[House Hearing, 113 Congress]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office]
FIELD HEARING ON EFFORTS TO PREVENT
AND ADDRESS CHILD SEX
TRAFFICKING IN WASHINGTON STATE
=======================================================================
HEARING
before the
SUBCOMMITTEE ON HUMAN RESOURCES
of the
COMMITTEE ON WAYS AND MEANS
U.S. HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES
ONE HUNDRED THIRTEENTH CONGRESS
__________
SECOND SESSION
__________
February 19, 2014
__________
SERIAL 113-HR10
__________
Printed for the use of the Committee on Ways and Means
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COMMITTEE ON WAYS AND MEANS
DAVE CAMP, Michigan, Chairman
SAM JOHNSON, Texas SANDER M. LEVIN, Michigan
KEVIN BRADY, Texas CHARLES B. RANGEL, New York
PAUL RYAN, Wisconsin JIM MCDERMOTT, Washington
DEVIN NUNES, California JOHN LEWIS, Georgia
PATRICK J. TIBERI, Ohio RICHARD E. NEAL, Massachusetts
DAVID G. REICHERT, Washington XAVIER BECERRA, California
CHARLES W. BOUSTANY, JR., Louisiana LLOYD DOGGETT, Texas
PETER J. ROSKAM, Illinois MIKE THOMPSON, California
JIM GERLACH, Pennsylvania JOHN B. LARSON, Connecticut
TOM PRICE, Georgia EARL BLUMENAUER, Oregon
VERN BUCHANAN, Florida RON KIND, Wisconsin
ADRIAN SMITH, Nebraska BILL PASCRELL, JR., New Jersey
AARON SCHOCK, Illinois JOSEPH CROWLEY, New York
LYNN JENKINS, Kansas ALLYSON SCHWARTZ, Pennsylvania
ERIK PAULSEN, Minnesota DANNY DAVIS, Illinois
KENNY MARCHANT, Texas LINDA SANCHEZ, California
DIANE BLACK, Tennessee
TOM REED, New York
TODD YOUNG, Indiana
MIKE KELLY, Pennsylvania
TIM GRIFFIN, Arkansas
JIM RENACCI, Ohio
Jennifer M. Safavian, Staff Director and General Counsel
Janice Mays, Minority Chief Counsel
______
SUBCOMMITTEE ON HUMAN RESOURCES
DAVID G. REICHERT, Washington, Chairman
TODD YOUNG, Indiana LLOYD DOGGETT, Texas
MIKE KELLY, Pennsylvania JOHN LEWIS, Georgia
TIM GRIFFIN, Arkansas JOSEPH CROWLEY, New York
JIM RENACCI, Ohio DANNY DAVIS, Illinois
TOM REED, New York
CHARLES W. BOUSTANY, JR., Louisiana
C O N T E N T S
__________
Page
Advisory of Febuary 19, 2014 announcing the hearing.............. 2
WITNESSES
Jeanne Kohl-Welles Senator, 36th Legislative District of
Washington..................................................... 7
John Urquhart, Sheriff, King County, Washington, Testimony....... 17
Reagan Dunn, Councilman, King County, Washington, Testimony...... 21
Noel Gomez, Cofounder and Director of Survivor Services, Seattle
Organization for Prostitution Survivors, Testimony............. 26
Mandy Urwiler, Senior Network Representative, The Mockingbird
Society, Testimony............................................. 31
Dawn Rains, Chief Operating Officer, Treehouse, Testimony........ 35
FIELD HEARING ON EFFORTS TO
PREVENT AND ADDRESS CHILD SEX
TRAFFICKING IN WASHINGTON STATE
----------
WEDNESDAY, FEBRUARY 19, 2014
U.S. House of Representatives,
Committee on Ways and Means,
Washington, D.C.
The subcommittee met, pursuant to call, at 9:00 a.m., in
Council Chambers of the Auburn City Hall, 25 West Main Street,
Auburn, Washington, the Honorable Dave Reichert [chairman of
the subcommittee] presiding.
[The advisory of the hearing follows:]
HEARING ADVISORY
Chairman Reichert Announces Field Hearing on Efforts to Prevent and
Address Child Sex Trafficking in Washington State
Council Chambers of the Auburn City Hall at 25 West Main Street in
Auburn, Washington
Washington, Feb 19, 2014
Congressman Dave Reichert (R-WA), Chairman of the Subcommittee on
Human Resources of the Committee on Ways and Means, today announced
that the Subcommittee will hold a hearing on Washington State's efforts
to prevent child sex trafficking and protect youth in foster care from
becoming victims of this crime. The hearing will take place at 9:00
a.m. Pacific Standard Time on Wednesday, February 19, 2014, in the
Council Chambers of the Auburn City Hall at 25 West Main Street in
Auburn, Washington.
In view of the limited time available to hear from witnesses, oral
testimony at this hearing will be from invited witnesses only.
Witnesses will include a law enforcement official, as well as
representatives of organizations working to prevent child sex
trafficking by reducing the vulnerability of youth in foster care.
However, any individual or organization not scheduled for an oral
appearance may submit a written statement for consideration by the
Committee and for inclusion in the printed record of the hearing.
In announcing the hearing, Chairman Reichert stated, ``This hearing
will provide Congress with direct input from people on the front lines,
such as law enforcement, local nonprofits, former foster youth, and
survivors themselves, who are working to protect youth in foster care
from sex traffickers. Their perspectives are critical and will inform
our efforts to pass national legislation to do just that, ensuring more
young people can grow up to lead healthy, successful lives.''
BACKGROUND:
Recognized as one of the first states to pass laws criminalizing
human trafficking, Washington has been a leader in preventing and
addressing child sex trafficking. For example, Shared Hope
International, a group focused on preventing sex trafficking around the
world, recently recognized the work of Washington in both prosecuting
those who traffic children for sex and in protecting victims of this
crime, giving the State an ``A'' grade for its work. In addition, a
variety of State and local stakeholders have worked together to develop
a statewide Model Protocol for Commercially Sexually Exploited
Children. This protocol will help law enforcement, the courts, victim
advocacy organizations, youth service agencies, and other first
responders in better identifying child sex trafficking as well as the
risks that make children vulnerable to this crime.
Reports suggest that children in the child welfare system are at
heightened risk for being victims of sex trafficking. In 2010,
officials in Los Angeles, California reported that 59 percent of
juveniles arrested for prostitution were in the foster care system. Of
children reported missing to the National Center for Missing and
Exploited Children, who are also likely child sex trafficking victims,
60 percent were in foster care or group homes when they ran away.
Research shows the majority of sex trafficked youth experienced sexual
abuse growing up, and that victims of sexual abuse are 28 times more
likely to be involved in prostitution than children who have not
suffered such abuse. As improvements in the child welfare system aimed
at preventing childhood sexual abuse are considered, it is critical
that child welfare agencies be equipped to do more to prevent and
address the consequences of this crime, especially when youth in foster
care are involved.
FOCUS OF THE HEARING:
This hearing will highlight efforts by groups in the State of
Washington to end child sex trafficking, prevent youth in foster care
from becoming victims of this crime, and empower youth in foster care
so they can achieve success.
DETAILS FOR SUBMISSION OF WRITTEN COMMENTS:
Please Note: Any person(s) and/or organization(s) wishing to submit
for the hearing record must follow the appropriate link on the hearing
page of the Committee website and complete the informational forms.
From the Committee homepage, http://waysandmeans.house.gov, select
``Hearings.'' Select the hearing for which you would like to submit,
and click on the link entitled, ``Please click here to submit a
statement or letter for the record.'' Once you have followed the online
instructions, submit all requested information. Attach your submission
as a Word document, in compliance with the formatting requirements
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change in House mail policy, the U.S. Capitol Police will refuse
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or if you encounter technical problems, please call (202) 225-1721 or
(202) 225-3625.
