Human Trafficking

Floor Speech

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Mr. CORNYN. Madam President, we spend a lot of time, as one would expect in a legislative body, talking about the technical aspects of legislation and the procedure we use to consider it and pass it, a subject which perhaps many of us enjoy but which probably turns the public--puts a glaze in their eyes and bores them because they don't see the relevance of it.

We talk about motions to proceed and cloture and filibusters, but what is important in the Senate is the subject matter of the legislation that we apply this procedure or these rules to. This week in the Senate we will be undertaking a very important subject; that is, how to protect our fellow citizens, many of them children, who are needing our help and waiting to be rescued.

Those are children who are being trafficked in the commercial sex and forced-labor trade--not over there, not necessarily just in some other country, but right here in the United States of America.

I believe that we are all created in the image of God, that all human beings are entitled to be treated with dignity and respect. But the criminals who traffic in human flesh treat these same human beings created in the image of God as a thing. They treat these children as a commodity to be bought and sold. To me that is the very definition of evil. A few weeks ago the Judiciary Committee heard from several witnesses on what has been called modern day slavery--human trafficking.

I know many of us thought that slavery was an ugly part of our Nation's beginning but certainly only something in the past. But the truth is that there exists today something that you could legitimately call modern day slavery, and that is human trafficking. Now, even though institutionalized slavery has long been cast into the dustbin of history and is something we read about in our history books, human trafficking, particularly sex trafficking, still affects the lives of hundreds and thousands of our children.

Tragically, many of them are young girls. As the father of two daughters, it turns my stomach to realize that a majority of the human beings who are trafficked are girls who are of middle-school age. In the Judiciary Committee, we heard from Malika Saada Saar who represents a wonderful organization called Rights4Girls.

Malika spoke of a young woman named Aviva. According to Malika, Aviva was in foster care when a trafficker kidnapped her and held her hostage for almost a year. During this time, we learned in the Judiciary Committee during that hearing, Aviva was sold to as many as 10 different men a night. Of course, she did not understand. She could not comprehend why an adult man would want to buy her body when she was just a child.

When law enforcement officials found Aviva, she was arrested for prostitution at the age of 15. Let me repeat that because it is important. This young girl who was kidnapped, raped, and sold nightly--daily--was treated like a criminal, not a victim. In 1992 Holly Austin Smith ran away from home and was forced into a sex trafficking ring the summer before her freshman year of high school.

Within hours of running away, 14-year old Holly was sold for $200 to a man who wanted her for sex because he said she reminded him of his granddaughter. When police eventually found Holly--still only a child, scared and confused, as you can only imagine--they treated her as a criminal, not as a victim. Too often these children, who are not of the age of consent, are treated as child prostitutes.

As many of us who have worked on this issue for some time know, there is no such thing as a child prostitute. If you are not of the age of consent, you cannot consent, and you cannot agree to be used in such a horrific way. These are children who are bought and sold for sex--plain and simple--as nauseating as that truth is. Malika powerfully said during our hearing: ``There should be no difference between raping a child and paying to rape a child.'' Now, the individuals who commit these crimes--not just the people who traffic in them but the people who purchase these services--too often pay a fine and get on with their lives. Yet they are the child rapists who should be treated as the sex traffickers they are.

If it were not for the demand, sex trafficking would not have a business model. But unfortunately, there is too great of a demand. But often the people who purchase these children are treated with impunity. Tomorrow, I expect the Senate will move to consider legislation that I have introduced with a number of our colleagues from Minnesota, Illinois, and Oregon. Indeed, there are a number of Senators who have already contributed a lot of very good and constructive work to the product we will turn to tomorrow.

The bill is called the Justice for Victims of Trafficking Act. The most important thing that it does is that it ends the culture of impunity for the people who purchase children and other victims of human trafficking. It holds the so-called johns and the pimps accountable, and it does not focus on the victim who should be treated like a victim and helped to heal and get on with their lives. But too often they are the ones who are prosecuted and treated as a criminal.

Instead of being treated as criminals, this bill makes sure that the future Avivas and Hollys are treated for what they are, and that is as victims. What this bill also does is it takes the money and assets forfeited from convicted human traffickers and directs it to services for the victims. So future Avivas and Hollys would have a shelter, a place to live, a roof over their head, a bed to sleep in, and somebody who loves them and cares enough to help them heal and get on with their lives. That is the kind of treatment these victims of human trafficking deserve--not jail time.

We know that Washington can be a dysfunctional place more times than we would like to admit. So often there are political issues or ideological issues that divide us. But the fight against human trafficking reminds us that it does not have to be this way. Indeed, I was heartened a few weeks ago when this particular piece of legislation passed the Judiciary Committee with unanimous support. All Republicans and all Democrats on the committee voted to support it.

Indeed, Republicans and Democrats--not just in Congress but across the country--support this legislation, as evidenced by the more than 200 different organizations, from victims' advocates to law enforcement groups, which have joined forces to fight this modern day slave trade and to support the legislation we will turn to tomorrow. It is a fight, sadly, that must be acknowledged and it must be fought. But it is a fight we can win, finally delivering our Nation's promise of freedom to those who are enslaved.

It is not the kind of slavery we read about in our history books or the kind that resulted or helped precipitate the Civil War, but it is the kind that goes on unbeknownst to most Americans and most people but which represents that seamy underbelly of society, one that we must expose and one we must reveal as the evil that it is.

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