Legislative Action Center Archives - Shared Hope International

May 13, 2019 by Susanna Bean

What 6,890 advocates can do

We are celebrating! Legislative sessions are wrapping up in states around the country and we have great news. Many of the bills you advocated for have passed:

Utah HB 20 comprehensively strengthens the state’s response to child sex trafficking.
Utah HB 108 strengthens the state’s existing non-criminalization laws to ensure that youth engaged in commercial sex cannot be arrested for prostitution but, instead are provided a protective, non-punitive response.
New Mexico HB 56 ensures minors engaged in commercial sex are treated as victims of sex trafficking, not offenders of prostitution.
Mississippi HB 571 comprehensively strengthens Mississippi’s existing child sex trafficking laws to ensure that all minors under 18 are immune from prosecution for prostitution charges, that child welfare is required to respond to and provide holistic care to child sex trafficking victims, and law enforcement, child protective services, 911 operators, and foster care parents to receive training on child sex trafficking.
Washington SB 5885 will create critical courtroom protections for child survivors by by permitting the child’s out-of-court statements as evidence in prosecutions of their perpetrators.
Georgia SB 158 prohibits minors from being criminalized for prostitution offenses and directs commercially sexually exploited youth to specialized services.
Montana HB 549 strengthens existing protections for youth survivors of sex trafficking by creating access to specialized services for survivors, including protective shelter, food, clothing, medical care, counseling, and crisis intervention services.

Since November, 6,890 of you have taken action by signing a petition or contacting your legislators. Collectively you made 5,927 connections with state and federal legislators around the country; our states with the most advocates were Washington, Texas, California, Florida, and Tennessee!

We are so encouraged by your engagement in helping us to advocate for these laws!

But not all state sessions are over, and there’s still work to be done! Visit our Advocacy Action Center to see how you can be involved. Together we are making a difference, helping to ensure that when a victim of child sex trafficking is identified our systems respond with compassion and justice.

Want to support our advocacy work?

Right now, your giving impact would be doubled with our $100,000 Matching Challenge for the Shared Hope institute for Justice and Advocacy. Our new location, just two blocks from the White House, will enable us to work closely with U.S. government agencies on the front lines. From the Institute:

We will dramatically expand our work,
We will increase our influence in the halls of power, and
Fight more effectively than ever against the scourge of child sex trafficking.

Your critical support will help Shared Hope take a huge step for our justice and advocacy work and our fight against child sex trafficking.

DONATE

November 20, 2018 by Susanna Bean

How to Tweet Your Legislator

On November 16 we released the 2018 Protected Innocence Challenge State Grades. This year, with our new tools, you can be a grassroots hero by sharing your state grade with your legislator! Click the Take Action button to visit our new Advocacy Action Center to tweet your legislator.

If you don’t have a Twitter account, you also have the opportunity to share the campaign on Facebook to encourage your friends with twitter to tweet their legislator.

We’ve made a quick clip to show you how quick and easy it is to take action!

Here are the steps:

Visit the Advocacy Action Center and select your state’s grade.
Fill in your name, address and information.
Send out the pre-written tweet that will automatically go out to your state legislators. (Note: you will have to authorize our system to post to your twitter the very first time you do this).

Thank you to all of you who have already taken action! It’s makes a difference when legislators hear directly from those who elected them. Thank you for being activists and using your voice!

November 14, 2018 by Sarah Bendtsen

Nonprofit Partnership in South Dakota Leads to Groundbreaking Law

In 2017, South Dakota passed a groundbreaking law to ensure survivors of sex trafficking, ages 16 and under, are protected from criminalization. This effort began two years ago when Becky Rassmussen, Executive Director of Call to Freedom, an awareness-raising and survivor-serving organization, recognized the important perspective she could bring to the legislative process. Seeking to address South Dakota’s D grade, Becky reached out to Shared Hope for technical assistance, and together with local partners, three critical pieces of legislation were passed strengthening the state’s response to child sex trafficking.

Read our interview of Becky Rassmussen, one of our grassroots heroes! You can become a grassroots hero by taking action to tweet your state’s grade to your elected official. Take action here!

Can you provide a brief background on your role as an anti-sex trafficking advocate?

As Executive Director of Call to Freedom of South Dakota, I have had the privilege of working with some of the most amazing people that are dedicated to helping survivors of Human Sex Trafficking. We strive to cultivate relationships and link arms with others who are dedicated to helping create a cohesive community model of care and support for victims, bringing communities together while educating and legislating to stop human trafficking.

…and what sparked the genesis of Call to Freedom?

