Homeless Youth Labor and Sex Trafficking in Denver

Impoverished young people in Denver are routinely promised jobs with good pay and travel, but it's a scheme to traffic them into hard labor. Urban Peak gets kids out of these situations.
This post was published on the now-closed HuffPost Contributor platform. Contributors control their own work and posted freely to our site. If you need to flag this entry as abusive, send us an email.

I received a call today from Chris, an outreach worker at Denver's homeless youth services Urban Peak. He said he had to pick up some kids left stranded by a "sales crew." I never heard of such a thing so it didn't register or make sense.

When I arrived at their downtown facility I met Jeremy and Alicia. They were left stranded by an group that exploits homeless youth for labor. These organizations promise great income and fun travel. To a kid in poverty, being able to travel and make money is often too sexy to resist. Of course, this is just a labor trafficking scheme. The kids make very little money, are often abused, and when they want out they are left stranded back homeless, often worse than when they started.

Jeremy and Alicia, up until this morning, were sleeping in a bus station. Alicia is 21 and pregnant. This could have been a horrible situation, but luckily they found Urban Peak. They received a hotel voucher for tonight and will get travel assistance tomorrow so they can take a bus back home.

For more information on labor and sex trafficking of homeless youth, watch this powerful video:

Popular in the Community

Close

What's Hot