现代奴隶：我们如何曝光美国监狱中致命的性交易 [英国媒体]

In January of 2017, we sat in a nondescript hotel room in Orlando Florida and listened while Kate (we’ve changed her name at her request) calmly described how in 2014 she was recruited and trafficked out of a state prison by a convicted sex offender and self-styled “super-pimp” Richard Rawls.

在2017年1月，我们坐在弗罗里达州奥兰多市的一间毫无特色的酒店房间，倾听凯特（我们应她的要求改了她的名字，化名Kate）平静地描述她在2014年如何被招募，并被一名被判有罪的性犯罪者和自封为“超级皮条客”的理查德·罗尔斯从州立监狱贩卖出去。

After being promised a relationship and somewhere safe to stay, Kate instead left one prison for another. She spent months locked inside Rawl’s house with a group of other women – all also former inmates – who were being controlled with drugs and violence and forced to prostitute themselves to make him money.

在被承诺会得到一段感情和一个安全的住处后，凯特从一个监狱换到另一个监狱。她和另外一群女人被锁在罗尔斯的房间几个月。这些女人都是被毒品和暴力控制的前囚犯，被迫卖淫为他赚钱。

It was a shocking story, and one that we would hear over and over again over the following year as we investigated how prisons and jails across the US have become lucrative recruiting grounds for pimps and sex buyers in America’s thriving domestic sex trafficking industry. The work culminated in our documentary, The Trap, which exposes the systematic pattern of grooming and recruitment of women prisoners by pimps and sex buyers in the US.

这是一个令人震惊的故事，在我们调查美国各地的看守所和监狱是如何成为美国蓬勃发展的国内性交易行业中皮条客和性购买者有利可图的招募场所时，我们会在第二年一遍又一遍地听到这个故事。这些故事中的作品会在我们的纪录片《陷阱(TheTrap)》中达到了顶峰，它揭露了美国皮条客和性购买者对女性囚犯打扮仪容仪表的系统模式和招募模式。

As two journalists who have covered modern slavery and human trafficking for the best part of a decade, we have travelled far into the dark depths of human exploitation across the globe. Yet for both of us – and for Guardian videographer Alex Healey – this story has been a profound, deeply troubling and emotionally challenging experience.

作为在过去十年的大部分时间里报道现代奴隶制和人口贩运问题的两名记者，我们已经在全球范围内深入到人类剥削的黑暗深处。然而，对于我们俩-以及“卫报”的摄像师亚历克斯·希利来说，这个故事是一次意义深远的、令人深感不安的、在情感上具有挑战性的经历。


Most of the women we worked with over the last months don’t fit the profile of what many women would think of as trafficking victims. All are American nationals, none have been moved across international borders or controlled by huge organised crime gangs.

我们过去几个月与之共事的大多数妇女都不符合许多妇女认为的贩卖受害者的形象。所有人都是美国公民，没有人被驱使跨越国际边界，或者被庞大的有组织的犯罪团伙控制。

Yet across the US, hundreds of thousands of women, men and children are being sold in a multi-billion dollar domestic sex trafficking industry that thrives on the lack of value that society is placing on those being exploited.

然而，在整个美国，成千上万的妇女、男子和儿童正在价值数万亿美元的国内性贩卖行业中被出售，这一行业因社会正在依赖那些被剥削缺乏价值的人而蓬勃发展。

All the women we spoke to for this story had personal histories of abuse and trauma. For many, the path into pimp-controlled prostitution had started with a need for love or a relationship, which had been twisted through domestic violence, drug use and basic survival into something very different. None of them had planned or expected their life to end up the way that it has.

我们为这个故事采访的所有女性都有虐待和心理创伤的个人经历。对许多人来说，进入皮条客控制的卖淫道路是从对爱或关系的需求开始的，这种关系由于家庭暴力、吸毒和基本生存而被扭曲成了完全不同的东西。他们中没有人计划或期望他们的生活会以现在这样的方式结束。

We started researching this story at the end of 2015 but didn’t pick up a camera until the middle of 2016 – instead we spent the following year corroborating our initial leads and spent hours on the phone slowly building the trust of the women we wanted to film.

我们在2015年底开始研究这个故事，但直到2016年年中才拿起相机-相反，我们用第二年的时间证实了我们最初的线索，花几个小时打电话，慢慢建立起我们想要拍摄的女性的信任。

Thanks to the foundation funding that we received to help finance this investigation, we were able to return to Florida, Massachusetts and Chicago a number of times over the months of filming and reporting, an extraordinary luxury in today’s journalistic climate.

