The following is a transcript from the Tom Lantos Human Rights Commission Briefing that took place in Washington D.C., on March 1st, 2016.
00:00:00
Rep. Randy Hultgren: “This is a very important day. I want to welcome you all; my name is Randy Hultgren. I’m congressmen from fourteenth congressional district in Illinois. It is the seven counties that wrap around Cook County in Illinois, so just west and north of Chicago. I’m really honored to have you all here and especially honored to have this incredible group of panelists and experts talking about a very, very important subject.”
00:00:30
Rep. Randy Hultgren: “There’s really nothing more important, I believe that we could be talking about. It’s something that I’m more convinced every single day that we can do something about this; we can stop this. You can’t not know about this or know about it and not do something. So that is really my hope, for us to continue to spread the word and understand the seriousness of what is happening clearly around the world, but also in our own backyards.“
00:01:00
Rep. Randy Hultgren: “We are responsible if we don’t do something. So welcome, as many of you know we were supposed to have this hearing about a month ago, but this little thing called ‘Snowmageddon’ here in Washington, D.C. In Chicago, the snow is a challenge for us as we know, but we kind of deal with it. One to two inches in DC, it becomes paralyzing. 32 inches, forget it, it shuts down in D.C. “
00:01:37
Rep. Randy Hultgren: “I apologize that we had to change things, sometimes things just happen and you have to roll with that, and that’s what we did. I’m so grateful for our panelists who are here, some who were going to be here, some who now are filling in for those who were going to be here but now can’t be here at this date. Anyhow, I think we have an amazing group of people here today.”
00:02:00
Rep. Randy Hultgren: “I also want to thank a couple people who have been very influential in my life and mentors to me in some ways. I want to thank the Co-Chairmen of the Tom Lantos Human Rights Commission, Congressman Joe Pitts and also Congressman Jim McGovern, who have shown consistently strong leadership and have raised their voices through this commission on behalf of those around the world who are deprived of their basic human rights. Again, it’s something so important for us to be working together and fighting together on.”
00:02:30
Rep. Randy Hultgren: “Also, I want to thank Exodus Cry, so grateful for everyone at Exodus Cry and their incredible help they’ve provided to me. Also, I would like to thank Shared Hope International for their valuable work in fighting human trafficking and restoring survivors and for their assistance with today’s briefing. I especially want to thank our distinguished panelists from whom you will hear shortly. Some of them, themselves are survivors of human trafficking and now advocate for those who are still entrapped in this sinister and nefarious global enterprise.”
00:03:00
Rep. Randy Hultgren: “All are on the front lines fighting on behalf of victims and against those who seek to steal the souls of society’s most vulnerable, especially purchasers of commercial sex who stoke the demand for sex trafficking. Demand for commercial sex that fuels the global sex trade resulting in human trafficking becoming a major human rights’ crisis is the central theme of today’s briefing. Increasing evidence reveals that demand plays a critical role in sustaining sex trafficking. It’s one of those things if men stopped purchasing sex, overnight the demand for sex trafficking would stop.”
00:03:32
Rep. Randy Hultgren: “It remains an industry run largely by and for the benefit and profit of men. Men overwhelmingly tend to be the buyers of commercial sex. And as I said, we could end this overnight if all men stopped buying sex. Human trafficking at its base then, is an economic albeit insidious enterprise. It is fundamentally an issue of supply and demand, as sick as that sounds.”
00:03:59
Rep. Randy Hultgren: “Earlier this Congress, I introduces HR 611, The Sex Trafficking Demand Reduction Act. This legislation acknowledges the significance of the demand factor inherent in human trafficking. It requires nations to recognize demand and to account for their actions to reduce demand in their efforts to fight sex trafficking. Their commitment to address demand will be factored into a country’s tier ranking in the State Department’s annual Trafficking in Persons report. Sex trafficking flourishes where demand exists for commercial sex and an environment of impunity for its customers.”
00:04:35
Rep. Randy Hultgren: “Therefore, eliminating demand is a major step toward eliminating human trafficking as a global human right’s crisis. Today we will hear from front line experts in the fight against human trafficking as they discuss its dangers and the damages caused by purchasers of commercial sex. We will also hear about the successful efforts employed to combat demand. It’s my hope that through today’s briefing we will come away with a better understanding of how demand for commercial sex drives the human trafficking industry, and a greater resolve to stand with those who fight for the basic human rights for those who are violated and exploited.”
00:05:11
Rep. Randy Hultgren: “With that, I want to introduce our first presenter. What I’ll do is introduce each presenter and give them a chance to speak, and when they’re finished with their presentation, I will introduce the next presenter. Let me at least go through and introduce them, if they could just wave first.”
00:05:30
Rep. Randy Hultgren: “Taina Bien-Aimé, is the Executive Director of Coalition Against Trafficking in Women. She is going to be our first presenter. Second Ernie Allen, Allen Global Consulting. Third, Tina Frundt, Founder and Executive Director of Courtney’s House. Fourth, Marian Hatcher from the Cook County Sheriff’s Office of Illinois. Fifth will be Georgia Attorney General Samuel Olens. Finally, last but not least, Kubiiki Pride, mother of a survivor. “
00:06:09
Rep. Randy Hultgren: “Thank you all so much for being here. I’m going to first turn it over to Taina Bien-Aimé, Executive Director, Coalition Against Trafficking in Women. So thank you so much for being here, and I’ll turn it over to you”
00:06:30
Taina Bien-Aimé: “Thank you Congressmen. So, my name is Taina Bien-Aimé, for anybody who took a little French in high school. The Coalition Against Trafficking in Women, which I head is an international organization that works to end all forms of human trafficking and commercial sexual exploitation of women and girls around the world. We work in the United States and on every continent, and we look at commercial sexual exploitation and sex trafficking as gender-based violence and discrimination.”
00:07:03
Taina Bien-Aimé: “I just wanted to thank the Congressman and the commission, the Tom Lantos Human Rights Commission for this extraordinary opportunity to talk about this really urgent human rights crisis. Under the leadership of the great Eleanor Roosevelt, governments gathered after WWII to adopt the Universal Declaration of Human Rights which lays out the basic principles of our inalienable and indivisible rights.”
