CHILD WELFARE

Children:
N ot for Sale

SEX TRAFFICKING DEFINED

Sex trafficking is the illegal business of
recruiting, harboring, transporting, obtaining,
or providing a person and especially a minor
for the purpose o f sex.

Lawmakers are
attacking sex
trafficking on several
fronts.
BY JANE HOBACK

Jane Hoback is a freelance writer based in

Denver.

f you think child sex trafficking doesnt

occur in your neck of the woods, youre
not alone.

On a ride-along with a Seattle police

officer, W ashington R epresentative Tina
Orwall (D) was shocked to see what looked to
be 13- and 14-year-old girls on street corners
being trafficked for sex.
He showed me a side of our community I
had never seen, she says.
When Alabama Representative Jack Wil
liams (R) tried to introduce legislation in 2009
to combat sex trafficking in the northern part
of his state and along Interstate 20, it didnt
get far. Nobody was against it, he says, but
people said it just didnt happen here, that it
only happens in big cities.
Even Minnesota Senator Sandy Pappas
(D), whos worked on the issue for 10 years,
was surprised when police arrested traffickers
at what she describes as her next-door neigh
bora downtown St. Paul hotel connected by
a skyway to her condo.
SEPTEMBER 2016

24

STATE LEGISLATURES

R epresentative
Tina O rw a ll
W ashington

R epresentative
Jack W illiam s
Alabama

Senator
Sandy Pappas
M innesota

A 15-year-old girl from Iowa had been held

against her will and forced into prostitution
there. Shed been there for a week, with men
coming and going, Pappas says. Nobody
reported it. Finally, the girl got to a phone and
called police. This is a business hotel where
people come to do training at local corpora
tions or attend conferences. Right in the heart
of downtown St. Paul.
E v e ry w h e re , O u t o f S ig h t

No part of the country is immune from sex

trafficking, and girls and boys as young as 9
years old of every race, socioeconomic class and

m
CHILD WELFARE

WM
Decreasing the Demand

A King County, Washington, program is setting its sights on buyers of comm ercial sex
with a pilot program aimed at reducing demand by 20 percent in tw o years.
The program, called Buyer Beware, is a jo in t effort of the office of the King County
Prosecuting Attorney and the nonprofit Organization fo r Prostitution Survivors.
"With the average age of entry into prostitution at 13 to 15 years old, prostituted people
are coerced into 'the life,' controlled by pimps or unable to escape for other reasons," the

T;

survivors' group says. "Instead, this model w ill focus on the participants w ho do have free
choice: the buyers w ho drive demand."
The attorney's office aims to increase the number o f arrests and prosecution of buyers:
expand training o f police agencies to conduct stings on sex buyers: and ensure imposition
o f the state's mandatory $5,000 fine to support victim services. The office also will
increase the number o f jurisdictions conducting internet stings and coordinate a public
awareness campaign aimed directly at online buyers.
The survivors' group will develop a comprehensive intervention program that convicted
sex buyers w ill have to participate in as a condition of their sentences. The group w ill also
focus on expanding public awareness through its "Buyer Education" efforts.
"The mandatory $5,000 fine is a good tool because buyers are the ones paying the
fees," says Washington Assistant Attorney General Farshad Talebi, w ho also heads the
state's Commercially Sexually Exploited Children Statewide Coordinating Committee. "A
lot o f times buyers are spending $5,000, $10,000 a m onth on prostitutes. The demand side
is just m ind-blowing."
The program w ill step up publicity on arrests, prosecutions and penalties. In Seattle,
program organizers and others are meeting with the largest local businesses and biggest
employers to raise awareness and help them establish internal policies addressing sex
trafficking.
"It's in their self-interest," he says. "The last thing you want is to see a front-page article
that says your employee just got arrested for having sex with underage prostitutes."

