(NEW YORK) — When someone goes missing in Hawaii, local activist Ihilani Lasconia says that many in the island’s Native communities first suspect one thing: sex trafficking.

“Everybody knows that it’s happening, everybody knows that it’s a problem,” said Lasconia, an advocate for the feminist group AF3IRM. “It’s been so normalized — with over 100 years of colonization — so people feel defeated and don’t have the vocabulary to articulate these experiences.”

A new task force created by the state House aims to gather data on the number of missing Native Hawaiian women, and the impact of sex trafficking on Native populations on the islands.

Women and children in Hawaii are facing a widespread epidemic of violence and sex trafficking, according to House documents.

The task force is being led by the Hawaii State Commission on the State of Women and the Office of Hawaiian Affairs — and is backed by state agencies, local authorities and other activist groups.

Khara Jabola-Carolus, executive director of the Hawaii State Commission on the State of Women, said that “if there’s no data, there’s no problem.”

That’s why she and her team are researching the concrete numbers of how many women and girls may be missing or being sex trafficked in the state.

Why the data matters

The few figures that exist, like research from the commission and Arizona State University, suggest that Native Hawaiian women are disproportionately represented among sex trafficking victims in the state.

Sixty-four percent of the sex trafficking victims identified in the commission’s 2020 study identified as having Native Hawaiian ancestry.

The report reads: “The overutilization of Native Hawaiians to meet sex buyer demand may be directly linked to structural economic coercion and vulnerabilities connected to land dispossession, exposure to sexual violence, hypersexualization, incarceration, cultural dislocation, intergenerational trauma, mental and emotional distress, racism, poverty, and going inequities.”

Nearly a quarter of the sex trafficking victims were sex trafficked by a family member, the research shows.

But there’s still a lot that researchers don’t know, Jabola-Carolus said.

Native Hawaiians have been left out of federal and state research into the issue of missing and murdered Native and Indigenous women — according to Jabola-Carolus, because recent federal efforts have been focused on researching crimes on tribal lands in the U.S., and Native Hawaiians don’t have the same land designation as other Indigenous communities.

Indigenous women and girls are victims of violence at far greater rates than any other population in the United States, according to the Urban Indian Health Institute.

Much of the research on these missing and murdered women have not included or researched Native Hawaiians, or the data does not offer the racial and ethnic nuances of these victims.

How did this happen?

The local activists who spoke with ABC News put the blame on tourism and lack of law enforcement resources for the widespread issue plaguing Native women across the islands.

“We can’t talk about the sexual violence that Native Hawaiians experience without talking about the tourism industry, because a lot of buyers come from either the United States, or internationally and they feed this market,” said Lasconia

Jabola-Carolus and Lasconia say there’s a mistrust in law enforcement, which they allege have never put the resources into finding missing Native women and girls — several of whom have gone missing in recent months with no leads.

ABC News contacted the Honolulu Police Department which wouldn’t comment on the matter.

They also say they believe the tourism industry often easily escapes accountability due to authority or temporary time in the islands.

“There’s nothing bad about Hawaii, right? It’s meant to be marketed to you as a blissful, problem-free place where you can leave your worries behind,” said Jabola-Carolus. “But for us, there is such a high cost.”

Now, the efforts to find these women — and prevent more women from going missing — are on.

Finding the missing

The disappearance of Gabby Petito, a white social media personality, and the media attention that followed her case has prompted calls to search for missing women from different communities across the United States. Activists, like Lasconia, say that missing women of color have been left behind, receiving little attention.

“There was so much conversation around this one white woman going missing … there were so many young Native Hawaiian girls [who] went missing within that same week, and not a single Amber Alert went out,” Lasconia said.

But local activists and organizers in Hawaii have long been working to fix this issue themselves.

Since the state passed its first anti-sex trafficking law in 2016, local agencies have been working to examine how widespread the issue of sex trafficking is.

Jabola-Carolus said that the Hawaii State Commission on the State of Women has been working to build trust with communities that have been heavily impacted by sexual “exploitation, neglect and criminalization.”

In 2019, SB1039 was signed into law.The Hawaiian law lets people vacate a prostitution conviction and expunge their criminal record as long as they haven’t been convicted of another offense within three years of the original offense. Before, the person would have to prove that they were a victim of sex trafficking to have the conviction erased.

In May 2020, the Department of the Attorney General established a human trafficking coordinator position for the state in an attempt to improve Hawaii’s anti-trafficking response.

The department plans on collaborating with law enforcement to increase the number of prosecutions, developing training programs for law enforcement and expanding outreach against these kinds of crimes.