FORMATTING REQUIREMENTS:
The Committee relies on electronic submissions for printing the
official hearing record. As always, submissions will be included in the
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not alter the content of your submission, but we reserve the right to
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1. All submissions and supplementary materials must be provided in
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relies on electronic submissions for printing the official hearing
record.
2. Copies of whole documents submitted as exhibit material will not
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3. All submissions must include a list of all clients, persons,
and/or organizations on whose behalf the witness appears. A
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The Committee seeks to make its facilities accessible to persons
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call 202-225-1721 or 202-226-3411 TTD/TTY in advance of the event (four
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Note: All Committee advisories and news releases are available
online at http://www.waysandmeans.house.gov/.
Chairman REICHERT. I appreciate everybody being here today.
This is such an important topic, and I think one that, of
course, everyone in this room clearly understands. As I went
around and met each of you before the hearing, discovering what
your roles are in helping to eliminate human trafficking, I
know Jim and I both appreciate all the hard work that you do.
It is not an easy task.
We are also going to hear from some folks this morning, not
only those who are working in the world of trying to prevent
human trafficking, but we will also hear from folks who have
nearly become involved in, or have been involved in, and are
survivors. And I think it is important for us to hear from
those folks as well.
I will read part of a prepared statement. Today, we are
doing what Congress, in my opinion, should do more of, and that
is get out of Washington, D.C., and listen to real people who
deal with critical issues like we are dealing with today. We
are grateful for all of our witnesses, and thank you all for
joining us today, and we look forward to your testimony.
Your testimony will be made available on the Ways and Means
Committee Web site for anyone around the country to read and,
hopefully, use as communities work together to prevent sex
trafficking.
And I am pleased to be joined by my longtime colleague on
the Ways and Means Committee, Jim McDermott. We are pleased to
have Jim with us here today. He is the past chairman of the
Human Resources Subcommittee and has a wealth of knowledge, as
you might guess, about these issues from his days in the
Washington State Legislature as well.
I would also like to acknowledge Mayor Nancy Backus,
Councilman Bill Peloza, and their staffs, and thank them all
for their work in helping make this possible today.
Before being elected to Congress, I was the sheriff of King
County, as most of you know. And I spent nearly 33 years in the
Sheriff's Office right here in King County. And I know that you
also know I saw firsthand in my work, not only in the Green
River case, but on patrol when I first started in the early
'70s, the tragedy that occurs when young boys and young girls
run away from home, leave their dysfunctional homes and end up
on the street.
And a lot of time, they end up in the arms of people who
are there to do them harm, and they figure that out way too
late. And in some cases, they lose their lives, and families
are ripped and torn apart. In some cases, they survive, but
they are scarred for life, living in that community, in that
underworld.
And it is so critical for us to take action to work
together to end and eliminate human trafficking. These are
children that we are talking about.
Back in the Green River days, I can remember meeting young
girls and young boys on the street who were 11 years old, 12
years old. And I know that some of you today are still dealing
with young children on the streets of our cities right here in
our own communities.
Back in August 1982, I was called to investigate with Kent
Police Department the body of a young woman who was found in
the Green River in Kent, only a few miles from where we are
sitting right now. Three days later, I received a call about
two more bodies, both young women. And then I found a third
body at that same location.
Little did I know on that day, but finding these victims
began a 2-decade hunt for a man who became known as the Green
River killer. Once caught, he confessed to killing between 60
and 70 young women who had been involved in the sex trade.
The first known victim of the Green River killer was Wendy
Coffield. She was only 16 years old when she was killed. Wendy
was living in a foster home when she ran away. But because she
had run away before, no one was looking for her. We need to do
more to protect kids like Wendy Coffield, and that is why we
are all here today.
To better understand this issue, we have already had
several hearings in Washington, D.C. Our own Justice Bobbe
Bridge joined us for one of those hearings when she summarized
what has been happening here in Washington, and also provided
us with recommendations for national reforms.
Based on her recommendations and those of other experts,
this last week, I introduced legislation to help every State
better protect youth in foster care from being victims of sex
trafficking. And I was pleased to be joined in introducing that
bill by my colleague Lloyd Doggett of Texas, who currently
serves as the lead Democrat on the subcommittee, as well as Mr.
McDermott, who also serves on the Ways and Means Committee.
Other Congressional committees have also been working on
strengthening penalties on traffickers and johns, as well as
preventing international trafficking.
Later this year, I expect the House will act on all of
those bills, and I am confident we will be able to get our
legislation to the President's desk. The reason I am confident
is because the approach we are taking is practical, based on
State experience, and it is bipartisan.
As Jim can tell you, when we get the lead Republican and
the lead Democrat on a subcommittee to agree on a bill, that is
usually a formula for success.
Our bill will not increase our debt, but we will ensure
that all States take real steps to better understand the
problem and keep kids safe while they are in foster care. That
is a beginning and not an end.
Ultimately, making this work will require having
discussions like this one in communities all across the
country. This community is uniquely suited to lead that
conversation and show the way.
Again, many thanks to all of you who are here today,
playing a part in doing just that.
I now recognize Mr. McDermott for his opening statement.
Mr. MCDERMOTT. Thank you very much, Dave.
You are witnessing a rare occurrence, I think, in the
modern-day Congress, a Democrat and a Republican working
together on something. This subcommittee has had a long history
of being very nonpartisan, because the issue that we are
dealing with here is not Democrat, is not Republican. It is
kids that are ground up in the system.
And the bills that I put through when I was the chairman,
the Foster Connections and some of the other acts, related to
foster kids and the things that Dave is putting through, and
people before me, are always bipartisan. In fact, my bills went
through the House, both with me as chairman and with a
Republican as chairman, with no votes against it, because we
worked together on this issue.
And I think that Dave is to be commended for having this
hearing.
The issue, it seems to me, of trafficking is sometimes--I
want to make sure people understand we are talking not only
about girls, but also about boys, because that is a real part
of this problem. And the tie to foster care is a very tight one
in many, many, many instances because youngsters get into a
foster situation and decide, for whatever reason, they can't
stand it. And they leave when they are under 18, or they come
to the age of 18 and they age out of foster care and have no
other resources.
So they go out in the streets, and drugs and prostitution
are right there. And it is a way to live, a terrible kind of
life, but it is a way to do it.
And the efforts to interrupt that, I think, are what we are
really here to talk about today. And I would rather listen to
the witnesses than talk.
I am a child psychiatrist, and I have been doing it since
1970. I started out at Cascadia and a lot of other places where
youngsters who are in these situations wind up, and I have seen
it all.
But we have had our problems in finding the resources to
actually help these kids on a widespread basis. And I would
like to hear what is going on today.
So thanks, Dave. And thanks for all of you for coming in to
testify.
Chairman REICHERT. Great, Jim. Thank you so much.
And without objection, each member will have the
opportunity to submit a written statement and have it included
in the record at this point.
Chairman REICHERT. I want to remind our witnesses to please
limit their oral statements to 5 minutes. However, without
objection, all the written testimony will be made a part of the
permanent record.
So if panelists would please take your seats at this time,
we will introduce you and we will begin our testimony.
Thank you.
So on our panel this morning, we will be hearing from
Jeanne Kohl-Welles, a senator of the 36th Legislative District
of Washington. Thank you for being here, Senator.
John Urquhart, the sheriff of King County. John, thanks for
being here.
Reagan Dunn, councilman, King County. Reagan, thank you for
being here.
Noel Gomez, cofounder and director of Survivor Services,
Seattle Organization for Prostitution Survivors. Noel, thank
you for being here today.
Mandy Urwiler, senior network representative, The
Mockingbird Society. Mandy, good to see you again. Thank you
for being here this morning.
Dawn Rains, chief operating officer of Treehouse. Dawn,
thanks for being here this morning.