Call to Freedom was birthed out of love and deep concern to affect real change starting here at home. Like many of us, I have encountered countless individuals who needed a lot of support if they were going to be successful in transitioning out of this nightmare.

Navigating a healthy path for victims of human trafficking is not just a clever motto on our website, but has become our creed. We take it to heart every single day, knowing this atrocity is very real and happening in our own backyard. We take comfort and remain motivated in knowing we really can do something about it, if we all work together.

As an advocate, I am inspired everyday by working directly with those who have been victimized and with all the individuals who authentically love and serve those in need. I become an advocate because of the inspiring unsung heroes who showed me the overwhelming need to help and empower survivors so they could know and believe they have a voice, a choice and that they really do matter.

What drove you to seek change in this area?

For me, it really hit home at the annual Sturgis Motorcycle Rally in SD, with over a half a million people in attendance over a period of 10 days. I was shocked how many gaps in services there were within the United States for those who were coming out of human trafficking. 3,287 individuals are pulled into human trafficking on a daily basis and there were less than 300 beds designated for women trapped in human trafficking and only a handful for boys at the time. Trafficking victims were falling through the cracks and they weren’t getting the help and support they needed to be successful in transitioning out.

What approach have you taken? On a grassroots level, how have you mobilized fellow stakeholders to develop an agenda that seeks improvements in both policy and practice?

We first focused our efforts on the local level, working with law enforcement, creating open dialogue and building relationship so we could all ask the right and difficult questions. We had to find healthier ways to work together that would accomplish each of our individual missions and at the same time help avoid re-victimizing those in transition in the process.

What does grassroots collaboration look like for you?

Unfortunately, we soon discovered there were lots of different legislation gaps – in services, responses, screening questions, etc. that had not yet been implemented in the State of South Dakota.

Our response was to begin holding weekly luncheons and talk to people about what we were experiencing, first hand, here in South Dakota. We began to ask for input, feedback and ideas, empowering them to stand in the gap with us and become part of the solution.

Over time we earned the trust of most of our community leaders both locally and across the state. We were consistent in education and opportunities that helped build up the community and empowered everyone who wanted to know how to become proactive.

It wasn’t long before more and more community leaders and legislators began responding to the call. Soon individuals like State Representative Tom Holmes and Senator Jack Kolbeck were willing to carry three important pieces of legislation that unanimously went through the House and Senate, and have since been successfully integrated into South Dakota law and are now making a real difference.

Since then, many have stepped up to fill in the void. Legislators have supported our efforts. Law Enforcement, US Attorney’s office, and all those who are involved in prosecuting and supporting victims, have tirelessly worked together for the greater good. It’s amazing what we can accomplish when we don’t care who gets the credit.

We all continue to work together to create and refine laws that protect survivors and will ultimately send a clear message to the traffickers and Johns… “Stay out of South Dakota or suffer the consequences.”

How have the Shared Hope Protected Innocence Challenge tools (report cards and related materials) influenced or empowered your efforts?

Shared Hope is a valuable asset to what we are doing here in South Dakota. We are extremely grateful for their ability to create awareness and help us in our research of what other States have done successfully and how we can make our legislation more effective. They have been an invaluable partner, helping us to get the most out of our collaboration with our States’ Attorney and Attorney General’s office and helping us find the right words for our legislation in South Dakota.

What, in your mind, are the most notable legal and practical achievements that are a result of your advocacy and collaborative efforts?

We are now in the process of developing and strengthening a task force, which brings everyone to the table for the first time with a single focus; to work together and end human trafficking in South Dakota.

The support now from law enforcement on a state and federal level and many other service providers is so encouraging. I am overwhelmed with gratitude and filled with hope to see how many communities have responded. Everyone is eager to learn all they can about human trafficking so we can best incorporate protocols, procedures and responses within our own communities.

We have successfully worked together to change and strengthen legislation in South Dakota, create public awareness, effectively support and protect survivors, change the public view about victims and their unimaginable plight and successfully help survivors find the support they need to start over.

We continue to learn everyday how we can best work together in this process, promoting collaboration and unity so we might become a braided cord and effective advocates. If we stand together, each of us doing what we can, we will accomplish our mission and erase human trafficking… one community at a time.

October 19, 2017 by Guest

The Smoke Screen That’s Obscuring the Voices of Survivors – Why We Must Amend the CDA

By: Alisa Bernard, Survivor Advocacy Coordinator, The Organization for Prostitution Survivors

I am of the technology generation. I was born the same year the cell phone was invented and Macintosh Apple made its debut. I never knew a time when a computer was not an accessible tool. We live in a time where computers the size of a credit cards can stream a giraffe giving birth across the country and can teach us how to do anything from play the violin to fix a leaky drain. The possibilities are limitless. But what happens when those possibilities are twisted into something darker? What happens when we use our innovations to trade in the flesh of young girls?

