Efforts continue after Ohio lawmakers adopt bill strengthening penalties.
By Mary McCarty, Staff Writer Updated 10:09 PM Saturday, January 29, 2011Last year, Alisa Bartel jokingly became known as “the downer at the dinner table.”
She regaled her University of Dayton roommates with the facts she was learning about human trafficking — both in the classroom and in her new role as an activist. She peppered them with questions such as “Did you know that one-third of chocolate comes from the Ivory Coast — and that they have slave labor?” until, after a while, they begged her to stop.
“They didn’t want to hear it,” she said.
Lots of people don’t want to hear about this modern-day form of slavery that by some estimates impacts 200,000 people in the United States. But Bartel has joined a group of UD students making sure that the public hears the message.
They met in professor Tony Talbott’s human trafficking class, but this is far from an academic exercise.
Many say the students’ lobbying efforts played a key role in the passage of Ohio Senate Bill 235, which makes human trafficking a felony offense with stronger penalties for abduction and kidnapping if they involve involuntary servitude. The bill, co-sponsored by state Sen. Teresa Fedor, D-Toledo, and Sen. Tim Grendell, R-Chesterland, enjoyed bipartisan support.
“The UD students’ focus and initiative was a huge contributing factor to the Senate decision to come out of a lame-duck session to vote on a bill that had absolutely no opposition in the Senate, House or from the Governor’s Office,” noted Susan Hesselgesser, education director for the League of Women Voters. “This no-brainer legislation that had been languishing for months was passed within days. Had the bill remained idle, the work done by Senator Theresa Fedor would have been lost and Ohio would have remained one of the few states in the nation without tough regulations on the sex trafficking of juveniles.”
Traffic delayed the students on advocacy day Nov. 9, creating a stir when 35 of them arrived in Senate chambers.
Recalled Fedor, “They added a significant voice to end modern-day slavery. When all the senators looked at those fresh faces, they thought, ‘Wow, it’s so cool to have this.’ ”
Graduate student Alex Kreidenweis, 25, of Cincinnati called the victory “enormously gratifying,” especially when “time and time again, we were told it was a low-priority issue during an election year.”
Talbott said that most of the sex-trade victims are Americans, while most victims of forced labor are illegal immigrants.
Now that the legislation has passed, the UD students are focusing their energy on the Safe Harbor bill that Fedor, now a state representative for the 47th district, plans to introduce in March. The legislation will focus on helping minors, requiring the state to provide them with services. Nearly 1,100 American-born youths are forced into the sex trade in Ohio each year, according to a study released in February by the Ohio Trafficking in Persons Study Commission. “The average age of those entering into prostitution in the United States is 12,” Talbott said.
The bill also will specify that minors can not be charged with solicitation, bringing Ohio law in line with federal laws that identify every underage prostitute as a victim of sex trafficking.
“I don’t know how you’re rehabilitated when you’re 12,” Fedor asked. “How do you move on?”
Bartel, 23, said she didn’t know anything about human trafficking before coming to UD. “I’m from Springfield, Ill., and Abraham Lincoln is our hometown hero, the one who abolished slavery,” she said. “I grew up believing it’s over, it’s done. As if one signature is enough to eradicate slavery.”
Talbott said he was equally ignorant during his own youth, when he served in the Philippines in the Navy. “Right outside the gates of the Navy base, near the harbor, a club called the Sweet 16s,” he said. “From the street you saw girls in bikinis dancing on tables, and they promised that the oldest girl in the bar was 16. I knew that was wrong, but I didn’t understand that was human trafficking.”
Abolition Ohio
Talbott and his UD colleague Mark Ensalaco co-founded Abolition Ohio with the goal of rescuing human trafficking victims. “This is a problem we can end in our lifetime,” he said.” It’s a matter of awareness.”
Talbott and Ensalaco will be leading a coalition, spearheaded by the League of Women Voters, with the goal of reaching out to trafficking victims. It’s a group that encompasses the YWCA of Greater Dayton, the Artemis Center for Alternatives to Domestic Violence, Daybreak runaway shelter, the St. Vincent de Paul Society, Soroptimist International and Lexis-Nexis.
“Linking these groups together allowed us to begin discussion on the complexity of the issue and the efforts being made by each organization to reach out to trafficking victims,” Hesselgesser said.
Fedor believes the UD students may be the most important part of the equation: “We need to grow the responsible adults of the future. The seeds have been planted.”
For now, the students are keeping busy with a free-trade chocolate sale for Valentine’s Day. “What you buy does matter,” Bartel said. “It’s amazing how hard it is to find that little free-trade sticker.” Another current project is a multimedia exhibit at the Dayton International Peace Museum running through February. “Under Our Noses: Modern Day Slavery and What You Can Do About It” educates visitors about how they can help combat human trafficking through video clips, student artwork and a photo essay by local photographer William Murdock.
Neither Kreidenweis nor his friend Bartel can imagine being done with this issue, ever. “I don’t know how you walk away from this issue,” he said, “when you know there are 27 million victims of human trafficking worldwide.”
Source: daytondailynews.com
UD students leading fight against human trafficking
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