Senator, you are recognized for your statement this
morning. Thank you.
STATEMENT OF JEANNE KOHL-WELLES, SENATOR, 36TH LEGISLATIVE
DISTRICT OF WASHINGTON
Ms. KOHL-WELLES Thank you for the opportunity to testify
this morning on this important issue.
As you noted in your advisory, Washington State has been a
leader in the Nation on antisex trafficking legislation since
former State Representative Velma Veloria began championing
this effort in the Legislature in 2002.
Washington was the first State to outlaw human trafficking.
And between 2002 and 2013, the Legislature passed 33 bills, all
with bipartisan leadership and supporters.
But sex trafficking, as well as all forms of human
trafficking, is a pervasive and ever-changing social problem.
It occurs in many forms, from mail-order bride trafficking,
including two murders in our State, to false advertisements for
au pairs, and to the coercion of minors and children being
trafficked via the Internet.
Unfortunately, though, 33 antitrafficking bills over 11
years only begins to address this horrifying commodification of
human beings. Domestic sex trafficking of minors came to light
in the mid-2000s as a recognizable term, with considerable
awareness brought by former U.S. Congresswoman Linda Smith and
Shared Hope International, API Chaya, the Committee for
Children, Seattle Against Slavery, and YouthCare, among others.
We have made a great deal of progress in passing
legislation and, I believe, also in raising awareness among the
public.
We began our work, mainly, on sex trafficking of minors
with Senate Bill 5718, passed in 2007. It created a new crime
of commercial sexual abuse of a minor, which replaced the crime
of patronizing a juvenile prostitute. Follow-up legislation in
2009 and 2010 strengthened penalties and allowed for diversion
of cases for those minors who agreed to participate in
wraparound services.
We also, in 2010, with the efforts of Seattle Against
Slavery and with the State Attorney General Rob McKenna,
permitted placement of informational posters in rest stops
along I-5 and other State highways in conjunction with the
winter Olympics taking place in British Columbia, which seemed
to be placing more youth at risk.
Treating victims of trafficking, especially children and
minors, as victims rather than criminals has been an important
component of the laws we have enacted.
Children are not prostitutes. They are victims. They are
coerced or forced into this practice by perpetrators and need
to be protected and assisted, not jailed.
Another important component to the way sex trafficking of
minors is being addressed in Washington is by meeting head on
the challenges that technology and the Internet pose when
addressing this problem. Twelve bills became law in 2012--we
have a handout for you--including a bill that was the first of
its kind in the country relating to the online advertiser
Backpage.com.
Senate Bill 6251 created a new crime of publishing adult
escort ads involving minors while providing an affirmative
defense for advertising businesses that verify the age of the
individuals depicted in the ads, which Backpage does not do. It
was passed unanimously by the Legislature. And, unfortunately,
when it came into effect, Backpage.com sued the State in
Federal court charging the new law violated the First Amendment
and the 1996 Federal Communications Decency Act.
After the case was settled, Senate Bill 5488, passed in
2013, repealed the law and imposed an additional fine of $5,000
for using online ads to facilitate the commercial sexual abuse
of a minor.
I am running out of my time, so you will have to read my
written testimony, but I am pleased that we did pass just
yesterday before our 5 p.m. cutoff to get bills out of their
house of origin, Senate Bill 6017, which allows local law
enforcement to seize materials and properties used in
connection with child pornography and commercial sexual abuse
of a minor, and to keep more of the assets in order to defray
the costs of investigations and reapply the funds to future
investigations in this bill.
Thank you very much for inviting me.
[The prepared statement of Ms. Kohl-Welles follows:]
[GRAPHIC(S) NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT]
Chairman REICHERT. Thank you, Senator.
We have an emergency over to my right.
[Laughter.]
Chairman REICHERT. Sheriff, you are recognized for 5
minutes for your testimony.
STATEMENT OF JOHN URQUHART, SHERIFF, KING COUNTY, WASHINGTON
Sheriff URQUHART. Thank you, Mr. Chair. I am very honored
to appear today before this committee.
The trafficking of our youth is an abhorrent practice, and
the issue is long overdue for the type of publicity and
exposure it seems to be finally receiving.
While any one of any age can be trafficked, the legislation
we are here to discuss today focuses on a subset of girls and
boys who are especially vulnerable to becoming victims of this
form of modern-day slavery.
Mr. Chair, I have been a police officer for 38 years. You
were my sergeant back in the day, and as we both know, society
did not always view those trapped in the sex trade as victims.
We had other words for them: hooker, prostitute, and
streetwalker, to name a few. ``Victim'' was never one of those
words.
Sure, we occasionally arrested the johns who were out there
soliciting, but you and I both know it was much easier to make
a case against the woman working the street than her customer.
I spent a lot of time on patrol and then as a vice
detective on Pacific Highway South, which eventually became the
City of SeaTac.
I investigated and arrested people for prostitution. Those
were my marching orders. And I arrested a lot of women, and
occasionally girls, who were selling their bodies. And
virtually all of them went to jail or the youth center.
Mr. Chair, those days do not stir up feelings of nostalgia
for me. But as society evolves, as people evolve, so must law
enforcement evolve.
Thankfully, this groundswell of evolution has occurred in
Washington State at all levels of government. For years, the
Office of Attorney General, through two administrations, has
made fighting human trafficking one of its top priorities.
Locally, the King County Council, with the leadership of
Councilmember Dunn, has allocated specific funding for public
health and to the Sheriff's Office to raise awareness and to
understand the problem of human trafficking better.
King County Superior Court Judge Barbara Mack is chairing
the Commercially Sexually Exploited Children Task Force to
develop and implement a coordinated, countywide response to
childhood prostitution. The King County prosecutor, Dan
Satterberg, takes cases of human trafficking very seriously and
even obtained Washington State's first conviction under our
human trafficking statute.
And my patrol deputies and detectives in the Sheriff's
Office place a high priority on locating and rescuing those who
have been coerced, beaten, or otherwise trafficked against
their will.
Last year, we implemented mandatory training for all
commissioned personnel to recognize the signs of human
trafficking. My deputies now have a broader base of resources
for which to refer victims.
And every day we partner with the Federal Government on a
joint task force to fight human trafficking. We constantly
share information and resources with the U.S. Attorneys' Office
locally, because oftentimes investigating the perpetrators of
this crime takes us across jurisdictional boundaries.
Mr. Chair, the legislation discussed today addresses a
systemic failure for our children who have no choice but to
depend on the State for their welfare. As you, yourself, have
quoted, 59 percent of juveniles arrested in Los Angeles for
prostitution were in the foster care system. Sixty percent of
child sex trafficking victims were in foster care or group
homes before they ran away.
These statistics are simply astounding. They came as a
surprise to me, but I am not so sure the numbers surprised
everyone in this room. This room is filled with service
providers who have spent years trying to convince the public
that the vast majority of those involved in the sex trade have
been victims of abuse in the past, making them that much more
susceptible for continued abuse.
There is nothing voluntary about a child who has engaged in
survival sex. There is nothing voluntary about a woman whose
pimp coerces and pressures her into engaging in sex for money,
just to have the pimp keep the proceeds. And there is
absolutely nothing voluntary about any adult paying any child
for sex.
I spoke earlier about a certain level of lack of sympathy
law enforcement used to have for the victims caught up in the
sex trade. Thankfully, Mr. Chair, I suspect you were ahead of
the times in those days. One has to only know your personal
history as a teenager, or have watched the level of compassion
and determination for justice you showed for the victims of the
Green River killer, to know that this issue has been and will
always be near and dear to your heart.
No, I am not nostalgic for those days. But putting that
different time into perspective shows how far we have come in
recognizing and fighting human trafficking. Simply put, this
legislation will save lives, and I thank you for taking up the
cause.
Thank you.
