Looking down both roads, they were stapled to every telephone pole I could see. I ripped it down and stuffed it in my pocket.
Of course, a myriad of ideas and arguments start flooding in.
For a good chunk of 2018 I had lived in Texas, where human trafficking (or "slave-trade", if we want to maintain a continuity of terms) was an issue of previously unbelievable scale to me. Where people are regularly grabbed from the street and never seen again. Where you couldn't go a day without following the thread of an investigation, especially in the Houston area. Beyond that, I have good friends who practice varying degrees and branches of magic, from basic intention setting to spells and rituals, to things I have little to no understanding of. The flyers had my attention.
My first instinct, which may still prove to be the case, is that the person responsible for posting the flyers (found in the same area as another batch of pro-christian homemade flyers a few weeks prior) was your run of the mill, well, you know the type. However, I am new to Vermont. I don't know the people well. I don't know the climate of spiritual communities. The few practicing folks that I know have been mostly kind, gracious, and loving people. But, people surprise you. People in general can be monsters. Was it likely that a coven was trafficking people? No. Was it possible? Unfortunately, yes.
First, I began to look into missing persons in Vermont. Forty-ish cases, dating back to the 40's. A very small handful of them (less than four) are what I would consider to even fit the profile of someone likely to be a victim of human trafficking. A few hikers that had gone missing (including Paula Jean Welden, whose disappearance is reminiscent of the Missing411 profile and went on to inspire the creation of the Vermont State Police). A few people abandoning their lives, seemingly purposefully. A few gruesome cases, including two victims of the recent serial killer Israel Keyes. But almost no one that leapt out to me. It then occurred to me that victims may not be from here, but merely funneled through.
From there I discovered that in 2013, Vermont had assembled The Vermont Human Trafficking Taskforce, and noted:
"Between 2014 and mid-2017, in the Chittenden County area alone, the HTTF’s data collection efforts estimate that there were over 250 suspected incidents of human trafficking. Due to the inherent challenges of counting those whose activities are deliberately shielded from sight, we believe that the incidence of sex and labor trafficking in Vermont statewide is substantially higher than these numbers suggest."
Chittenden County is where Burlington is located, and in only three years there were 250 (or a "substantially higher" amount) cases. I began to dig into news reports and found only one instance of a sex-trafficking trial occurring recently. However, further googling brought up a wide community concern with at least one public forum being held in January of 2019, and a large mural downtown that reads "YOU ARE LOVED" along with contact information if you are or know a victim of trafficking.
A task force was involved, and the state police (who had just been awarded a $1.2M grant to assist with the issue) were assisting them. Various sections of the community were concerned. But only one trial?
I began reaching out. First to the head of the task force (who as of this post has not responded) to clarify some smaller questions I still have. Then, to the wicca/pagan/occult communities, to inquire how they felt about what I still suspect is small-town religious bigotry.
Contacting those communities has so far proven difficult. I have contacted people via what now appear to be dead forum communities. I have reached out on Reddit (where only two practitioners have come forward, but a good handful of people have made a point to ridicule them). I currently have a handful of interviews to conduct in the next week or so with local practitioners, and am hoping to gain some insight into their point of view on the matters.
At this point, I feel as though my original guess is correct, an over-zealous religious person with a printer stapled non-sense to a handful of telephone poles.
However, those statistics from the Vermont Human Trafficking Taskforce sit uneasily in me.
I plan on following this up regularly.
In the meantime, if you or someone you know may be a victim of human trafficking, you can make an anonymous report at
Vermont:
https://vsp.vermont.gov/tipsubmit.
text: “VTIPS” to 274637 (CRIMES).
call: Vermont 211.
or nationally:
text: 233733
call: 1-888-373-7888
https://humantraffickinghotline.org/report-trafficking
To see how your purchases may affect human trafficking: http://slaveryfootprint.org/#where_do_you_live
