According to a new local documentary, a single human-trafficking victim can suffer more than 40 rapes a day.
But perhaps even more shocking is the fact that this sort of thing happens in Lycoming County.
Produced by Central PA’s On the PULSE media outlet, “The Hidden Truth of Human Trafficking in Pennsylvania” is a bracing, brave and brilliant look at how and why this occurs in our own backyard.
“Like most other people, I assumed human and sex trafficking was more of an international problem — or it involved girls being kidnapped, taken from home and forced into the trafficking trade,” says the film’s writer and co-director, Anne Reiner. “But I was surprised to find that in addition to this type of trafficking, there is a more hidden kind that takes place within our communities, often perpetrated by family members or a guardian of the victim.”
Along with fellow-director Noah Beiter, Reiner interviewed several local experts, advocates and trafficking survivors for her film, which premiered March 18 at Penn College.
It will run again at 3 p.m. Saturday at Lycoming College’s Krapf Gateway Center.
The interviewees’ unilateral testimony is that sex-trafficking is generally not as sudden and overt as in the famous Liam Neeson movie “Taken.” Instead, in up to 80% of cases, the perpetrator is a family member or an intimate partner.
One courageous trafficking survivor is Lynaugh Bobst, a Williamsport native who is now helping to expose this tragedy in our area. Bobst stresses how hard to was to be heard as a powerless teen who — like another local survivor in the film — was actually trafficked by her own mother.
“There are people who construct a lifestyle that gives them power and privilege over others,” says Bobst in her revealing interview.
Perpetrators often use social media to lure victims, looking for youth with loose privacy settings; in many cases, the victims’ posts reveal social isolation or unstable family, and these can be exploited by traffickers offering gifts, connection or sympathy, all while “grooming” their targets for sex with friends or customers — some from out of state.
“Route 15 in PA is one of the primary corridors for trafficking through the state,” says one of the film’s attention-getting intertitles.
Having begun their research four years ago, Reiner and Beiter spent a year and a half working on the film, for which they served as the entire crew — doing all their own editing, lighting and photography.
Beiter even appears briefly in what may be the film’s strongest aspect: Alongside articulate and well-informed interviews runs a fictionalized vignette involving a young victim and her trafficker.
With no dialog and just a scattering of tasteful but distressing scenes, we watch this young lady fall under the man’s spell, thereafter, cycling through a series of faceless trysts — then slowly realizing that she needs to break free.
Beiter plays the perp, with a tremendously tender and engaging lead performance by Williamsport Area High School junior Faye Moore. Along with the actual victim interviews, this brilliantly crafted story-strand really puts a face on the horrific issue.
The movie also discusses how victims are rescued and rehabilitated, including the vital PAATH 15 initiative, which has now been in place for nearly 10 years.
This fine film’s April 8 screening is free and open to the public.
On the PULSE is currently also working on a film project about end-of-life care around the world — plus two others on elder abuse and the opioid crisis in our local community.
Info on funding or promoting any of these projects can be found at onthepulsenews.com or anne@onthepulsenews.com.
