Protected Innocence Initiative Part 6: Shared Hope’s Law Enforcement and Criminal Justice Tools For to Effectuate Investigation and Prosecutions
The sixth and final component of the Protect Innocence Initiative analyzes state law regarding law enforcement and criminal justice tools for investigation and prosecution. This final category includes recommendations for states to adapt training for law enforcement, mandate the reporting of missing children and permit the use of specific technology or techniques in the investigation of domestic minor sex trafficking including wiretapping, single party consent, decoy officers, and the Internet. These tools are vital in the investigation and prosecution of domestic minor sex trafficking.
John Haas is a 59-year-old Air Force retiree and frequent john who allegedly fulfilled a traffickers request to “break in” a girl he said was so young she could be his granddaughter. The child was 15 years old. Haas faced 15 years to life in prison; however, to avoid forcing the child to testify in court, Haas was allowed to plead and received a reduced sentence of two to five years in prison.
Stories like this are far too common because adequate criminal investigation and prosecution techniques may not be permitted under state law. However, some organizations have taken measures to assist in the search for missing children. Child Safety Network, Klaas Kids Foundation, and the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children all emphasize the need for parents to have an identification card for their child in case the child goes missing. These cards can be given to law enforcement and entered into the database to assist in finding the minor.
The final PII component, law enforcement and criminal justice tools for investigation and prosecution, is another crucial component in combating domestic minor sex trafficking in every state. Our desire is to strengthen the fabric of state laws by creating consistent policies that require DMST training for law enforcement, help aid law enforcement in investigations of DMST, and ensure that all missing children are reported including rescued DMST victims.
Part 5: Protective Provisions for Child Victims: Correcting laws to protect, not prosecute, child victims
In the growing tragedy of American children being brutally exploited and sold in the U.S. sex trade, perhaps the greatest tragedy of all is how the justice system responds to child victims. A Russia Today reporter stated, “In the US, prostitution laws do not exempt minors from prosecution…But lawyers say, in the US, the paradox of the system is that the children are prosecuted for crimes for which they cannot legally give consent.” Every day the justice system encounters prostituted children; however, instead of helping these children and correctly labeling them as victims, the victims may be arrested and prosecuted as underage prostitutes before being turned back on the streets to their pimps.
Lucilia came from an abusive home life and at 13 years old she ran away from home and fell prey to sex trafficking. During this time, she had multiple interactions with the police, but she was never labeled as a victim and was instead processed as an adult and set back on the street. When Lucilia admitted she was 13 years old she was locked up in a juvenile jail in the Bronx and transported to Family Court in handcuffs and leg shackles. Lucilia was taken to various detention centers where she suffered severe depression.
This is not a story of rescue, restoration, or ultimately, justice.
Shared Hope International seeks to establish justice for DMST victims through proper identification of victims and vacating any past convictions they sustained as a victim of trafficking. The Protected Innocence Initiative seeks to address these issues by analyzing states on its victim-friendly procedures, expungement laws, and child protective response to domestic minor sex trafficking. The Protected Innocence Initiative also advocates that prostitution laws should apply only to adults, making minors specifically immune from prosecution. It is our hope that by strengthening state provisions for the protection of child victims, children like Lucilia will grow up in a nation that values protection and justice for the innocent.
Part 4: Hotels, Planes, and Taxis, Oh My! The efforts to stop facilitating child sex trafficking
The fourth component of the Protected Innocence Initiative is “Criminal Provisions for Facilitators.” Hotels are perhaps one of the most well recognized facilitators in the sex trafficking industry. At hotels young children are taken by their traffickers and sold to dozens of men a night. Airlines and taxis also act as facilitators in the sex trafficking industry.
Through the Protected Innocence Initiative, Shared Hope is providing recommendations on how to strengthen state laws to adequately penalize and criminalize the facilitation of child sex trafficking. These measures include criminalizing the facilitation of trafficking through the state human trafficking law and making the promotion of child sex tourism illegal.
Recognizing the critical role facilitators play in the exploitation of children, some hotels and airlines have taken it upon themselves to no longer act as facilitators in the child sex trade. Here are some of the positive steps hotels and airlines have taken in order to stop child sex trafficking.
Airlines are often used by traffickers to transport their victims to domestic and international locations. Carol Smolenski, U.S. Director of End Child Prostitution, Child Prostitution, and Trafficking of Children for Sexual Purposes (ECPAT), says that sex tourists fall into two categories “preferential child abusers” or “situational child abusers.” “Preferential abusers” have a preference for having sex with children, while “situational abusers” may not be particularly interested in children, but may try having sex with them to try something new, particularly while abroad. Smolenski believes that the second group may be educated through public awareness campaigns to change their behavior. For instance, in order to discourage child sex trafficking, Air-France runs in-flight videos against child sex tourism. These videos are played on 94 of the airline’s long-distance flights and are viewed by up to 46,000 passengers a day. Ten other airlines have also used the video, though currently no United State’s airlines have agreed to show videos discouraging child sex tourism on their flights.
U.S. airlines have taken a stand to fight child sex trafficking through the “Flight Attendant Initiative” which was designed by Innocence at Risk. The “Flight Attendant Initiative” requires airline personal to be educated on recognizing and reporting human trafficking on flights. Flight attendants also wear wristbands with the National Human Trafficking Hotline (1-888-373-7888) so they can report suspicious activity from the air. So far, one third of American Airlines’ 19,000 flight attendants received the training. It is expected the program will soon expand to other airlines.
A second industry that has taken a stand against child sex trafficking is the hotel industry. ECPAT released a document entitled “The Code” that hotels and travel agencies may sign to show they are working to combat child trafficking. Since it’s inception in 1998, 1,030 companies have signed the ECPAT Code of Conduct to combat child sex trafficking, though only six American companies have signed.
These efforts, combined with stronger state penalties for those individuals and organizations that facilitate the sale of children, will help end child sex trafficking. To find out the level of your state’s legal response to facilitators, join us on December 1 when we release all 51 state Report Cards at the National Association of Attorneys General winter meeting in San Antonio, Texas. We hope you’ll tune in the rest of the week for more information on the initiative.
Protected Innocence Initiative Part 3: Protective Provisions for Traffickers
The United States has been working to combat modern day slavery, human trafficking, by passing the Trafficking Victims Protection Act (TVPA) of 2000 and subsequent reauthorizations. This valuable piece of legislation provides a sturdy legal platform for federal cases, but what does this mean for most the traffickers around the nation? A majority of cases are tried at the state level, and some states do not have laws to adequately prosecute a trafficker. This means in certain states traffickers are evading significant sentences and financial penalties, making the crime seem more profitable than punishable.
This is what Shared Hope is working to change through the Protected Innocence Initiative. The Legislative Framework measures state law against the federal standard to certify that every state has an equal ability to impose significantly high penalties for traffickers. It outlines that the use of the Internet to entice, recruit or sell a minor and creating an
d distributing child pornography should carry high penalties. State’s laws are analyzed and graded to ensure that convicted traffickers must register as sex offenders and parental rights should be terminated for convicted sex traffickers.
State Report Cards will be released publically on December 1. Please tune in to our blog this week to learn more about remaining components of the Protected Innocence Initiative. Check out our event calendar for details of the release.
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