[The prepared statement of Sheriff Urquhart follows:]
[GRAPHIC(S) NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT]
Chairman REICHERT. Sheriff, thank you for your testimony.
Councilman Dunn, you are recognized for 5 minutes.
STATEMENT OF REAGAN DUNN, COUNCILMAN, KING COUNTY, WASHINGTON
Mr. DUNN. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, for holding this
hearing. Congressman McDermott, as well. We are grateful for
this. It is such an important issue. I wanted to highlight some
of the work that King County has done to fight human
trafficking.
It is estimated that, this year alone, between 300 and 500
young people--mostly women, but some boys and men--will be
brought into the sex trade in King County alone, and that is a
number we estimate occurs every year. That doesn't mean 300 to
500 incidents of actual sexual slavery but new people brought
into the profession.
And so it is a serious issue, and children as young as 11
years old have been brought in and sexually exploited for
commercial purposes in King County.
Through the hard work of many individuals in Olympia, such
as Senator Kohl-Welles, who just testified, Washington State
has been a national leader in legislation to fight human
trafficking. And I wanted to take a moment to talk about some
of the things we have done at the local level to fight back
against human trafficking.
King County Superior Court, in partnership with the Center
for Children and Youth Justice, is leading King County's most
comprehensive work yet to support children who have been
commercially sexually exploited. Under the leadership of
Barbara Mack, the King County Commercially Sexually Exploited
Children Task Force is working to develop and implement a
coordinated, countywide response to childhood prostitution.
As Sheriff Urquhart just mentioned, the Sheriff's Office
has played a key role in the county's effort to end human
trafficking.
The King County Prosecutor's Office works diligently to
prosecute cases of human trafficking. One highlight is the fact
that the PAO obtained Washington State's first-ever conviction
under the State's human trafficking statute, which requires
prosecutors to prove that the defendant caused the victim to
engage in forced labor or involuntary servitude for the
defendant's personal gain.
The executive department provides some direct services to
victims and has embarked on educating certain staff about human
trafficking.
One significant tool for bringing human trafficking into
the open is utilizing the National Human Trafficking Resource
Center hotline. It connects callers to resources, including law
enforcement and services and information about the crime of
human trafficking.
For victims of human trafficking, the public posting of
information and hotline phone numbers in locations where the
information may be seen is critical as they might not have
access to the Internet or to other forms of community-based
outreach and awareness programs.
For community members, information and calls to the hotline
often generate future tips and a better understanding of the
red flag indicators of human trafficking.
Now, as a former Federal prosecutor, I prosecuted sex
crimes, and I have been leading a series of legislative efforts
in King County to bring better awareness to the National Human
Trafficking Resource hotline. As you might have seen in the
last year, in 2012, I drafted legislation to launch a public
information campaign utilizing metro buses to display the human
trafficking national hotline number throughout King County.
King County's efforts were multiplied through a partnership
with private-sector media companies that included Clear Channel
Media and Titan, as well as the City of Seattle, with
strategically placed billboards along roads in certain
locations across Western Washington. So there were $200,000
worth of pro bono billboard advertising provided, and over 200
metro buses where the signs were.
The antitrafficking campaign was displayed all over King
County, including more than 200 buses, and those buses covered
2,134 square miles in King County with a population of over 2
million.
The public information campaign raised awareness of the
signs of human trafficking, leading to an increase in local
call volume to the National Human Trafficking hotline. And we
estimate that at least 17 of these calls were crisis calls
identifying human trafficking situations. And that is 17 lives
that were potentially saved as well.
We are still working hard to highlight the national hotline
number across King County. I have introduced legislation with
the County Council that calls for the placement of human
trafficking public awareness materials in all of our county
facilities, such as public health clinics, transit centers,
courthouses, and other locations were trafficked individuals
and the public may see the information. The legislation calls
upon the county executive to explore information posting
opportunities with all of our partners--bus shelters, clinics,
hospitals--where trafficked individuals may utilize services
and, in turn, see information on where to go.
The only way we can begin to get a handle on these crimes
and to stem the tide is to continue to work together and attack
the problem from all sides, which is what I believe you are
doing here today.
Thank you so much, Mr. Chairman, Mr. McDermott, for being
here. We appreciate the work that you are doing.
[The prepared statement of Mr. Dunn follows:]
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Chairman REICHERT. Thank you, Councilman Dunn.
Ms. Gomez, you are recognized for your testimony.
STATEMENT OF NOEL GOMEZ, COFOUNDER AND DIRECTOR OF SURVIVOR
SERVICES, SEATTLE ORGANIZATION FOR PROSTITUTION SURVIVORS
Ms. GOMEZ. Thank you for having me here today. My name is
Noel Gomez, and I am a survivor of sex trafficking, and also
the cofounder of the Organization for Prostitution Survivors
and the director of Survivor Services. I am here to talk a
little bit about myself and what we are doing.
I grew up in a middle-class family in Kirkland. Everything
was normal from the outside. There was a lot of alcoholism and
violence in the homes that I grew up in. And when I was 12,
some sexual abuse happened, and that is when things really
started changing for me.
I started using drugs and drinking alcohol to deal with
everything that was going on at home and everything that was
going on with what had happened to me, and I ended up getting
pregnant at 16.
My father wanted to put me into foster care and basically
get rid of me. He tried to force me to sign papers saying that
I would go to foster care and basically that didn't happen, and
he told me just to leave and not come back, and I never did.
So I left home when I was 16 years old and I was pregnant.
Once I had my child, his father's family took custody of
him, and then I was pretty much on my own for the rest of the
time. I lived my teenage years much like many foster care youth
do. I ran from here to there, living where I could and getting
involved in the juvenile justice system.
The difference between me and a foster care youth in the
juvenile justice system is I would get out, because as far as
they knew, I wasn't State-dependent. My friends, the foster
care kids, would have to stay in juvie until they found a
placement for them, which would be a foster home for them to go
to.
So anyway, usually, the youth that I knew would go and then
run right away, just because they felt like they had found
their families on the street and didn't want to be somewhere
where they didn't feel like they were wanted or belong. It
wasn't their family.
So anyway, I met a guy. I met a young man who appeared to
have it all. He had the car, the apartment, the alcohol,
everything, the money. He became my boyfriend and ended up
being a very violent pimp that was very well-known in Seattle
during that time. He was later murdered in prison, because he
was prosecuted in 2000 for trafficking minors.
Anyway, he ended up pimping me and trafficking me from
State to State. We went all around the West Coast for about 4
years. I don't have time to go into detail about my life, but I
can tell you it was like living in the middle of a war zone at
all times, never knowing who was going to try to kill me or who
was going to rape me next, and that included my trafficker.
My story is similar to the story that I hear over and over
again from the girls who have been trafficked. They say they
want to be with their real families and they don't want to be
in the system. They don't want to live in a foster home,
especially after everything they have been through. They need
special services at this point.
Without offering services, we can change laws and do
things, and that is wonderful, but we need to offer services to
these youth and the women and girls and boys who have been
through this.
I ended up being stuck in the life for 15 years. I had no
resources, nobody to turn to. There were no services. It was
the hardest transition of my life.
I didn't have any skills. I didn't have a resume. I didn't
have an education. I didn't have anything.
I got away from my pimp after 4 years, after attempting to
escape many times. Once he found me and handcuffed me in broad
daylight, threw me in the trunk of his car and kept me in there
for hours, and I woke up in Portland.
So getting away from him was not an easy thing to do.
Nine years ago, I decided I was leaving the life, no matter
what, and I was determined to do it. I got my first job in a
bar, because a friend of mine worked there and was able to get
me a job.
Since then, my life has become about helping women and
girls and boys in the life to get out and get the help that
they need.
Our organization offers survivor support groups, art
workshops, drop-in services, that we need to be doing much,
much more of. So I decided to start OPS because I know there
were no services for anybody that was coming out of the life.
So that is what we are doing.
