Justice for Victims of Trafficking Act of 2014

Floor Speech

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Madam Speaker, I thank the chairman of the Judiciary Committee for yielding me this time and also for his support and work on this legislation, and I thank the ranking member as well.

Also, I want to thank my friend across the aisle, Carolyn Maloney from New York, for being the chief cosponsor of this legislation on the Democrat side.

Madam Speaker, Cheryl Briggs is one of many American children that got caught in the slave trade. When she was 12 years of age, she ran away from home because she was being assaulted by her father.

Not long after that, she was picked up as a hitchhiker by a trucker, and then soon after that, she was put in the slave trade where she was forced to have sex with men several times a day.

She also was forced to work at a strip club during the daytime, sold at night, and also was forced to do that work in the daytime. She was able to escape that trafficker because a patron at one of the clubs figured out she was a mere child and called the police.

Sex trafficking of minor children happens all over the world. It happens in America.

Recently, I was in South America. I went to a shelter in Peru, and I met several girls. One of them was named Lilly. At 10 years of age--she was 10--she was sold by her mother for a cell phone to a sex trafficker. Lilly gave me this bracelet when I was there, and she asked me to remember her and the other girls that were at the rescue shelter.

Madam Speaker, as the chairman and the ranking member pointed out, in the United States, there is not much help for minor sex traffic victims. There are approximately 300 beds--or less--in the whole country for children victims of sex trafficking. Compare that to animal shelters. We have over 3,000 animal shelters.

America needs to do better, and this bill will help America do better, so we can proclaim not only to the traffickers and the buyers of sex slaves that the victims of crime, the children, just aren't for sale.

They are not for sale here in America or anywhere because they are children. Children--the greatest resource any nation has are our children; no matter whether they are runaways, throwaways, or stowaways, they are not for sale.

This legislation enforces the law against the trafficker, the slave trader that buys and sells these children. It makes sure that they go to the penitentiary, and the law is very clear.

On the other end, it treats these victims of crime as victims of crime. They are not criminals. They are not child prostitutes. There is no such thing as a child prostitute. Children cannot consent to sex. They are rape victims.

Society and the law are going to start treating them that way, rescuing them and giving resources to children assessment centers, to the police to recognize these children that have been captured and stolen--their youth stolen and they are in the slave trade.

Most importantly, this bill goes after the demand, those people in this country who buy these children for sex. The days of boys being boys are going to be over in this country because those people in the middle--they are not johns; they are child rapists.

They are going to be held accountable for their actions against these girls. The law is clear. It is clear that the law will prosecute those individuals. They will go to the same penitentiaries as the traffickers for stealing the soul of the youth of America's greatest resource, our children.

I am glad to see that this bill has so much bipartisan support that it came out of the Judiciary Committee unanimously. It is one of several bills that are coming to the House floor today to proclaim to the country and to victims of crime and to criminals that the days of the slave trade are going to end in the United States.

And that's just the way it is.

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