"There's been a pretty big

shift over four years from
arresting young women to
focusing on the demand."
- W AS H IN G TO N REPRESENTATIVE TINA ORWALL

sexual orientation are at risk. Children are

bought and sold for sex in big cities and at
truck stops, in small rural communities and
at suburban strip malls, in upper-middleclass counties and at major sporting events
like the Super Bowl. And then theres the
internet. One estimate puts the number of
child pornography websites at 20 million.
Trafficking is a multimillion-dollar
ind u stry , says W ashington A ssistant
Attorney General Farshad Talebi. Traf
fickers operate on circuits that span whole
regions of the country. What were seeing
are gangs and drug dealers shifting to sell
ing girls because, one, its more lucrative

and, two, its less risky, says Talebi, who

heads Washingtons Commercially Sexu
ally Exploited Children Statewide Coordi
nating Committee.
Its less risky because fewer law enforce
ment officials are dedicated to investigat
ing and prosecuting sex trafficking than are
working on other crimes. But thats chang
ing at both the federal and state levels as
legislators are enacting laws addressing the
problem on several fronts, from mandating
tougher penalties for traffickers to provid
ing counseling and a range of services to
the young victims.
Traffickers especially target vulnera
ble children who have been abused, have
dropped out of school, are homeless, or
are gay or lesbian. Some are teenagers
who are just a little lost, as Pappas puts it.
Their average age is 13.
Statistics are hard to pin down, but esti
mates, which vary widely, start at about
100,000 children trafficked for sex annually

STATE LEGISLATURES

25

SEPTEMBER 2016

in the country. At a congressional hearing

in 2015, Utah Attorney General Sean D.
Reyes put the number at about 2 million.
In an April 2016 congressional report,
The National Strategy for Child Exploita
tion Prevention and Interdiction, the U.S.
Department of Justice called the total num
ber of children affected immeasurable,
due to misidentification of juveniles as
adults, varied classification of criminal inci
dents by law enforcement and extra mea
sures taken by traffickers to ensure juveniles
are not contacted by law enforcement.
Child sex trafficking is one of the most
complex forms of child sexual exploitation,
the report says. Victims frequently fall prey
to traffickers who lure them in with an offer
of food, clothes, attention, friendship, love
and a seemingly safe place to sleep.
Traffickers often use acts of violence,
intimidation or psychological manipula
tion to trap the child in a life of prostitu
tion. Victims are conditioned to remain

CHILD WELFARE
Truckers to th e Rescue
The nonprofit Truckers Against Trafficking organization views drivers and others in the
trucking industry as uniquely situated to help in the fight against trafficking. The organization
produces DVDs, exhibits and other training materials and works with trucking schools, the
carriers, the truck stop industry, as w ell as manufacturers and state and national trucking
associations to spread the word about trafficking.
Drivers call the National Human Trafficking Resource Center hotline at 1-888-373-7888
when they suspect human trafficking. The group says its training has produced a significant
increase in reports o f possible trafficking from truck drivers, resulting in victim recoveries
and the arrest o f criminals. Among its materials are wallet cards with a list o f "Trafficking Red
Flags" to look for, among them:
A minor w ho lacks knowledge o f his or her whereabouts
CB radio chatter about "commercial company" or flashing tights signaling a "buyer"
location
A m inor w ith no identification documents
Any acknowledgment that a minor has a pimp
Signs o f branding or tattooing of a trafficker's name.
-K evin Frazzini, NCSL

loyal to the trafficker and to distrust law

enforcement, according to the report.
Protecting Victims

The cornerstone of federal law is the

Trafficking Victims Protection Act, enacted
in 2000 to punish traffickers and buyers
and protect victims. The law specifically
addresses child sex trafficking, also referred
to as commercial sexual exploitation of chil
dren, making it a crime to recruit, harbor,
transport, obtain, patronize or solicit a per
son under the age of 18 for the purpose of a
commercial sex act. A critical part of the law
is that child sex trafficking does not require
proof that the minor victim was subjected to
force, fraud or coercion.
Last year, Congress strengthened the
original law by passing the Justice for Vic
tims of Trafficking Act. It includes the pro
ducers of child pornography in the defini
tion of sex traffickers and increases federal
fines for convicted traffickers to $5,000.
The fines will fund a new Domestic
Trafficking Victims Fund, which will help
states with the costs of providing services
to victims and prosecuting traffickers.
The Justice Department will accelerate
training of law enforcement officers and
prosecutors who work on trafficking cases,
and will report annually on how states are
enforcing sex-trafficking laws.
Because the new federal law is barely a
year old, no data are available yet on the
results of distributing fines or of enforce
ment at the state level. But a host of state

laws enacted or being considered this year

complement the federal legislation by
increasing criminal penalties and fines for
traffickers and buyers, treating minors as
victims, protecting them from prosecu
tion on prostitution charges, boosting the
number of law enforcement officials and
prosecutors dedicated to trafficking cases,
and increasing funding for anti-trafficking
efforts.
Nearly every state has passed some form
of anti-trafficking legislation. Heres a
closer look at some of them.
Washington

