PIC Archives - Shared Hope International

January 26, 2012 by SHI Staff

Washington State: Taking a lead in combatting the online facilitation of child sex trafficking

Backpage.com has been on the hot seat for months as policy makers, faith leaders, and advocates have intensified their efforts to hold the online advertising site, owned by Village Voice Media, accountable for its documented facilitation of child sex trafficking through online advertisement. Online facilitators have largely avoided liability as serious crackdowns on sex trafficking have hit the nation; however, today Washington state is taking a lead in the effort to combat online facilitation of commercial sexual abuse of children.

Today, Shared Hope International President and Founder Congresswoman Linda Smith will testify before Washington legislators on SB 6251 introduced by Senator Jeanne Kohl-Welles (D-WA), which would create criminal liability for media that allow advertisements of commercial sexual abuse of a minor, including prostitution, pornography and sexual performance. Together with Auburn Seminary’s Reverend John Vaughn, a leader in convening clergy to urge Village Voice Media to close its “adult services” section, Linda will advocate for this law that would deter child sex trafficking. Click here to watch the hearing live today at 1:30pm PST.

The Washington bill is a bold move in bringing accountability to –a growing venue for child sex trafficking. In a recent New York Times article, Nicholas Kristof cites a Brooklyn prosecutor’s claim that a majority of cases include girls aged 12 to 25 marketed through Backpage.com. According to an independent study by Advanced Interactive Media Group, Backpage.com’s “adult services” section is expected to earn Village Voice Media $24.8 million, accounting for over two thirds of the $36 million in revenue projected to be earned by all tracked online classified ads facilitating commercial sex.

Shared Hope International is leading a national campaign inviting mayors across the nation to join our efforts to encourage Village Voice Media to stop illegal forms of commercial sex advertisements on Backpage.com. Additionally, 51 state attorneys general, 53 anti-trafficking experts and organizations, and nearly 500 faith leaders from multiple denominations have publically called on Backpage.com to remove the “adult services” section. Yet the “adult services” section remains active on Backpage.com. Our fight will not end until the online advertisement of children for sex does.

Shared Hope International will continue to support efforts to combat the facilitation, sale, or purchase of a child for sex. We aim to hold states accountable through the Protected Innocence Initiative which grades each state on its level of protection against domestic minor sex trafficking. States must have adequate laws to effectively prosecute offenders, protect children, and accurately identify and track the crime. We offer advocacy resource tools including state Report Cards, an analysis of each state’s laws as it relates to or impacts domestic minor sex trafficking, policy recommendations for each state highlighting gaps in state law and offering solutions , and user-friendly issue briefs on key legal components to provide an understand and examples of the legal provision.

November 17, 2011 by SHI Staff

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.

November 15, 2011 by SHI Staff

Protected Innocence Initiative Part 3: Protective Provisions for Traffickers

There are more slaves today than were seized from Africa in four centuries of the trans-Atlantic slave trade.

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 and 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.

November 5, 2011 by SHI Staff

Protected Innocence Initiative Part 2: Criminal Provisions Addressing Demand

Demand fuels the commercial sex industry. Without buyers seeking paid sex with children, traffickers would not have a market to sell young children for sexual exploitation. To achieve significant deterrence, severe penalties must be in place to adequately punish the crime of purchasing sex with a child. This dynamic is illustrated in the case below.

Operation Precious Cargo took place in 2005 in Pennsylvania. During this operation, the stretch of US Route 11 connecting Interstate 81 to Interstate 76, locally known as the “Miracle Mile” for the high prevalence of commercial sex, was the main target. Along the “Miracle Mile” there are three truck stops, three truck terminals, and sixteen motels that were investigated by law enforcement during a sex trafficking sting. Of the 151 victims of prostitution found at just one truck stop in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, 45 were minors— the youngest was only 12 years old. If this sting happened today, buyers in Pennsylvania could face a third degree felony with a fine of up to $15,000 and imprisonment up to seven years. However, if this sting happened in Oregon, for example, the buyer may face only 30 days after the second conviction.

30 days.

This is the reason for the Protected Innocence Initiative, because children deserve a standard level of protection no matter what state they live in. The Protected Innocence Challenge is designed to reveal these critical gaps in legislation so concerned activists and legislators can work in proactive partnership to strengthen state law to better protect children and prosecute the perpetrators.

October 23, 2011 by SHI Staff

Part 1: Victims or perpetrators: Who goes free in the “Land of the Free”

The words “human trafficking” often conjure images of dark, grungy alleys in countries such as India and Thailand. Though awareness is growing, the 100,000-300,000children that officials estimate are forced into prostitution each year are often not regarded as trafficking victims, though legally defined as such by the federal Trafficking Victims Protection Act (TVPA), because the laws in some states fail to specifically criminalize domestic minor sex trafficking.

That is why Shared Hope International launched the Protected Innocence Initiative. The Protected Innocence Initiative is the first proactive study to effectively combat domestic minor sex trafficking by analyzing and grading six areas of law within every state’s legal framework. The first area of analysis under the Protected Innocence Legislative Framework is criminalization of domestic minor sex trafficking. Under this component, we are analyzing and grading every state’s law on it ability to specifically criminalize domestic minor sex trafficking and define minors used in commercial sexual exploitation or prostitution as human trafficking victims. Click here to learn more about this component.

One young girl, Kelly, spoke out about her sex trafficking experience in Virginia saying, “I carried around guilt that I thought I was a prostitute. I thought that I had made the decision. I didn’t really understand that someone had taken advantage of me and manipulated me.” Kelly was forced into the sex industry by a pimp after she ran away from home. However, despite being trafficked at a young age and finally seeking help, Kelly’s pimp could not be charged with sex trafficking of a minor because the state does not currently have any law directly criminalizing domestic minor sex trafficking.

Stories like Kelly’s have become all too common in today’s society. Through the Protected Innocence Initiative, Shared Hope International seeks to help victims like Kelly by making sure the laws properly criminalize domestic minor sex trafficking.

In order to truly make a difference, American’s must realize that sex trafficking is not some far off phenomenon, but a reality within our own borders. Sex trafficking happens within every state and every city. To combat this, each state must work to strengthen or create legislation to criminalize domestic minor sex trafficking. It is only through these efforts that one day America will escape the horrors of modern day slavery and be able and call itself “The Land of the Free.”