Rob Portman
By Rob Portman

Since 2011, Megan Mattimoe has been working through the organization she founded in Toledo, Advocating Opportunity, to help victims of human trafficking rebuild their lives. As she says in her mission statement, her goal is to create “an opportunity for victims to choose their life’s course.” And yet too often Megan, and others like her, must overcome their own obstacles in the fight against trafficking.

For too long, victims of human trafficking have been shuffled through the criminal justice system instead of getting access to the help they need. Children who suffer sexual abuse at the hands of traffickers have been ineligible for funding intended to help them overcome abuse. Finding missing children, who are most vulnerable to human traffickers, is made difficult or impossible by arcane rules that prevent police from updating vital information about the missing, most importantly photographs of the children. These and other issues are some of the reasons that new federal legislation to address the crime of human trafficking is needed.

Today, trafficking is a problem in every state in America. In the greatest country on earth, almost 300,000 American kids are at risk of trafficking and commercial sexual exploitation, more than 1,000 each year in Ohio alone. Turning that around has been a central focus of my time in the U.S. Senate.

In 2000, while in the House of Representatives, I supported the first major bill to directly address the growing problem of human trafficking, the Trafficking Victims Protection Act. But we’ve learned a lot about this crime over the last fifteen years. More than two years ago, I co-founded the Senate Caucus to End Human Trafficking. It’s not only bipartisan; it’s non-partisan. We meet monthly with groups who are on the ground, working in this area, seeing the challenges first hand. Much of what we’ve learned from those groups and from victims became the basis for the most significant anti-human trafficking legislation since 2000—the Justice for Victims of Trafficking Act of 2015 (JVTA).

Two bills I authored are cornerstones of this legislation, and they go directly to the challenges that make it harder for dedicated people like Megan Mattimoe to do their jobs.

One of those bills is called the Bringing Missing Children Home Act. First, this bill takes the important step of replacing in federal law the term “child prostitution” with “child sex trafficking.” There is simply no such thing as child prostitution. The bill also makes it much easier for the police to update information on missing children so we can find them before they fall into the hands of traffickers, most importantly by providing a photo when available. Since Jan 1, 2015, there have been 100 children reported missing in Ohio. We only have a photograph for 24 of those children. Seventy-six have no photograph. This bill will help change that.

Another piece of legislation I co-authored that is a part of the JVTA is the Combat Human Trafficking Act, designed to increase the ability of prosecutors to punish those engaged in human trafficking. This legislation will enable us to better train prosecutors and police on how to identify and target traffickers. It also enlarges the number of federal charges prosecutors can bring against those involved in the trafficking industry, and provides more information to victims on ongoing prosecutions.

Ending human trafficking is one of the most important human rights issues of this century. It is a cause that people like Megan Mattimoe are taking up every day. They deserve our thanks, but they deserve our help, too. This legislation will provide that help, and it will go a long way towards putting human traffickers out of business and helping victims recover.