[easy-tweet tweet=”What happens when we use our innovations to trade in the flesh of young girls? – Alisa Bernard” user=”SharedHope”]

The online sex trade is not new. When I was prostituted over a decade ago, I was sold online. Online prostitution is not glamorous and it is not safer than street prostitution. The violence endemic to prostitution is not somehow mitigated by the internet. One study stated that violence is perpetrated predominantly by buyers regardless of venue of solicitation. The internet has normalized the buying of sex down to a negligible transaction. Women and girls are being reduced to mail order masturbation aids.

[easy-tweet tweet=”Online prostitution is not glamorous and it is not safer than street prostitution. – Alisa Bernard” user=”SharedHope”]

[easy-tweet tweet=”The violence endemic to prostitution is not somehow mitigated by the internet. – Alisa Bernard” user=”SharedHope”]

The Senate’s proposed reforms to section 230 of the Communications Decency Act would allow for the prosecution of criminal activity on the part of internet service providers for facilitating the online sex trade. Essentially, businesses like Backpage.com could be held accountable for their contributions to the online sex trade. This is an essential step forward in the fight against trafficking in the US. Opposition activists express concern that the sex trade marketplace would make trafficking somehow more hidden or move underground if the online market is eliminated through this act. In reality, a result of the now internet facilitated sex trade is the intentional disappearing of both victims and traffickers. Backpage.com’s business model assists traffickers in obfuscating information in their ads, keeping them hidden behind bitcoins. Photos of children for sale across Backpage.com and similar sites have had their meta-data scrubbed away. Identification of victims and perpetrators has become practically impossible. How much more hidden could the market be?

According to the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children most cases of trafficking occur online and the majority of those are happening through Backpage.com. At first, I thought Backpage.com was simply ignoring the experiences of women and girls like me by populating their site with these ads. Backpage.com isn’t ignorant that we are being bought and sold on their website, they want us to be bought and sold on their website. Every ad costs a price and with hundreds of ads posted daily they won’t say no to such a profit margin. Never mind if most of the product is young girls and women so long as the profits keep rolling in. And why not if they can hide behind a bastardization of free speech laws.

The thousands of women and girls whose faces have glared across a Backpage.com moderator/editor’s screens are not products. Editing an ad for a child doesn’t change the facts. She’s 14 with a pimp, or 23 and her pimp’s name is poverty, editing doesn’t make that 14-year-old 18, and it doesn’t change the 23-year-old’s circumstances. It does, however, add another few dollars into the Backpage.com bank account. So yeah, I care that there are more stringent requirements to post a car for sale than there are to post a young girls body.

Do the rapes of innocent women and girls mean so little? Have we accidently put the freedom to facilitate the rape of girls above girl’s freedom to be safe from rape? Reform is needed. The changes proposed to the CDA do not allow for the mass hysteria the tech industry would have you believe. The changes in the language do not allow for overzealous trial attorneys to go suing innocent internet service providers. If they are doing nothing wrong, they have nothing to fear. If they are using the CDA as a cover to hide their own perpetuation of the sex trade then, yes… they should have much to fear.

[easy-tweet tweet=”If (tech companies) are doing nothing wrong, they have nothing to fear (from amending the CDA). ” user=”SharedHope”]

I am firmly for the protection of the First Amendment and believe that it is one of the most integral core tenets of any free society. However, using the CDA as a smoke screen to conceal trafficking is just as much an attack on free speech as stripping the First Amendment bare. The modern era is rife with technological advancement, and we must update our laws to reflect this ever changing landscape.

I stand in solidarity with those who work to reform section 230 of the CDA, and I beg you, from someone who has seen what the online sex trade really looks like, to mobilize around this issue. Get your voice out, get your opinion out, because our voices cannot be the only ones to stand up.

[easy-tweet tweet=”Get your voice out, get your opinion out, because our voices cannot be the only ones to stand up.”]

September 16, 2017 by Guest

Law Professors Weigh in on Amending the CDA – Part 3

Q: How did we get here? Could the Communications Decency Act have been drafted differently to avoid this problem?

It is very important to understand the history of the CDA and that puts in context the SESTA proposal as a mere clarification of what the CDA was meant to do in 1996 when drafted, and how it should be clarified in light of technologies and crimes that have emerged since 1996. At the time of the CDA the internet was barely beginning, the crime of human trafficking was not recognized in the law, and the extreme growth of sexual exploitation of children online had yet to be realized.

