New data program to help counter human trafficking
Naples Daily News Guest Commentary
January 19, 2018
My habitual monitoring of human-trafficking news revealed a story every week or so just a few years ago. Now every day my inbox is loaded with at least three news stories about human-trafficking victims and the vile criminals who prey upon them.
Recently, I learned a Naples girl was sold for sex on the internet by a human trafficker. Don’t be shocked – it’s true! Websites like Backpage.com have a loophole that makes it legal for their advertisers to post ads selling underage girls for sex on the internet.
That’s why I’m shaking my head that Congress, after months of investigation, deliberation, committee hearings and outrage, has failed to amend Section 230 of the 1996 Communications Decency Act.
A simple and widely supported amendment to Section 230 will close the loophole that creates a Wild West playing field for human traffickers to make billions off internet transactions that exploit our most vulnerable citizens – especially children.
We must keep up our grass-roots efforts to encourage Congress to pass the Stop Enabling Sex Traffickers Act of 2017 (SESTA), Senate Bill 1693, which was introduced in the Senate in August and is co-sponsored by Florida Sens. Marco Rubio and Bill Nelson.
To turn your outrage into action, let your congressional representatives know that you support SESTA.
This type of internet-based human trafficking must stop. We know from the Polaris Project, one of the largest anti-trafficking organizations in the U.S., that “people in the modern anti-trafficking field have struggled to identify and disrupt human-trafficking networks in the United States. This movement to stop modern slavery has confronted many challenges, and one of the most significant has been the absence of data that shows how human trafficking operates.”
We learned several years ago that the lack of accurate data and privacy issues represented major obstacles for law enforcement, victim services and legal professionals in quantifying the problem and securing adequate resources to combat human trafficking. At the request of the U.S. attorney serving this region at the time, the Southwest Florida Women’s Foundation responded to the challenge and began exploring options for obtaining and developing accurate, useful data.
After several trials and errors, our foundation developed an innovative human-trafficking data program in cooperation with the Southwest Florida Human Task Force under the leadership of our 20th Judicial Circuit State Attorney’s Office.
The database includes information about gender, age range, type of trafficking and risk factors. This information will be centralized, analyzed and reported out by the State Attorney’s Office. The resulting data will not only deepen our understanding of human trafficking but will reflect trends over time and validate the specific resources needed to bolster the professional efforts of local and statewide agencies.
We will continue to raise public awareness and advocate for policies to help our law enforcement, prosecution and victim support agencies obtain the tools and resources they need to remain fully equipped to investigate, prosecute and punish human-trafficking crimes, as well as to support human-trafficking survivors once they are safe.
Additionally, the Southwest Florida Women’s Foundation will be hosting two events in February. One is geared toward training legal and human-trafficking victim support professionals. The other is a community outreach effort to educate local leaders about the scourge of human trafficking. For further information about these events, contact Charlotte Newell at charlotte@fundwomenfl.org or go to the foundation’s website, www.fundwomenfl.org/cc-events.
Armed with accurate data and sustained with ample resources, dedicated professionals of the Southwest Florida Human Trafficking Task Force will be better equipped to dismantle those criminal networks which ensnare farmworkers in labor trafficking and trap innocent children in sex trafficking. Now is the time to turn our outrage into action!
