West Roxbury —
While listening to the radio recently, I was confronted by news that troubled me. WGBH’s Philip Martin reported on a silent epidemic spreading throughout southern New England, including Boston.
The epidemic is human trafficking, which includes horrific practices such as debt bondage, unpaid labor servitude and sex slavery. According to the report, it is believed there are over 20,000 such victims brought into the United States every year, while many others are born right here in our communities.
Your initial reactions are probably very much like mine: “Not in the 21st century, not in the United States and not in Boston!”
Unfortunately, it happens here. In his report, Martin tells of a former Boston nail salon owner currently under a federal grand jury investigation for using his business as a front for money laundering and prostitution. Martin also recounts an anti-trafficking investigation that led to the indictment of five people for smuggling Asian women into Massachusetts for the purpose of prostitution.
Most heartbreaking of all was learning that many of the victims are just children, often “troubled” girls sometimes as young as 11 years old. Some victims have been abducted right off the street, then forced into prostitution through drugs, intimidation and violence. It may sound like a movie scenario, but it is unfortunately very real.
When I was an assistant district attorney, I worked hard to steer such at-risk youths into appropriate programs so they could get help or get clean and hopefully avoid such dire straits. I have never turned my back on the defenseless or on innocent victims. That’s not my way, that’s not the American way, and it’s certainly not the way of residents living here in the 10th Suffolk District.
In Massachusetts, it feels like we have always been at the forefront of human rights issues — from the idea of self-government to abolition. However, I was shocked and thoroughly disappointed to learn that our state is one of only five states that has not enacted a comprehensive law to stop human trafficking. Such legislation was proposed in 2007; a measure on human trafficking recently passed the Senate and is now in the House.
Enacting comprehensive state laws to combat involuntary servitude is essential to ending it. Such laws would allow us to provide our local law enforcement agencies with the tools and training to seek out and prevent these operations and give our courts the ability to vigorously prosecute these cases. We must have these laws to root out human trafficking where it already exists and to prevent it from spreading into our communities where it has not taken hold yet.
In closing, three years is a long time for someone to be held against their will, yet that’s how long this bill has sat in the state legislature. I believe the indifference and inaction of Beacon Hill in this regard is unacceptable. As your state representative, I promise to carry this message with me to the State House and say it loud and clear that when it comes to human trafficking, “Not in our state, not in our city, not in our neighborhood!”
Paul Sullivan is a Democratic candidate for state Representative for the 10th Suffolk District.
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