A task force intent on eradicating human trafficking will debate whether Colorado should deem mail-order brides as sex slaves and will set up a training program to teach police the difference between prostitutes and sex slaves.
Mail-order brides are often targets of violence and abuse, said state Rep. Alice Borodkin, D-Denver, who formed the Interagency Task Force on Trafficking this year. Women forced into prostitution should be considered victims, not criminals, she said at the first task-force meeting at the Capitol on Tuesday.
The task force, which includes state law-enforcement officials and experts from the University of Denver and nonprofit groups, will form subcommittees to discuss mail-order brides, training programs, new legislation and help for victims, Borodkin said.
Borodkin said she formed the task force after three spas in her district staffed with foreign sex slaves were broken up. Six other spas also were cited for using foreign- born sex slaves.
FBI agent Nick Vanicelli recently told state lawmakers that an initial investigation found that an interstate ring smuggling children for prostitution could be operating in Colorado.
Maybe the first obstacle to ending human slavery is ignorance, according to several experts. Several members of the new committee said they knew slavery existed in Eastern Europe and impoverished countries but hadn’t known it existed in Colorado.
“I was just shocked,” Kenlyn Kolleen of the group Free a Child said about learning that Denver youths plied with drugs had been coerced into prostitution.
Her organization has spent eight years in Nepal attempting to steer vulnerable girls from sex slavery.
“We must start a U.S. program,” Kolleen said. “This has to be a global approach. We have to be as involved as anyone else.”
Staff writer Kirk Mitchell can be reached at 303-820-1206 or kmitchell@denverpost.com.
