Bill would protect human trafficking victims from criminal prosecution

WASHINGTON (Gray DC) - More than half of human trafficking survivors end up being cited, arrested or detained by law enforcement according to government data.

Human rights attorney Yasmin Vafa has studied how traffickers coerce, manipulate and force victims to commit a variety of crimes.

“This can look like a young woman being forced to commit drug trafficking,” Vafa said. “It can look like a young woman being forced to recruit other victims into exploitation.

Vafa published a report with Georgetown University exploring how prosecutors often miss that trafficking victims, even young ones, were not acting on their own accord.

“Victims are often not seen and treated as children,” Vafa said. “They are denied that sense of innocence. They are not seen as victims of crime. And so, they are instead blamed and punished for their victimization.”

Representative Russell Fry, R-SC, is introducing a bill with a bipartisan group of lawmakers that would protect trafficking victims accused of federal crimes in court.

“From a victim’s standpoint it allows them to express what is really going on and to get to the heart of the matter,” Fry said. “Because you don’t want to attack the victims. You want to get to the actual traffickers themselves.”

Fry said protecting victims can also lead to information about those who trafficked them.

“If they know that there is that ability to do that, to express that, then they’re more willing to come forward, and it could help lead to the arrest of the people who are actually committing these crimes.”

Fry said some states, like South Carolina, do already offer protections for victims,l but federal protections would be new.

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