Preventing Sex Trafficking and Improving Opportunities for Youth in Foster Care Act

Floor Speech

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Madam Speaker, I rise in strong support of this bill. It is extremely important.

I would like to underscore that there is no politics in sex trafficking. This body is often described as being bitterly partisan. But today that is not the case as voices on both sides of the aisle and hard work on both sides of the aisle have joined to work to try to make it better and try to stop this abuse.

We have already heard and know that trafficking in human beings is nothing less than a modern form of slavery and that the incidence in foster children is tremendously high.

A foster child named Angela came to my office one day and told me the story that at 10 years old the boyfriend of her foster mother started selling her as a prostitute, and her younger brother. She was horrified one day when she saw a picture of herself and her younger brother in a magazine advertising that they were for sale. She spoke out at school to her counselor and they didn't believe her. When the authorities from the welfare agency came to the home she told them she was being abused, and they told her to be grateful to her foster parents--why is she raising such problems.

So there is clearly a need for educating and involving States and agencies in being more sensitive and identifying the victims of child abuse and child sex trafficking. It is something we do not want to acknowledge that it exists in our own country. But every time you see a child on the street, a child prostitute, there is a tragic story behind that young girl or boy of intense abuse. Regrettably, too many of them come out of the American foster care system, a system that is supposed to protect them.

This bill is incredibly needed. I congratulate Mr. Doggett and Ms. Bass for their hard work on this.

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