Human Trafficking

Human trafficking is the business of stealing freedom for profit. Victims of trafficking are deprived of their basic human rights, dehumanized, brutalized, and objectified. Traffickers coerce their victims for labor or sex through force, fraud, and deception. Human trafficking business makes over $100 billion annually, more than Apple, Starbucks, Microsoft, and Nike combined. In 2017, the Human Trafficking Hotline reported 156 human trafficking cases in Virginia, 70% of which were sex trafficking cases. A closer look at this through the Northern Virginia Human Trafficking Initiative reports 526 identified victims, 312 of these victims were recovered from 2013-2016. 94% of these cases were victims of sex trafficking. This past session I was proud to introduce and pass legislation that will create a Sex Trafficking Response Coordinator within the Commonwealth of Virginia. This coordinator will be the crucial first step Virginia needs to align efforts and create a statewide response plan that will save countless lives, many of them just young teenagers.