How the Transport Industry Is Making a Difference
By Annie Sovcik
From Issue 4, 2024 of Breakbulk Magazine.
Pulling into a truck stop to take a break, professional truck driver Kevin Kimmel noticed suspicious activity around an RV in the lot. After seeing a young woman try to stick her head out the window only to have it violently pulled back, he called 911.
When officers arrived on the scene, a state trooper took the young woman aside and discovered the two people she was traveling with had been torturing her, threatening to kill her family and forcing her to perform sex acts for money with unknown men in the RV. As a result of Kevin Kimmel’s 911 call, the victim received medical attention and was reunited with her family. The perpetrators were arrested and sentenced to 40 and 41 years in prison for sex trafficking and related charges.
Human trafficking—or modern-day slavery—is a global problem in which people are illegally bought and sold for forced labor or commercial sex. Traffickers use violence, manipulation and false promises of work opportunities or romance to lure, control and exploit their victims, generating billions of dollars per year in illicit profit around the world. It is paradoxically both a hidden crime and one that regularly occurs in plain sight, as traffickers are relying on the public to be ignorant and apathetic as they exploit their victims for profit.
As the eyes and ears of the highways, roadways and communities, professional truck drivers are uniquely positioned to recognize and report human trafficking. As traffickers keep their victims on the move, they are traveling on the same highways and visiting the same truck stops and gas stations as everyone else, creating multiple opportunities for victim identification.
TAT (Truckers Against Trafficking) is a non-profit organization that exists to educate, equip, empower and mobilize members of key industries and agencies to combat human trafficking. TAT is raising a mobile army of transportation and energy professionals to make a difference in the lives of victims of human trafficking and help law enforcement investigate and prosecute traffickers. Since its founding in 2009, TAT has trained over 1.8 million people on how to recognize and report this crime, leading them to help in the recovery of hundreds of victims.
With the goal of reaching every professional driver with human trafficking awareness training, TAT partners with trucking companies, truck stops, manufacturers, energy companies, bus companies, dealerships and more to educate their workforce with TAT’s free, niche-specific training resources.
TAT also works with companies to identify ways they can leverage their spheres of influence to create greater awareness throughout their communities and networks to both interrupt and prevent his crime.
To learn more about TAT and explore partnership opportunities, visit https://tatnonprofit.org/.
Annie Sovcik is TAT’s senior director of Programs & Strategic Initiatives, managing TAT’s energy program and working to build public-private partnerships between key industries and law enforcement in order to combat human trafficking.