多亏我们得到了基础基金会为这次调查提供资金的帮助，我们能够在几个月的拍摄和报道中多次返回到佛罗里达州、马萨诸塞州和芝加哥，这在今天的新闻氛围中是一种非凡的奢侈。

As journalists we are supposed to be impartial, using our skills and our platform to report on what is happening to others. Yet trying to process and comprehend the trauma of those whose lives we were dipping in and out of took a toll on all of us.

作为记者，我们应该不偏不倚，用我们的技能和平台来报道发生在别人身上的事情。然而，试图处理和理解那些在我们生活中陷入困境的人的创伤，却给我们所有人带来了损失。

Despite both of us having a lot of experience on reporting on human rights and trafficking stories, we both found it increasingly difficult to hear story after story of women branded as outcasts of society, who have never had a chance at living a life that hasn’t been shaped by abuse and violence. Most were living hand to mouth on the streets, some were pregnant, many had lost their children. We are both mothers of small children and coming home and having to make the switch from one role to the other became increasingly hard.

尽管我们两人都有很多关于人权和贩卖人口的报道经验，我们俩都发现越来越难听到一个接一个女人被贴上社会弃儿的标签，她们从来没有用机会过一种没有受到虐待和暴力影响的生活。大多数人在大街上勉强糊口，有些人怀孕了，许多人失去了他们的孩子。我们都是小孩子的母亲，回家后不得不从一个角色转换到另一个角色变得越来越困难。

For Mei-Ling, the weeks of filming along with Alex Healey inside a jail in Massachusetts, was a disorientating and psychologically jarring experience. Cut off from the outside world, many of the women serving time were only in their 20s but had been in and out of jail and prisons multiple times. Many felt a bleak resignation that things would be no different for them when they were released. There was a suffocating absence of hope.

对美玲来说，和亚历克斯希利一起在马萨诸塞州的一所监狱里拍摄的几个星期，是一次迷失方向和心理震颤的经历。与外界隔绝，许多服刑的女性只有20多岁，但已多次进出看守所和监狱。许多人感到沮丧的顺从，当他们被释放的时候，形势对她们来说并没有什么不同，令人窒息的绝望。

It was easy to see how these facilities have become hunting grounds for people wanting to exploit this loneliness and isolation. One woman told us that getting a letter from the outside world was like a gift from God.

很容易看出这些（监狱性贩卖组织提供的）服务是如何成为那些想要利用这种孤独和孤立的人的猎场。一位女士告诉我们，从外面收到一封信就像收到上帝的礼物一样。

Then there are the practicalities: without these men sending money into their prison bank accounts, many of the inmates we interviewed wouldn’t be able to buy shampoo, tampons or toothpaste, the things that made them feel human while behind bars. Without these men, few would be able to meet their basic need for housing and food when they left incarceration.

还有一些实际情况：如果没有这些人（性贩卖者）把钱存入她们的监狱账户，我们采访过的许多囚犯就无法购买洗发水、卫生棉或牙膏，这些东西让她们在狱中感觉到自己还像个人。没有这些人，几乎没人能够在离开监狱时满足他们对住房和食物的基本需求。

In Massachusetts, we saw first-hand the same women being cycled out of jail and immediately back into a life of addiction and exploitation at the hands of pimps and sex buyers.

在马萨诸塞州，我们看到同一个女人被循环往复送出监狱，在皮条客和性购买者的控制下，立即回到了吸毒和剥削的生活状态中。

That correctional facilities have become recruiting grounds for pimps and sex buyers is just an indication of how pervasive the trap of incarceration and exploitation has become for this community of women. In Worcester, Massachusetts, where some women are finding support, we saw the impact that a criminal record and a lack of exit services or specialist interventions had on those we met in jail. Many felt they had no option but to go back to the same life that put them there in the first place with arrest an inevitability.

