BETHLEHEM, Pa. – Leaders say human trafficking is happening here in the Lehigh Valley, often in ways people don’t expect.<\/p>\n
“Human trafficking happens in every community. And here in the Lehigh Valley, we are the third largest urban area in Pennsylvania. And Pennsylvania consistently ranks around the top 10 in the country for reported human trafficking cases,” said Carol Andersen, CEO of Bloom for Women.<\/p>\n
That’s why Bloom for Women hosted a documentary screening at ArtsQuest.<\/p>\n
“We’re hosting a screening of the Right Track film, which follows survivors through the experience of commercial sexual exploitation,” said Andersen. “And we’re doing this because we really want to raise awareness about this issue, that it’s happening here, and that there are ways to disrupt it here in the Lehigh Valley.”<\/p>\n
The documentary follows survivors and highlights the fight to end sex trafficking and exploitation.<\/p>\n
“I think\u00a0people think human trafficking is the white van pulling up and grabbing someone off the street,” said Andersen. “While that does happen on occasion where someone is kidnapped and physically held captive, more often than not, a victim is groomed by someone they know or that is building trust with them.”<\/p>\n
After the film, a panel focused on spreading awareness and hearing from survivors who now work to prevent trafficking.<\/p>\n
“When we can step into someone’s story and see that it could be someone we know or someone next door or even someone in our family, we may be able to prevent it from happening or prevent it from getting worse,” said Andersen.<\/p>\n
Organizers say awareness is key to prevention, and there is help that can connect survivors to support.<\/p>\n
“It does happen here and that there is hope, there is help,” Andersen added.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"BETHLEHEM, Pa. – Leaders say human trafficking is happening here in the Lehigh Valley, often in ways people…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":165092,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[119,121,120,3783,174,524,28140,810,157,7340,16048,268],"class_list":{"0":"post-165368","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-allentown","8":"tag-allentown","9":"tag-allentown-headlines","10":"tag-allentown-news","11":"tag-awareness","12":"tag-bloom-for-women","13":"tag-community","14":"tag-documentary","15":"tag-human-trafficking","16":"tag-lehigh-valley","17":"tag-prevention","18":"tag-sexual-exploitation","19":"tag-survivors"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/165368","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=165368"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/165368\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/165092"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=165368"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=165368"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=165368"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}