Hawaii also passed a law in June to enhance the state’s ability to investigate and prosecute traffickers, “while improving outcomes for victims and survivors as they move through the justice system, which punishes sex buyers who exploit sex trafficking victims,” a press release from the office of Gov. David Y. Ige reads.

“These laws are the result of support and input from our partners in law enforcement, policy makers, community service providers, non-governmental organizations, and most importantly, those with lived experience,” said Deputy Attorney General and State Human Trafficking Coordinator Farshad M. Talebi in the statement.

Copyright © 2021, ABC Audio. All rights reserved.

(NEW ORLEANS) — A Louisiana State Police officer was found dead after being shot in Ascension Parish Saturday night as law enforcement authorities have swept across the region looking for a suspect in the murder of one person and the shooting of several others.

The New Orleans branch of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives said it was assisting on scene where the officer was found dead and confirmed the death was tied to “a manhunt for a gunman tied to multiple shootings in several parishes this weekend.”

“Today, Louisiana mourns the death of Master Trooper Adam Gaubert, a 19-year veteran of Louisiana State Police, who was ambushed while in his patrol unit and killed in the line of duty on Saturday.” Louisiana Gov John Bel Edwards said in a statement Sunday.

“Preliminary information indicates that Trooper Gaubert was shot and killed in the area in which an early morning homicide occurred,” Edwards said. “I am thankful for Louisiana State Police and all law enforcement agencies that worked together to capture the suspect in these homicides.”

Authorities announced overnight that they had caught the suspect, Matthew Mire, 31. He is suspected of breaking into a home and shooting two people in Prairieville around 3 a.m. on Saturday, according to the Ascension Parish Sheriff’s Office.

Joseph Schexnayder, 43, and Pamela Adair, 37, were both taken to the hospital, where Adair later died. Schexnayder is in critical but stable condition, the sheriff’s office said.

Just hours earlier, in nearby Livingston Parish, Mire is suspected of breaking into another home and shooting two other people. In that incident a woman was shot twice in the arm and leg and a man was shot once in the arm. Both are expected to recover, Livingston Parish Sheriff Jason Ard said.

“The pair tells detectives that they heard a noise outside of their home. They then witnessed someone barging in through their front door and firing shots,” Ard said. “We do not believe this to be a random shooting. It’s believed Mire was familiar with the victims.”

Mire is believed to have stolen a blue 2013 Chevrolet Silverado from that scene, authorities said.

At 5 a.m., a Louisiana state trooper attempted to stop a pickup truck in East Baton Rouge Parish when they came under fire from the driver, authorities said. The officer was not struck, but law enforcement believes the driver was Mire.

Police are still trying to find a motive, authorities said.

Copyright © 2021, ABC Audio. All rights reserved.

(HOUSTON) — A 3-year-old boy in Texas who has been missing since Wednesday has been found alive, officials said Saturday.

Christopher Ramirez was last seen playing with a neighbor’s dog while his mother unloaded groceries from her car outside their home in Grimes County Wednesday afternoon, authorities said. He followed the dog into the woods, and while the dog returned, he didn’t.

Search crews, including FBI personnel and community volunteers, had scoured the region with no signs of the boy for days.

Around noon local time Saturday, Texas EquuSearch, an organization that assists in search and recovery, announced that Christopher had been found. It shared a photo of him shirtless in a car, being cradled by a woman, though did not provide further details.

Christopher was found around 11 a.m. Saturday “alive and safe,” Grimes County Sheriff Don Sowell said in a Facebook post.

He was taken to Texas Children’s Hospital in the Woodlands, where he will be “observed and monitored for a period of time,” the sheriff said.

“A bit tired and dehydrated as well as hungry and in overall good spirits and healthy,” Sowell said.

Crews and community volunteers had been canvassing the wooded area, using drones and dogs to track Christopher’s scent, authorities said. On Friday, Sowell said they had expanded the search perimeter and would continue to search through the night and weekend.

Sowell had said there was no evidence of foul play, and family members were not persons of interest.

The boy’s mother, Araceli Nunez, had publicly pleaded for help in finding Christopher.

“I am asking you all to please help and find my son. I don’t know anything about him, and a lot of time has passed. I don’t know what to do. Please everyone help me,” she told reporters in Spanish at a press conference Thursday.

“I’m desperate and my heart has a hole in it. Please bring back my son, please help me,” she said.

The “humble and kind man” who found Christopher has requested anonymity, Sowell said on Facebook.

“I had several good visits with him and thanked him for being there,” the sheriff said. “He replied that God told him at Bible study yesterday evening to go look for him and he would find him. This morning the man did just that and the rest is a happy ending to this story.”

Copyright © 2021, ABC Audio. All rights reserved.