The first step to fighting human trafficking is the ability to spot when it’s happening. And, often, the people best positioned to identify when someone is the victim of human trafficking are the people who respond to emergency situations involving traffickers and their victims: emergency medical technicians, nurses, and nurse-practitioners among them.
Identifying someone who is caught in the web of a trafficking scheme requires an eye for nuanced details, says Amy Farrell, an associate professor of criminology and criminal justice at Northeastern who studies human trafficking.
And too often, she says, emergency medical personnel haven’t been properly trained to identify these warning signs or to know what to do next if they see them.
