[Congressional Record Volume 160, Number 17 (Wednesday, January 29, 2014)]
[House]
[Pages H1504-H1506]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                              {time}  1130
                      THE SLAVE TRADE OF CHILDREN

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under the Speaker's announced policy of 
January 3, 2013, the gentleman from Texas (Mr. Poe) is recognized for 
60 minutes as the designee of the majority leader.
  Mr. POE of Texas. Mr. Speaker, before I get into my official remarks 
this afternoon, I, too, want to thank Trudi Terry for her service to 
the House. A lot of folks don't know, especially folks throughout 
America, that as Chief Clerk of Debate--and all the clerks--they get 
here in the morning before we ever get here, and they don't go home 
until long after Congress is over because they have got to make sure 
that everything we say is appropriately recorded in the Congressional 
Record that is prepared by the clerks during the night before the sun 
rises the next day. It is a tremendous job, and our clerks do a 
tremendous job.
  Trudi, when you told me you were leaving yesterday, I told you, It 
can't be. Just say it isn't so. We depend on you. Now, you know, you 
sit right in the middle of the House, right between the Republicans, 
right between the Democrats, right down the center of the aisle making 
sure that you take care of all of us. I personally appreciate what you 
have done for me over the last 9 years since I have been in the House 
of Representatives, and I know that all Members appreciate the House 
staff for what you do.
  If people ever watch C-SPAN, occasionally they will see the clerks 
are always here, Mr. Speaker. They are always here. They are never 
sick. They never miss. Even when the House is closed down because of 
bad weather, there the clerks are. They are still here.
  So I appreciate their service. I know all Members of the House 
appreciate the service of all of you. And you don't get near the 
credit. You make us all look good, and I appreciate that very much.
  Mr. Speaker, I want to talk and address the House on a more serious 
note this afternoon, and it has to do with not the economy, it doesn't 
have to do with money or the debt, all those things that all Americans 
are concerned about, but it is dealing with something that, to me, is 
really serious, if not more serious, because it has to do with people--
children, primarily. What I am talking about is something that we 
thought doesn't happen in this country anymore, and that is slavery.
  Yes, we still have slavery throughout the world today in 2014. It is 
called human sex trafficking. And what we are talking about, and what I 
am talking about, has consequences throughout the United States. It is 
not just happening in foreign countries. It is not just isolated and 
happening a little bit. The scourge is happening throughout the world 
and, yes, has even come to the United States. That is one reason why 
this is National Slavery and Human Trafficking Prevention Month.
  It is vital that mothers and fathers understand the crime of human 
trafficking. I have four kids and I have 11 grandkids. Children are the 
greatest resource that the country has, and things are happening to 
them that a lot of Americans are unaware of, and it happens in our 
neighborhoods.
  Here is how it happens, a small example that happened in Houston. A 
young girl goes to the mall, like teenagers do, middle schoolers. 
Parents drop kids off at the mall on a Saturday, for example, and then 
come pick them up later in the day. The young girl was there with some 
others. She got to talking to a young male. When you think of sex 
traffickers, a lot of them think of the old guy in the trench coat. No. 
Many of them are young people.
  A good-looking guy in his early twenties starts talking to this young 
girl, and before you know it, they hit up a good conversation and he 
starts telling her things that she wants to hear. He buys a few things 
for her there in the mall. Before you know it, she is picked up, and he 
and this young girl, this middle schooler, go somewhere in a car. But 
they disappear into the Houston community, because now she has been 
kidnapped and is used, unfortunately, in the sex trade, in the sex 
slavery trade as a young teenage girl.
  These traffickers will find young girls anywhere. They will find them 
at salons. They will go to massage parlors. Human trafficking occurs in 
many different places. Sometimes there are storefronts that are for one 
business, but it is nothing more than a outlet of sex trafficking, and 
traditional businesses, unfortunately, are nothing more than fronts for 
forced prostitution of minors. They are held and forced to have sex 
with others for money so the trafficker can get money, and that filthy 
lucre goes to the slave trader. It happens in far-off places, and it 
happens in America.
  The victims are the ones I want to talk about today. There are 
domestic victims in the United States like the girl I mentioned in 
Houston, and there are international victims in other countries, and 
they are trafficked into the United States or throughout the United 
States for two purposes: for sex or for labor, forced labor.
  I have recently been to Central America and South America--Honduras, 
Guatemala, Costa Rica, Panama, and even Peru--and I have been able to 
see the sex trade, the sex trafficking business in those countries. It 
happens domestically in those countries as well as other countries 
throughout the world, but some of those girls are forced to come to the 
United States--not all of them, but some of them are. And be mindful, 
we do have girls in the United States who are transported throughout 
the country, domestic sex trafficking.
  I got to talk to some of these young girls in the shelters about 
their lives. I met one girl. I asked her, How did this happen to you? 
And she said, Well, when I was 9 years old, my mother sold me to a 
trafficker for a cell phone. And she got sold for a phone for mom, and 
then she goes into the sex trafficking business. After they reach a 
certain

