Coalition to Abolish Slavery and Trafficking

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Coalition to Abolish Slavery and Trafficking (CAST) is a Los Angeles-based anti-human trafficking organization. Through legal, social, and advocacy services, CAST helps rehabilitate survivors of human trafficking, raises awareness, and affects legislation and public policy surrounding human trafficking.

CAST was founded in 1998 as a response to the landmark El Monte Thai Garment Slavery Case of 1995,^[1] in which 72 Thai immigrants were forced to work in slave-like conditions for 18-hours a day, while locked-up in the Los Angeles suburb of El Monte. The victims were paid about 69 cents an hour, and charged exorbitant amounts for basic necessities, ensuring they would never be able to pay off their original debt to their traffickers, and remain under their control. The case garnered national press coverage, and brought the issue of modern slavery and human trafficking into the mainstream media.^[2] In 1997, Dr. Kathryn McMahon, a professor at California State University, Long Beach, started the Trafficked Women Project. This grew into CAST, which officially came into existence in 1998.^[3]

CAST defines human trafficking as "a modern-day form of slavery", in which victims are subjected to force, fraud or coercion for the purpose of forced labor or sexual exploitation. Victims of trafficking can work in domestic service, factories, farms, restaurants, construction sites, hotel housekeeping, servile marriage, forced prostitution, child prostitution and child pornography.^[4]

According to their website, CAST has spearheaded many developments in the anti-trafficking movement. They are the first organization in the United States exclusively dedicated to serving survivors of trafficking, and were instrumental in starting the Los Angeles Slavery and Trafficking Task Force (now called the Los Angeles Metropolitan Task Force on Human Trafficking), the first task force in the U.S. dedicated to combating human trafficking. In 2004, CAST opened the country's first shelter exclusively housing survivors of human trafficking.^[5]