00:07:30
Taina Bien-Aimé: “Among which that all human beings are born free and equal in dignity and rights and that everyone has the right to life, liberty, and security of person. Specific to human trafficking, the Declaration establishes that no one shall be held in slavery or servitude and slavery and the slave trade shall be prohibited in all their forms. No organization or official entity from the United Nations to the United States’ State Department truly knows how many people are trafficked around the world for both labor and sexual purposes.”
00:08:03
Taina Bien-Aimé: “The numbers range from four million to twenty seven million depending on the sources; however, there is overwhelming agreement on at least two points. First, that seventy nine to eighty percent of trafficked persons are women and children and the majority of the population is trafficked for commercial sexual exploitation. Secondly, we know and understand that the economic equations of supply and demand are applicable to this multi-billion dollar illegal market.”
00:08:35
Taina Bien- Aimé: “Human trafficking is not only a pervasive crime that is hidden in plain sight, but it is an extraordinarily lucrative one perpetrated with very low risk of punishment for the trafficker. The International Labor Organization estimates illegal profits from human trafficking at one hundred fifty billion dollars, ninety billion dollars of which emanating from sex trafficking.”
00:09:00
Taina Bien-Aimé: “Labor trafficking thrives on cheap goods and free labor and as it relates to sex trafficking, it is the demand for prostitution that fuels it. The work of my colleagues at this table and beyond remain at the heart and core of the path in finding solutions to end human trafficking and commercial sexual exploitation. I have the great privilege and honor to work alongside survivor leaders like my two colleagues here, and frontline direct service providers who inform us in identifying the best solutions to ending these crimes.”
00:09:35
Taina Bien-Aimé: “We work with legislators and policy makers to ensure that national laws continue making the links between sex trafficking and the sex trade, including prostitution, and the links between sex trafficking and the demand for prostitution and the link between violence against women and exploitation in the sex trade.”
00:10:00
Taina Bien-Aimé: “ We need laws like the Sex Trafficking Demand Reduction Act that will both strengthen our trafficking laws and mandate a clear focus on targeting the demand that nourishes the thriving multibillion dollar worldwide sex trade. Article nine of the Polermo Protocol (the article to prevent, suppress, and punish the trafficking of persons especially women and children which the United States ratified in 2005) urges governments to adopt or strengthen legislative, or other measures to discourage the demand that fosters all forms of exploitation of persons, especially women and children that leads to trafficking.”
00:10:35
Taina Bien-Aimé: “Last year, a number of governments did just that. Ireland, Northern Ireland, Croatia, Canada, Israel, Lithuania, and France followed the examples of Sweden, Norway and Iceland by enacting or proposing laws that address the demand for commercial sex acts, addressing exploitation in the sex trade as gender-based violence and discrimination, and punishing those who purchase human beings for sexual acts.
00:11:06
Taina Bien-Aimé: “This legal framework is known as the Nordic Model, or increasingly, the Equality Model based on human rights principles. Independent reports from the governments of Sweden and Norway have shown that targeting the demand for prostitution has reduced the level of street prostitution and sex trafficking exponentially so compared to their neighboring countries that have not adopted such laws.”
00:11:30
Taina Bien- Aimé: “In addition, in 2014, the European parliament passed a resolution on sexual exploitation and prostitution and its impact on gender equality, calling on member states to achieve through legislation, the shift of “the criminal burden unto those who purchase sexual services rather than those who sell it, thus reducing demand.” It is equally time for the United States to continue fulfilling our commitment to ending sex trafficking by focusing on demand.“
00:12:02
Taina Bien-Aimé: “HR 611 introduced by Rep. Randy Hultgren would accelerate these efforts. As a society, we have great difficulty in examining commercial sexual exploitation and prostitution as forms of violence, power of control over persons with acute vulnerabilities such as: childhood sexual violence, homelessness, racial inequalities.“
00:12:30
Taina Bien- Aimé: “The concept is even difficult for human rights organizations our colleagues such as, Amnesty International who is proposing to call on governments to decriminalize pimps, brothel owners and buyers of sexual acts, as a means to protect the exploited. This is a travesty of human rights. We must instead stand with the women and girls, men and boys, who are bought and sold in the sex trade and not with the exploiters who profit or benefit from their suffering.”
00:13:00
Taina Bien- Aimé: “On a personal note, the name I bear, Taina, is of a native Caribbean tribe, the Tainos whose language has no word for prostitution. This is a conversation I’ve had with many indigenous and first nations’ women who worked in the sex trade, who they too cannot find the word or concept of prostitution in their foremother’s language. Generations of lives and communities have been destroyed and desecrated by sexual exploitation and sex trafficking. Prostitution was never inevitable, it was invented, and therefore we can dismantle it.”
00:13:30
Taina Bien- Aimé: “The UN Secretary General, Ban Ki-moon, recently said “society is as weak as its weakest member,” combatting human trafficking requires an intensive collaborative network among anti-trafficking organizations, working with law enforcement, governments, civil society, labor unions, men and boys, faith based groups, and youth groups. We must also form alliances with the medical community including mental health providers, who can provide us with concrete data on the harms of prostitution exacted by buyers of sexual acts and pimps.”
00:14:09
Taina Bien-Aimé: “Finally, and most importantly, we must invest in the growing movement of survivors who are guiding us toward changing our cultural belief that lulls us to believe that prostitution is a so called ‘victimless crime’. Instead, it is time to move forward, toward the understanding that commercial sex acts are crimes perpetrated by buyers: the people with power and money over people who have neither.”
00:14:35
Taina Bien- Aimé: “Therefore, consent, agency, and empowerment are at best illusory, and worse, non-existent. ‘Where do human rights begin’, Eleanor Roosevelt asked, ‘in small places, close to home, so close and so small that they cannot be seen on any map of the world.’ And so this is where our task begins to end human trafficking and commercial sexual exploitation and to support the Sex Trafficking Demand Reduction Act. Thank you.”
00:15:10
Rep. Randy Hultgren: “Thank you so much. Unfortunately I took Swedish and Spanish, but I didn’t do very well in either of those either. Thank you, I blew it, I didn’t read your bio that I want to read because you’ve just done some amazing things. So I’m just going to read that quickly and then we’ll go on to the next presenter. Ms. Bien-Aimé, her expertise in human trafficking began two decades ago when she joined the board of the international human rights organization, Equality Now. Subsequently served as its Executive Director from 2001 until 2011. She led and participated in national and international coalitions that successfully advocated for strong anti-trafficking legislation from international conventions to the US Federal Trafficking Victims Protection Act to New York State’s groundbreaking Human Trafficking Act of 2007.