Washington was the first state to crimi

nalize human trafficking. In 2003, the state
made human trafficking a class A felony
with criminal and civil penalties. Since
then, the Legislature has enacted several
bills addressing the commercial sexual
abuse of a minor. A $5,000 mandatory
fine for first-time offenders helps pay for
services for victims and training for law
enforcement.
Washingtons safe harbor law requires
mandatory diversion for a first charge of
prostitution and a discretionary diversion
for a second charge.
Theres been a pretty big shift over
four years from arresting young women to
focusing on the demand, Orwall says.
No juveniles were arrested for prostitu
tion in 2015, a result of increased awareness
and training of law enforcement officials,
says Orwall. Her next legislative priority

SEPTEMBER 2016

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STATE LEGISLATURES

she says is to establish training and educa

tion funds for survivors. Theres a big gap
in our system, she says. We get them out
and then where do they go?
She also hopes to get curriculum in
schools to raise awareness about the dan
gers of trafficking.
Washington Assistant Attorney General
Talebi wants to beef up law enforcement.
Thats one of the key recommendations
in the committees April 2016 preliminary
report to the Legislature on Washingtons
safe harbor law.
Were saying these crimes are equiv
alent to homicide, but we have very few
law enforcement resources being dedicated
to them, he says. We have to make that
shift in law enforcement.

CHILD WELFARE
The area near Washingtons Seattle-Tacoma International Airport, which is in
Orwalls district, has one of the highest
rates of trafficking in the U.S. But the
biggest proliferation of sex trafficking has
been online, where hundreds of website are
breeding grounds for the exploitation of
children for sex.
In one sting operation, police posted an
ad on Craigslist posing as a mother selling
her young children for sex. In an hour,
the ad got hundreds of responses, Talebi
says. Were talking about 8- and 11-yearold kids. That hit me really hard. This is
happening in every community. If were
genuine about going after this problem,
we have to have more law enforcement.

N e w H a m p s h ire

The New Hampshire House passed a bill

this June that makes it a felony to buy sex
with a minor regardless of whether a traf
ficker is involved. The provision encom
passes runaway and homeless youths who
are exploited for sex in exchange for food,
shelter or other necessitiesknown as
survival sexwithout the involvement
of a trafficker.
New Hampshire Representative Brian
Gallagher (R) has a longtime and personal
interest in the issue. His
93-year-old aunt, a Maryknoll nun, has been fighting
human trafficking for 65
years.
Shes been a symbol of
leadership to me, he says. R e p r e s e n ta t iv e
When I was first elected to B ria n G a lla g h e r
N e w H a m p s h ir e
the House, she asked me to
look into the issue.
A more immediate incentive came from
what Gallagher says was a poor ranking
from Shared Hope, the nonprofit that
tracks and rates states legislative efforts,
along with reports that trafficking was
increasing in the cities of Nashua and
Manchester.
New Ham pshire has been lagging
behind in setting strict standards and
strengthening protections for victims,
he says. Future legislation will provide
resources for victims to help them heal
and recover.
M in n e s o ta

The Minneapolis-St. Paul metro area

has the dubious distinction of being one of
13 U.S. metro areas with a high incidence
of child prostitution, according to the FBI.
Pappas says Interstate Highway 35, the
Mall of America and ships on Lake Supe
rior are particular trouble spots.
A 2000 study by the Womens Foun
dation of Minnesota estimated that more
than 200 girls are sold for sex an aver
age of five times a day via the internet
and escort services alone. Native Amer
ican girls are at a greater risk than any
other racial or ethnic group, according to
another study.
M innesota started by enacting laws
strengthening penalties against traffickers.
The Legislature passed its first safe harbor

STATE LEG ISLATURES

27

SEPTEM BER 2 01 6

"We're talking about

8- and 11-year-old kids.
That hit me really hard.
This is happening in every
community."
-

