CAST and Me

When I was very little, my Dad and I had an unspoken weekly tradition - watching CSI: Crime Scene
Investigation on CBS. One day, as we settled in to watch, I realized that I had no idea what that week’s
episode was about. The focus was (you guessed it!) human trafficking. As D.B. Russell and his team
scrambled to find the perpetrators and heroically save the victims, I struggled to wrap my head around
the concept.

As far as I knew, traffic was the thing that my parents stoically faced down every morning in the car,
the thing everyone complained about. So in my childish mind, human trafficking took the form of large
lines of people all queueing up to get somewhere or do something.

Imagine my relief when, at the end of the episode, the CSI team captured the men who were forcing
these poor people into torturous, long lines!

Unfortunately, the reality of the human trafficking issue is a lot less tame and much more sordid than my
young mind could comprehend. As an adult, my horror at the knowledge and for the victims of human
trafficking extends beyond sympathy for an imaginatively long queue. But it took me longer than I’d like
to admit to realize that human trafficking is something that happens in the real world every day, effects
real families, and dehumanizes real victims - in my own backyard.  

CAST was born of a college course assignment which required me to set up a blog on something that
interests me. Throughout the 10 week duration of this exploratory and investigative blog, I hope to learn
more about human trafficking in Colorado, and worldwide, and form an educated opinion on the issue.
I want my eyes, and the eyes of readers, to be opened to some of the abhorrent realities of this crime,
and to be moved for its (often silent) victims.

If you or someone you know is a victim of human trafficking, call the National Human Trafficking Hotline at 1-888-373-7888, or text 233733.