00:16:00
Rep. Randy Hultgren: “Also under her tenure, Equality Now, initiated the first campaigns against sex tourism and formed the fund for grassroots activism to end sex trafficking. Supporting community based groups in a dozen countries, on five continents that provide direct services to victims and push their governments to address trafficking of women and girls. Thank you again for your great work and thank you so much for your testimony today and for your words; we really do appreciate it.”
00:16:30
Rep. Randy Hultgren: “Next, I want to introduce our second witness, Ernie Allen, of Allen Global Consulting. Ernie Allen is a global expert on child abduction, sexual exploitation, human trafficking, and the dark web. He speaks to global audiences on these issues and advises governments, law enforcement, technology companies, and non-profit organizations. He currently chairs a global initiative to combat online exploitation for UK Prime Minister, David Cameron. He serves on several corporate boards and is an advisor to the Ethisphere Institute in the US, Il Telefono Azzurro in Italy, ECPAT international in Thailand and others. He is a founding board member of the End Modern Slavery Initiative Foundation and serves as an advisor on human trafficking to the McCain Institute for International Leadership. Allen was named pathbreaker for his victim-centered anti-trafficking efforts by Shared Hope International in 2013. Previously he was architect, first chairman, and president and CEO of the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children.”
00:17:30
Rep. Randy Hultgren: “He also created the International Center for Missing and Exploited Children, and served simultaneously as its president and CEO. We’re very honored today to have Mr. Ernie Allen here, and I yield to you.”
Ernie Allen: “Thank you Congressman Hultgren, General Olens, ladies and gentlemen, it’s great to be in a room with a lot of friends, with whom I’ve worked for a lot of years. I’m particularly pleased to be here at request of my friends and allies at Shared Hope, Eliza and Samantha and my great friend Congresswoman Linda Smith.“
00:18:04
Ernie Allen: “For many years, we have emphasized the importance of attacking demand; this is not just a US issue. Congressman, I am particularly enthusiastic and want to echo Taina’s endorsement of your Sex Trafficking Demand Reduction Act. I think it’s timely, it sends a message both in the United States and globally. I want to point out that the UN special rapporteur on sale of children, child prostitution, and child pornography, is releasing her report next week, and in it she concludes and calls upon all stakeholders to focus on the demand factor and establish comprehensive strategies to reduce it effectively. My belief is that in the United States, we need to do no less. We’ve made enormous progress, but let me take you back thirteen years.”
00:19:00
Ernie Allen: “Congressman Hultgren reminded you that for about thirty years, I ran the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children. In 2003, I was honored to play a part in designing and implementing a new approach to addressing sex trafficking in this country. It was called ‘Innocence Lost’; it was developed in partnership with the FBI and the US Department of Justice. The Philosophy was very basic. Historically, when law enforcement addressed the problem of trafficking in this country, they did it almost exclusively at the local level, and almost entirely by the arrest of the victim.”
00:19:30
Ernie Allen: “So the goal of ‘Innocence Lost’ was to look at this problem from the thirty thousand foot level and in a multi-jurisdictional collaborative way. We created task forces around the country; federal, state, local task forces working together and the results have been dramatic. Most recent data I’ve seen that’s about a year old, sixteen hundred traffickers had been successfully prosecuted.”
00:20:06
Ernie Allen: “Those prosecutions have led to unprecedented sentences: more than a dozen life sentences for these traffickers, multiple sentences of twenty years and up. So you would expect with that kind of collaborative, coordinated effort over the span of thirteen years, that the problem would have disappeared or at least decline dramatically.”
00:20:32
Ernie Allen: “The very opposite happened. Almost as soon as the trafficker goes away, somebody else springs up in his place. How is that possible? Well, what we have learned is that there is a very basic equation here. This is behavior that is easy to do, very little risk, addressing a problem with enormous consumer demand, and therefore, is enormously profitable.”
00:21:05
Ernie Allen: “The decision that is being made in communities across this country and around the world, is that the balance between risk and reward is not yet onerous enough that it is encouraging people not to engage in these behaviors. Now, why? Let me suggest four simple reasons. One is while enormous progress has been made, particularly since the passage of the Trafficking Victims Protection Act in 2000, while enormous progress has been made, still much of America believes this is a problem that exists, but it exists somewhere else on the other side of the world. Or they believe, if it happens in the United States, it only happens in our largest cities and that the victims are exclusively foreign nationals that are trafficked into this country for this purpose.“
00:22:00
Ernie Allen: “What we have learned, what I have learned in the past thirteen years is that overwhelmingly the victims are American citizens, many of them American kids, most of them who leave home initially voluntarily, and are then targeted on the streets with kindness, friendship, love, and find that they are in a situation they cannot walk away from. The second factor in all of this is most Americans think this problem is about sex, it’s not; it’s about slavery.“
00:22:30
Ernie Allen: “There are real victims. This is twenty first century slavery. The juvenile victims are primarily runaways, throw-aways, kids targeted out of the child welfare system, homeless kids. These are forgotten victims that the world doesn’t recognize. Third issue, most Americans still believe this is a street crime problem. This only happens in the “bad areas of town” where good people don’t go.”
00:23:06
Ernie Allen: “What we’ve in the past thirteen years is this problem has migrated; it has moved largely from the streets to the internet. Today, those who seek to access kids or adults for sex, can shop from the privacy of their own home or hotel rooms and the risk for the trafficker is far less than it has ever been. There have been aggressive efforts to eliminate the marketing and sale of kids for sex via internet sites and you’ll hear from Marian a compelling example of those efforts. The practice continues and is growing worldwide. My fourth factor, and I believe the most important one, is that the customers who patronize this illicit industry, who create the demand for the sale of kids and adults for sex, and thus who are responsible for sustaining it, do not match society’s stereotype.”
00:24:01
Ernie Allen: “Overwhelmingly, they are not treated like the criminals they really are. Surely, those who purchase or would purchase a child for sex looks and acts like a criminal or a deviant? Well, not exactly; they’re doctors, they’re lawyers, they’re businessmen, they’re schoolteachers, they’re coaches, and they’re even police officers. They have wives and children at home; they don’t look evil.”
00:24:30
Ernie Allen: “They’re viewed by the public as model citizens. Yet, if we’re ever going to have impact on this problem, we have to create real deterrents. We have to hold them accountable for their behaviors and make them think twice before they engage in that behavior. The behavior is criminal, yet the courts and prosecutors in this country are overwhelmingly reluctant to charge or prosecute them and we need to change that.”
