MARSHALL — With the month of January being observed as National Human Trafficking Awareness Month, local nonprofit agencies invited concerned community members to discuss the issue of exploitation in our community and to gauge the need and interest in creating a task force to develop a coordinated community response.

The meeting, coordinated by New Horizons Crisis Center, Southwestern Minnesota Opportunity Council, Southwest Crisis Center and WoMen’s Rural Advocacy Programs, took place Thursday at the Law Enforcement Center in Marshall.

Elizabeth Bunjer from Southwestern Minnesota Opportunity Council said Thursday’s meeting was the second of its kind. The first was in November and took place to “gather community input and see where we go from here.”

Forty-nine people signed up for the meeting and almost that many were able to show up despite adverse weather conditions, said Becci tenBensel, the WRAP Yellow Medicine County program coordinator. She said representatives from schools, health care, juvenile corrections, United Community Action Partnership, students were among those who attended the meeting.

“It’s important for us to connect,” tenBensel said.

tenBensel said exploited victims include a girl who has met someone online and moved across the state or several states to be with someone they thought was a boyfriend. If the person gets involved with an agency of any kind, “she could be seen as a domestic violence case at first, but it’s really a trafficking case,” tenBensel said.

The problem of sexual exploitation and human trafficking is not just in big cities, said Allan Bakke, a regional navigator for Safe Harbor, a program of the Minnesota Department of Health. His region includes 17 counties including Lyon, Lincoln and Redwood counties. He has been the point of contact for 70 individuals in the two years he has been a navigator. “There is not a county where it’s not happening,” he said.

“Minnesota really picked up the ball on this,” Bakke said. Minnesota was the fifth state to enact legislation to decriminalize prostitution for youth under 18. The Safe Harbor Law, passed in 2011, created navigators throughout Minnesota who collaborate with other agencies and provide consultation and trainings.

What is exploitation and trafficking? Bakke said it is “the use of a person for any kind of sexual activity in exchange for money, drugs or something of value or in exchange for food, shelter or other basic needs, known as survival sex.”

Exploitation includes a victim and an abuser. Trafficking includes a victim and a purchaser. A trafficker is involved in recruiting, online ads, providing transportation, receiving the money.

“Traffickers profit from exploitation,” he said. “Ninety-eight percent of the perpetrators are men.”

Safe Harbor has a No Wrong Door response model. No Wrong Door is a comprehensive, multidisciplinary, and multi-state agency approach. It ensures communities across Minnesota have the knowledge, skills and resources to effectively identify sexually exploited and at-risk youth.

“Youth have many avenues where they can be identified as needing help — school, YMCA, law enforcement, health clinics,” said Bakke.

Bakke gave as an example of a trafficked victim the scenario of Jamie, a 22-year-old female with bruises on her face who was picked up during a traffic stop and the officer smelled marijuana in the car. She identified the driver as her boyfriend. The man said the drugs were his. She had no I.D., no personal items except for a purse.

Bakke asked for reactions from the meeting attendees. People in the audience said red flags included the bruises on her face and no I.D. One attendee said it’s possible she was an undocumented and might have crossed an international border. He said there are agencies that could help her if she chose to aid in the prosecution of the trafficker. Another possibility is she had an I.D. and the trafficker took it.

Another audience member was struck by the detail that the driver “copped to the drugs, perhaps to divert attention from the greater illegal activity which is the trafficking.”

tenBensel said traffickers often use law enforcement as part of their control.

“Victims are told law enforcement is in on it or law enforcement won’t believe them,” she said.

She said victims need transportation, shelter, food and clothing.