and form a group on Facebook or Twitter.  What if Abraham Lincoln had Twitter? What if William Wilberforce had Facebook? Imagine the impact they could have had without having to do everything the old-fashioned way. You have at your fingertips the most powerful technology in all of human history.  If you just look around yourself to your immediate group of friends and you partner with them and then they partner with their friends you create a movement. The most powerful thing in our society today is the student movement. There are more young people in the world than any other demographic so if you’re able to create an impact with young people though a student movement, you can change the world. We can bring peace on earth in our lifetime if we just realize that fourth P, partnership.

Aaron Cohen is a human rights activist, abolitionist, and undercover investigator. He was awarded the Prize for Humanity in 2008 for his work finding and rescuing victims of human trafficking both at home and abroad. The recipient of the US Congressional Certificate of Merit for his work on behalf of women and children, Aaron Cohen is the bestselling author of “Slave Hunter”. He resides in California.