Shyima was only 10 years old when she left her parents in Egypt to come to the United States. It might have been the ideal American life, living quietly with another family behind the gates of an upscale Orange County community. In fact, in the neighborhood’s comings and goings, the little girl was almost lost until a neighbor noticed that she didn’t seem to be going to school with the other children. The neighbor called to report. If not for that call, Shyima might have never again known childhood. She had come to California, it turned out, to work as a slave.

An estimated 27 million people live in bondage today, which is almost as many as the population of Canada.

People think human trafficking and slavery happen somewhere else, but California is a top destination. Victims come by boats, cars and on foot in, out and through California, said Marsha Daughetee, assistant dean for student affairs at the Cal State Fullerton, Irvine campus.

Human trafficking is modern-day slavery. It is the recruitment, transportation, transfer, harboring or receipt of people, by threat or use of force or other forms of coercion, abduction, fraud and deception for the purpose of exploitation. Victims are used for a variety of purposes, said David Batstone, a professor of ethics at the University of California, San Francisco, and co-founder of the Not for Sale campaign, which works to end slavery and human trafficking.

Trafficking victims are often found in sweatshops, domestic work, restaurant work, agriculture labor, commercial sex and sex entertainment in the United States and other countries. By learning where and what to look for, an ordinary citizen can help change a victim’s life.

Traffickers are driven by two primary factors: high profits and low risk, according to Humantrafficking.org, which provides information to combat human trafficking through prevention, prosecution and victim protection.

Significant activity in human trafficking and slave labor occurs in Orange County, and students should not only be aware of the problem but should also realize that they can help to end it.

Victims can be rescued with the help and awareness of everyday citizens who see something that doesn’t look right.

The demand for labor, services and commercial sex acts fuels this criminal industry. Traffickers, motivated to make money, force victims into these services because they can generate large profits.

The combination of high profits and low risk makes trafficking the fastest-growing criminal industry in the world, now second in size only to drugs and weapons with a global annual market of about $42.5 billion, according to the Council of Europe, Europe’s leading human rights watchdog.

The industry requires low start-up capital and few skills to generate profits. In many cases, a trafficker must simply be willing to exploit a vulnerable person and tap the tremendous demand that exists for cheap labor and commercial sex, according to the same site.

The U.S. Department of Justice reports that an estimated 600,000 to 800,000 men, women and children are trafficked across international borders each year; 70 percent of whom are female and 50 percent children. An estimated 14,500 to 17,500 foreign nationals are trafficked into the United States. The number of U.S. citizens trafficked within the country each year is even higher, with an estimated 200,000 American children at risk for trafficking into the sex industry.

Los Angeles and San Francisco are among the largest ports for trafficking.

From 2006 through 2008, Orange County police reported 38 potential trafficking victims, mostly women and young girls used for commercial sexual exploitation. The victims were from Thailand, Singapore, China and Korea. Police received anonymous tips from callers, or “johns,” who were suspicious of the brothels or massage parlors they visited.

Women exploited in massage parlors often worked in massage parlors in their native countries. After they are brought to the United States, their passports are taken away, and they are told they must perform sexual acts.

This problem is invisible because people are unaware of it happening, especially in America. Bringing visibility to this issue is half the battle, Batstone said.

Living in Alexandria, Egypt, 10-year-old Shyima heard her parents negotiate the deal. She would earn $45 a week working for a Cairo couple to pay a debt incurred by her older sister, whom they caught stealing. Later, Shyima found out the couple was sending her earnings to her parents in Alexandria.

“I overheard them talking,” Shyima said. “No one physically told me I was going to America to work.”

Soon, Shyima left her parents and 10 siblings and boarded a plane for California. She thought she would only be gone a month. However, when she stepped onto American soil, her passport was taken, and she was forced to work as a nanny and housekeeper. “At first, I thought I was working to pay my sister’s debt. Once I was here, I found out they were paying my parents for my work.”

For the next 22 months, Shyima woke in a dark and airless garage to continue her work from the previous day. She cooked all meals and prepared the couple’s five children for school but she was not allowed to go to school herself. While the couple was at work, she cleaned the house alone. When they came home, they insulted and slapped her if something was not done to their satisfaction, and they repeatedly threatened to report her sister to Egyptian authorities. She was not allowed to have friends, or even to visit the doctor. After seeing Shyima, who never left the home, a neighbor called the police department. “Something isn’t right,” the anonymous voice said.

One day while working, Shyima heard a loud knock on the door, which she was never allowed to answer. Her trafficker ran down the stairs and opened the door. The police started questioning the man about Shyima and he told them that she was a visiting relative who was visiting. He then told Shyima in their native language not to say anything and to repeat what he had told the police if they asked her anything.