00:25:00
Ernie Allen: “Despite the growing numbers of prosecutions of traffickers, it’s clear that arrests and prosecution of traffickers alone will not solve this problem. The reason is, there is massive consumer demand. It has never been more blatant nor more normalized than in this era of the internet. Many websites that sell human beings for sex are protected by Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act passed by Congress in 1996.”
00:25:33
Ernie Allen: “These sites receive civil immunity under the CDA and may only be prosecuted by federal authorities, not state authorities. Prostitution is a crime in all fifty states, yet the responsibility for investigating and prosecuting these crimes presides solely with state authorities absent interstate transportation or some other factor.”
00:26:00
Ernie Allen: “The Federal Government has no role in prosecuting prostitution in this country. Yet, states are barred from investigating and prosecuting prostitution in this country where it involves an internet site. In July 2013, I worked with 47 state Attorney’s Generals including General Olens of Georgia, who drafted and sent a letter to Congress, urging a narrow, surgical, two word amendment to the CDA giving states the authority to investigate these sites under state law. It was a bi-partisan exercise. General Olens may know better, but I dare you to try and find forty seven elected state officials to agree on anything. These forty seven AG’s all signed the letter asking Congress to act. Last year Congress passed, and Congressman Hultgren Co-Sponsored the SAVE (Stop Advertising Victims of Exploitation) Act.”
00:27:04
Ernie Allen: “I’m grateful and admire Congressman Hultgren’s leadership on that, but I think there’s more work to do. I believe that Congress must still address the central problem, which is section 230 of the CDA. It must at least give state and local authorities the ability to investigate internet sites for violations of offenses that are exclusively state crimes.”
00:27:30
Ernie Allen: “The population we’re most concerned about, juveniles and adults, are not engaging in these activities willingly and voluntarily. They are twenty first century slaves who do not receive the proceeds of their labors and lack the ability to walk away. They are also brutalized and traumatized by those who traffic and control them. So, my suggestion to you is that this is not what Congress intended in 1996.”
00:28:00
Ernie Allen: “This is a problem Congress needs to fix. In the United States and around the world, traffickers sell human beings because it’s easy, low risk with huge consumer demand and is thus enormously profitable. We need to follow the money, attack the demand, increase the risk, and eliminate the profitability. Thank you very much, Congressman.”
00:28:20
Rep. Randy Hultgren: “Wow, very well said. Thank you so much. Definitely do want to follow up on that too. We’ll open it up to questions after everybody’s statements, so if you have questions please think of those. I wondered if there is legislation right now to clear that up, following up on the letter from the forty seven states. I haven’t seen anything specific to that, but would be very interested in helping with that if we could draft something and push that forward. So let’s follow up with that after the time we’re together today. Thank you so much for your work and for your statement Mr. Allen. Next, I’m very honored to introduce Tina Frundt, Founder and Executive Director of Courtney’s House.”
00:29:00
Rep. Randy Hultgren: “Tina Frundt founded Courtney’s House in 2008 in order to provide services to survivors of sex trafficking ages twelve to twenty-one in the Washington, DC metro area. Since its inception, Courtney’s House has helped over five hundred survivors recover from their trafficking experience. Ms. Frundt and Courtney’s House also train law enforcement and other non-profit groups to recover and provide resources to survivors. They also work with any group that may come in contact with trafficking: church groups, foster parents, social workers, teachers, hotel employees, etc., to raise awareness about identifying survivors and properly reporting to authorities. As a survivor of domestic sex trafficking, Tina has become a high profile national advocate on the issue. She has been featured on numerous national television shows and publications, including the OWN networks Our America with Lisa Ling, 3am Girls, which featured an undercover look at sex trafficking in Washington, DC, as well as the CNN Freedom Project and Redbook Magazine.”
00:30:02
Rep. Randy Hultgren: “Thank you for being here.”
00:30:08
Tina Frundt: “Thank you very much. I’m going to add one thing. I was newly appointed to the White House Advisory Board on Human Trafficking. I just want to mention that, because that’s really important that now we actually have a White House Advisory Board of survivors of foreign national, US domestic servitude, sex trafficking, labor, that’s actually going to be working on policy and what policies are important to push in the future.”
00:30:31
Tina Frundt: “So it is great to be here, and around so many people that are from where I am originally from, Chicago, Illinois. Courtney’s House is based here in DC and we work with boys and girls who were trafficked. We are a drop-in center, ages eleven to twenty-one. So I said both male and female, and we work on long-term programs and doing street outreach. So I know we hear a lot about the internet and there’s probably not that much going on, on the street.”
00:31:02
Tina Frundt: “However, we do street outreach, and our street outreach is conducted about four and a half blocks away from the White House. So, this area (the Capitol) is a high trafficking area. So I’m going to need you to sit back close your eyes and think about why this area would be a high trafficking area. Then, let’s talk about demand; and with that being said, I’m going to talk about questions that most people ask me about the demand that I get asked every single day.”
00:31:30
Tina Frund: “Probably questions that all of you are having right now. One of those is, ‘Do the men who buy sex, do they really know that this person, may be being controlled? How much is their knowledge on that?’ I think it’s actually interesting that we ask that question. We’ll talk about later as a society why we even ask that question. So let’s go back to really understand, because I think that’s a good question to ask.”
00:32:00
Tina Frundt: “My trafficking situation started at nine years old, inside the foster care in Chicago, Illinois. So when people ask me that, I think back to my own situation and say ‘I don’t know did someone know I was nine? Did they fully know that? Did they make that decision and know?’ Do we feel bad as a society for me when I was nine? Would you feel bad when I was thirteen and I got no help? Would you feel sorry for at sixteen? Would you blame me and not the man who bought sex at eighteen?”
00:32:35
Tina Frundt: “Is it then now all my fault and we take all the blame from them? See as a society, we created a name. The name that we created for men who buy sex, is the word ‘John’. See, we normalized it from the very beginning. When we created this word, ‘John’ as a name of a person who buys sex, right then and there we said the people who are being abused aren’t as important.“
00:33:00
Tina Frundt: “We said, this man, we’ll call him ‘John’ because we don’t want to know his name. He has a family, he has a job that we don’t want him to lose so we’ll normalize this, and we’ll say that the man who buys sex, we’ll call him ‘John’. The thing about that is I know some good men who are called John, you know, John the Baptist and many others. Women and girls and children who are forced into this, we’ll call them a prostitute, and we’ll say it’s their fault. No matter if they’re twelve or eleven or ten.”
