Report gives U.S. top rating for prevention, prosecution
By Alan Johnson
THE COLUMBUS DISPATCH
The federal government aggressively pursued human-trafficking violations last year, rescuing 306 children and obtaining nearly 200 convictions, according to the 10th annual report released yesterday by the U.S. State Department.
The 2009 Trafficking in Persons Report, unveiled by Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, for the first time ranked the U.S. by the same human-trafficking standards as it has ranked other countries for the past decade. The U.S. received a top-tier ranking, meaning it meets all international standards for preventing and prosecuting human trafficking.
But Clinton said the U.S. "takes its first-ever ranking not as a reprieve, but as a responsibility to strengthen global efforts against modern slavery, including those within America."
The report described the U.S. as "a source, transit, and destination country for men, women, and children subjected to trafficking in persons. ... Trafficking occurs primarily for labor and most commonly in domestic servitude, agriculture, manufacturing, janitorial services, hotel services, construction, health and elder care, hair and nail salons, and strip club dancing."
Overall, the U.S. reported 198 convictions of traffickers in state and federal courts last year. The majority were related to trafficking of children. The average sentence was 13 years.
By comparison, in the previous seven years combined, the federal Innocence Lost project, which focuses on children forced into prostitution, reported 148 convictions and 245 recovered children.
The report also noted that 13,000 law-enforcement personnel received special human-trafficking training last year.
The Ohio Trafficking in Persons Study Commission recently said that more than 1,000 children younger than 18 were sex-trafficking victims in the state in the past year. Thousands more were at risk.
An additional 783 foreign-born people were trafficked for sex or forced labor in Ohio in the past year, and 3,437 were at risk, the commission reported.
Worldwide, the federal report estimated 12.3 million people are human-trafficking victims. There were 49,000 victims identified and 4,166 traffickers convicted by courts in various countries in 2009.
Human-trafficking convictions up | Columbus Dispatch Politics
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