Legislation targets human trafficking

Calling it a billion-dollar criminal enterprise with tentacles in the fabric of many local communities, state and local officials announced Thursday they had filed legislation to make human trafficking for sexual servitude and forced labor a crime.

The filing of the bill, announced at a press conference led by Attorney General Martha Coakley and Sen. Mark C.W. Montigny, D-New Bedford, creates new statutes for human trafficking. The offenses, which are felonies, will see increased penalties for those who use or profit from the services of people forced into the slave trade and will allow authorities to seize assets.

Coakley said Massachusetts is one of only five states in the country without human trafficking laws.

“Human trafficking is the most despicable crime against humanity and all that is decent in our society,” said Montigny, who has tried for six years to get some form of human trafficking legislation passed.

“It is so prevalent in cities and wealthy suburbs,” he said. “It doesn’t just go on in Third World countries.”

Montigny said the victims are often young women who have been beaten or drugged or threatened or had their passports stolen. They are forced into sexual slavery or made to work in factories or other industries.

Federal law enforcement officials, who hunt traffickers across international and state borders, need the eyes and ears of local police to help catch them, Montigny said.

New Bedford Police Chief Ron Teachman said trafficking “isn’t just a federal problem. It’s a local problem.”

He said New Bedford police know of past instances of possible forced labor, but never had the tools to investigate and prosecute because Massachusetts doesn’t have a human trafficking law.

The proposed legislation “sends a message that the true perpetrators are the pimps and the johns and those who are have been historically charged are the victims,” he said.

Corinn Williams, executive director of the Community Economic Development Center of Southeastern Mass., said the legislation is “a step forward” for groups such as undocumented aliens, among those her agency deals with. It also “highlights a problem that is growing in the commonwealth.”

Coakley said human trafficking is considered the second largest and single fastest growing illegal industry in the world. Experts estimate than 27 million people are trafficked internationally and domestically, bringing in $32 billion annually, she said.

Dartmouth Police Chief Timothy M. Lee, who previously served for 21 years on the Providence police force, said the women who work in massage parlors in that city are prime examples of people caught up in the sex business.

District Attorney C. Samuel Sutter said there have been occasional cases of human trafficking in Bristol County and the current laws aren’t tough enough.

“This legislation is needed and it’s needed swiftly,” Sutter said.

http://www.gateway.i2sf.org/c2_blog/2011/01/20/coakley-on-sex-trade-crackdown-in-mass/