00:33:32
Tina Frundt: “These men, let’s protect their name and make sure they keep their job so they can keep the traffickers in business. When I think about the demand, I’ve always thought it was an issue, I actually didn’t understand as a survivor why other people didn’t understand it. Let’s go through some of those questions again and we’ll talk about the other bigger pieces of why our society really created the situation that we’re in.”
00:34:00
Tina Frundt: “So let’s go to the next question. Usually, people then ask me ‘but isn’t it different for boys? You say that you work with boys, but boys its survival sex. It’s survival sex because some of the boys identify as gay and trans-gender, and they need a place to stay, something to eat.’ So we created this word survival sex. Now, let’s talk about that word survival sex that we created as a society again.”
00:34:30
Tina Frundt: “See, it would be survival sex if another fourteen year old boy was buying sex with another fourteen year old boy to survive these hard streets. The problem is, it’s grown men buying sex from kids to survive for a place to eat? But we said that’s okay for a man to buy sex from a child, because a child needs a place to eat. I want you to think about that statement for a moment. If that didn’t make sense to you out loud, then that is the society that we created.”
00:35:00
Tina Frundt: “We created that. So we created another word so that we don’t pay attention to child sexual abuse. When kids come to us, we do support groups at Courtney’s House, and they’re called, Transitioning Your Mindset Out of the Life. There are myths that we have to learn. Because of my own experience and all of our survivors, I thought that it was okay for men to buy sex.”
00:35:30
Tina Frundt: “I thought as a child I was wrong, because I got in trouble, I got arrested, but I thought it was fine. Now, many moons ago, when I was younger, but the sadder part is just last week at my support group, all my kids thought the same thing. The reason why they think the same thing is, guess what, we created that as a society. They don’t understand what child sexual abuse is, because I didn’t either. See, you can’t understand it when someone always took it from you.”
00:36:00
Tina Frundt: “When I was nine years old and ninety percent of all survivors including myself were sexually abused before their sex trafficking situation; it means I never had consensual sex. It means that I did not know that my body is a temple, it means that when a man approached me and said ‘come on, let’s do it, do this, here, what’ I’m going to, because I don’t understand how to say ‘no’, but they know how to ask. So when we think about the demand and how important it is, are we actually really thinking about the different layers?”
00:36:31
Tina Frundt: “Let me take you out of that for a second. I am in middle schools and high schools, inside the area and outside the area. So in a very nice area, and in Maryland, because we immediately when we think of trafficking we think of those other poorer sides, but forty four percent of all my referrals come from parents, who actively are in their children’s lives, because again we took the blame off right, because we blamed it once again on the child, on the parent, on everybody else, but not the man who bought sex, and not the trafficker.”
00:37:00
Tina Frundt: “We blamed everybody else again, which takes us back to being in schools. So, I’m with sixth graders in a health education class, and we talk about a curriculum on trafficking and we do it very differently. One of the things I asked the kids first is everyone in the room (again I am talking to eleven and twelve year olds) and I always say ‘Okay, let me ask everybody a question, is it okay to sell yourself for sex if you’re sixteen?’ Everyone raises their hands, every kid.“
00:37:30
Tina Frundt: “Teacher, you know, she’s having a conniption fit over here. Then I say, ‘Okay, what about fourteen?’ Everybody raises their hand. I say ‘Thirteen?’ Everybody raises their hand. I have eleven and twelve year olds, sixth grade. I say ‘Okay, ten?’ It’s a split. ‘Nine’ it’s still a split. So then I say, ‘Well is that bad? Because isn’t that a grown man touching you and giving you money to perform stuff is that abuse?’”
00:38:05
Tina Frundt: “They say no because they gave you money for it. So now we say, ‘Oh my goodness, we need to educate these kids!’ And I say ‘Oh my goodness they learned it from us.’ They learned it from us. So one of the things we actually work on the most is what sexual abuse is; that this isn’t okay that a man is not supposed to do this.“
00:38:30
Tina Frundt: “The next question I asked actually made the teacher get up to go get the principal. That question was, ‘How many of you, on your way to school, on your way home, both boys and girls, just with your friends, how many times to cars stop, ask you for a ride?’ Everybody’s hands raised up and said before anyone never talked about this, so the first thing they said was ‘Oh my god, it happens all the time!’ and the teacher said ‘Oh my god, I need the principal.’”
00:39:00
Tina Frundt: “This happens at every school I go to. That was middle school. When we’re thinking about the demand, let’s go back there. So you think these men are not buying sex online and on the street? That they just happen to be driving by a middle school and for the first time ever, they’ve decided to pull over and ask you for a ride, just because, today is the day. Or is this some behavior that they’ve been doing for years and don’t get caught with so they feel privileged?“
00:39:30
Tina Frundt: “So they feel that I can do it. When somebody buys you, it isn’t about sex. Exactly what Ernie said is actually very true. Because you all think about the sex, do you think about the other big issue I have to talk to the kids about? When someone purchases you, they own you two minutes, five minutes, an hour, a day; I can call you anything I want to call you out your name. I can treat you anyway I want to treat you out your name. I have, all of us I’m pretty sure have jumped out of a window have jumped out eighty mile per hour cars, so you don’t get killed and raped.”
00:40:02
Tina Frundt: “So do the men that buy sex know? Maybe it should be asked a different question; do the men that buy sex care? Plenty of times they told me, don’t tell me your age because you look like my granddaughter.
00:40:30
Tina Frundt: “Don’t tell me your age because you look like my daughter. For me growing up, I just knew they were probably doing the same exact thing they were doing to me to their own family. Why are we sitting here telling other people and making you all believe that’s true? You don’t think they abused their kids? They’ll go out and buy sex and abuse them. Did we just separate a person who buys sex and a pedophile? Did we put them in different categories? Or does now, it sounds the same?”
00:41:00
Tina Frundt: “The mindset is the same is the same of an abuser. Men who buy abuse children or women who abuse children, it is never their fault. It’s never their fault, they never did anything wrong, it’s always the child’s fault. It’s the same thing on the demand of men. But wait a minute, I’m going to throw a question, are we talking about two different types of men, or are we talking about one in the same? Are we?”