The investigators documented Shyima’s living conditions in the garage: no heat, a bucket for washing her clothes, and a strained mattress to sleep on.

The neighbor’s phone call and the investigation led to her rescue. After Shyima’s rescue, she was placed into foster care. With the choice of returning to Egypt or staying in California, Shyima chose the path that would allow her to pursue an education.

“I knew if I stayed here, I could have a real family and I could go to school,” she said. “If I went back to Egypt, the same thing could have happened again.”

Defying her parents, Shyima explained she would not return home. She intended to tell the truth about the treatment she received from her traffickers.

“My father wanted me to say everything was fine, that they were nice people and treated me well,” Shyima said.

In 2006, Shyima’s captors, Amal Motelib and Nasser Ibrahim, pleaded guilty to four felonies: conspiracy, holding a person in involuntary servitude through force or coercion, obtaining labor through unlawful force or coercion and harboring an illegal immigrant.

They were ordered to pay Shyima $76,000 in restitution, the amount she would have made working seven days a week for 22 months. The judge sentenced Ibrahim to three years in prison and Motelib to 22 months -- the same length of time Shyima worked as their servant. After serving their sentences, the couple’s visas were revoked and they were sent back to Egypt.

It took Shyima two years to finally feel comfortable and safe enough to tell the truth about what had actually happened her.

Shyima, now 19 years old, was adopted by her third foster family in 2007. She participates in activities within her community and takes general education classes at a community college in Riverside. She wants to work in law enforcement, her aspiration since she was a little girl.

Shyima is a human trafficking survivor. Her case represents the positive outcome of a shocking phenomenon that is rampant worldwide.

“The system worked out well because I told the truth, and because of my case more people are aware of the issue,” Shyima said. “Everyone can do something to help.”

As more people use Craigslist.org’s resources to find housing, employment, furniture and activities in their community, it is also becoming a useful tool for purchasing sex.

Craigslist.org’s “Erotic Services” section is a free speech environment, which may be amoral to some individuals. Consenting adults seeking other adults does not cause harm. However, it is harmful to the many women and children who are brought to America illegally to work as sex slaves to pay off a $20,000 smuggling debt.

In New York, a 16-year-old girl was trafficked and prostituted by Woodley Gaston, who first approached her as she walked home from school. He offered to buy the girl new clothes and paid to get her hair and nails done. Soon, he held her captive in his apartment, where he forced her to engage in sex acts with 10 men each day for 18 days. As the girl’s family searched for her, Gaston advertised her sexual services on Craigslist.org.

The girl escaped Gaston’s apartment and called her aunt, who picked her up and called the police. Gaston was arrested three days later and was held without bail.

Sandie Morgan, an Orange County native, has run an anti-trafficking organization called the Lydia Today Foundation for the past 10 years. Her fight against human trafficking results from living in Greece, where prostitution is legal. “In places where prostitution is legal, conditions for women have not improved,” Morgan said. Lydia Today provides human trafficking victims with legal and medical assistance, counseling services and programs to help them re-enter society. It also finds safe housing for them at domestic violence shelters.

“There are no shelters dedicated to human trafficking victims,” Morgan said. “If a victim does not feel safe, they will not talk. They have been kept in a mental prison.”

Morgan stresses the importance of not labeling sexual-trafficking victims as prostitutes because prostitution is the decision to sell oneself, which a child cannot do.

With 40 million Americans using Craigslist.org and 25,000 new ads in the “Erotic Services” section monthly, the site emerged as a new and efficient international venue for human trafficking and sex exploitation.

Organizations like the End Internet Trafficking Coalition, Lydia Today and The Project to End Human Trafficking educate the public about the dark side of Craigslist.org that most users don’t see.

In June 2008, the FBI rescued 433 exploited children from 16 cities across the country, including Boston, Atlanta, Detroit, Washington, Miami, Reno and many California cities.

Craigslist.org is not the only site where trafficking occurs. The Internet has many anonymous forums like Craigslist.org offering mail-order brides, often only 15 years old.

The U.S. Citizen and Immigration Services states 4,000 to 6,000 marriages between American men and foreign brides occur each year. Most mail-order brides come from Colombia, Venezuela, Thailand, Philippines, Ukraine and Russia. There are currently 12,000 women being advertised online.

Instead of posting photos of minors, traffickers publish photos of women. Once a customer or “john” is deemed trustworthy, the traffickers suggest girls.

“Internet trafficking is a relatively new phenomenon,” said Jaime Evanoski, a representative from the Project to End Human Trafficking, a Pittsburgh-based, non-profit organization.

As part of the anti-slavery movement, the group educates the general public, local law enforcement, postal service and hospital workers about human trafficking so they can recognize it when they see it. The project also researches human trafficking cases and documents victims’ social reintegration.

