The fastest growing crime in the world is human trafficking with Texas being one of the worst states for it. Dallas is no exception as the national human trafficking hotline received about 250 calls from the city alone.

Traffick911 is an organization based in Addison which works to prevent, rescue, and restore lives affected by human trafficking and it’s an issue that was addressed with a recent program for parents at Heritage High School.

“Prevention is so important,” Traffick911 Director of Programs Lindsey Speed said. “And the way we can do that is with things like this, through community awareness.”

Human Trafficking is essentially modern-day slavery with 27 million slaves in the world,  twice as many human trafficking slaves today than the entirety of the trans-Atlantic slavery era.

“I’d heard of human trafficking and was somewhat acquainted with it on more of a global scale,” one parent who attended the session said. “I did not know how it touched our lives out here in the suburbs, I found that really shocking.”

At the presentation to parents at Heritage, Speed spent considerable time discussing the mission of Traffick 911.

“We exist to free youth from sex trafficking,” Speed said. “Prevention, rescue and restoration. And how that happens is through a lot of collaboration. No one organization can tackle this alone, it takes everyone working together.”

The association has already played a major role in tackling this issue.

“In the past 3 years we’ve been able to identify 196 girls,” Speed said. “They’re all under the age of 18 and are from here.”

Due to the issue being so relevant all around the world and its rapid growth, it is important to the organization to act today.

“One of the reasons why we’re called Traffick911 is because this is an emergency situation,” Speed said. “You cannot wait 20 years for a law to get passed before we decide to do something. They’re living on average of 7 years if they don’t get out of the trade. We have to act now.”

With the amount of students using social media, online safety is a particular concern. It’s an important reminder to keep in mind the content and privacy settings on social media accounts and who is viewing that.

“How many of you accept friend requests from people you don’t know but you say oh I’m going to accept them anyway,” Speed said. “This is how these guys get into our world and see exactly what we’re doing, where we’re hanging out, where our school is. It is made so easy for these pimps and traffickers to get into our lives and know exactly where we are and what we’re doing.”

That includes personal safety in real life. Sometimes it’s easy to be trusting of a person who’s a friend of a friend but even then it is better to air on the side of cautious Speed says.

“How many of you have gotten in the car with someone and didn’t know the driver?,” Speed said. “That’s how simple this could be. That they could take you somewhere, so we have to start thinking a little bit deeper and a little bit more forward thinking on where we’re going and who we’re with.”

Parents and students who attended the talk left feeling informed and appreciative of their loved ones.

“It helped me become aware of the problem of human trafficking,” another parent said of the traffick911 session. “That it is a problem everywhere and it’s not just an overseas or an inner city problem but it is affecting young people and people all over. It is a horrible thing that is going on right under our noses.”