Thank you.
[The prepared statement of Ms. Gomez follows:]
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Chairman REICHERT. Ms. Gomez, thank you so much for your
testimony. I know that everybody in this room, you could hear a
pin drop as you were telling your story. And sadly, this is not
a unique story.
Ms. GOMEZ. Not at all.
Chairman REICHERT. So I thank you so much for having the
courage to be here today and share that with us.
Ms. GOMEZ. Thank you.
Chairman REICHERT. Ms. Urwiler, you are recognized for your
testimony.
STATEMENT OF MANDY URWILER, SENIOR NETWORK REPRESENTATIVE, THE
MOCKINGBIRD SOCIETY
Ms. URWILER. Thank you. Hello, Congressman Reichert and
Congressman McDermott. Thank you both for your time and effort
on the Preventing Sex Trafficking and Improving Opportunities
for Youth in Foster Care Act. It is a really long name.
My name is Mandy Urwiler, and I work for the Mockingbird
Society. I am 19 years old, and I entered foster care when I
was 15. I am still in foster care now, thanks to the Extended
Foster Care program.
I could tell you several stories about when people tried to
get me to turn a trick for them, but there is one in particular
I would like to share.
I was 13 and I had just been expelled from my previous
school because of complications while running away from home.
Consequently, I started attending an alternative school for
juvenile court-involved youth. I quickly learned that many of
my classmates were pimps and drug dealers.
On my second day at that school, they asked me to be their
whore and make them money. I said no, but they kept pushing.
After class let out, they followed me home, continuously
telling me that they needed me and I could make good money.
I went to class the next day and was still being pressured,
but I held my ground.
This time, when class let out for the day, I was beaten
brutally for saying no. I was shoved down and kicked while I
was on the ground. I was punched and had my head slammed into
the concrete. But I still said no.
When I went home that night, still being followed by my
attackers, I told my dad what happened. That may have been the
only time I ever saw my divorced parents agree on something,
and that was to pull me out of that school.
I was lucky because, in this case, it was a situation I
could get away from.
Not every young person living in foster care or in a group
home gets that chance, especially when they are a minor and may
not have a trusted adult advocating for them. Sometimes,
especially if the youth have run and are living on the streets,
the pimps are adult predators who are more sophisticated and
brutal than the young group that came after me.
Sometimes the youth being pressured doesn't have the
support wrapped around them to help them resist the way I did.
I saw girls who had run away from their foster homes and
were arrested for prostitution. I later talked to them and
found out they were afraid to leave the life because they had
been assaulted. They weren't given help to escape the clutches
of these evil people who hurt them. Instead, they were treated
as criminals by the police. I believe that they were victims,
not criminals.
I met these girls who were my age and even younger, and saw
what could have happened to me. I don't want to ever, ever have
to see that again, because no one should have to go through
that. I don't want anyone else to have to make the decision
between injury and sel1ing their bodies.
This is an epidemic that needs to stop. We say children who
are removed from their families will be safe from further abuse
and neglect. We must protect vulnerable youth in care from
predators like the ones who hurt me.
As a strategy for preventing sex trafficking, this bill
addresses the topic of normalcy for foster youth. I am happy to
see that this bil1 encourages States to adopt a prudent parent
standard to support normal life experiences for youth in care,
which is an effort that is already underway here in Washington
State.
I believe if youth had more opportunities to do normal
things they want to do without fear of running into barriers,
less youth would run from care.
When I was in my foster home, my foster parents couldn't
sign for the simplest of things, like school field trips, job
fairs, and college tours, and this negatively impacted my
grades, and I lost opportunities to explore educational and
career opportunities and resources.
But field trips aren't the only things I missed out on. I
never got to spend the night with friends, because my foster
parents were afraid of the liability. I didn't get my learner's
permit from the State for the same reason.
And in my experience, this path that leads too many foster
youth to be preyed upon is driven by a lack of control,
opportunity, and support.
I believe this bill will help youth by giving them more
input and control in their lives by allowing foster parents to
give their youth access to opportunities that are taken for
granted by others, and by giving youth who have already started
down a dangerous path a way out.
I ask the subcommittee to maintain its commitment to the
pieces of this bill that reinforce control, opportunity, and
support for youth in care.
Thank you.
[The prepared statement of Ms. Urwiler follows:]
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Chairman REICHERT. Thank you for your testimony.
To both of you, thank you for your courage and your
willingness to be here today to share your stories with us.
Ms. Rains, you are recognized for your 5 minutes.
STATEMENT OF DAWN RAINS, CHIEF OPERATING OFFICER, TREEHOUSE
Ms. RAINS. Thank you for inviting me to testify before you
today. My name is Dawn Rains, and I serve as the chief
operating officer of Treehouse, a Seattle-based nonprofit
serving foster care youth in Washington State. I am also a
former foster parent.
At Treehouse, our mission is giving foster kids a childhood
and a future. We are a major partner with Washington State's
child welfare system, providing foster youth with
individualized academic support, access to critical
extracurricular activities and community resources, and
material needs, like clothes, toys, and school supplies at our
free store, the Wearhouse. We provide this support to over
6,000 foster youth in Washington State every year.
We have set an ambitious goal that foster youth in King
County will graduate high school at the same rate as their
peers with a plan for the future by 2017. Currently, only half
of youth and foster care graduate high school on time and fewer
than 2 percent will earn a 4-year college degree.
Without a high school diploma and a plan for the future,
foster youth experience disproportionately high rates of
poverty, homelessness, incarceration, mental illness, substance
abuse, and sexual exploitation when they age out of foster care
or are missing from care.
We are pleased to endorse the proposed legislation.
Children come into foster care through no fault of their own.
We as a community have a special responsibility to kids in
foster care, and this proposed legislation improves future
prospects for youth in our community.
For my testimony, I would like to focus on two of the major
provisions of the bill that we are particularly passionate
about.
The first is how youth-centered planning is essential to
building foster youth engagement and investment in their
future. We support empowering every youth to participate in
planning their own future and transition from foster care and
to begin that process at the age of 14. Current transition
planning in Washington State child welfare is compliance-and-
checklist-oriented and begins too late to have the most
powerful impact. Starting in 2012, Treehouse began implementing
youth-centered, or what we call student-centered, planning with
middle- and high-school aged youth in foster care as part of
our academic support program called Graduation Success.
Student-centered planning is an evidence-based practice
designed to elicit and inspire youth's own plan for the future
within the context of support from the adults in their lives.
When youth set their own course, they build self-determination,
resilience, and problem-solving skills that lead to confidence
and self-sufficiency as young adults.
While student-centered planning is much more labor-
intensive than what public system social workers are typically
able to provide, we believe that the impact will be powerful in
building aspirational and proactive behavior that leads to
better life outcomes.
So how does this work in the field? Every youth in
Treehouse's Graduation Success program has an education
specialist that provides them with a critical stable adult
presence in their lives and partners with social workers,
caregivers, and schools to monitor academic progress and ensure
that they receive services tailored to their individual needs.
Foster youth work together with their education specialist
to define aspirational goals and educational milestones that
will help the youth stay on track to achieve those goals.
They then provide coaching to develop positive mindset and
drive progress toward meeting goals in their plans.
Education specialists are uniquely situated in a critical
role if youth should be at risk or actually go on the run, and
they are being trained on how to identify the risk factors
associated with sexual exploitation to support and redirect
these youth.
If youth should go on the run, they oftentimes keep in
touch with our staff and/or visit our Wearhouse to stock up on
clothes as their first stop when they run from care.
We are currently working with DSHS Children
Administration's Missing from Care workgroup to strategize how
to locate and reengage these youth in support services.
We see every youth in foster care is at risk of poor or
failing outcomes and believe each need an education specialist.
We are currently serving over 500 middle school and high
school youth in King County in our Graduation Success program
and are on course to fully saturate the population of foster
youth in King County.
