News from Shared Hope International

December 23, 2010 by Guest

S. 2925 Falls Through in the Final Hour

Last night, the Senate adjourned without passing S.2925, the Domestic Minor Sex Trafficking Deterrence and Victims Support Act of 2010. After passing in the Senate and the House with bipartisan support, the Senate failed to act on behalf of children exploited through prostitution and suffering–without the shelter, services and access to justice this bill promised.

It is terribly unfortunate we could not get the much-needed funding and resources for our children; however we have been heard on Capitol Hill. Advocacy throughout 2010 led to three Congressional briefings and two committee hearings on the issue of domestic minor sex trafficking. Congressional offices were flooded with emails and calls, including Change.org petitions that gathered more than 3,000 signatures, in support of this bill. This issue was noticed!

We extend our sincerest thanks to all the champions in Congress and the advocates around the country! We will continue to fight for the rights of the young victims of sex trafficking in our nation, and we ask you to continue to join us in 2011 and beyond.

September 20, 2010 by Guest

Congress Opens Its Eyes to the Reality of DMST

On September 15, 2010, the culmination of many voices and a powerful idea finally found its way into the halls of the illustrious Rayburn Building. With a knock of the gavel, Chairman Bobby Scott (D-VA) began his introduction, “Subcommittee will now come to order, and I am pleased to welcome you [to]…today’s hearing before the Subcommittee on Crime, Terrorism, and Homeland Security. The committee is hearing Domestic Minor Sex Trafficking and specifically, H.R. 5575-Domestic Minor Sex Trafficking Deterrence and Victims Support Act of 2010.”

This bill, sister to the Senate bill (S. 2925), was introduced by Representatives Carolyn Maloney (D-NY) and Christopher Smith (R-NJ) in June and has collected 24 co-sponsors. Despite the pending Congressional votes that day and the haste of a short session, the room was filled to capacity with listeners awaiting the testimonies of the two distinguished witness panels. Spectators even filtered into an overflow room to view the hearing via satellite; while, the most notable media in attendance included: CNN, Fox News, C-SPAN (Full Video Coverage) Washington Post, Christian Broadcast News, Al Jezeera, and Change.org

Though not every member of the Subcommittee was able to attend, Chairman Scott was joined by Ranking Member Gohmert (R-TX), Rep. Lungren (R-CA), Rep. Jackson-Lee (D-TX), and Rep. Poe (R-TX) for the hearing.

The first panel was comprised of five members, including our very own founder and President, former Congresswoman Linda Smith:

Representative Carolyn B. Maloney (R-NY)
Representative Jackie Speier (D-CA)
Representative Ted Poe (R-TX)
Representative Christopher Smith (R-NJ)

The second witness panel included law enforcement, NGO representatives, a survivor, and an employee of Craigslist/ their attorney:

Ms. Francey Hakes, National Coordinator for Child, Exploitation Prevention and Interdiction, US Dept. of Justice
Mr. Nicholas Sensley, Chief of Police, Truckee Police Dept., Truckee CA
Mr. Ernie Allen, President & CEO, National Center for Missing and Exploited Children
Ms. Tina Frundt, Partner to SHI and Survivor and Executive Director/Founder, Courtney’s House
Ms. Suzanna Tiapula, Director of National Center for Prosecution of Child Abuse of the National District Attorneys Association
Ms. Deborah Richardson, Chief Program Officer of Women’s Funding Network
Mr. William “Clint” Powell, Director of Customer Service/Law Enforcement Relations, Craigslist, Inc.
Ms. Elizabeth “Liz” McDougall, Partner at Perkins Coie, LLP, Craigslist, Inc. Representation

It is not often that so many organizations come together to give testimony for a single bill, and in light of the recent Craigslist allegations related to fostering minor sex trafficking via the Adult Services section on the company’s Web site, urgency for passage of the bill was unmistakable. H.R. 5575 authorizes the US Department of Justice’s Office of Justice Programs to allocate six, one-year block grants of $2.5 million to create a victim-centered approach in addressing the sex-trafficking of minors. This includes placing a heavier focus on the necessity for proper shelters and services for victims, providing funding to improve resources for law enforcement agencies, such as the National Crime Information Center (NCIC) system of tracking data of missing and exploited children, and creating treatment programs in lieu of incarceration for those charged with solicitation of prostituted children. The bill also addresses deterrence tactics to prevent men from buying young girls for sex, including $2500 fees, vehicle impoundment, etc.

Panel One:

After brief introductory statements and comments from the members of the Subcommittee, the first round of testimony began with Rep. Carolyn Maloney poignantly describing the institution of sex trafficking as the recycling of human beings. The position and mindset of the Congressional panel was emulated by Rep. Ted Poe who recalled being told to “get a rope,” when he was serving as judge in Texas, to address perpetrators of sex exploitation.

Congressman Christopher Smith echoed the need for reformation by declaring this issue a huge and escalating crisis. He commended Rep. Speier for asserting that we need to do what the bill has outlined and expand on it ten-fold.

