Ohio agencies win grant to fight human trafficking

AMANDA LEE MYERS

Asso­ci­ated Press

CINCINNATI — A fed­eral grant announced Fri­day will allow two Ohio agen­cies fight­ing human traf­fick­ing to hire two new inves­ti­ga­tors and a vic­tim advo­cate and pay for gaps in ser­vices for those res­cued from the prac­tice that has been likened to modern-day slavery.

The $700,000 in U.S. Jus­tice Depart­ment grants will go to the Ohio attor­ney general’s office and the Sal­va­tion Army, which have part­nered to com­bat human traf­fick­ing with two insep­a­ra­ble prongs — law enforce­ment and social services.

“Peo­ple shouldn’t be exploited. Peo­ple shouldn’t be sold in any capac­ity,” said Michelle Han­nan, direc­tor of pro­fes­sional and com­mu­nity ser­vices for the Sal­va­tion Army in cen­tral Ohio. “This is some­thing that has remained hid­den for so long, and peo­ple have just had to endure the most unspeak­able situations.”

Han­nan and her agency began to focus on human traf­fick­ing in Ohio in 2007 after a national group iden­ti­fied Colum­bus and Cincin­nati as being among 24 cities in the coun­try with high risk fac­tors for sex trafficking.

Both cities began their own coali­tions tar­get­ing the prob­lem that same year and have increased their efforts since then.

Han­nan said that in the past year, her coali­tion has been work­ing a lot more closely with law enforce­ment and the fed­eral grant will strengthen and pro­vide fund­ing to that partnership.

“It’s really going to be amaz­ing to have some of the resources to make a dif­fer­ence,” she said, adding that the fund­ing also will go toward gaps in ser­vices for vic­tims res­cued from human trafficking.

That could include, for exam­ple, short-term emer­gency hous­ing for a woman who has been forced into the sex trade, med­ical ser­vices and out­reach into at-risk com­mu­ni­ties, Han­nan said.

Attor­ney Gen­eral Mike DeWine said in a state­ment that he “can’t stress enough how seri­ous of a prob­lem human traf­fick­ing is in Ohio.”

“With this new part­ner­ship we aim to pre­vent traf­fick­ers from escap­ing notice by mov­ing from one juris­dic­tion to another and improve the oppor­tu­ni­ties avail­able for traf­fick­ing vic­tims to get the help they need,” he said.

More than 1,000 Ohio chil­dren are traf­ficked every year, accord­ing to a 2010 report by the state Human Traf­fick­ing Com­mis­sion, which cited weak laws in Ohio com­pared with other states and the state’s prox­im­ity to the Cana­dian bor­der as dri­ving factors.

Ohio law­mak­ers have since passed leg­is­la­tion known as the “safe har­bor law,” which went into effect in June. The law makes human traf­fick­ing a first-degree felony with a manda­tory prison term of 10 to 15 years. It also allows vic­tims to sue their traf­fick­ers for dam­ages and to have their records expunged if they were con­victed of pros­ti­tu­tion or solic­i­ta­tion charges as a result of being forced into the sex trade.

Posted by AP News on Sep 7 2012. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS Feed. Comments can be made below.