Mr. Speaker, I rise today to highlight the problem of human trafficking. Every day all over our country, vulnerable women, and children and even men are stolen away from their communities and forced…
Mr. Speaker, I rise today to highlight the problem of human trafficking. Every day all over our country, vulnerable women, and children and even men are stolen away from their communities and forced into work to line the pockets of criminals. Their stories and situations are different, but one common denominator remains: they are moved away, they are forced to work, their wages are stolen, and they are unable to leave. They are modern day slaves.
Under the federal Trafficking Victims Protection Act, human trafficking is defined as the recruitment, harboring, transportation, provision, or obtaining of a person to perform labor or a commercial sex act through force, fraud, or coercion. You can find human trafficking victims everywhere. They are working in restaurants; nail salons; as maids and nannies; on farms; in factories; in brothels, on the street, and as online escorts--they exist in any industry where one's work and freedom can be stolen from them.
The Justice Department supports task forces dedicated to investigating human trafficking cases. Between 2008 and 2010, these task forces rescued 527 confirmed human trafficking victims. Some of the people rescued were sex trafficking victims, others were labor trafficking victims. But the statistics are telling. The majority of trafficking victims are women: women made up 98 percent of sex trafficking victims and 68 percent of labor trafficking victims. The traffickers were overwhelmingly (81 percent) male. Most of the victims were under the age of 25. With sex trafficking, most of the victims were U.S. citizens, while labor trafficking largely affected undocumented individuals. But this data just scratches the surface of the problem that is out there, within our own borders.
Hundreds of thousands of trafficking victims are exploited every year in the United States. The Polaris Project estimates that there are 100,000 child sex trafficking victims in the U.S. alone each year. This figure came into clear focus in my hometown of Toledo, Ohio back in 2005, when a child prostitution ring in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania was broken up. The sting involved 177 girls, 77 of whom were from Toledo. One was a ten year old girl. They had all been stolen away from their family, from their community, and forced into prostitution in a city over 400 miles away. That discovery led to the discovery of many other girls from Toledo who had fallen victim to sex trafficking.
The problem is big, but progress is being made. One state representative from Toledo has worked tirelessly to address this issue at the state level. Representative Teresa Fedor recently saw her signature legislation signed into law. The legislation, Ohio's ``Safe Harbor'' law, ensures that children who have been trafficked are treated as victims and not charged with violations like solicitation. The law also increases the penalties faced by adult traffickers and helps victims access services to help return to society. Prior to the signing of this law, Representative Fedor passed a law to create a human trafficking charge that could be added to related crimes to increase the severity of the sentence.
The good work that Representative Fedor has done will undoubtedly help victims of trafficking in Ohio. I would like to ask unanimous consent to include an article from the Toledo Blade detailing her work in this area.
Human trafficking will remain a scourge on our society until we can assure that no human being is turned into a slave. I applaud the steps that have been taken so far, but also recognize that much more needs to be done.
[From the toledoBlade.com, July 31, 2012]
Fedor Found Voice in Human-Traffic Battle
(By Jim Provance)
Columbus.--``Without her, we wouldn't have a voice,'' a
former human-trafficking victim recently said of Rep. Teresa
Fedor.
But one might also say that it was this victim and others
like her who gave the Democratic lawmaker from Toledo her
voice.
The former elementary school teacher and former Air Force
staff sergeant has without a doubt experienced political
success. She'd been in the Ohio House only two years before
Lucas County voters promoted her to the Senate in 2002. In
2010, when term limits forced her out of the chamber, they
sent her back to the House. She faces no Republican
opposition for re-election this year.
But making legislative gains proved more elusive.
An unscientific poll in the summer of 2007 by Columbus
Monthly magazine of 100 lawmakers, lobbyists, and players in
Gov. Ted Strickland's administration, and other Statehouse
insiders ranked her among the least effective and politically
savvy of state lawmakers.
Her colleagues in the Senate Democratic Caucus, a very
small club, dumped her as
their elected leader in early 2008 after an internal coup.
But just two weeks ago, many of those same Democratic
senators and their more plentiful Republican counterparts
gave Ms. Fedor a standing ovation after the chamber
unanimously passed House Bill 262, the so-called ``Safe
Harbor'' bill.
Gov. John Kasich is to sign it into law Wednesday at Second
Chance, a Toledo social service program offering help to
trafficking victims and prostitutes.
``There's no higher calling than fighting for those who
can't fight for themselves,'' said Sen. Mark Wagoner (R.,
Ottawa Hills), the Senate Judiciary Committee chairman who
helped to work through last-minute changes to get the bill
over the finish line.
``Teresa is to be commended for taking up this issue, for
the energy she put behind it, and for the commitment to see
it through,'' he said.
The bill seeks to push the reset button for government, law
enforcement, judges, and others to look at those forced or
coerced into selling themselves, especially minors, as
victims rather than as criminals.
Initially struggling to get bipartisan support, Ms. Fedor
reached out to a man who, at least through much of 2011, was
considered by Democrats to be the enemy--Mr. Kasich.
When the Republican governor signed on, Ms. Fedor was in
disbelief.
``This was different for her,'' Mr. Kasich recalled. ``She
asked me, `Are you really serious that you're going to help
me?' ''
The highly contentious fight over Senate Bill 5, which
ended last November when voters rejected the Republican-
passed restrictions on public employee unions, was still
fresh in lawmakers' minds.
