US: Flight attendants fight human trafficking with eyes in the sky

Donna Hubbard, a flight attendant who lives outside Atlanta, has no problem speaking forcefully about the issue of human trafficking in the US. But her voice begins to falter when she talks about her own life — how years of exploitation shattered her confidence and turned her life upside down. “For many years, I couldn’t talk about being an addict,” she said. “I couldn’t talk about being imprisoned. I couldn’t talk about getting on my feet, getting my life back, getting my children back.” She paused to fight back tears. “I could not talk about that part of me where I was victimized.” But having realized that airline employees are perfectly positioned to stop human traffickers and their victims in transit, Hubbard has found her mission: teaching other flight attendants to spot and report cases of human trafficking. The nonprofit organization she joined in 2015, Airline Ambassadors International, trains workers at airlines and airports how to spot, and report, cases of human trafficking. It also delivers humanitarian aid around the world and transports sick children who need medical care. It was founded in 1996 by Nancy Rivard, who was then a flight attendant. “We just did it on our own as a public service because we had the front-line personnel,” Rivard said, noting that the organization began focusing on human trafficking in 2009 and has held 52 training sessions in the US and abroad since 2011. There were 8,042 reported cases of human trafficking in the United States last year — the most ever, according to a report released last week by the nonprofit organization Polaris. But it is not all bad news, said Bradley Myles, Polaris’s chief executive. “We don’t necessarily want to give the impression that just because we’re learning about more cases, the crime is increasing,” Myles said. “It’s actually possible that the response is getting more sophisticated.”<br/>