00:41:30
Tina Frundt: “So maybe, just maybe, there are more men than we think that feel privileged with power and money that they can buy and use people the way they want, because if kids are walking down the street, in every city I’ve talked to and they can tell me that. Then no, we need to change our language and this should’ve been done a long time ago. It goes hand in hand together. Thank you so much for my time.”
00:42:00
Rep. Randy Hultgren: “Thank you Tina, so much. Next I want to introduce Marian Hatcher. Marian is with the Cook County Sherriff’s Office. Sherriff Dart is a good friend of mine and I’m so grateful that Marian is able to be here representing Sherriff Dart and the great work going on in the Cook County Sherriff’s office. Marian Hatcher has been with the Cook County Sheriff’s office for twelve years and serves as a Senior Project Manager and Human Trafficking Coordinator for the Office of Public Policy.”
00:42:30
Rep. Randy Hultgren: “She supports the coordination of several of the CCSOs anti-trafficking efforts including The National John Suppression Initiative. A nationwide effort with more than one hundred participating law enforcement agencies including the FBI, targeting the buyers of sex as the driving force of sex trafficking and prostitution. Her office also has a long history of combatting online facilitation of trafficking. As a national expert on combatting the demand for commercial sex, she has testified before the Illinois and Colorado legislatures, has been featured on the OWN documentary, Prostitution: Leaving the Life, The Ink 180 Documentary, The Shared Hope’s Gang Trap Series, for which she was also a consultant.”
00:43:09
Rep. Randy Hultgren: “She is a recipient of a number of awards including the 2013 FBI award for Outstanding Assistance with Investigative Efforts, the Depaul University Helen F. McGillicutty award for her work in the advancement of women and gender rights, and the Shared Hope Pathbreaker award.”
00:43:26
Rep. Randy Hultgren: “Her article Ten Years and Counting was published in Police Chief Magazine as a companion article to a piece written by Cook County Sherriff, Thomas J. Dart, both focused on human trafficking. Marian, thank you.”
00:43:37
Marian Hatcher: “Thank you Congressman and thank you to the Tom Lantos Human Rights Commission. Good morning everyone, it is my privilege to represent the Sherriff of Cook County, Thomas J. Dart. On his behalf, I’ve had the privilege of coordinating a number of law enforcement efforts that are related to prostitution.”
00:43:59
Marian Hatcher: “He saw the need to focus on the demand that fuels the brutal crime, by arresting sex buyers. He conceived in 2011, a unique effort to highlight the role of solicitors as perpetrators to this violent and exploitive industry. The National Johns Suppression Initiative, previously called the National Day of Johns Arrest, led by the Sherriff’s office is a coalition that has grown from eight jurisdictions with two hundred and sixteen buyer arrests in our pilot to sixty three arresting agencies and over one hundred partners.”
00:43:33
Marian Hatcher: “Having executed eleven operations over a five year stretch, the collaborative effort has led to the arrest of more than 4,400 total sex buyers. In addition to that, the Sherriff created a Human Trafficking response team, of which I am a coordinator and a team member. There are three of us that are survivors of the sex trade that work for him.”
00:45:00
Marian Hatcher: “While we do this demand-focused effort, we also have provided more than six hundred interventions with women and girls since 2009 (February 2009). Not only have we arrested forty four hundred plus sex buyers, but we’ve rescued hundreds and hundreds of women and girls, trans-gender, and boys. We’ve also arrested scores of pimps and traffickers as you might expect.”
00:45:30
Marian Hatcher: “We have also noticed of course that, while we do these operations, these stings that there are many associated crimes as you might expect. There are hundreds and hundreds of and probably thousands of charges in my database that are related to narcotics, weapons, kidnapping, and even murder. Sherriff Dart stated recently that ‘Sex trafficking continues to destroy countless lives and this broad national movement should send a strong message to perspective Johns, that their ‘hobby’ is much more than a victimless crime.’”
00:46:05
Marian Hatcher: “As a survivor of prostitution, I can say that it most certainly is not a victimless crime. As a member of SPCE International, Survivors of Prostitution Calling for Enlightenment, representing seven countries, the United States, Germany, France, Denmark, Ireland, Canada, and the United Kingdom, it’s our educated stance that the role most responsible for the exploitive practice of prostitution is the demand inducing function of the buyer.”
00:46:35
Marian Hatcher: “Men who buy sexual acts as to the bodies of women and girls do not simply assist and support the sex trade; they are responsible for creating it. This is a demand-driven trade no different in its operative components than any other commercial enterprise. The members of SPCE International know through our collective experience and our own lives and that of the women who we deliver services to, the institution of prostitution owes its existence, its very existence to those who demand that it exists.”
00:47:08
Marian Hatcher: “If our legislators deal strongly with that demand, as they are which we see, under the law, we will not have to worry about the pimps, or the traffickers, because our lawmakers will have put them out of business. The nature of abolition does not involve the reformation of prostitution.”
00:47:30
Marian Hatcher: “In the present day, any more than it involved the reformation when chattel slavery in days gone by. We are not seeking to support policies that divide traffick from prostituted, and I am very glad to see that this legislation connects the dots of prostitution to trafficking and we can’t separate adult from child as Tina so eloquently connected. Eighteenth birthday doesn’t change anything, except make them now a criminal.”
00:48:00
Marian Hatcher: “Even many of our juveniles are still considered criminals in many states even though Safe Harbor and there are laws that are supposed to prevent that. It’s child abuse, pure and simple. But it’s abuse if it’s an adult or a person who has yet to reach the age of accountability. We seek to uphold the dignity of humanity. All humanity in every way it manifests.”
00:48:30
Marian Hatcher: “As long as we endure this erroneous notion of a person’s physical dignity as more worthwhile than another’s, we uphold a toxic principle of inferiority itself. All we seek is the impartial delegation of freedom with inherent rights and protections from men who choose to abuse. Forever abolishing value assignation to that which is beyond measure, we are God’s handiwork, priceless works of art, sculpted in greatness and meant from birth to be treated with the gravest courtesy.”