The second major provision of the bill that I would like to
address is the importance of creating normalcy in the lives of
youth in foster care for improved outcomes.
We applaud the empowerment of licensed foster parents and
relative caregivers via a reasonable and prudent parent
standard, which would allow them to make day-to-day decisions
about a youth's ability to participate in normal childhood
experiences like sleepovers with friends, school field trips,
summer camps, and extracurricular activities.
Currently, bureaucratic barriers impede court and social
worker efforts and frustrate caregivers without adding value
for youth. Normal childhood activities are foundational
experiences that help youth develop interests, skills, and
dreams for the future. The relationships and connections that
are built doing these activities contribute to a youth's sense
of belonging, their mental health, and well-being.
At Treehouse our Little Wishes program helps to create
normalcy for kids in foster care by giving them access to self-
selected activities and experiences. This is a critical piece
of our model because we know kids who are positively engaged in
school and community have better academic and life outcomes. We
also know that these activities build a critical protective
factor that make youth less vulnerable to exploitation and sex
trafficking.
Thank you.
[The prepared statement of Ms. Rains follows:]
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Chairman REICHERT. Thank you for your testimony. One of the
things that is a little different about having a hearing here
in the district is that when the timer goes off, people stop
talking.
[Laughter.]
Chairman REICHERT. Back in Washington, D.C., they just keep
on going, so thank you for being so punctual and respectful of
the timer.
But I know that Jim has to leave soon for another
appointment, and the senator has to leave soon, too, because
they are still in session. So it is especially great to have
you take time out of your day here to be here. And because Jim
has to leave early, we are going to start with his questioning
first, and then I have a couple questions.
But, Jim, go ahead.
Mr. MCDERMOTT. Thank you, Dave.
Ms. Gomez, your testimony was very compelling, but the
thing that I didn't hear, and I try to figure out, you have two
kinds of kids who are caught up in trafficking. You have
underage kids who are out there surviving, just barely getting
by. And then you have people who have been immersed in the life
for a long period of time. And you said 9 years ago or
something you turned a corner. Tell me how that happened. What
was offered, or what did you stumble into, or who did you meet,
or how did that transition occur? Because I think one of the
things we struggle with is trying to figure out how do we take
people who have been way into the system, how do we then help
them not wind up in much worse circumstances.
Ms. GOMEZ. And that is why our organization is survivor-led
and run. I think that it is important to have survivors as
mentors and advocates for people who have been in the life.
For me, there was no support. I got into AA and met people
in AA who had been through things like I had. And that was
really the only support I had. There were no services or
anything like that.
So for me, I was just so angry and so tired of it, that,
you know, I just had to get out. I had to.
Mr. MCDERMOTT. Was the support of AA members of a similar--
it was really a support group, is what you are saying.
Ms. GOMEZ. Yes, and that is why I started specific support
groups for survivors, instead of having--because AA is not for
that, you know. It is for alcohol. But there are a lot of women
in AA and NA who had previously been in the life. And that is
how I got help, really, and support was from the recovery.
Mr. MCDERMOTT. Ms. Rains, you talked about involving
youngsters in their own planning. Children go into foster care
all the time in this country. I mean, Dave is responsible, and
I was responsible, for half a million foster kids all over the
United States. And they go for different reasons. How do you
set up something at the State level--or does it have to be at
the county level? Or where is it set up that youngsters,
somebody sits down with them and says, ``Now, look, you have a
bad situation at home, and you are not going home. That is not
possible. So how are we going to plan for your life from here
on?''
Where does that occur? Where should it occur?
Ms. RAINS. Yes, there is planning that happens in the child
welfare system with their social workers. In Washington, we
have what is called a 17\1/2\ meeting, where the final planning
happens.
Mr. MCDERMOTT. That is too late.
Ms. RAINS. It is way too late. We would love to see that
more proactive youth-involved planning happening from, again,
from the age of 14 on, because youth need to see a future for
themselves. In a situation where youth in foster care give up,
they have really no say or control in what is happening to
them--where they live, who they live with--this is a way for
them to reclaim some of that.
And we are doing it on a very local scale, with 500 youth.
We would love to see that program expand statewide, because it
is time-intensive. It relationship-based. We have to really
form those relationships in order for youth to trust us and
engage their caregivers and their social workers and the folks
at school in charting a course.
As an interesting side note, someone on my staff is doing a
Ph.D., and her dissertation is looking at former foster care
alums who also experienced special education while they were in
foster care. And she has been interviewing these young adults
and almost every single one have goals and dreams and
aspirations for their future, but no one taught them how to map
the course to get from A to B. And that is what we are really
trying to build in with the youth that we are working with.
Mr. MCDERMOTT. This is funded by your own private donations
to your--and there is what? Eight thousand kids? How many kids
are there in the State who are in foster care?
Ms. RAINS. Between 9,000 and 10,000.
Mr. MCDERMOTT. Senator Welles, where are we going to get
money to do that? What she is describing for 500 kids in one
program?
Ms. KOHL-WELLES. Well, obviously, Congressman McDermott,
that is an enormous challenge and is the discussion of the day
in Olympia.
We have the requirements to meet the McCleary decision for
fully funding K-12 education. We have increasing demands on our
social safety net and higher education and transportation. And
so, with our system of having--we are one of a handful of
states that does not have an income tax, so we have tax issues.
And we also have a very generous citizen initiative system in
our State.
Legislators in many ways have our hands tied in terms of
funding all of the needs that we have.
Mr. MCDERMOTT. I mean, the reason I raise this issue is
that I want the people who see and hear about what happened
here today to understand that doing what they are doing at
Treehouse is not done on the cheap, nor is it done without
money. You do need money to do that kind of stuff.
And if we are serious about trafficking, then we have to
talk about money at some point, because to give social workers
the time to have age 14 meetings instead of an age 17\1/2\
meetings is going to take time for people to sit down and talk
with kids about where they are going to go, how are they going
to do this.
Ms. KOHL-WELLES. Well, we have our revenue forecast coming
out, I believe tomorrow. And we know that our State is coming
out of the great recession, but it is a recovery that has been
slow. We are sales-tax-reliant, have one of the most regressive
if not the most regressive tax system in the country, so our
revenue, it is very difficult to have a sufficient amount
coming in.
But we are trying. We are making progress, and I am pleased
about that.
Mr. MCDERMOTT. Ms. Gomez, did anybody ever have that kind
of conversation with you in your trips through juvie downtown?
Ms. GOMEZ. No.
Mr. MCDERMOTT. You didn't need to turn it on to tell me
that.
[Laughter.]
Ms. GOMEZ. On the streets, there was nothing anywhere, no.
Nobody.
Mr. MCDERMOTT. So when you were processed through the
juvenile justice system, since you were not a foster kid and,
therefore, State-dependent, they just opened the door and said
goodbye.
Ms. GOMEZ. Yes. I could be released to my family, but they
would give you a bus ticket.
Mr. MCDERMOTT. How about you, Ms. Urwiler? What was your
experience? When did somebody start talking to you about what
you might become?
Ms. URWILER. Honestly, what I have thought of on what I
might become, it started before I entered foster care. I
started thinking about where I wanted to go. But I never really
had anybody to help guide me until I talked to my independent
living case manager, which has been amazingly helpful.
Mr. MCDERMOTT. How old were you then?
Ms. URWILER. Fifteen or 16. And then from there, I have
gotten help with filling out my FAFSA and all of my college
forms, still a hugely confusing process, but I am still
confused on where I am going. I don't know where I want to go.
I thought of everything from being a doctor specializing in
emergency pediatrics to getting a Ph.D. in theoretical physics
or a law degree or going into poli-sci. I don't know where I am
going.
Mr. MCDERMOTT. How old are you?
Ms. URWILER. Nineteen.