The CDA was enacted in 1996 when the Internet was in its infancy. It was drafted in response to at least one case, Oakmont v. Prodigy.[1] In that case, Prodigy used its software to filter profanity on its platforms, including a bulletin board. However, a security firm sued Prodigy when users put negative comments on Prodigy’s bulletin board about that firm. In a twist of fate, Prodigy lost the lawsuit in part because it had taken efforts to screen out material, but had been incomplete in doing so.

This case influenced Congress to act, as this decision seemed to punish a Good Samaritan who was trying to self-regulate. That is why the legislation is called the Communications Decency Act. Its purpose was to protect people from sexually explicit material online and encourage companies to “take steps to screen indecent and offensive material for their customers.”[2] It was not encouraging companies to engage in criminal activity, but quite the opposite. Therefore, the purpose of the CDA was to encourage a robust Internet while protecting service providers for their actions to restrict access to explicit content. It did so by declaring that service providers should not be treated like publishers for content on their platforms provided by third parties. §230(c)(1). It also provided broad protection for Good Samaritans who restrict access to sexually explicit material. §230(c)(2).

However, since 1996 this law has been interpreted far more broadly than intended or than the words of the statute suggest. Courts have tried to navigate the meaning of the CDA today. But the world today is very different from 1996. First, the Internet is no longer in its infancy. It has grown and is robust and thriving. However, crime and exploitation are also thriving on the Internet in ways unforeseen in 1996. Secondly, the drafters of the CDA could not have anticipated the role of the Internet in human trafficking which was not even recognized as a crime until 2000. Some courts, at the urging of Backpage.com and other tech companies and their representatives, have advocated that the CDA provide blanket immunity for their actions because they are internet companies. They argue that the CDA affords service providers immunity because Congress wanted a robust Internet. Some courts have read the law to offer such a broad protection effectively isolating service providers from liability simply because they are service providers. This is notwithstanding the fact that were these same actions committed by brick and mortar businesses, no immunity would be considered at all. This has prevented states from pursuing criminal charges or victims from suing service providers civilly.

Moreover, the law now recognizes a new series of crimes: human trafficking. The Trafficking Victims Protection Act was not passed until 2000. As a result, there is no guidance in the CDA on how to manage the CDA with the TVPA. So courts have tried to reconcile the immunity provision for Good Samaritans of the CDA with the intent of Congress to hold traffickers and those who enter into a joint enterprise with human traffickers liable in the TVPA. Some courts have struggled with this issue and resolved the conflict in favor of immunity for online entities. Many of these courts have expressed concern that they could not allow trafficking victims’ claims to proceed and asked Congress for clarification.[3] For example, a California Court explicitly stated, “until Congress sees fit to amend the immunity law, the borad reach of section 230 of the Communications Decency Act even applies to those alleged to support the exploitation of others by human trafficking.”[4]

Therefore, it makes perfect sense for Congress to clarify this tension. The Senate bill does so in some very simple ways within the four page bill. First, it adds a line to the “Findings” section of the CDA making the non-controversial clarification that “§230 was never intended to provide legal protection to websites that facilitate traffickers in advertising the sale of unlawful sex acts with sex trafficking victims.” Second, it adds to the “Policy” section of the CDA the similarly non-controversial statement that one of the policies of the United States is “to ensure vigorous enforcement of criminal and civil law relating to sex trafficking.” Again, this is not a controversial statement. Third, it leaves the Good Samaritan protections in place. Finally, it includes state sex trafficking and the enforcement of state sex trafficking laws as laws unaffected by the CDA, as well as clarifies what it means to participate in a human trafficking venture. These steps are narrow but critical to clarifying confusion experienced by courts trying to reconcile the express intent of Congress in the outdated CDA and current TVPA.

Read Part 1 and Part 2 here.

By Mary G. Leary, Professor of Law, Catholic University of America, Shea Rhodes, Director of Villanova Law School’s Institute to Address Commercial Exploitation, Chad Flanders, Professor of Criminal Law and Constitutional Law Scholar, St. Louis University, and Audrey Rogers, Professor of Criminal Law and the Internet, Pace University.

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[1] 1995 WL 323710 (NY Sup. Ct. 1995).

[2] 141 Cong. Rec. H8470

[3] E.g., Jane Doe No. 1 v. Backpage.com, LLC, 817 F.3d 12, 29 (1^st Cir. 2016); California v. Carl Ferrer, Michael Lacey, and James Larkin, No. 16FEO24013, Ca. Super. Ct. (August 23, 2017).

[4] Ferrer, No. 16FEO24013 at 18.