Task force to study Native Hawaiian sex trafficking

A new task force will try to gather as much data as possible on Native Hawaiians who might have been victims of sex trafficking.

House Concurrent Resolution 11, passed last week by the Legislature, established a task force co-chaired by the Office of Hawaiians Affairs and the Hawaii State Commission on the Status of Women with the goal of figuring out ways to prevent sex trafficking among Native Hawaiians.

“The first step is mapping out how we’re going to exist,” said Khara Jabola-Carolus, executive director of the Hawaii State Commission on the Status of Women. “What I’m hoping is that we can start with orienting the group with how these task forces and research has been done nationally.”

Jabola-Carolus said the task force has consulted with the Urban Indian Health Institute, which produced a 2018 report that covered Indigenous women trafficked across the country.

Another study, from the Hawaii State Commission on the Status of Women and Arizona State University, found that Native Hawaiians were disproportionately sex-trafficked in Hawaii.

The study found that 64% of sex trafficking victims were Native Hawaiian. Most of the them lived on Oahu and Maui, and 83% identified as female and 23% as male.

That study was conducted for three months in 2019. It surveyed 363 people in Hawaii, and 100 admitted to being sex-trafficked.

“We want to make sure that accuracy is a No. 1 concern,” Jabola-Carolus said.

The lack of more detailed data raises questions about the scope of Native Hawaiian sex trafficking.

“The main criticism is that people have been saying is, ‘Well there’s no proof,’” Jabola-Carolus said. “That’s the point of the task force.”

The task force will not be led by law enforcement, but will need law enforcement assistance in gathering data. Some methods being considered for the study are community engagement and survivor surveys.

“We know that data collection is so poor,” Jabola- Carolus said. “The way data is collected now could lead to a misleading conclusion. So we have to understand what data is being collected first before we can just count numbers and say whether or not this is an issue.”

The task force is planning its first meeting for sometime in June. Its report to the Legislature is due by 2023.