[[Page H1505]]

age, then they just disappear into the society. This girl was rescued 
in Guatemala. There are shelters that help these young girls.
  I got to talk to several of these girls. And we are talking about the 
youngest that I met was 7, and they go all the way up to 17 to be 
minors. But I got to talk to some girls, five of them in one shelter, 
that were 12 years of age or younger--five of them. There were other 
girls in the shelter. These five girls I talked to, Mr. Speaker, all 
had children that were the product of forcible rape by one of the 
customers that had abused them.
  It is sex slavery, and it is sex trafficking throughout the world. 
They are forced into terrible, abusive conditions, whether it is work 
slavery or whether it is prostitution, forced prostitution.
  There are also young women--and males, too, but primarily young 
women--that are trafficked in our own neighborhoods for sexual 
servitude. As many as 100,000 children in the United States a year are 
at risk for sexual exploitation. And worldwide, Mr. Speaker, 
trafficking is a billion-dollar business. It is a $32-billion business 
a year. That is just a number, but what does that mean? That 
trafficking criminal activity is second only to narcotics trafficking 
in the United States or in the world. The difference between 
trafficking or selling drugs is that, when you sell drugs, the product 
is sold one time; but when you traffic young children, the trafficker 
sells that young child numerous times, numerous times a day.
  And the consequences are much less for trafficking children than they 
are for trafficking drugs. That is another issue we need to resolve. 
But the consequences are something that keeps this dastardly crime 
operating.

  Mr. Speaker, these traffickers are so bold that they brand these 
young girls with tattoos so that other traffickers, or pimps, whichever 
you want to call them, know that this property belongs to this 
trafficker. They will brand them somewhere on their body.
  The New York Times, Mr. Speaker, has reported that a girl in New York 
City was branded with a barcode so that her trafficker could keep up 
with her whereabouts. Barcodes. Barcodes are put on property. And I 
think this should be disturbing that this is happening to young 
children in the United States.
  Where do traffickers operate? They operate wherever there is a 
business. Unfortunately, they operate at big sporting events like the 
Super Bowl. New Jersey and New York have done an excellent job 
preparing for this year's Super Bowl by warning parents, warning 
children, and warning people who come to New York about the issue of 
sex trafficking, especially of children.
  So what can we do? What should we do about this issue that is taking 
place in other countries and the United States? The first thing we need 
to do is to treat these children like victims rather than criminals. 
They are treated like criminals.
  When the police go out and they go into an area and they raid that 
area, they take these girls who are forced into prostitution. Many 
times they file criminal charges on them. Now, in all fairness to the 
police, there are not places to put trafficking victims. There are just 
not enough shelters. But they are treated and observed by the community 
as criminals as opposed to victims. So we must change the mindset and 
laws in this country to treat them as victims, because that is what 
they are. They are victims of criminal conduct. They are not criminals 
themselves.
  The second thing we need to do is to prosecute those that are 
involved, and that includes not just the trafficker, but that includes 
the demand, that includes the customer, that includes, as it is said in 
the trade, the john, who seems to get away with this miserable conduct.
  And the third thing we need to do is to raise awareness in all 
communities about this scourge.
  It is unfortunate that my hometown of Houston, Texas, has become a 
major hub of this crime because of our interstates, our ports, our 
airports, and our proximity to the southern border. So young girls are 
smuggled into this area of Houston and then farmed out throughout the 
United States as property.
  Of course, it is something that people are aware of in our Houston 
community, and law enforcement is doing a good job to make folks aware 
of this crime and working together to close these places where these 
young children are trafficked. Other communities throughout the country 
are following the example of law enforcement--the media, government 
officials, nonprofits, churches, and communities working together--to 
stop this type of conduct.
  We need to be aware that it occurs. Denial seems to be the biggest 
problem in the United States. People I have talked to of all 
backgrounds don't believe that this is an issue, don't believe that 
this is a problem and do not want to believe that this criminal conduct 
is occurring. And it is. It is occurring right in the United States.
  I have recently introduced some legislation along with Carolyn 
Maloney from New York, bipartisan legislation. It certainly is 
bipartisan if it is Carolyn Maloney, who is from New York and a 
Democrat, and, of course, I am a Texas Republican. We get through the 
language barrier, but we have been able to file this legislation that 
is excellent. It is the Justice for Victims of Trafficking Act. It is 
also bipartisan. The Senate has filed our same bill over there. Senator 
Cornyn from Texas and Senator Wyden from Oregon have filed the same 
bill in the Senate.
  This bill looks at this problem in a broad scope. Hopefully, we will 
pass this bill because it will go a long way to solving this problem 
that we have. What it does is it focuses first on rescuing the victims 
of the crime.
  Mr. Speaker, it is my understanding, according to Shared Hope 
International, that in the United States there are 220-plus beds for 
minor trafficking sex victims--220-plus. That is all. The SPCA says 
there are 5,000 animal shelters in the United States, as there should 
be.

