More than a million people live in conditions of modern slavery in the United States today, according to the Global Slavery Index, or about 3.3 out of every 1,000 people in the country.

At least 240,000 of those — more than 22 percent — are victims of sex trafficking, according to other studies, a jaw-dropping average of about 4,800 per state. In Maryland, the numbers are stark.

The National Human Trafficking Hotline has received about 6,000 hotline calls and other types of reports from Maryland since its inception in 2007. It found 1,533 human trafficking cases involving nearly 3,000 victims in Maryland during that period, the Baltimore Sun reported earlier last year.

Human trafficking is a term that refers to both sex work and other forms of exploitation, including forced labor. The SAFE Center, which primarily serves Prince George’s and Montgomery counties, has helped more than 400 sex and labor trafficking survivors since it was founded eight years ago, The Sun report noted.

The numbers are so overwhelming that those who devote their lives to fighting the multibillion-dollar human trafficking industry say they can find themselves losing hope.

That debate came to Baltimore this week.

The Alliance to End Human Trafficking, a nonprofit established in 2013 by a group of Catholic nuns from across the United States brought reams of facts, testimony from individuals who have survived the trafficking trade, and some of the latest best practices in the anti-trafficking field.

“Sometimes people scoff and say to me, ‘Is it realistic to try to prevent human trafficking when it’s such a huge and complicated problem?'” said Katie Boller Gosewisch, executive director of the Brighton, Michigan-based group since 2022.

“I say it’s a lofty goal, but it’s our identity,” she said. “It’s who we are and what we want to accomplish. Pope Francis declared this to be a jubilee year of hope, and that’s exactly what we want to bring to what we do.”

As befits an illicit industry with tentacles in so many familiar elements of modern life, a group of experts brought together by the organization in Baltimore opted to address the subject of human trafficking — mainly sex trafficking but also its less visible twin, labor trafficking — from multiple points of view.

Marianne Thomas, a survivor of human trafficking and a behavioral psychology specialist who teaches in a sex-trafficking education program at St. Thomas University in Miami, spoke Wednesday about how adverse childhood experiences can leave young people more psychologically vulnerable to the predations of sex traffickers.

That much exposure to substance abuse, sex abuse or violence, known as Adverse Childhood Experiences (or ACEs) in the trade, can be a catalyst to trafficking. That means experts in Maryland and elsewhere must find a way to break intergenerational behavior patterns within families to help prevent tragic situations in the future.

Eileen McKenzie, a member of the Catholic order the Franciscan Sisters of Perpetual Adoration who works with asylum seekers in the U.S. Southwest, spoke of the vulnerability of immigrants to criminals seeking to enslave others for profit on both sides of the U.S./Mexico border.

According to the Polaris Project, a non-governmental organization that works to prevent sex and labor trafficking in North America, people from Latin America make up almost a third of the population of victims of human trafficking in the United States.

Most of the victims are from Mexico, Honduras, El Salvador, and the Dominican Republic.

Marcia Eugenio, the director of the office of child labor, forced labor and human trafficking in the U.S. Department of Labor, outlined how trafficker-employers routinely threaten immigrant victims.

Those include threats of deportation, forcing immigrants to work in hazardous conditions without adequate safety gear or compelling them to live in overcrowded conditions they provide.

A panel discussion among four survivors of sex trafficking Thursday afternoon lent an often tragic but ultimately hopeful human dimension to such information.

Cristian Eduardo, a 34-year-old immigrant, spoke of being a smart, well-behaved, high-achieving young man while growing up in Mexico.

But after he came to the United States, he fell into the company of skilled traffickers who used his then-undocumented status to compel him gradually into a life of sex slavery. He said he didn’t even realize he was being trafficked.

Had his parents or others around him taught him about bodily autonomy as a young man, he said he might have realized what was happening to him. And had he known about the danger and prevalence of smart traffickers and how they operate, he would not have been ensnared by it, said Eduardo, a trained engineer who has become an anti-sex trafficking advocate over the past decade.

He also stressed the importance of keeping an eye out for people who might be subtly displaying signs of enslavement, like downcast eyes or an evident lack of financial independence in the presence of another, older person, for example.

“It isn’t just young people from dysfunctional families who become susceptible to traffickers. Watch out for those kids who seem to be doing so well in life that the adults around them just assume they don’t need to be looked after,” he said. “Keep an eye on your kids. And if you don’t educate your kids, some trafficker out there will be happy to.”

Three other survivors echoed that theme.

Kris Wade, an anti-trafficking activist from Kansas City, Missouri, described growing up in a loving family in western Kansas. But she said she had such a rebellious attitude she gravitated toward older people with money and cars who could shower her with gifts, even though her parents tried to warn her away.

“I was the smartest 18-year-old in the world, and I knew it,” she told a rapt audience.

She said when she became a mother, she frequently told her daughter she’d always be there to take a phone call from her and help her, no matter what kind of trouble the daughter might have landed in.

“Don’t punish them for coming to you when they need you,” she said. “Praise them for calling you. Tell them, ‘I don’t approve of the behavior, but I love you, and nothing is going to change that as long as I live.’ That can make all the difference.”

Two other survivors who have become activists, Jennifer Footle of Denver and Maria Tell of Fort Collins, Colorado, also told their stories.

Both agreed that parents need to share age-appropriate lessons with their children, telling them they have a right to bodily autonomy, that it’s wrong for others to touch them without permission and to give children a realistic sense that there are actually people out there in the culture who are willing to do them harm for money.

“I was naive,” Footle said. “If I had known more, my life might have gone in a different direction.”

Tell echoed the idea.

“I was looking around at the airport on the way here, and everyone I saw was on their cell phone. People aren’t talking to each other,” Tell said. “They aren’t interacting face-to-face. Put your phone down. Talk to your kids. And tell them the truth. Our kids deserve to hear the truth.”

Boller Gosewich said the alliance’s roots are in Catholic social teaching, which underscores “the dignity of the human person.” And the idea that human beings can be bought and sold as commodities is “a devastating blight on the dignity of the human person.”

As the conference continued through Friday, speakers were set to address how to reduce demand for the sex-trafficking business, which Boller Gosewich said is so vast in the United States today that “believe it or not, it’s present in every ZIP code.”

Experts said that we must better educate young people, particularly boys — the vast majority who procure paid sex are men — of the need to respect women and inform them of women’s rights.

“Demand is the driver,” Eduardo said.

It’s but one part of a complicated puzzle, but to activists, that’s no reason not to keep pushing in the right direction.

“I always keep the words of Mother Teresa in mind,” Tell told her audience. “We are called to be faithful, not successful.”

Have a news tip? Contact Jonathan M. Pitts at jonpitts@baltsun.com.