What We Mean When We Say Human Trafficking
By Melanie Heitkamp, LCSW | Executive Director Emeritus, Youthworks
Governor Kelly Armstrong has signed a proclamation recognizing January as Human Trafficking Prevention Month in North Dakota. This is important and this proclamations matters. It helps us acknowledge that human trafficking exists in our communities. In North Dakota. Of North Dakotans. By North Dakotans. However, the proclamation does not address what we, as a community, should do once we acknowledge the issue of human trafficking.
Right now, it is difficult to escape stories of exploitation and abuse. We continue to learn more about the harm connected to Jeffrey Epstein. We are hearing new allegations involving Sean “Diddy” Combs. And here in North Dakota, the details surrounding former State Senator Ray Holmberg have forced many people to confront a reality they would rather not see. Alongside these stories are the steady, heartbreaking reports connected to Missing and Murdered Indigenous People, names added far too often to a list that continues to grow. As we read the news, we are facing a near daily barrage of stories about child sexual abuse, exploitation, and abuse that thrives in silence.
At first, these stories are shocking. Then they are painful. And over time, they become numbing. We read them, absorb what we can, and move on to the next headline. Not because we do not care, but because it feels overwhelming.
Because the question that follows is always the same: what can we actually do?
How we answer that question depends on how we understand human trafficking in the first place.
When many people picture trafficking, they imagine an unknown assailant arriving from outside the community. They picture a stranger using a ploy of money left under a windshield, luring someone back to their car in a parking lot, and abducting them in a single, terrifying moment. Someone dangerous and obvious. A threat that feels dramatic and extreme. That framing makes trafficking frightening, but distant. It allows us to believe that if we are paying attention, if we are good parents, if we live in the right neighborhoods, this is not something we need to look too closely at.
This is rarely what happens.
More often, trafficking unfolds through familiarity. Through grooming. Through attention that feels affirming before it becomes controlling. Through adults who recognize unmet needs and exploit them. Through offers of love, safety, or stability that come with conditions a young person recognizes and accepts because the alternatives feel even worse.
Sometimes it looks like a trusted adult crossing boundaries. Sometimes it looks like an acquaintance offering a place to sleep, at a price. Sometimes, it can look lonely girl, unsure of her worth, seeking affirmation and acceptance on the internet. Parents trying to survive poverty and drug addiction, who may have experienced similar experiences when they were young, and miss the signs for their own children. These situations are rarely dramatic. They are quiet. And they happen in plain sight or begin on a computer or phone.
These situations do not happen in isolation. They take root in social environments where girls’ bodies are routinely commented on, evaluated, and sexualized, and where that attention is treated as normal rather than alarming. They exist alongside a quiet but very real demand. Adults who are willing to pay for sex rely on secrecy, silence, and social tolerance to keep it hidden. Discomfort is minimized. Inappropriate behavior is brushed off as awkwardness or misunderstanding. People notice when something feels off but hesitate to say anything because they do not want to be wrong, intrusive, or disruptive. In that space, exploitation is not just enabled by the person doing the trafficking but sustained by those who are willing to purchase sex and by communities that allow both to remain unnamed.
When conversations about trafficking focus on the youth’s risk factors, we miss the point entirely. Exploitation does not happen because young people are reckless or careless. It happens because adults misuse power and because communities normalize silence. It happens when harmful behavior is tolerated long enough to feel ordinary.
Prevention does not begin with teaching youth how to protect themselves from adults. It begins with adults taking responsibility for the conditions we have created and allowed to persist. It requires us to question what we excuse, what we overlook, and what we have come to accept as normal. It requires us to educate ourselves about human trafficking, to challenge our assumptions on how it happens and implement protections in our homes and in our institutions.
This kind of prevention is not sensational. It does not rely on fear or dramatic warnings. It shows up in everyday moments — in conversations we choose to have, in boundaries we are willing to name, and in whether we are prepared to believe people when the truth is uncomfortable or inconvenient. The good news is that the same social norms that allow exploitation to persist are learned, which means they can also be interrupted. In the end it is about providing connection and purpose for our youth.
Human trafficking prevention depends on community. When young people are welcomed into our spaces, known by name, and connected through real relationships, they are safer from exploitation.
At Youthworks, we believe young people are capable, perceptive, and deeply aware of the world around them. They do not need us to frighten them into safety. January gives us a chance to do more than acknowledge human trafficking. It gives us a chance to talk honestly about how it shows up here, and what it asks of all of us. Prevention does not live in a proclamation alone. It lives in what we notice, what we name, and what we are willing to change together.
A message from Mark Heinert, Executive Director
Melanie’s reflection invites us to look honestly at how exploitation takes root—not through dramatic, isolated acts, but through everyday norms, silence, and gaps in accountability. It also reminds us that prevention is strongest when it is built into systems, policies, and shared community expectations.
At Youthworks, our work to prevent human trafficking and child exploitation extends beyond direct services. We also engage in policy advocacy and systems-level prevention efforts to reduce opportunities for harm before they occur.
As part of this commitment, Youthworks helped create the ND HOPE Project in 2025. Our partners include Youthworks, 31:8 Project, Central Dakota Forensic Nurse Examiners, the North Dakota Domestic and Sexual Violence Coalition, and the Children’s Advocacy Centers of North Dakota—organizations that work statewide to prevent child abuse and human trafficking, respond to harm, and advance systems-level prevention.
Beginning this month, the ND HOPE Project will host a community webinar series designed to build shared, practical understanding of how human trafficking and child exploitation show up in North Dakota, how they impact individuals and communities, and how earlier recognition and stronger systems can interrupt harm.
The North Dakota HOPE Project will announce the initiative during a press conference on Thursday, January 8, 2026, at 10 a.m. at the Bismarck Public Library in meeting room A. It will also be livestreamed on www.NDHOPEProject.org.
Lasting change does not come from awareness alone. It comes from communities willing to examine power, set clear boundaries, and embed prevention into how we lead, govern, and care for young people. We hope you’ll join us in these conversations as we work toward a safer, more accountable future for North Dakota’s youth.