                              {time}  1145

  There are no shelters, not even that many shelters for the young 
women that are trafficked throughout the country. So we need to focus 
on the victims, take them out of the criminal justice system and put 
them in shelters, and find an avenue and funds to do that. We need to 
rescue the victims. That is our most important job. No matter where 
that victim is from, we must rescue them out of that environment that 
they have been forced into, into this modern day slavery.
  What it does to create revenue--because we are always talking about 
money; where are we going to get money--this doesn't create new funds, 
in the sense that it is a tax requirement. What it does is it allows 
Federal judges, when they have these people before them, they not only 
have the ability to put them in prison, where they should, but in 
similar crimes like trafficking, prosecution and trafficking, and other 
types of crimes, Federal judges can impose a fee on the defendant, and 
that money goes into a special fund that helps victims of crime. It 
gives them the resources for those shelters. It gives law enforcement 
resources to investigate this criminal conduct. So it makes those 
criminals pay the rent on the courthouse, pay for the system that they 
have created by imposing judges, imposing fines and fees on them, and 
that money is specifically used not to bring down the debt, but it is 
specifically used to help victims of criminal conduct. I think that is 
something that is important that we do.
  It also goes a little bit further, and it starts enforcing our 
punishment for these criminals. What I mean by that, the law in the 
country is pretty good to punish the trafficker, but the person who is 
getting away with all of this conduct is the demand. The customer is 
getting away. If there wasn't a demand, this act wouldn't be happening, 
but the system lets that person, unfortunately, get away with it.
  Now the law will be changed, if it passes, that the demand, the 
customer, the john, can get the same punishment as the trafficker. Not 
only that, we apply the RICO statute, the racketeering statute, to let 
it be used in organized crime. In other words, you have the hotel 
clerk, the cab driver, the pimp, the john, all working together to have 
this victim abused, and the RICO statute can be applied to all of those

[[Page H1506]]

people involved in that criminal conduct, and they can all be punished 
accordingly. So hold all of those individuals accountable for their 
conduct because it is important that they be treated and punished for 
the conduct of sex slavery against victims of children.
  Mr. Speaker, slavery was supposed to end in the United States in 
1865, but this new form of slavery deals with destroying the dignity, 
the self-worth, the hope, the soul of certain people; women primarily, 
young women primarily.
  If we don't do anything else in this country in this congressional 
session, we need to understand that this problem, this scourge, is 
affecting the quality of life of people--females, young children. We 
have an obligation to rescue them, let them understand that we are on 
their side, and let them once again have some dignity, have some self-
worth, and have some hope because that is what we are supposed to do in 
life, to take care of people.
  So I thank the Speaker for allowing me to make these comments on the 
House floor. Let's rescue the victims, treat them like they should be 
treated, and then punish the traffickers and those that seek the demand 
for this, and treat them like they should be treated, and that means 
put them in the jailhouse for a long time because that is where they 
belong.
  And that's just the way it is.
  I yield back the balance of my time.

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