00:49:04
Marian Hatcher: “Let us take a pause and respectfully, I am taking poetic license, echoing elements of a veiled vision of late Dr. Martin Luther King in his historic final speech. In which he assured humanity that we as a people would get to the promise land. If we replace the sanitation worker to which he so eloquently referenced in his speech, with:
00:49:30
Marian Hatcher- “’the [prostituted person], they too will get to the promise land if we redistribute the pain of the [victim] and place it instead on the [buyer causing harm]. And by biblical example of the Good Samaritan in the same historic speech that night, ‘do not ask if I stopped to help this [woman or girl] in need what will happen to me, but instead ask, if I do not stop to help the [woman or girl], what will happen to [them]?’ That’s the question. Thank you.”
00:50:06
Rep. Randy Hultgren: “Thank you Marian, so much. Next, we’re grateful to have Georgia Attorney General, Samuel S. Olens. The Honorable Sam Olens was sworn in as Georgia’s fifty third Attorney General on January 10, 2011. That year, he worked with legislators to strengthen the penalties for sex trafficking, making Georgia’s law one of the toughest in the nation.”
00:50:30
Rep. Randy Hultgren: “In 2012, he spearheaded the first comprehensive revision of Georgia’s sunshine laws in more than a decade. In 2013, he led the effort to stem the epidemic of prescription drug abuse with a law that requires pain management clinics to be licensed and regulated. Olens currently is Chair of the Southern Region of the National Association of Attorney General and Co-Chairs the Federalism Pre-emption Committee. General Olens, thank you so much for being here.”
00:51:00
Sam Olens: “My Pleasure Congressman, It’s a pleasure to be on the panel and to be at this briefing of the Tom Santos Human Rights Commission. Prior to serving as Attorney General, I was a county executive, and a county chair, and I was active in a child abuse center in my county. So I learned a lot about child abuse/sex abuse at that time, but had no idea about sex trafficking. Shortly after my election, we had a meeting in Florida, the National Association of Attorneys General and former Congresswoman Linda Smith was one of the speakers.”
00:51:33
Sam Olens: “At that time, she provided a bunch of information from Shared Hope International, and I think a bunch of us in the room were just sort of aghast at the data. On the one hand, we could feel good that as bad as our state’s laws were, we were in great company with many other states that had pathetic laws, but I came back from that conference saying we were going to do something about it. So as you noted Congressman, in 2011, we made a huge difference in our state working with a couple leaders and the legislature in this area.”
00:52:04
Sam Olens: “I don’t use terms like pimp and John. I use trafficker, because under our statutory construct, both the buyers and sellers are traffickers with the same potential penalties. I think that’s one of the first things that needs to occur. We have emphasized throughout, demand, we’ve emphasized throughout that you can’t solve the problem without dealing with the buyers.”
00:52:30
Sam Olens: “The sellers are going to be there as long as there’s willing buyers, as everyone has said before me. So this is all about the buyers. Now, if you’re convicted of sex trafficking, that includes coercing or deceiving minor victims under the age of eighteen, you can get life in prison, that’s twenty five to fifty or life. Camela Wright who is with me today, who is our full time sex trafficking state prosecutor, has on numerous occasions gotten life.“
00:53:00
Sam Olens: “Along with another prosecutor in Decabb County, Camela was previously in Fulton, I stole her, so she could have statewide jurisdiction at that time. We are constantly trying to improve our laws as well as other sex-related laws. For instance, in our state, pandering carries a term of five to twenty years if the victim is sixteen or seventeen, and ten to thirty years if the child is under sixteen. Additionally, one good thing about the Georgia law, in contrast to Federal law, is that the buyer takes his victim as she comes.”
00:53:39
Sam Olens: “In other words, you can’t say ‘she looked eighteen’. If she is under eighteen, that’s trafficking with the greater penalties. Under the federal law, you have to show reasonable opportunity to observe; in Georgia, it’s the straight age. That’s all there is and that’s all there should be. The buyer should not be able to say, ‘I thought she was eighteen’.”
00:54:00
Sam Olens: “It’s got to be the buyer’s risk, in that process. We also, last year passed a forfeiture provisions as well as having a constitutional amendment on the ballot this November, where anyone involved in the adult entertainment business, which by definition would include minors if they were involved in adult entertainment side, would pay a hefty fine, and we expect that to pass this November and I expect to be sued the day after the results are certified, and that’s what makes life busy in the AG’s office.”
00:54:33
Sam Olens: “What we do around the state, both Camela and myself in partnership, with the Georgia Bureau of Investigation and several other non-profits is we go all over the state educating. We educate anyone and everyone. If you would’ve told me how many churches I go into to talk about sex trafficking, I never would have believed it. We do full day programs with school counselors, because they have to know what the signs are vis-à-vis the children in their schools.”
00:55:00
Sam Olens: “They need to know the signs of a victim of sex trafficking. We talk to the prosecutors. We are planning a program this fall teaching judges. Law enforcement of any shape and size we go to. We go to rural Georgia, as rural can be. We go to metro, because as was stated earlier, sex trafficking is everywhere. It’s not in the ‘bad neighborhood’ it’s in every neighborhood. We need to provide that training.”
00:55:30
Sam Olens: “In 2011, when we sought to pass House Bill 200, we passed on the House, but we were getting lot of grief on the Senate side. We ran into a fact pattern in Dodge County. In Cochran, Georgia, a town of 5000 folks, where a family was selling their fourteen year old girl to the sixty six year old used car manager in lieu of the minivan payment. Mom got eight years, dad got ten, used car lot dealer got ten. I’m pretty comfortable at this time there would be life sentences if that same fact pattern arose.”
00:56:03
Sam Olens: “Following the passage of House Bill 200, we started training law enforcement. Between Camela and the Georgia Bureau of Investigation, we initially started with the state troopers because once again they have statewide jurisdiction. Trooper stops a car in rural Georgia, right off the interstate, doesn’t smell right, the girl won’t look to him, the girl’s not talking, the guy’s doing all of the talking. He’s just had the training, he calls the Georgia Bureau of Investigation for backup, long story short of it was this a girl from Birmingham, Alabama.”
00:56:37
Sam Olens: “Similar to what Ernie said before, most of the kids we see in Georgia are from the Southeast. Girl from Alabama, she was seventeen, had been trafficked since the age of twelve and Georgia was the fourth state she was trafficked in. The training works, the training leads to the arrests, the training leads to saving victims.”