``I know I'm dancing on the edge of a knife here, but this
issue's more important than the politics of this place,''
said Ms. Fedor.
No political backlash came.
The trafficking issue has brought Mr. Kasich, the father of
12-year-old twin daughters, close to tears multiple times.
``I knew about human trafficking worldwide, but I was
certainly not aware of the situation in this state. . . .''
he said. ``It doesn't just touch me because I have daughters.
That's part of it, but it's anybody's children.''
In addition to signing the bill into law, Mr. Kasich's own
interagency task force on trafficking will release its
recommendations on how the state can better respond to the
problem on Wednesday.
``Instead of prosecuting these people, we're beginning to
recognize these people are victims,'' Mr. Kasich said.
``Secondly, those people who knowingly engage with these
traffickers and abuse them, the book is going to be thrown at
them. We had this bust [near Bowling Green] that's had a
significant amount of attention, so the word is out: You're
going to jail and for a long time.
``And the women who are out there, the people who have been
trafficked, they can come forward, and we will not prosecute
you,'' he said. ``We will treat you and help you get your
life back.''
Incremental gains
The gains have been incremental. In 2008, Ms. Fedor
persuaded her colleagues to amend a separate bill to create a
human trafficking specification that, when attached to a
related crime such as compelling prostitution, could increase
the severity of the sentence.
Ms. Fedor said she knew the specification would not be
used, but saw it as the first step to getting human
trafficking recognized in Ohio law.
More important, she said, was a provision authorizing then
Attorney General Richard Cordray, a Democrat, to create a
commission to quantify modern-day slavery in Ohio.
The statistics that emerged from the commission were a kick
in the stomach.
They suggested that as many as 2,879 youths born in Ohio
are at risk for sex trafficking and that 1,078 have been
trafficked over the course of a year.
In terms of raw numbers of arrests, investigations, and
rescues of children involved in the sex trade, the commission
suggested that Toledo ranked fourth in the nation behind
Miami, Portland, Ore., and Las Vegas. When adjusted for
population, Toledo climbed to No. 1.
``We feel that the models were reasonable and
conservatively estimated, but I also think the estimate woke
some people up,'' said Celia Williamson, professor of
criminal justice and social work at the University of Toledo
and leader of the commission subcommittee that presented the
numbers.
But even when armed with those numbers, she was surprised
at the success Ms. Fedor had.
``I was astonished that she was able to pass such a
comprehensive Safe Harbor law,'' Ms. Williamson said. ``It's
more than we could have realistically dreamed.''
The numbers were somewhat skewed by a 2005 federal child
prostitution sting in Harrisburg, Pa., involving 177 females.
Seventy-seven of them, including a 10-year-old, were from the
Toledo area. A 2006 series by The Blade trained a spotlight
on Toledo's role as a major recruiting hub for children in
the sex trade.
``It made no sense to me that pimps weren't getting
arrested, that johns weren't getting arrested,'' Ms. Fedor
said. ``They were all misdemeanors. The whole focus was on
the prostitutes. In other words, it was always the woman's
fault. . . . And then, when I saw that it was reaching down
to our children, I thought, `Enough is enough.'?''
Rugged determination
Judge Tim Grendell of Geauga County Common Pleas Court was
a Republican state senator in 2010 when he teamed with then
Sen. Fedor for the next step, creation of Ohio's first stand-
alone, second-degree felony of ``trafficking in persons.''
Mr. Grendell's northeast Ohio district was dealing with its
own problem of Asian massage parlors investigated for
trafficking.
``She brought a rugged determination and dedication to the
issue that, I think, was critical in passage of that
legislation a year and a half ago and this legislation,'' he
said. ``In my personal opinion, [the latest bill] certainly
would not have passed in this advanced state without her
efforts.''
But he also said that without Mr. Kasich's intervention, a
bill as strong as the one that ultimately just passed
probably still would have been several years off.
``She's been a huge force,'' said Attorney General Mike
DeWine, a Republican who resurrected the trafficking
commission begun under his predecessor.
``She has a real passion for this and persistence,'' he
said. ``I've found in government that you have to have those
two, and she has them on this issue.''
Theresa Flores, of Columbus, a former trafficking victim
and now a member of Mr. DeWine's commission, detailed her
story in the 2007 book The Sacred Bath: An American Teen's
Story of Modern Day Slavery: As a teenager in an affluent
Detroit suburb, she was blackmailed and trafficked at night,
even if she did return to her own bed under her unsuspecting
parents' roof before the sun rose.
``[Ms. Fedor] really is empowering victims and survivors to
find their voices,'' she said. ``She's helping them to
realize that what happened to them wasn't necessarily their
fault. Somebody did this to us, and we need to go after
them.''
Although happy with the bill that reached Mr. Kasich's
desk, Ms. Fedor is already plotting her next move, battling
what she perceives to be a misunderstanding among her
colleagues over whether a trafficking victim can consent to
prostitution--even if she is over 16, the legal age of
consent.
``Age of consent should never apply,'' she said. ``These
victims are not consenting. They're enslaved. They can't get
out. They're being forced to have sex with 20 or 30 men a
night--beaten, drugged, raped, kidnapped. They go from city
to city. There's no consent involved at all.''