Evanoski represents the Baltimore branch and builds coalitions and networking with other organizations. The port city close to the nation’s capital serves as a hub for human trafficking, she said.

Providing a secure channel to exchange information and sales transactions across national borders, Craigslist.org charms traffickers and pimps with its legitimacy and anonymity.

An active evil in the United States, child pornography production, manufacturing and distribution often involves children from Asia-Pacific, Eastern Europe, the former Soviet Union or other regions where economic conditions are rotten.

Due to the inability to accurately count how often smuggling occurs in the United States, it is difficult to prosecute traffickers.

“The Internet is ungovernable,” Evanoski said. “When trying to criminalize a suspect, there are no real Internet laws to turn to.”

In response to criticism of the Web site, Jim Buckmaster, CEO of Craigslist.org, announced in 2006 a new partnership with law enforcement and the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children.

The decree, outlined in a statement by Craigslist.org, NCMEC and attorneys general from over 40 states, says it hopes the misuse of online forums and classified ads will cease. Craigslist.org implemented protocols for blocking illegal postings and a flagging system to allow the removal of inappropriate content.

In the “Erotic Services” section, a new phone system requires credit card verification and a nonrefundable-posting fee, which Craigslist.org donates 100 percent to charity.

“It is good to know Craigslist.org is taking social responsibility on this issue, but the ‘Erotic Services’ section is not necessary and should be shut down,” Evanoski said.

There is no one consistent face or characteristic of a trafficking victim. Trafficked persons can be men or women, adults or children, rich or poor, American citizens or foreign nationals. Some have college degrees, while others have no formal education. Traffickers recruit their victims in many ways, the most common being force, fraud or coercion. Victims are sometimes told they will be working on a visa and sending money to their families in their native countries. At other times, victims have been kidnapped.

Although it is often difficult to spot a trafficking victim because they are not always in public view, there are things the average person can look for: an individual who does not speak the language, and therefore someone else speaks for them, or a person who is never left alone and appears to be under the control of another indicates a victim. Severe fear of law enforcement is another characteristic of trafficking. Bruises, scratches or scars often appear on victims’ skin from abuse by their traffickers.

Shyima, the 12-year-old Egyptian child who was trapped as a domestic slave, was rescued from an upscale Southern California home because a neighbor had noticed that something wasn’t right. The neighbor made a phone call that changed Shyima’s life.

The human trafficking laws currently in place provide the tools to combat trafficking in persons both worldwide and domestically.

In the first 21 months of operation, the Human Trafficking Reporting System recorded information on more than 1,200 alleged incidents of human trafficking. The U.S. Department of Justice’s Bureau of Justice Statistics announced in January The HTRS contains data collected by 38 federally funded human trafficking task forces on alleged incidents of human trafficking that occurred between Jan. 1, 2007, and Sept. 30, 2008.

Many discovered victims are deprived of rehabilitation resources and penalized as prostitutes unless they provide proof they were trafficked. Although anyone under 18 who performs sex acts for money is considered a trafficking victim, most brought from overseas have false identification, making it difficult to prove they are victims. Local law enforcement agencies lack officers who know how to correctly deal with human trafficking.

Project to End Human Trafficking encourages the general public to write senators and congresspersons about this issue. Vice President Joe Biden co-sponsored a human trafficking bill recently passed by the Senate. Many reviewing the bill are urging it to specify sexual trafficking.

The William Wilberforce Trafficking Victims Protection Reauthorization Act of 2008 was passed Dec. 23, 2008. With the new law, more responsibilities are put on the State Department’s Office to Monitor and Combat Trafficking to work with organizations to fight this form of modern-day slavery. The bill toughens the U.S. stance on countries that are not progressing by threatening to eliminate non-humanitarian aid. It also works to eliminate use of child soldiers internationally by prohibiting U.S. military assistance or sale of military equipment to countries that recruit child soldiers.

Victims’ parents and siblings in danger abroad are also protected by the bill. They are allowed into the United States, and visas are readily available.

Criminal penalties for those who profit from human trafficking are being tightened.

“It is imperative this bill is not specific to sexual trafficking because it is not the only form of slavery,” Evanoski said. “However, it should include a clause regarding the activities that take place on Internet sites such as Craigslist.org.”

There are more trafficking victims in the United States than are reported yearly because prosecution of traffickers at the federal level is very strict.

Not all potential victims are certified as trafficking victims. Of the 38 cases reported, 23 were submitted for federal support, and only eight received trafficking visas and protective services.

Laws provide options for trafficking victims. There are also organizations that provide safe housing, health care, food, income, employment and interpretation services to victims, but first they must be found.

“It doesn’t matter where you started,” Lt. Derek Marsh of the Westminister Police Department said. “What matters is what happens once you get here. This doesn’t sit well with jurors.”