00:57:00
Sam Olens: “Last September, Camela went to Chattums (you know it as Savannah) and they trained over five hundred officers and within three weeks had a sting, seven victims were identified and saved at that time with numerous arrests. This has been referenced earlier, when you do a sting on sex trafficking, you’re not twiddling you’re thumbs waiting to see what happens. The phone immediately rings; these folks are more than willing to buy young kids for sex.“
00:57:30
Sam Olens: “Right after this time, we had this thing come into Atlanta called, the Final Four basketball tournament. We know whenever you’ve got those big sporting events; you’re going to have folks coming to town with the trafficking. We worked with the city of Atlanta, the suburban areas, anyone and everyone, the taxi drivers, hoteliers, etc. By that time we came up with the idea that we were going to start with another non-profit campaign called Georgia’s Not Buying It.”
00:58:00
Sam Olens: “If you go to the website, itsnotbuyingit.org. This program is now being used in Arizona, Indiana, the new AG for the District of Columbia has just signed on to be a part of it, along with other state AG’s. The whole idea is to introduce the law in your area, to introduce the education, the training modules, to have billboards, to literally have a full process where we go through the advertising council to educate anyone and everyone we can through this program.”
00:58:31
Sam Olens: “So the last several Super Bowls have used our program. There’s a mindset, as has been referenced earlier, there’s a relationship between teen dating violence, campus rape, domestic violence and sex trafficking, because in all them you’re objectifying the woman and not viewing the woman as a gift from God. We have to get to a point that we get into a room with men, we get into a room with our sons, and we say when you’re watching sports on TV and the ad selling food shows more of the lady’s body than less, they’re not selling the food.”
00:59:12
Sam Olens: “The food might not even taste so good, and we need to have that conversation with our sons and with our colleagues. Whether it’s in men’s clubs in churches or anywhere else, we need to say, ‘This isn’t appropriate. If you buy the kid, you need to serve years in jail.’”
00:59:30
Sam Olens: “The idea where the cop tells the buyer ‘run or it’s a hundred dollar fine’ is no longer acceptable; you now need to serve time in jail. Camela does her part training people all over the state, working with other prosecutors to bring these cases, it’s an everyday incident. This year’s legislation does two things: one it allows law enforcement officers to charge individuals who attempt to buy undercover officers posing as a child.”
1:00:04
Sam Olens: “Let’s face it, you’re calling they’re saying they’re twelve, we want the offense to be as if that individual is twelve. Another thing we’re doing that is sort of different is we’re including the enhanced penalties with folks with developmental disabilities. We have seen traffickers use adults with developmental disabilities for trafficking. The person may be thirty, but they’ve got an IQ of an eight year old, and you need to have the enhanced penalty for that fact pattern.“
1:00:33
Sam Olens: “We’re also working to make the second conviction of pandering of an adult a felony. Now it’s already a felony, pandering with a child, but if it’s an adult, the second offense would now be a felony. One of the other things that we need to be working on throughout this country, is you can have laws that say ten to twenty, twenty to thirty, whatever you want, but you cannot permit the sentence to be one hundred percent probated.”
1:01:00
Sam Olens: “When you’re dealing once again with the buyers, when you’re dealing with a minor, there has to be minimum jail sentence. That’s really the only way you get at the demand, you’ve got to provide the deterrents. It’s got to be your neighbor who is spending time in jail that scares all of the other neighbors to not do it. The only way you solve this problem is to provide that deterrent effect. So I think it’s safe to say that among the country with the AG’s, we’re making great strides, we’re working hard in our states, but as you all know, we still have a long way to go to end human trafficking.”
1:01:42
Sam Olens: “But when you have days that the training leads to immediate arrests and you immediately save some of these minors, and you treat them as a victim rather than a prostitute, that is a great day that makes it all worthwhile. Thank you.”
1:01:50
Rep. Randy Hultgren: “Thank you General Olens. Next, so glad to have Kubiiki Pride, mother of a survivor with us. Kubiiki Pride is an advocate against the exploitation of women and girls who has leveraged her own experience as a mother whose child was victimized by child sex slavery to educate policy makers and service providers on the issue of domestic minor sex trafficking. Although she has found no easy route to free her family from the chains that connect her to this horrendous crime, she has found solace in the fact that today the fight to save children from a similar fate is no longer in the shadows.”
1:02:30:
Rep. Randy Hultgren: “She works with organizations like Shared Hope International to bring the fight to those who most often walk away with no repercussions: the buyers and facilitators, in an effort to find justice for the survivors. Kubiiki, thank you for being here.”
1:02:42
Kubiiki Pride: “Thank you, I want to first thank the Commission and Shared Hope and you, sir. I was just sitting here listening to all of the panelists, especially Ms. Frundt, and just recognizing that at nine years old, she didn’t know, but at thirty some odd years old, I knew nothing about child trafficking.”
1:03:12
Kubiiki Pride: “I was not informed, I have lived in America all my life and I was completely clueless that children were being sold, not only in my neighborhood, but all around in all of the cities and events that I’m going to. I’m now noticing that you have to cover so many different ends, so it leads me to believe that I’m not the only one.”
1:03:44
Kubiiki Pride: “Only because my child was victimized did I even understand what child trafficking was. I had used Backpage.com on several different occasions for my children to sell games and toys, just different used goods to replace. To find my child there for sale, was probably one of the most mind-breaking experiences I’ve ever had.”
1:04:22
Kubiiki Pride: “I will say to you all, that the support, the knowledge, the education, all of those things are so needed, but if someone would have, in all of the parenting classes that I had attended, just told me that these things were going on, and right next door. I walked into a convenience store and I saw six pictures of missing children, I now live in Georgia, but I walked into a convenient store and saw six pictures of missing children, I often go into Wal-Mart and see pictures of these missing children.”
1:05:05
Kubiiki Pride: “It leads me back to Backpage, it leads me back to where it is that I’m readily hearing that children are being sold for sex. I will say this, if no one handles the demand, it will continue going on, and it will continue to be a hidden thing.”
1:05:30
Kubiiki Pride: “People will be sitting right beside you and you won’t know this is going on, unless you make tougher penalties for people that are doing this crime, then it will continue, and there will be more faces like mine and more parents in the same pain, and I don’t want to see that ever.”
1:06:00
Rep. Randy Hultgren: “Thank you, Thank you all. This is amazing, hard to listen to, sobering, heartbreaking, but so important. I do think there are things we can do so that’s the hope we have to take out of this. So we’ve got about a little over twenty minutes still remaining, so I do want to open it up to questions the audience might have for any of our panelists. I’m going to start out the questioning if I could.”
