Stepping Stones

Human trafficking is one the fastest-growing criminal industries. It includes the recruiting, transporting, maintaining, providing, confining, abusing, or obtaining of people for self-utilization or profit. It can involve men and women, adults or children, U.S. citizens or foreigners. A branch of human trafficking is sex trafficking, which involves young women being sold into prostitution or forced to be an object of the sex trade. The most common age for young women to enter prostitution is between the ages of 12 and 14, and there are 100,000 children estimated to be a part of the sex trade every year. The victims are threatened and often verbally and physically abused. They are forced to keep their heads low and obey their bosses. Their voice is unheard and they are forced to swallow years of pain and darkness, keeping it locked up deep inside themselves. This issue is often unheard of and misunderstood, and it isn't easy to spot a victim at first glance.

The state of New York is getting up on its feet to help victims of human- and sex-trafficking and to steer women away from the jaws of the sex industry. On Wednesday, September 25, New York's chief judge, Jonathan Lippman, introduced the first statewide system of specialized courts that deal specifically with trafficking offenses and help the victims of trafficking with the darkness of the experiences that they keep buried deep inside their beings. Eleven new courts were established across the state that will unite trained prosecutors, judges, and defense lawyers, along with social workers and an array of other services together in handling cases like human- or sex-trafficking. This new system was a counterpart for 3 laws recently passed by the New York State Legislature, including the Anti-Human Trafficking Act (which makes sex and labor trafficking a federal crime), the Safe Harbor for Exploited Children Act (which states that anyone under 18 who is arrested on prostitution charges is treated as "a sexually exploited child" as opposed to previous years, when they were treated as the criminals rather than the victims), and a third law that allows the victims of trafficking to have their prostitution charges vacated. 

Chief Judge Lippman is hoping that these actions as a whole will stop trafficking cases from just being brushed over at court trials without even going deep into the core reasons why the victims are there in the first place, which is problematic because each case of trafficking is so unique. Under this new system of specialized courts, called the Human Trafficking Intervention Courts, prostitution-related offenses cases will be evaluated by the judge, defense lawyer and prosecutor. If they reach a consensus, the court will then turn over the defendants to services like drug treatment, shelter, immigration assistance and health care, as well as education and job training, attempting to prevent them from returning to the sex trade.

“Human trafficking is a crime that inflicts terrible harm on the most vulnerable members of society: victims of abuse, the poor, children, runaways, immigrants,” Judge Lippman said. “It is in every sense a form of modern-day slavery. We cannot tolerate this practice in a civilized society, nor can we afford to let victims of trafficking slip between the cracks of our justice system” (NY Times, 9/25/2013).