December 17, 2013
Las Vegas, NV – Nevada Attorney General Catherine Cortez Masto joins 46 state attorneys general in a letter urging Congress to appropriate funds to the Trafficking Victims Protection Reauthorization Act (TVPRA).
These funds are a critical life line to combat this brutal, complex issue,” said Masto. “When a victim of human tracking is rescued it becomes a battle to undo all the abuse, both verbally and physically, neglect, and exploitation that has been done. It becomes a team effort to bring back the victims without re-victimizing them in the process.”
In Nevada, the Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department has recovered 2,229 victims of sex trafficking since 1994. Just last year, Metro recovered 107 children victimized by human traffickers, while the National Human Trafficking Resource Center Hotline has received 496 calls statewide since 2009.
“The TVPRA makes significant progress in protecting domestic minor victims of human trafficking, encouraging further education and awareness about human trafficking, providing prosecutors with more effective tools for prosecuting offenders, and funding task forces across the country that battle trafficking each day,” reads the NAAG letter.
Eighty-three percent of sex trafficking victims identified in the United States were U.S. citizens, according to the U.S. Dept. of Justice. The average age that U.S. children are first used in commercial sex is 12 to 14.
General Masto is a leading advocate fighting human tracking. She introduced and helped pass Assembly Bill 67, which establishes the crime of sex trafficking of children and adults, and makes victims eligible for state assistance and allows them to sue their traffickers.
Click the hyperlinks to read the letter to the Appropriations Subcommittee on Homeland Security and to the Appropriations Subcommittee on Commerce, Justice, Science and Related Agencies (the letter contents are the same).
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