Slavery Exists in Australia

The ABC recently ran an article on Modern Slavery in Australia, which featured Aranya’s story (name changed for privacy) of modern slavery for sexual exploitation in Victorian brothels. It’s a story we hear too often. Aranya found herself paying $100 a week to sleep on the floor of someone else’s kitchen, forced to cook, do…

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August Action Against Slavery

Was there slavery in Australia? YES!!  It shouldn’t even be a debate!! From early settlement Australia’s Indigenous Peoples  were forced to work unpaid on cattle stations, Chief Protector in the Northern Territory in 1927 wrote, “in a servitude that is nothing short of slavery”? Tens of thousands of Pacific Islanders were kidnapped or coerced to work as…

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Stamping out Exploitation in Travel

A study benchmarking the travel industry’s progress in fighting human trafficking and the commercial sexual exploitation of children by ECPAT-USA. This study establishes a baseline to assess how 70 companies in eight travel industry sectors address and report on the protection of children from commercial sexual exploitation in their business practices. While it is evident that the travel…

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Victim-Offender Overlap in Trafficking in Persons for Sexual Exploitation

Flinders University PhD candidate and member of ACRATH, Alexandra Louise Anderson Baxter, recently published a paper entitled When the Line between Victimization and Criminalization Blurs: The Victim-Offender Overlap Observed in Female Offenders in Cases of Trafficking in Persons for Sexual Exploitation in Australia. Between 2004 and 2015 nine females were convicted under divisions 270 (Slavery and…

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Call to Help Combat Modern Day Slavery

ACRATH (Australian Catholic Religious Against Trafficking in Humans) has launched its national fund-raising appeal today in a bid to raise $400,000 to continue its work fighting human trafficking and modern slavery. ACRATH now relies entirely on donations after last year losing its $125,000 a year grant from the Federal Government. ACRATH’s Executive Officer Christine Carolan said the…

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Inherent Dignity

Guidebook to Prevent Human Trafficking for Sexual Exploitation “Inherent Dignity”, an advocacy guidebook to preventing trafficking for the purpose of sexual exploitation and to realising the human rights of women and girls throughout their lives has been launched by Mercy International Association: Mercy Global Action at the UN (MIA-MGA). The guidebook was born from extensive research…

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Stop Trafficking!

Anti-Human Trafficking Newsletter Vol 16 No 6 The June issue of Stop Trafficking! is now available. It highlights the trauma suffered by victims of sexual exploitation and  the issues involved in their treatment and healing. Articles include Trauma & treatment, Biderman’s chart of coercion, Trauma coerced bonding and Interventions for Traumatized children. Download the June…

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Stop Trafficking!

Anti-Human Trafficking Newsletter Vol 16 No 4 The latest issue of Stop Trafficking! considers the issue of sexual exploitation. A copy of the April 2018 issue can be downloaded here.

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Stop Trafficking

Anti-Human Trafficking Newsletter Vol 15 No 11 The December issue of Stop Trafficking! highlights the vulnerability of children especially in the travel and tourism industries. Articles include Travel & Tourism…& Trafficking, Exploitation of Children by Tourists, Efforts to Prevent Human Trafficking in the Tourism Industry and Leaders Unite to Stop Global Sexual Exploitation of Children…

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Speaking on Behalf of Trafficked Women

2017 One Heart Many Voices Catholic Mission Conference Marietta Latonio is a social worker who lives and works in Cebu, Philippines and is a long time friend of ACRATH. She attended the 2017 One Heart Many Voices Catholic Mission Conference in Sydney recently to speak on behalf of women in Cebu who have been trafficked into sexual…

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We Cannot be Indifferent

From MESSAGE OF HIS HOLINESS POPE FRANCIS FOR THE WORLD DAY OF MIGRANTS AND REFUGEES 2016 ‘No one can claim to be indifferent in the face of new forms of slavery imposed by criminal organizations which buy and sell men, women and children as forced labourers in construction, agriculture, fishing or in other markets. How…

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Report of Interdepartmental Committee on Human Trafficking

Australian Government Response to Trafficking in Persons The seventh report of the Interdepartmental Committee on Human Trafficking and Slavery was tabled in Federal Parliament recently.  This report provides an outline of the work of Australian Government agencies during the 2014-2015 period. In the executive summary it states: “The Australian Federal Police received 119 new referrals…

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