A 30-year-old woman arrested on charges of prostitution walks into a courtroom in New York City. Forty-seven times before, she has walked into courtrooms just like this one to face the blank stares of lawyers, judges and other law enforcement officials who see her as a lost cause instead of as a young woman who was forced to sell herself for 17 years.
This time is different. This time, she has a public defender at her side who is part of the only programme of its kind in the country. Her public defender, Kate Mogulescu with the New York Legal Aid Society’s Trafficking Victims Legal Defence and Advocacy Project, has the training and expertise to understand that while this young woman has been arrested repeatedly for prostitution, she has been a victim of human trafficking since she was 13 years old.
“What we have is a massive system failure,” Mogulescu said. “All these trafficking victims hear is, ‘You are bad. You are a criminal. You belong in jail.’ For many of them, it just reinforces what they are hearing from their exploiters and society at large.”
Human trafficking, also known as modern-day slavery, has fast become one of the largest organised criminal enterprises in the world. According to the US State Department, nearly 21mn people across the globe, predominantly women and children, are, day in and day out, denied basic rights such as sleep, food, compensation or free interaction with others, while being forced to work or engage in sexual acts under threats of violence, abuse or death. In the US more than 100,000 citizens are estimated to be trafficking victims. Although because data are scarce, many experts say the number is actually much higher.
In many cases, victims may be led to believe that they are indebted to their captors - financially or otherwise - or they may be manipulated psychologically into compliance.
Additionally, because many in law enforcement still lack the skills, awareness or resources to deal with this growing, complex issue, trafficking victims frequently find themselves confronted by a criminal justice system that fails to recognise them for who they really are: victims.
Even as human trafficking is chronicled in cities, small towns and rural areas across the country, a mere 18% of 3,300 local, county and state law enforcement agencies surveyed in a 2008 National Institute of Justice study had some type of human trafficking training; only 9% had a protocol or training on human trafficking.
The American Bar Association has dedicated itself to changing the way that America’s legal system deals with this horrifying crime. We are conducting training sessions across the country for first responders - police officers, lawyers, judges, medical personnel, social service workers and others - to help them use resources wisely and punish traffickers while assisting and protecting victims. In addition, we are working to help more lawyers provide much-needed pro bono representation to trafficking victims.
For the 30-year-old woman described above and many others, Mogulescu is using an innovative law currently on the books in seven states - New York, Hawaii, Illinois, Maryland, Nevada, Vermont and Washington - that allows trafficking victims to wipe their criminal records clean of prostitution charges. - MCT