Kentucky State Police’s newly released ‘Crime in Kentucky’ report covers a wide range of serious crimes committed across the commonwealth.
While human trafficking crimes make up a small percentage of overall offenses in Kentucky (0.03%), they have made the biggest jump, percentagewise. The report shows a nearly 40 percent rise from 2022 to 2023.
Jani Lewis, who serves as executive director for Natalie’s Sisters in Lexington, said some of the increase is due to a better job of tracking and identifying human trafficking but the numbers also are higher.
Natalie’s Sisters works to support women who have been trafficked or sexually exploited through outreach at adult clubs and on the streets. Lewis says the upward trend is reflected in their drop-in center in Lexington’s east end.
Lewis said last year they saw 400 women at the drop-in center and this year, they have seen almost 400 women in the first six months.
Lewis says while human trafficking is often portrayed as a random, violent encounter out on the roads or somewhere in public, that is rarely what the crime actually looks like here in Kentucky.
“There’s ‘Romeo’ trafficking where a boyfriend makes a connection with somebody and says all the right things,” said Lewis. “There’s parents, there’s familial trafficking. Girls come in and…their parents sold them, or have given them to somebody in exchange for a pack of cigarettes.”
Lewis says people should always be wary of the possibility of stranger abductions, but she says the bigger problem is being lived out every day in the state.
She says what they are seeing ever since the pandemic is more people being brought into the state.
She notes that they have served around 1,500 women since the start of the pandemic. So, while these increases are cause for concern, it leaves her knowing they are fulfilling an important need.
Source: WBKO
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