Fighting sex trafficking

WORLD is committed to improving our coverage of the evil of sex trafficking. Over the next few months we’ll explain some basics and also track new developments.

Both legal and cultural changes are crucial in getting serious about sex trafficking of minors. We need laws that criminalize trafficking, facilitating, or exploiting minors for sexual purposes. We also need protective provisions for child victims and improved criminal justice tools for investigation and prosecution.

The advocacy group Shared Hope annually grades every state on its laws regarding sex trafficking of minors. Three states—Tennessee, Washington, and Louisiana, which led the nation with the highest score, 96— earned an “A.” Seventeen states received a “B,” 14 a “C,” 13 a “D,” and four—California, Michigan, South Dakota, and Maine—an “F.” California’s score of 50 was the lowest in the nation.

States move up and down depending on legal action, and one of the states moving up is Iowa, which received a “D” in 2012 but last year moved up to a “B.” The improvement commenced three years ago when Iowa Attorney General Tom Miller formed a Human Trafficking Enforcement and Prosecution Initiative (HTEPI) and asked investigator Michael Ferjak to lead an effort to “make Iowa the most hostile place in the country for human trafficking.”

Iowa is not there yet, but here are some positive developments:

In succeeding months we’ll look at what’s happening in other states.