Austin News

New Friends New Life is a drop-in center where teens who are homeless or being sex trafficked can shower, eat a healthy meal or just watch television. It also gives the staff an opportunity to offer their assistance and inform them about services.

“Foster kids are extremely susceptible because of their history and life experiences in foster care,” said Chad Frymire, board chair of the North Texas Coalition Against Human Trafficking. “Many times, it’s pretty dismal and a trafficker can smell weakness or low self-esteem while promising a better life. What ends up happening is they'll sit outside group homes or at a nearby gas station where they know kids go for snacks."

The traffickers, according to Frymire, know the locations of psychiatric hospitals and they know where to find prospective victims online.

"We've even had traffickers hanging out at schools,” he said.

New Friends New Life did not immediately respond to requests for comment. They are one of the many organizations that Frymire works with to stamp out trafficking.

But COVID-19 presents new challenges, according to Frymire, with child victims being exposed to the coronavirus.

“It's made things super complicated,” Frymire told the Texas Business Coalition. “What we've seen is an uptick in child exploitation and soliciting online even more so than before the pandemic. You’ve got kids and even adults that are home alone, especially some of the more vulnerable, and Johns thrive on discretion, which they have even more of right now because everybody's worried about COVID."

 As of Aug.5, there were 451,181 coronavirus cases statewide and 7,261 deaths, according to the Texas Department of State Health Services COVID-19 dashboard.

“It’s been in the past decade that we have started to understand what this trafficking is and all the layers of manipulation and complications that are on top of it, even in adults," said Frymire. “So, there’s more focus on prosecuting the Johns in recent years and getting their victims into social services rather than racking up prostitution charges."

But exposing the traffickers, Johns, pimps and perpetrators is not an easy task.

“With gangs and cartels, trafficking is a hard crime to prosecute because most of the prostitutes or trafficking victims are not going to squeal on their trafficker out of fear of retribution. Trafficking has surpassed drug sales as far as money is concerned," he said.

Frymire is also director of the Dallas-area Court Appointed Special Advocate (CASA) program, which is one way that a concerned, average citizen can help.

“Kids are already removed from their family home by a judge when we get on the case,” said Frymire.

“We now have multidisciplinary teams that bring together law enforcement, special prosecutors, the medical department of family protective services, advocacy groups and CASAs to provide wraparound services, which breaks the silo work we’ve been doing for so many years. We're creating protocols to make it a cohesive team. These protocols that we've created are a roadmap from when a child is recovered by law enforcement to ultimately a child is who is restored, whatever that may look like.”