TOLEDO, Ohio – Today, U.S. Sen. Sherrod Brown (D-OH) spoke at the 13th Annual International Human Trafficking and Social Justice Conference at the University of Toledo. The conference, first organized in 2004, allows participants to learn more about human trafficking and become involved in efforts to combat it.   

“The voices of survivors need to be heard, so that others are not forced to follow in their footsteps,” said Brown. “Thank you for all that you do to bring those stories into the open, and ensure their voices are heard.”   

Brown is working with local, state, and federal officials to ensure law enforcement have the resources they need and that victims have access to the services. Brown authored provisions included in the Justice for Victims of Trafficking Act of 2015, which President Obama signed in May 2015. Brown was also successful in including an amendment into the reauthorization of U.S. Customs and Border Protection in 2016 that permanently eliminated an exemption in U.S. law that allowed the import of certain products made with forced or child labor if there is not sufficient supply to meet domestic demand.

Brown’s remarks, as prepared for delivery, follow:

Thank you to Dr. Celia Williamson, and everyone at the University of Toledo for bringing us together for this important conference.

Human trafficking, or modern day slavery, is not a thing of the past. It is an evil present here and now—children, teenagers, and adults are being bought and sold in our backyard.

Toledo has known this for a long time, sadly – but the rest of the country seems to be finally waking up.

Last year I spoke at the Google Human Trafficking Symposium in Cincinnati, which brought experts and attention from around the country. And it highlighted the incredible work you are doing here in Toledo – with this conference, the oldest academic conference on the subject, and the new Human Trafficking and Social Justice Institute here at UT.

Your initiatives – the RISE program, the Lucas County Human Trafficking Coalition, State Rep. Fedor’s Safe Harbor bill – are models for how we tackle this issue.

We’ve also made progress in Congress, building on the innovative work you’re doing.

Last year we finally closed an outdated, 85-year-old loophole that allowed goods made by slave labor overseas to be bought and sold in the United States.

This so-called consumptive demand loophole allowed goods made with forced labor, including child labor, to be imported into the country if there wasn’t enough domestic supply to meet domestic demand. It was opened more than 80 years ago in 1930 – and shamefully never closed, until last year.

We’re talking about children being forced to work, often in deplorable conditions under extreme duress. There’s no justification for it – and now, no product made under those conditions will be allowed into this country.

Last year the president also signed the Justice for Victims of Trafficking Act, which included an important provision I authored, to provide grants to local law enforcement to allow  retired federal agents to help track down homeless and runaway youth.

This idea was first developed by a group of former FBI agents here in Northwest Ohio, working with Dr. Williamson. .

These retired FBI agents came to my office and asked for our help in creation of a pilot program that would allow retired agents to assist local law enforcement in finding runaway children and teens.

Now, the Department of Justice has been slow in getting this program up and running. But we have not forgotten about it, and we will continue to push to put this idea into action.

And this isn’t the only thing we are thinking about in this space.

In the Senate I serve as the Ranking Member on the Senate Banking Committee

One of my top priorities is doing more to combat trafficking through the banking system.

According to the International Labor Organization, $150 billion in illegal profits are generated worldwide each year from forced labor. This puts the banking industry in a unique position to be an important line of defense against these terrible crimes, by identifying and going after the money generated by traffickers. 

We’ve already seen the good that can be done with new Treasury regulations on “red flags,” which provide critical guidance to banks and other financial institutions nationwide on what to look for to help identify human trafficking and human smuggling.

Since the guidance to banks on using these red flags was released a year and a half ago, we’ve seen a large uptick in the development of “suspicious activity reports” to the Treasury Department, that can then be used by law enforcement to develop leads in investigations, and eventually to root out traffickers and their allies.

We need to build on this success next year, and we also need to make another push for more funding to back up all of these good ideas.

So keep up your activism and keep the pressure on Congress and on state legislatures. And tell your stories.

I’ve been to roundtables with trafficking survivors, and no amount of data or statistics are as powerful as hearing them talk about their heartbreaking experiences.

The voices of survivors need to be heard, so that others are not forced to follow in their footsteps.

Thank you for all that you do to bring those stories into the open, and ensure their voices are heard.

 

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