Native Hawaiians disproportionate among human trafficking victims

Legislative resolutions would ask the Hawaii State Commission on the Status of Women to convene a task force to study missing and possibly slain Native Hawaiian women and girls who might have been used in the sex trafficking trade.

Senate Concurrent Resolution 8, introduced by state Sen. Rosalyn Baker (D, West Maui-South Maui), will be heard Wednesday morning by the Senate Judiciary Committee. The resolutions would create a task force composed of eight members from local government departments to collect data, especially on Native Hawaiians who might be sex-trafficked. It also would invite six representatives from organizations to join the task force.

One of the goals would be to identify the number of Native Hawaiian girls and women who might be involved in sex trafficking.

“Missing Native Hawaiian girls should be treated like a crisis regardless of how many,” said Khara Jabola­-Carolus, executive director of the Hawaii State Commission on the Status of Women. “It’s really going to open up that conversation.”

Jabola-Carolus said Hawaii was left out of a national study conducted by the Urban Indian Health Institute, which produced a 2018 report that covered Indigenous women trafficked across the U.S.

However, it prompted a study from the Hawaii State Commission on the Status of Women and Arizona State University that surveyed sex trafficking victims. The study found that out of 363 people surveyed in Hawaii, 100 were sex-­trafficked.

Native Hawaiians disproportionately made up 64% of sex trafficking victims; 83% identified as female and 23% male.

The survey was conducted for three months in 2019, and it found that most of the victims lived on Oahu and Maui.

One in 5 had been sex-trafficked as a child averaging 11 years old, while the oldest was 55.

Victims of the human trafficking trade had experienced domestic violence, childhood sexual abuse, mental health issues, drug addiction and homelessness, the study cited. Exploitation is hidden from public view because it occurs in private homes, hotels, vacation rentals, parlors or the internet.

But it’s still unknown how many Native Hawaiian women and girls are missing or killed, Jabola-­Carolus said.

“They (the people surveyed) talked about seeing a girl killed, but we can’t corroborate because we just don’t know,” she said. “Because we haven’t done an overview, there’s no data sharing, and there’s so many different data points. A lot of this is hidden by the way data is collected or not collected.”

The ultimate goal of the task force is to figure out ways to prevent sex trafficking among Native Hawaiians.

The House introduced a similar resolution, HCR 11, which is the companion of SCR 8.

Senate Concurrent Resolution 8 will be heard Wednesday morning by the Senate Judiciary Committee. The resolutions would create a task force composed of eight members from local government departments to collect data, especially on Native Hawaiians who might be sex-trafficked.