Mr. MCDERMOTT. You have a little while. You don't have to
make every decision yet.
[Laughter.]
Mr. MCDERMOTT. Dave and I got into this late in life.
Thank you all very much for your testimony. And I apologize
for having to leave.
Ms. KOHL-WELLES. Congressman, can I bring up one more thing
I think might be helpful to other young individuals who have
been facing similar experiences?
We have a very new but I think has a huge potential
scholarship program in our State called College Bound. And we
are able to reach out to young people in the seventh and eighth
grade who are low-income. And they are able to make a pledge to
keep a C average and stay in school. And if so, then they
receive a scholarship from the State, which is sizable, along
with other scholarships and grants that we have for the funding
of their college education.
Chairman REICHERT. I thank Jim for being here today.
And, Senator, if you have another comment or two you want
to make, that is fine.
Ms. KOHL-WELLES. Thank you. I would like to make one more
comment before I leave.
Chairman REICHERT. Please.
Ms. KOHL-WELLES. I appreciate that.
As I mentioned earlier with the case with Backpage.com,
which is an online advertiser that supposedly and admittedly
makes over $21 million a year on these online adult escort
services, what we ran into with having to settle the case for
our legislation, our new law, was, as I mentioned, the Federal
Communications Decency Act, which was enacted into law in 1996.
And the Internet has grown rather sizably since that time.
So we have a measure moving through the Legislature, Senate
Joint Memorial 8003, which will request Congress to amend the
Federal Communications Decency Act to reflect the current scope
of the Internet and take into account the role that IPOs play
in the advertising and profiting from sexual exploitation of
minors.
Right now, the advertisers are not responsible for third
parties who advertise on them in terms of the content, and we
really think there has to be a change made.
So thank you for listening to that request.
Chairman REICHERT. You are welcome. Thank you for that
thought. And thank you for your testimony and your hard work.
Ms. KOHL-WELLES. Thank you.
Chairman REICHERT. It takes all of us to have an impact on
tragic issues like the one we are dealing with.
Ms. KOHL-WELLES. And it is bipartisan.
Chairman REICHERT. Absolutely.
Ms. KOHL-WELLES. It completely has been unanimously passed,
in terms of the legislation. Thank you.
Chairman REICHERT. Thank you. Good luck in Olympia today.
Ms. KOHL-WELLES. Thank you.
Chairman REICHERT. Well, I would just like to make a couple
comments and then I have some questions, too.
First of all, I think it is important for you to know that
we are having this hearing today, but as you know, we come to
this all with different experiences. Jim's experience in child
behavior and his work prior to Congress in understanding child
behavior gives him a passion and compassion for young people,
and a certain insight that is very beneficial to the Ways and
Means Committee. There are other Members of the subcommittee
who bring different experiences, but are also just as
passionate and compassionate.
I think that is a critical thing for Americans to
understand, that it is just not a machine of legislation back
in Washington, D.C., with a lot of uncaring, process-oriented
people.
And in my own personal experience, as most of you know, my
story starts out very similar to Ms. Gomez's story, in that my
family was also a home of violence and alcohol, and I ran away.
But I had a football coach and a geometry teacher, which is one
of the few classes that I did okay in. For some reason, I got
the circles and squares and triangles.
I don't know how I did that, John.
But you know, there was a person in my life that I remember
sort of grabbed me by the back of the collar and said, ``Dave,
you are headed down the wrong road.'' But where was I to go?
And I lived in a car for a while when I was a senior in
high school. I was one of the fortunate ones that didn't get
sucked into the rest of the lifestyle.
But then I became a police officer and saw it as a 21-year-
old police officer on the street. And as John said, Sheriff
Urquhart said, that it is not a nostalgic time to remember back
to. It is a sad time to recall how people were treated and the
thought process that not only police officers but the entire
community really held toward people who were on the street.
And then when I began Green River, I was only 31 years old,
by the way, and I had dark brown hair then, believe it or not.
[Laughter.]
Chairman REICHERT. Thirty-one years old, and that was the
beginning of 19 years of working with young ladies like you.
And the story that you told, again, I want to make clear to
the audience and people who might hopefully listen to the
testimony today, is not a unique story.
And the difficulty we have in trying to convince young
people to please leave the streets because of the danger we
knew that lurked out there in the presence of a man who is now
in prison for 49 consecutive life terms, but not only him,
others.
As you said, Ms. Gomez, the life that our young people are
leading that have left their homes, whether foster children are
not, have left violent and dysfunctional homes and end up on
the street in the arms of people like some of the descriptions
that we heard today--I don't even like to mention his name--is
a battle. It is a war. And they are in a world of violence.
Imagine 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16 years old and that is your
life.
So I am so grateful for you and the work that you do.
And, Mandy, what did you want to be? I think a rocket
scientist?
[Laughter.]
Chairman REICHERT. I hope that you make that. You have
hope, and you both have hope. And we all go through struggles
and now you are applying that struggle to help people.
So my question, first of all, goes to the sheriff and to
the councilman. I think Washington State is known for being a
collaborative state. State, local, and city governments work
together a lot on issues. And you have described some of the
ways you are working.
Where do you see your efforts in working together going
from here? What are the next steps? What do you see in bringing
all this together, because I know back when I was in the
Sheriff's Office and even in this job, it seems to me that
there are so many programs and plans and people, all working
but sometimes at cross-purposes and repetitive efforts.
What are you looking to in the future, to bring all of
these valiant efforts together to coordinate the efforts so we
can be more efficient and effective in saving lives?
Sheriff URQUHART. I think what we have to stop doing is
fighting. And we talked about it today, Congressman McDermott
mentioned it, and Senator Kohl-Welles mentioned it. There is
not enough money for all of us, not enough money for the
Sheriff's Office, not enough money for Treehouse, not enough
money for Mockingbird.
And what we have done in the past, we have fought over
those funds. And guess who normally wins? The police. It is a
much easier sell to the public. It is a much easier sell to the
council and county executive to fund the police department.
And we have been real happy with that, but that is the
wrong way to do it. We have to quit fighting over this limited
number of funds and work together.
I much prefer to be in front of the county council, in
front of Councilmember Dunn hand-in-hand with the social
service providers and divvy up the money that way. They are
just as important on any social problem, including this one, as
the police are. And not just the Sheriff's Office but other
police departments as well have to realize that if we are going
to be successful.
To me, that is the next step, getting all of us on the same
page and quit fighting over the money.
Chairman REICHERT. That is a small pot that we all fight
over.
Councilman?
Mr. DUNN. I think John is right on there. I would just add
to that the way that we are approaching the issue of human
trafficking, generally, we are very much in sort of the
beginning to mid-stages of understanding the issues and
developing the best practices to deal with them.
You and I worked together more than a decade ago on gun
violence. We put together a plan based on a lot of experiences.
That plan worked over time.
We did the same thing with ecstasy and methamphetamine,
getting those labs out.
So there is an evolution that is going take a period of
years, as we understand from the victims' perspectives and what
the nonprofits need, who are those trigger people or
organizations that are going to tend to pull these people out
of that horrible life.
So what I think we should be driving toward is nonprofit
local, State, and Federal sets of best practices where we can
all emphasize our areas of expertise. We need to find
additional funding sources. Maybe we need to redirect existing
resources. We can do a better job of raising money from the
private sector, which I think we are starting to get better at
as we do what the most important thing here is, is raising
awareness, Congressman. That is one of the things that has been
found to be lacking.
This issue is probably the least understood and least
reported crime happening in our community today that somebody
is prosecuted. People don't understand it. They are still in
that mentality that there is a prostitute. That is a criminal
now. That is a victim.
So those are the things we are working toward, and
ultimately, a series of best practices promulgated with the
help of Congress, perhaps through the Office of Justice
Programs at the Federal level, may be the way to go.
Chairman REICHERT. Thank you. And I do think that it is an
invisible sort of mindset that the people have.
