North Texas is a hotbed for human trafficking, one of the busiest in the country, according to an activist and advocate with a deep personal interest in combating the scourge.
Children and adults are trafficked for sex and labor through the Dallas/Fort Worth metro area, a crossroads running north, south, east and west, says Chad Frymire.
"In North Texas the issue is huge, with the only other city in Texas comparable being Houston," Frymire, program director with CASA Dallas and current president of the North Texas Coalition Against Human Trafficking (NTCAHT), told Lone Star Standard. "It is one of the biggest areas really in the country, when you look at the trafficking numbers."
Frymire has personal experience of one type of trafficking. He says his sister was forced into the sex trade, leading to her way too untimely death at the age of 26.
"I use her story as a cautionary tale but also as testimony about what happened to her and ultimate demise so her death not in vain," Frymire said of his sister, Kendra Frymire White.
Vulnerable and under the emotional control of an individual, she was forced and manipulated first to start stripping before falling deeper into the sex trade. She was then trafficked to Florida where she died in 2013, her brother said, adding that her death remains a mystery.
CASA Dallas mainly works with children in foster care, including homes. They are persistent targets of predators.
"Traffickers know where the group homes are, know how and where the kids run to. You have a girl of 13 or 14, no money, no food and in those teenage years, susceptible to being propositioned, and promised nice clothing," Frymire said. "It's not hard to convince a kid under the regime of a home."
CASA's work combating the problem has been helped by strong support from the office of Gov. Greg Abbott, particularly his Child Sex Trafficking Team, Frymire says.
It has delivered money and supported the idea of different groups and agencies, advocates, police, child services, working together and sharing information, a change "from everybody doing their own thing," Frymire said.
The coalition, an umbrella for all the groups working in North Texas, recognized the work of the governor by awarding him one of its Champion of Freedom awards.
State money has allowed CASA to create, with a Los Angeles-based organization, a training program for those working in the field. Students learn a range of skills, informed care, case planning and how to interact with vulnerable kids and become specialized volunteers.
Advocates are able to develop relationships and interact in such a way that when the child "is offered this, that and the other," the target is "able to say that is a lot like what my advocate was talking about," Frymire said.
The program also includes cyber-grooming in its curriculum because "trafficking has be pushed off the street into the cyberworld," the coalition's president says, adding that the COVID-19 pandemic has only added to the urgency surrounding the problem.
On his journey and personal experience informed by the life and death of his sister, Frymire said, "I really did not have any real knowledge of trafficking, know all the red flags. At the time I was just really angry and disappointed with [my sister]. If I knew, I would have reacted in a whole new way, maybe stepped in and saved her if I had the knowledge."
