Here are some developments in the fight against human trafficking from last month.
Cases in the News:
- The trial of parents in Kentucky accused of sex-trafficking their 13- and 14-year-old daughters has been pushed back to October. Both girls have been in foster care since the Harts were arrested.
- A 19-year-old boy, his 16-year-old girlfriend, and a 14-year-old female accomplice were arrested in Kennewick, Washington, for allegedly trafficking a 15-year-old girl. When the victim refused to continue prostituting herself, they physically assaulted her.
- A couple in Wichita, Kansas was arrested for trafficking three teen runaways. The victims have been rescued and reunited with their families.
- Two people were arrested at the La Quinta Inn in South San Francisco after a clerk who’d received training to recognize human trafficking called police. Among the four victims was an underage girl.
- A pair was arrested in Indianapolis for sex-trafficking teenagers and a 12-year-old special needs child.
- On the weekend of July 26, the FBI rescued 105 child sex-trafficking victims and arrested 150 pimps in its seventh iteration of Operation Cross Country.
Legislative Updates:
- Hawaiian lawmakers have passed three bills to combat human trafficking. SB 192 makes it illegal to solicit a minor for prostitution and adds solicitation of a minor to the list of crimes to be included in the sex offender registry. HB 1068 requires high-risk sex-trafficking establishments, such as strip clubs and massage parlors, to display a human trafficking hotline poster showing victims how to seek help. HB 1187 amends the definition of “child abuse and neglect” and “harm” to include child victims of human trafficking to provide these children with proper support and services.
- The Internet Archive, a San-Francisco based non-profit, and Backpage.com, a classified ad website, are suing to block a New Jersey law concerning online ads for underage sex workers, contesting that the law violates a 1996 federal statute.
- Maine lawmakers recently passed a law that expands the definition of human trafficking and that makes it a crime to promote the prostitution of a person suffering from a mental disability.
Awareness and Advocacy Efforts:
- Metro Transit in Minnesota has agreed to reserve space on the interior ad section of buses for ads that raise awareness of human trafficking. The transit service is also looking into ways to have bus drivers formally report incidents of human trafficking.
- Theresa Flores, a survivor of sex-trafficking as a minor, is now in her 40s and has developed an initiative called the SOAP Outreach. She distributes free cases of soap to motels and hotels. Each soap bar contains the number of the National Human Trafficking Hotline on it. She also provides hotel front desks with photos of missing teens and discusses signs of human trafficking with them so they know what to look for.
- A panel featuring Google, CNN, HuffPost, and others looked at ways big data can be used to target traffickers and influence policy changes to combat human trafficking. Google Giving and the Polaris Project are examining data of reported trafficking instances to look for useful patterns.
- The National Association of Attorneys General is seeking to convince Congress to amend the 1996 Communications Decency Act to provide state and local prosecutors with more power to investigate and prosecute child sex-trafficking.
- Senator Jeffrey Chiesa, chosen by Gov. Chris Christie to temporarily fill a vacancy in the U.S. Senate, says he will use his brief time in Washington to raise awareness about human trafficking.