Back in the Green River days, and my sheriff days, John, as
you worked on the street--and I know some of the other law
enforcement officers in the room--I often wondered and thought
about people who were driving from home to work and drove by
all these young girls and boys on the street but never saw
them. And there were hundreds of them.
It just sort of was a shock to all of us that no one saw
anything as you went back to the scene to try to gain
information. There were no witnesses. However, there were lots
of people present. And that is a sad commentary.
I do think that you touched on something, both of you, and
Ms. Rains has touched on this, too, in her testimony. I think
when you think about 9,000 to 10,000 young people in foster
care and prevention, one of the things that we have to take a
look at is why are these 9,000 to 10,000 young people in foster
care in the first place.
And there is really a beginning seed of where we need to
start. And then those that are in foster care, of course, we
really need to wrap our arms around them as a State.
And I know there are people here from DSHS. And I thank you
so much for your work and thank you for being here today, too.
I know DSHS is involved with the Rescue and Restore effort,
and I think that that is a national effort.
And, Councilmember Dunn, you referred to Project Safe
Neighborhoods, which was an effort to end gun crime violence.
But I think Rescue and Restore could be a similar effort in
really eliminating human trafficking. It is something I think
that we could grab onto at a national level. And I think it
would take a State like Washington State, which is really
active and forward-thinking, to take Rescue and Restore, make
it a statewide program, a model for other states to model
after.
I wanted to ask Mandy, I know you touched on this just a
little bit. If I can call you Mandy, if that is okay?
Ms. URWILER. No problem.
Chairman REICHERT. So I really like how you characterized
one of the drivers behind becoming a victim of trafficking, is
that youth in foster care feel they have a lack of control.
Where do you think, in some of the areas that we talked about
control, how do you think that we can give youth control? What
are some areas that you see, from your perspective?
Ms. URWILER. For me, I was lucky because I actually had a
lot of control in my planning, because I had an attorney,
because I was lucky to be in one of the very few counties that
gives attorneys to foster youth.
But I think the control really comes in when I was able to
sit with my social worker and my attorney when I was looking at
foster homes to go to. And I actually got to interview the
foster parents, and I was able to say I don't want to be in
this placement because their values don't match up with mine
and I don't think we would get along. I was able to have
control on where I lived.
I was able to have control on when I got to go see my
family, because I was able to talk with my social worker and my
attorney and set up when the best visit times for me were. I
didn't have school on Fridays, because I was going to a school
that didn't have class on Fridays, so my visits were on
Fridays. I could take the bus up from Shelton to Seattle to see
my family.
But I didn't have control where I couldn't go on any school
field trips. I wasn't allowed to go to a friend's house. And my
friends, by the way, were a huge support to me.
For a short time, my ISSP, the service plan, said I was not
allowed to sit in my room and be on the phone with my friends
and family from back home all day, which my first 2 months
spent in care, I didn't come out of a room and spent pretty
much 24 hours a day on the phone with my support network at
home. I was told I couldn't do that, so I was cut off for
several months from being able to contact people when I needed
to. When I was getting ready for bed, I would call home and
say, ``Hey, I don't know what is going to happen and I am
scared, and I want to go home, and I miss you.'' And then I
wasn't allowed to do that. So that is a big control piece for
me.
Chairman REICHERT. Thank you. Yes, so it is really the
little things just about being a normal kid growing up in a
home.
Ms. Gomez, I think that Mr. McDermott touched on a question
that I want to go back to, and, again, going back to my
experience in trying to take people off the street, to either
get them to the YWCA or to a foster home or somewhere off the
street.
How do people come to your organization? How do they come
to you? Are you on the street? Do you have people on the street
trying to pull people out of that life? Do you have referrals
sent to you? Do police officers refer to you? How does that
happen?
Ms. GOMEZ. Yes, we have a relationship with the Innocence
Lost task force. They make referrals to us. Different
organizations make referrals to us.
A lot of it is word of mouth. A lot of the women and girls
that we have been working with have heard from other people
about us.
We get referrals from everywhere. I think that everybody in
social work is looking for somewhere to send their client who
had been in the life or been involved. And really, there are
not many resources.
So we are overwhelmed with people wanting to get in and get
into the program.
Chairman REICHERT. And it is not just about getting out of
the life, but you are also talking about drug addiction,
alcohol addiction, and all of those things, too, that go along
with it.
Ms. GOMEZ. Yes.
Chairman REICHERT. We know that sometimes that it is more
than once off the street and into treatment, back again, and
then back again. So it is a long-term effort to even save one
life. It doesn't happen overnight.
So I know that is a huge struggle. Thank you so much for
what you are doing.
And one of the things we want to do is help collect data,
because I think that as we talked about some of the future
efforts, we really need to make our efforts focused on where we
know the money is going to do the most good. So the collection
of information and data from all of you in this room who are
involved I think it is really helpful in helping us identify
where to really put our energy.
And just one last question for Ms. Rains. So when I
mentioned why are kids in foster homes anyway, I think we have
some of the answers to that, but how do we keep kids in their
families? Is your organization involved in looking at that data
at all, or working with other organizations that have looked at
that data? Do you think that is important for us to examine a
little bit closer?
Ms. RAINS. Absolutely. We are very excited about the
implementation in the State of Washington about family
assessment response, which diverts families and the youth from
coming into foster care in the first place, provides intensive
in-home family support. And it will be a program that will be
rolling out over the next couple of years here in Washington.
But we believe that kids in need should stay with their
families whenever possible, and so we are very excited about
that, learning from several other States that have implemented
differential response systems.
And when it is necessary for safety reasons to have youth
placed in foster care, I think surrounding them with as many
supporters as possible, giving them regular access to their
families, trying to reunite, reunify, families whenever
possible, is absolutely the best way to go. And Washington is a
leader in that arena.
We are also working every day with about 40 percent of our
youth in foster care in King County, for example, who are
actually place with relatives. And working with those families
to keep kids in their neighborhoods and family systems as much
as possible I think leads to additional protective factors that
can help keep youth off the streets and out of sex trafficking.
So all of those elements, I think, are important.
Chairman REICHERT. Yes, I agree. And thank you so much for
your work in that area, and I look forward to the roll-out of
the program. And if there is a role for us to play in that,
maybe we can partner with you, along with everyone else at the
table today, and in the room.
I was a foster grandparent for a while, until my two
grandkids were adopted. And I have to hand it to my daughter
and her husband. The visits with the biological mothers are a
tough thing to do, especially after adoption. But that has
continued on.
And both of these young women were drug and alcohol
addicted, meth addicted, moms and on the street. So these two
young kids, they have a stable home. But the visits with their
biological moms still take place, so I think that is an
important factor.
I want to thank all of you so much for attending the
hearing today, and thank all of you for your testimony.
The important thing is that we do not want this effort to
end here today for the Federal Government. So I want you all to
know that.
I know one of my least favorite things to hear when I was
the sheriff, or when I was working on a task force as the lead
investigator, was from some Federal agency, ``I am from the
Federal Government, and I am here to help.''
When I say that today, I really mean that. And I know that
Jim does, too, from the bottom of his heart.
We want to be able to help in this effort. And I think we
have something to offer besides legislation, hopefully. And so
thank you again for all your work.
Just for the record, I would like to thank all of our
witnesses and Jim McDermott for their testimony and attention
to this important issue. I look forward to our continued work
as a subcommittee as we work to prevent sex trafficking of
children in our foster care system.
We received a lot of excellent testimony and
recommendations today, which we will review closely as we plan
our next steps.
If members have additional questions for witnesses, we will
submit them to you in writing, and we would appreciate
receiving your responses for the record within 2 weeks.
Chairman REICHERT. The committee stands adjourned. Thank
you.
[Whereupon, at 10:19 a.m., the subcommittee was adjourned.]
[all]