Austin News

With the help of a state grant, Allies Against Slavery is using technology to help illuminate the hidden aspects of human trafficking. 

The Austin-based nonprofit was awarded the grant by the Child Sex Trafficking Team (CSTT) in Gov. Greg Abbott's office to launch Lighthouse, an information gathering and sharing platform. The software can be used by nurses, social workers and organizations that work with homeless youth to gather data and study the causes, effects and possible solutions to human trafficking. 

According to Allies Against Slavery's website, less than 2% of trafficking victims are identified and given proper care, a statistic they are trying to improve with Lighthouse. The website states that a key aspect of finding a solution to the nearly 98% of victims who go unreported is identification. 

"You can't solve what you can't see," John Nahme, president and CEO of Allies Against Slavery, told KXAN reporter Steffi Lee. "We really need a comprehensive place to build the intelligence we need to proactively get out in front of traffickers and disrupt that exploitation." 

Lighthouse is capable of helping authorities and organizations better understand the experiences of the nearly 79,000 children and youth who are trafficked in Texas, Nahme said. By better understanding the experiences of the victims of human trafficking, Nahme's team believes it can identify people who have potentially been trafficked and build a comprehensive program to effectively help those victims. 

“Texas has made great strides to combat human trafficking, yet the hidden nature of the crime makes it difficult to see and respond to, much less measure,” Nehme said in a press release. “The Lighthouse Data Initiative will illuminate this problem so we can better understand the experiences of victims and learn from trends to proactively disrupt exploitation. We applaud the CSTT’s commitment to preventing and protecting people in Texas from this human rights abuse.”

In the release, Nehme said that traffickers use technology to exploit, but that Lighthouse will allow technology to be used for good.