管教所已成为皮条客和性购买者招募的场所，这仅仅表明监禁和剥削的陷阱对这些女性团体已变得多么普遍。在马萨诸塞州的伍斯特，一些妇女正在寻求支持，我们看到犯罪记录和缺乏出口服务或专家干预对我们在监狱中认识的人的影响。许多人觉得除了回到原来那种一开始就必然被逮捕的生活，他们别无选择。

The biggest shock was the daily violence that is a byproduct of their life on the streets. For the film we spent a year following Nikki Bell, herself a trafficking survivor who now runs her own NGO, Living in Freedom Together (LIFT), who is dedicating her life to helping other women both inside jail and on the streets of Worcester. She told us how, when she was in prostitution and addiction, she had been beaten, thrown out of cars and violently assaulted by sex buyers. Now she sees this violence perpetrated on a daily basis to the women she works with. Seven women she works with have already died this year of overdoses. One of the most sobering facts we learned on this project was that the average life expectancy of a street sex worker in the US is 34.

最令人震惊的是每天的暴力事件，这是他们在街上生活的附带产生的结果。为了这部电影，我们花了一年时间跟踪尼吉·贝尔，她本人就是一名性贩卖的幸存者，她现在经营着自己的非政府组织“共同生活在自由中”（LIFT），她一生致力于帮助在监狱里和流浪在伍斯特街头的其他女性。她告诉我们，当她在卖淫和吸毒成瘾时，她被殴打，被扔出汽车，被性买家暴力强暴。现在她看到每天都有暴力事件发生在和她一起工作的女性身上。今年已经有7名与她一起工作女性死于吸毒过量。我们在这个项目中学到的最令人警醒的事实之一是，在美国，街头性工作者的平均预期寿命是34岁。

The practicalities of working with women who have lived or are living these experiences is difficult and fraught with ethical dilemmas. Insensitive or overly intrusive interviewing can quickly retrigger trauma, yet many of those who agreed to speak to us were desperate for their stories to be heard. Navigating these interviews, which often took hours, was a huge challenge.

[size=15.3333px]与生活过或正在经历这些经历的妇女一起工作的实际情况是困难的，充满了道德上的困境。麻木不仁或过度干涉式访谈很快就会引起二次伤害，然而，许多同意与我们交谈的人迫切希望她们的故事被听到。进行这些面试往往要花上几个小时，这是一个巨大的挑战。

What you won’t see is the hours and hours of footage that didn’t make it into the film. The complexity of the story meant not all those people we interviewed could be included in the documentary. Having to explain this to them when they had been so brave to come forward with their stories and so generous with their time was one of our least favourite parts of this whole process.

你不会看到的是几小时几小时的连续镜头没有剪入电影。这个故事的复杂性意味着，不是所有我们采访的那些人都会被剪辑在纪录片中。当她们如此勇敢地说出她们的故事，如此慷慨地贡献她们的时间，不得不向他们解释这一点，这是整个过程中我们最不喜欢的部分之一。

We also pursued leads which ultimately we had to abandon. In Ohio we followed a sex trafficking survivor who was going through an expungement, a legal process to attempt to get the 102 charges on her criminal record – every one of them the result of her trafficking – wiped clean. After a few days she called us, saying she was finding the whole experience too upsetting and so we agreed to stop our interviews with her immediately.

我们也继续我们最终不得不放弃的线索。在俄亥俄州，我们跟踪了一名性贩卖幸存者，她正在经历一次“大清洗”，这是一个法律程序，试图将102项指控从她的犯罪记录中抹去——每一项指控都是她贩卖的结果——清洗掉。几天后，她打电话给我们，说她觉得整个经历太烦人了，所以我们同意立即停止对她的采访。

Yet amid the bleakness, there is also inspiration and hope. Despite all she has gone through, Kate has now left her life of prostitution and addiction behind her and now has a job and a house and is slowly rebuilding her relationship with her family.

然而，在黑暗中，也有灵感和希望。尽管凯特经历了这么多，但她现在已经摆脱了卖淫和吸毒的生活，现在有了工作和房子，并且正在慢慢地重建她与家人的关系。

The bravery of those who agreed to talk to us and the resilience and compassion of women like Nikki Bell who have survived trafficking and now work relentlessly to try and give others the chance of a different kind of life has been the biggest thing we have both taken away from this story. They can teach us much about how to find light in the darkness of human rights reporting, and we are deeply grateful to them for sharing their lives with us.

那些同意与我们交谈的人的勇气，以及像尼基·贝尔(Nikki Bell)这样的女性的恢复力和同情心，在贩卖人口中幸存下来，现在一直在不懈地努力，试图给其他人一种不同的生活机会，这是我们从这个故事中学到的最好的东西。她们可以教我们如何在人权报道的黑暗中找到光明，我们发自内心感谢她们与我们分享她们的生活。