{"id":1316076,"date":"2019-10-24T21:32:00","date_gmt":"2019-10-25T03:32:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.postindependent.com\/toussaint-column-going-to-bbat-to-stop-human-trafficking\/"},"modified":"2019-10-25T09:21:07","modified_gmt":"2019-10-25T15:21:07","slug":"toussaint-column-going-to-bbat-to-stop-human-trafficking","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kske\/local-news\/toussaint-column-going-to-bbat-to-stop-human-trafficking\/","title":{"rendered":"Toussaint column: Going to BBAT to stop human trafficking"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Last week, Gina D\u2019Orazio Stryker was elected president of the Battlement to Bells Anti-Trafficking Taskforce (BBAT).<\/p>\n

Most locals haven\u2019t heard of BBAT, but they\u2019ve heard of Gina. She\u2019s the founder of Gina Cucina, a gourmet soup company that has burst from its organic Carbondale roots to appear in stores all across Colorado.<\/p>\n

You\u2019d understand the connection if a recipe artist and mother of four went to bat to protect family farms or support food banks. But human trafficking?<\/p>\n

It\u2019s a huge issue. More than 40 million people are abducted and enslaved every year (that\u2019s what trafficking really is). Roughly 75 percent of trafficking victims are female and 25 percent are children. The scope of this crime has surpassed illegal arms sales and may soon exceed drug sales. After all, a person can be profitably trafficked numerous times daily, while drugs can be sold only once.<\/p>\n

Two things connected Gina to the issue: trucks and a close call as a teen.<\/p>\n

D\u2019Orazio Stryker grew up in Idaho, in a town about the size of Dotsero. One day, she skipped out of high school to go buy a sandwich. While at a convenience store, a man in a yellow van struck up a conversation with her, asking about local hunting and fishing. As she approached the van\u2019s open door, Gina\u2019s track coach saw what was happening and screamed, \u201cGet away! Get away!\u201d<\/p>\n

Later, that yellow van reportedly picked up a 9-year-old girl \u2014 who was never seen again.<\/p>\n

Human trafficking does indeed happen here: sometimes it\u2019s men brought to the Western Slope and trapped into agricultural labor. More often, it\u2019s young women lured into the sex trade; they\u2019re often moved from Denver to Colorado\u2019s resort areas.<\/p>\n

Human trafficking flows along Interstate highways. That\u2019s one of the reasons that a recent undercover operation \u2014 one that resulted in the arrest of nine Johns who were seeking sex with underage girls \u2014 took place in Glenwood Springs.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s also transportation that connects trafficking to food. As Gina says, \u201cAll food is transported by trucks. Hundreds of thousands of trucks.\u201d<\/p>\n

The trucking connection prompted Gina to ask FedEx to train all of its drivers to combat human trafficking. In 2016, D\u2019Orazio Stryker won a coveted FedEx Small Business Grant and was then asked to serve on FedEx\u2019s Entrepreneurial Advisory board. Her first request was for FedEx to train its 10,000 drivers to watch for and report human trafficking on America\u2019s highways.<\/p>\n

Within six months, FedEx did star training, and in February 2018, a FedEx representative came up to Gina at a conference and whispered that those efforts had saved the life of a 14-year-old girl in California.<\/p>\n

D\u2019Orazio Stryker has now joined with attorney Beth Klein \u2014 the powerhouse lawyer who wrote Colorado\u2019s two anti-human trafficking laws \u2014 to bring that work to the Roaring Fork Valley. Together, they have convened the Battlement to Bells Anti-Trafficking Taskforce (BBAT), an ad hoc group of about 40 volunteers. BBAT has met twice in Carbondale to design a regional effort to safeguard youngsters from Rifle up to Aspen.<\/p>\n

It might be tougher to reach teens than to take on big, burly truckers. D\u2019Orazio Stryker relates an incident in which a local eighth grader phoned to interview her for a term paper on human trafficking. Soon after, the girl\u2019s mother called to say that the paper had been shut down; a local school administrator had forbidden the project saying that the subject was too edgy and too graphic.<\/p>\n

If it\u2019s too scary to discuss, then what about the reality? Once a youngster is trafficked, their life expectancy is about seven years \u2014 seven years until death, usually from overdose or suicide.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s not a stranger-danger thing anymore,\u201d D\u2019Orazio Stryker explains. \u201cThe recruiters are called \u2018Romeo pimps\u2019 for a reason. They court a victim for three to six months, taking them to movies, buying them candy and gifts, learning what they like, learning about their friends, siblings and families. Then they nab them. They gang rape the youngster and take pictures. If the victim resists or tries to escape, the traffickers will threaten everyone the kid loves. They say, \u2018We\u2019ll get your little brother. We\u2019ll post the photos.\u2019 There\u2019s such shame involved, the victims just do what\u2019s asked of them.\u201d<\/p>\n

Local law enforcement officers \u2014 including Carbondale Police Chief Gene Schilling, who first proposed a local sting operation, Lee Damuth, Chief Investigator for the Judicial District and Rifle Police Chief Tommy Klein, who helped put on an anti-trafficking seminar last year \u2014 have welcomed BBAT\u2019s efforts. Here\u2019s to hoping that teachers, parents and other caring citizens will also step up to bat.<\/p>\n

Nicolette Toussaint lives in Carbondale. Her column appears monthly in the Post Independent and at postindependent.com.<\/p>\n

via:: Post Independent<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Last week, Gina D\u2019Orazio Stryker was elected president of the Battlement to Bells Anti-Trafficking Taskforce (BBAT). Most locals haven\u2019t heard of BBAT, but they\u2019ve heard of Gina. She\u2019s the founder of Gina Cucina, a gourmet soup company that has burst from its organic Carbondale roots to appear in stores all across Colorado. You\u2019d understand the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[160],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1316076","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","category-local-news"],"acf":[],"publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-09-06 16:26:52","action":"change-status","newStatus":"draft","terms":[],"taxonomy":"category","extraData":[]},"publishpress_future_workflow_manual_trigger":{"enabledWorkflows":[]},"distributor_meta":false,"distributor_terms":false,"distributor_media":false,"distributor_original_site_name":"KSKE Ski Country","distributor_original_site_url":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kske","push-errors":false,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kske\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1316076","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kske\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kske\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kske\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kske\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1316076"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kske\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1316076\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1316091,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kske\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1316076\/revisions\/1316091"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kske\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1316076"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kske\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1316076"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kske\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1316076"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}