Rep. Ted Poe, R-Texas, and Carolyn Maloney, D-NY., talk about the uphill battle trafficking victims face in getting short- and long-term help with survivor Shandra Woworuntu as their anti-trafficking bill awaits Senate action. (Madeline Fox/MNS)
WASHINGTON — The federal government as well as states need to focus more on victims in their efforts to create stronger anti-trafficking laws, Reps. Ted Poe, R-Texas, and Carolyn Maloney, D-N.Y., said Wednesday.
The House passed Poe’s Justice for Victims of Trafficking Act late last month; it awaits Senate action.
“If you can get a New York Democrat and a Texas conservative Republican to co-sponsor a bill and we’re agreeing, I think that’s about as bipartisan as you can get,” Poe said, expressing frustration that the Senate did not vote on the bill after it was introduced in the previous Congress.
The measure would repurpose financial grants to implement comprehensive victim-centered programs and allow trafficking task forces to obtain permission for wiretaps in state courts in order to investigate sexual exploitation charges. It would also require law enforcement to put photos of missing kids into a database and notify missing children’s organizations about any child who disappears while under state care. Additionally, it would clarify current law to punish as traffickers those who purchase sexual activities, rather than treating them as petty criminals.
“We want to go after the traffickers, to go after the pimps,” Maloney said. “Don’t talk to me about johns. These are sex abusers.”
Maloney, who co-sponsored the bill and co-chairs the Congressional Caucus on Human Trafficking, said she will reintroduce legislation that would give the IRS more money to go after pimps and traffickers for taxable income. The bill, sometimes called the “Pimp Tax,” would also offer financial assistance and whistleblower protection to victims.
At the briefing, activist and trafficking survivor Shandra Woworuntu told her story of coming to to the U.S. from Indonesia for a purported job in the hospitality industry. Instead, she said, she was kidnapped at an airport in New York and forced into sex slavery for almost a year by traffickers who took her documents.
“It’s not a job, it’s abuse,” said Woworuntu, “The wound never, never goes away.”
Woworuntu went to three police precincts to tell her story, but was turned away by officers who saw her as a prostitute, not a victim. She finally told her story to the FBI, and agents raided the brothels and hotels where she had been sold.
Maloney, who has been working to pass comprehensive anti-trafficking legislation for nearly 20 years, identified lack of data about trafficking as one of the major obstacles to combating the issue.
“If you get good data, you get good policy,” Maloney said. “And we just don’t have good data.”
