If you want to knock a middle-class mom out of her comfort zone, paint her the picture of a young sex trafficking victim in desperate need of rescue being kept hidden away somewhere in the metro area, right this second.

Describe the tragedy of a 12-year-old being controlled by someone, perhaps a parent, who takes payment from scumbags for acts that shatter the child’s innocence, and repeatedly damage her body and soul.

First, vigilante Mom-bo fantasies come to mind, then the questions: “How big is our problem, and what is being done about it?” This is where the picture goes fuzzy.

“We are definitely seeing an increase in the number of cases involving the commercial sexual exploitation of children, forced and coerced prostitution and organized prostitution,” according to Sgt. Dan Steele of the Denver Police Department.

The FBI’s Dave Joly, who supervises the new Innocence Lost Task Force, a partnership between the FBI, Denver and Aurora police departments and the Arapahoe County Sheriff’s Office, said “Between 2006 and 2011, Denver PD identified and rescued approximately 47 children from commercially sexually exploitative environments. In 2012 alone, the Innocence Lost Task Force and our Metro Area partners identified and rescued 49 children.”

It’s called sex trafficking when a vulnerable person (of any age) is forced, coerced or lured by false promises into providing sex acts for cash that goes not into his or her own pocket, but into the trafficker’s. In these cases, the prostitute is a victim who may not even recognize that fact. Sadly, the rest of us, including law enforcement, may not, either.

I have lived comfortably unaware that such atrocities are happening within miles of my family-friendly community, perhaps within it. This is the kind of thing that goes on in Cambodia, right? Yes, and in Colorado, too.

“Sex trafficking in suburbs and more rural areas often occurs in private residences, whether as a residential brothel or as an in-call service with a family member or intimate partner trafficking their victim out of their own homes,” explained Becky Bullard of the Denver Anti-Trafficking Alliance.

Prax(us), a local non-profit victims support group, works to connect trafficking survivors with services in the city, a struggle on any given night due to the shortage of shelter space. “We find folks experiencing severe forms of exploitation are also homeless,” said Prax(us) director of education and advocacy, Emily Lafferrandre.

“I would say shelter is the number one important need that is lacking. There’s never enough beds.” Lafferrandre’s group believes another barrier to preventing runaways and homeless youth from ending up in vulnerable situations is Denver’s urban camping ban.

Enacted in response to last spring’s Occupy Denver campaign, in which scores of protesters set up camps in city parks and sidewalks, Lafferrandre and many other advocates for the homeless say the ban has served to criminalize homelessness without providing enough alternate means of shelter. She says the ban pushes the homeless further underground where they are more likely to fall victim to traffickers.

Prax(us) has built relationships with the service providers around Denver so that when the group connects with a person in need, they go through their list and find what’s available at that moment, based on the age, gender and condition of the one seeking help. Sometimes help may not be available for days.

“International trafficking victims are eligible for benefits such as food stamps and ongoing case management. Unfortunately, not a lot of institutions exist for domestic trafficking survivors, so we are constantly borrowing from other systems,” Lafferrandre said.

“One difficult challenge is ensuring there are long-term services for both adult and minor victims of sex trafficking that address their complex needs as a result of the physical, social, spiritual, economic and psychological trauma they have endured,” explained Denver Anti-Trafficking Alliance program manager Becky Bullard.

Just three weeks ago, a treatment and housing facility, Amy’s House, opened for girls under 18 who have been rescued from sex traffickers. (A 9News story on the facility can be seen at http://on9news.tv/UAeO7Z.)

Other groups like Street’s Hope, which serves women over 18 who have come out of the sex industry, are in the trenches everyday, relying on charitable donations, fundraisers and whatever grants they can get. “When I tell people our budget is $168,000 a year — that covers staff, the year-long program for residents, the outreach we do four times a year on Colfax, everything — they can’t believe it,” said Nina Martinez, executive director for Street’s Hope.

Martinez sounds a bit like lady liberty when she speaks of the women her facility has been able to shelter since 2008, “They come to us tired and broken and wanting rest.” Which is what they receive, along with individual and group counseling, job training, food and hygiene items, even spiritual ministry if they would like, and Martinez finds many of them do.