Former Congresswoman Linda Smith brought the first panel testimonies to a close by screening a short victim testimony video and giving a voice to the voiceless; she called her“Lacy”. Linda Smith discussed the issue of DEMAND for younger and younger victims as the driving force of this market. She implored the committee to understand that those who buy sex from innocent children should receive the full penalty under the law.

Panel Two & Questioning:

The main focus of the second panel was a reiteration of the need for resources, a reverberating sound of how prolific the use of the Internet to exploit children has grown (and not just on Craigslist) and the need for law enforcement to use this same technology to combat it. Rep. Poe said he wanted to the see the pictures of every buyer posted online and done more fervently than the traffickers post pictures of their girls.
The DOJ’s Innocence Lost Initiative was noted for making strides, but they need to capitalize on their progress. The 10 traffickers that have presently been indicted needs to become 1000; the approximate 1200 children rescued needs to look more like 10,000; and the 50 beds available for these rescued victims needs to become 50,000.

There is a social change that is needed, according to Mr. Ernie Allen. This was done to campaign against tobacco and for the use of seat belts, and now we need society to see the realities of the heinous crimes happening to our children in America. As Tina Frundt so powerfully stated, “We need this [change] yesterday!”

Once questioning concluded, Chairman Scott adjourned the hearing with the closing remarks, “This was a very powerful hearing. We can do a lot more if we focus our minds to it.” Focus our minds we must, and continue to take the needed steps e.g. Craigslist shutting down their adult services section, but more importantly, the American people need to re-sensitize their psyche and raise their voices to fight against Domestic Minor Sex Trafficking.

April 14, 2010 by Guest

Finding the face behind the numbers

The issue of human trafficking, and sex trafficking in particular, can be overwhelming. 27 million people enslaved worldwide. Over 300,000 young girls at risk of being trafficked into the commercial sex industry in the United States alone. These numbers set our heads spinning and make us wonder: how we can sustain our compassion for those who are suffering when we are likely overwhelmed by the sheer magnitude of this issue?

“If I look at the mass I will never act. If I look at the one, I will.” -Mother Teresa

Mother Theresa’s quote illustrates the difficulty faced by many NGO’s – donations dry up and political will disappears once an issue becomes too large to emotionally process. The charitable nature of human beings or their outrage against injustice is limited by a process called “psychic numbing” posited by Oregon professor Paul Slovic. In simple terms, psychic numbing explains the phenomenon that human beings are more likely to act to stop the suffering of one human being than tackling ever-increasing numbers of human suffering.

NGO’s that seek to end human trafficking worldwide must base their strategy on the studies of Dr. Slovic or will have their cries fall on deaf ears. Our brains can grasp the pain of our fellow man, but do not go through a process of multiplying this suffering amongst our fellow brethren. As Slovic says, “Numerical representations of human lives do not necessarily convey the importance of those lives. All too often the numbers represent dry statistics, “human beings with the tears dried off,” that lack feeling and fail to motivate action.”

The effects of psychic numbing are seen in the media coverage of the conflict in the Democratic Republic of the Congo. In the HBO documentary “Reporter”, New York Times columnist Nicholas Kristof was followed on his journey to the DRC to document the atrocities. Mr. Kristof has spent most of his career seeking out underreported large-scale human suffering in order to bring the stories back to mainland. The DRC has lost nearly six million people over twelve years during the Second Congo War, the largest death toll in any war since WWII.

Unfortunately, the magnitude of lives lost in the Congo has not been given justice through the media because raw numbers do not carry weight with audiences, as millions dead without personal stories mean little to our sympathetic eyes. Overall, mainstream media coverage of this conflict has been feeble at best, while natural disasters such as the earthquake in Haiti occupy a large portion of media consciousness due to the ability to ‘put a face’ to the tragedy. Audiences have been responding to courageous individual stories of survival in Haiti with their dollars and hands while six million remains just a number.

Dr. Slovic’s theory should come as no surprise to a population overwhelmed by twenty-four hour news channels that often focus on two or three individual stories per cycle, i.e. the disappearance of Laci Peterson, the murder of Jon Benet Ramsey, or the recent death of Shaniya Davis. These stories garnered national attention because of our ability to relate to the one- an easily identifiable victim. News reporters everywhere have learned the value of the “human interest” story and flood the airwaves with personal details designed to capture our attention. This practice is not limited to news desks, either. A number of people have recently been exposed to the issue of sex trafficking from the Hollywood film, Taken.

Even if Taken is not the typical trafficking situation, there is something about a story and an individual victim that we ‘get to know’ that draws us in and helps us relate to them. If stories of trafficking are not personalized to our country or neighborhood, we often turn a blind eye. This is ‘psychic numbing’ in practice. How do we make human trafficking REAL?

We in the anti-trafficking community need to tell twenty-seven million individual stories to the localities in which we serve in order to make the reality of trafficking resonate within our communities. Scale is useful when lobbying politicians, but is overwhelming when engaging citizens in the fight. Unfortunately, it is not hard to find a local story of a trafficking victim that looks, sounds, and acts like someone’s teenage daughter. To make human trafficking real to the masses, it takes one story for each community in America.

“What does a child sex trafficking victim look like?” Like you used to look when you were a child…