Nguyen advocates for bills that seek to create pathways for survivors to rebuild their lives
By Rep. Tram Nguyen
Today on Human Trafficking Awareness Day, let’s pull back the curtain on the reality of trafficking. Human trafficking isn’t always the high-profile, international controversy that film and media lead us to believe. In reality, it’s so devastatingly subtle that it can go undetected anywhere, even in our communities here in the Merrimack Valley. Community members can support survivors of human trafficking by recognizing the reality of these situations and advocating for solutions that would allow survivors to escape and rebuild their lives. As a former legal services attorney and now as a legislator, I will continue to fight for bills that support survivors and hold abusers accountable.
This November, the Boston Globe exposed a high-profile brothel system based out of Massachusetts, in which the ring trafficked women between Boston and D.C. to cater to hundreds of wealthy clients. These scandalous stories are the ones that make headlines, but in most cases, victims aren’t kidnapped or geographically relocated. More often, trafficking occurs at the local level, where smaller rings don’t make the news, and survivors face abuse right in front of our eyes – at the grocery store, in the school pick-up line, or at college with our kids. At this level, trafficking is often a more insidious form of abuse, and women and girls of color are at the greatest risk. These survivors are often isolated and financially insecure, leaving them vulnerable to being manipulated and coerced into a cycle of abuse and exploitation.
Our current laws make it next to impossible to hold traffickers or their clients accountable for their abusive acts. The consequences – criminal, emotional, mental, and financial – fall almost exclusively on the survivors, who are prosecuted at nearly twice the rate of their clientele. As survivors attempt to rebuild their lives, their already difficult re-entrance into society is made exponentially more difficult by the consequences of a criminal record, including barriers to employment and housing. Survivors with criminal records related to their trafficking may also lose custody of their children, be disqualified from receiving government benefits, and some may even face deportation from the country. These injustices leave survivors with little choice but to engage in criminal behavior as a means of survival, perpetuating the cycle of abuse.
The Commonwealth also severely lacks a means of collecting accurate data about human trafficking in Massachusetts. We can only begin to piece together the extent of this crisis by gathering data from local law enforcement, service providers, and survivors themselves. Since we rely on sources based on self-reported data gathered from crisis hotlines where callers may be hesitant to report due to fear and stigma, it is easy to underestimate the extent and frequency of trafficking. However, the limited data collection that we do have is enough to paint a picture of a growing urgency that requires the attention of our leaders and our communities alike.
We can and must address this crisis through legislative change. One bill, H.1701/S.1002, An Act supporting survivors of trafficking, which I filed with Rep. Christine Barber and Senator Adam Gomez, would grant survivors the opportunity to expunge or seal their records without a waiting period so they can begin the next chapter of their lives without being haunted by a criminal record. Additionally, the Sex Trade Survivors Act, H.1597/S.983, would decriminalize survivors while maintaining criminal accountability for the trafficker and clientele. This bill would also create better pathways for survivors of human trafficking to rebuild their lives by providing them with the programming, resources, and support to sever ties with their traffickers and allowing for the expungement of their criminal records.
It can be difficult for trafficking survivors to come to terms with their experiences. As their neighbors, community members, and legislators, we must support them by ensuring that we have laws in place to support them when they are ready to reclaim their futures.
As the people of the Commonwealth, we need to send a clear message: no one has the right to buy and sell human bodies, no one deserves unfettered sexual access to anyone, and no one should bear the criminal consequences of their abuser’s actions.
January 11th is National Human Trafficking Awareness Day. Congress designated this day in January, which is Human Trafficking Awareness Month, to recognize the impact human trafficking has on communities and to shine a light on the trafficking happening daily across our country.
Tram T. Nguyen is a Massachusetts State Representative, currently serving in her third 2-year term. She is a first-generation Vietnamese-American immigrant, the first person in her family to graduate from college and law school, and the first Vietnamese-American woman elected into public office in the Commonwealth. Rep. Nguyen is the highest-ranking Asian American woman in the Legislature and champions legislation that addresses gender, racial, social, criminal, economic, and environmental justice.
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