WASHINGTON ASSISTANT ATTORNEY

GENERAL FARSHAD TALEBI

law in 2011, decriminalizing prostitution

for commercially sexually exploited youths
15 and under. The law increased penalties
for commercial sex offenders and created
a statewide victim-centered service model
known as No Wrong Door.
A lot of times the police would say, I
picked up this young girl ... but I have no
place to bring her but jail, Pappas says.
So we developed safe places where they
can go and not be treated as criminals.
A 2013 law, which extended safe harbor
provisions to all sexually exploited youths
under age 18, also designated $2.8 million
to fund various prevention and treatment
services as well as law enforcement training.
Pappas and her colleagues worked with
Minnesotas U.S. Senator Amy Klobuchar
(D) to develop the 2015 federal anti-traf
ficking law, which is modeled on the com
prehensive Minnesota bill.
This is a totally bipartisan issue, Pap
pas says. Theres no one who doesnt sup
port trafficking victims. We moved from
the mindset that for some girls this could
be a choice. [In the 2011 law], if you were
between 16 and 17, you didnt quite get
safe harbor. We changed that to recognize
that its a very difficult thing to get out of
and it can take a while.
N e w Jers e y

The Super Bowl, like other major sport

ing events, is a hot spot for sex trafficking.
When the Meadowlands Sports Complex in
Rutherford, N.J., was chosen to be the site
of the 2014 Superbowl, New Jersey Assem
blywoman Valerie Huttle (D) and many
of her colleagues on both sides of the aisle
moved quickly to get the Human Traffick
ing Protection, Prevention and Treatment
Act signed into law.
It raises the penalty for trafficking of

CHILD WELFARE

"M/e had so many

advocates that hotels and

motels in the area had
little soaps with the 1-800
number for reporting sex
trafficking on them."
- N E W JERSEY ASSEMBLYWOMAN VALERIE H LITTLE

minors; establishes a fund

to provide services for vic
tims; expands law enforce
ment training; and estab
lishes a school to educate
custom ers of prostitutes.
The law also targets hotel A s s e m b ly w o m a n
V a le rie H u ttle
and m otel owners, land N e w J e rs e y
lords and taxi drivers. We
received some pushback from these indus
tries, Huttle says. They didnt want to be
held accountable. But, she says, they are
the most likely to see suspicious activity that

points to trafficking.
By the time the Super Bowl arrived,
Huttle says, We had so many advocates
that hotels and motels in the area had little
soaps with the 1-800 number for reporting
sex trafficking on them.
The law also targets escort services
and others who advertise commercial sex
abuse of minors. Thats still a thorn in our
sides, Huttle says.

Alabama
The Alabama Legislature passed its
Human Trafficking Safe Harbor Act in
April 2016, expanding on trafficking leg
islation Williams has championed for over
half a dozen years.
The law focuses on the demand side
of trafficking, establishing fines ranging
from $500 for a first charge of soliciting to
$1,500 and class A felony charges for the
fourth charge. It requires all prostitution
charges to be heard in district, rather than
municipal, courts. The law also includes

forfeiture of property provisions.

In the past, Williams says, police offi
cers said it wasnt a problem. Judges said
it wasn't a problem. But within 10 minutes
of my home, one little section of one little
town averages about 20 arrests for prosti
tution every month.
He says two sting operations in small
Alabam a towns netted more than 30
arrests of men attempting to purchase sex
from minors in just two days.
The new law also focuses on treatment
and supervision of exploited children. We
cant just say a child cant be charged with
a crime, he says. They have to receive
assistance.
Williams acknowledges hes an unlikely
champion of sex trafficking laws.
Its not something a white suburban
Republican picks up the banner for. But it
just had to be done in our state.
He may be surprised at whos in his cor
ner. This is one issue that appears to have
little partisan divisiveness.

ACCORDING TO THE CDC, THERE ARE AN ESTIMATED

2.6
MILLION
EMERGENCY ROOM VISITS
fo r in ju rie s r e la te d to c o m m o n ly p la y e d
s p o r t s in c h i l d r e n 1 9 & u n d e r e a c h y e a r .

T h a t's

7 , 1 2 3 / DAY, 2 9 7 / H O U R o r

1 e v e r y 5 SECONDS.

V i s it a t y o u r o w n r i s k . o r g t o d i s c o v e r h o w y o u can r e d u c e
r i s k on t h e fiel d, on t h e j o b a n d in y o u r c o m m u n i t y .

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