“We are unique in that we are faith-based, and right now a lot of our funding comes from churches, but it’s not our agenda to evangelize these women. Our priority is treating them holistically and helping them get to a place where they can recover. We try to do our work with grace and love,” Martinez said.

The U.S. Department of State says human trafficking responds to market demands, inadequate laws, weak penalties and economic instability. In other words, it’s happening everywhere and in many forms.

“We’ve seen that Colorado is different from the East and West coasts,” stated Amanda Finger, co-founder of the Laboratory to Combat Human Trafficking (LCHT), a group working to develop guidelines for Colorado communities to better identify and address gaps in combating human trafficking.

The group hosted a first-of-its-kind conference in Denver in early March to share results from its comprehensive research study, the Colorado Project. The goal of the conference was to improve understanding and collaboration among anti-trafficking groups. LCHT’s mission to end all forms of human trafficking focuses on four key elements: prevention, protection, prosecution and partnerships.

In 2000, the United States enacted the Trafficking Victims Protection Act the same year that the United Nations adopted the Palermo Protocol, also known as the Protocol to Prevent, Suppress and Punish Trafficking in Persons, Especially Women and Children.

But so far, “No country has yet attained a truly comprehensive response to this massive, ever-increasing, ever-changing crime,” according to the State Department’s 2010 Trafficking in Persons Report.

Researchers at the LCHT have certainly found that to be the case in Colorado. “We see a landscape of scattered efforts, frustrated communities that must cobble resources to combat a vast and complex problem, victims falling through the cracks and traffickers escaping punishment,” according to their website.

“Our state law has only been utilized twice because trafficking is being prosecuted under other laws,” Finger noted. But steadily, the focus is starting to sharpen.

In December, eight people, including some claiming allegiance to the Crips street gang, were arrested in several Colorado cities for human trafficking and pimping-related activities after allegedly advertising juvenile girls for sex on Backpage.com. Four suspected “johns” were also taken into custody. The state attorney general’s office will prosecute the case in cooperation with the Denver District Attorney’s Office.

State lawmakers are starting to grapple with ways in which to strengthen Colorado laws. House Bill 1195, sponsored by Reps. Jared Wright R-Fruita, and Dan Nordberg, R-Colorado Springs, seeks to punish those convicted of attempting to engage in human trafficking as severely as those who are actually caught in the act.

The bill passed the House State, Veterans and Military Affairs Committee last week, but was sent to the Colorado Commission on Criminal and Juvenile Justice for further study and recommendations.

Billie McIntire, who heads an advocacy group called the Sex Workers Alliance Network, believes it is important that any new laws distinguish between those who work in the industry by choice from those who are being trafficked.

McIntire says the issue of sex trafficking has been seized by activist groups she describes as “abolitionist feminists” and members of ultra-conservative Christian groups, as a way to help push their desire to eradicate the sex industry entirely.

She points to a law Gov. John Hickenlooper signed in June 2011, allowing the creation of so-called “John Schools” to give first-time solicitation offenders the option of attending classes designed to educate them about the dangers of prostitution, and thereby theoretically reduce demand for commercial sex. The approach has had poorly measured results in other cities where similar programs exist.

Susan Dewey, who teaches Women’s Studies at the University of Wyoming and has conducted extensive worldwide research on the sex industry, agrees the topic of sex trafficking has become heavily politicized.

“What I would like to see is evidence-based law and public policy based on empirical findings, rather than ideological assumptions,” said Dewey. This is a wish that cannot be granted just now.

“One of the biggest challenges with trafficking as a human rights issue is that it’s relatively new to the greater field, and therefore there are few accurate numbers,” noted K. Berger, LCHT’s public information officer.

“Data the LCHT has been gathering will help us to understand what we can do to improve our responses. However, not even this project will give us the numbers everyone wants in terms of how many people are trafficked every day or year. That number will come with time, but first we need to understand the issue as best we can, in order to know where to look for that number.”

It’s encouraging that solid efforts are underway to rescue victims and punish their abusers. We can all help focus on this complex and seemingly invisible problem by supporting the groups dedicated to helping those victims heal.

Kristen Kidd is a freelance journalist who lives in Highlands Ranch.