Lawmakers target human trafficking

Twenty-seven states have laws regarding human trafficking.
COLUMBUS (AP) -- Some state lawmakers believe that coerced sex slavery can exist in Ohio because the state lacks a law specifically targeting human trafficking, even though federal law prohibits it, so they're working to fill in the gap.
"Human trafficking is far more serious than kidnapping," said Rep. Kathleen Chandler, a Kent Democrat who introduced a House bill targeting the issue. "It's modern-day slavery."
There have been examples in Ohio:
Nearly four years ago, a Cleveland teenage girl was abducted at gunpoint downtown and driven to Detroit, where she was kept with other girls who were being forced to have sex with men in exchange for food and money.
Last year, federal authorities broke up a prostitution ring in Toledo that abused girls and young women smuggled into the United States.
Near Cleveland in March, a traffic stop found a Spanish-speaking driver and passengers, including a terrified 23-year-old woman, in a car that came from Mexico. The woman, disoriented and pregnant, told rape counselors through an interpreter that instead of finding her family, she was forced into prostitution.
State law
Federal law prohibits human trafficking, and the U.S. Department of Justice has urged each state to make its own statute. So far, 27 states have.
Chandler's bill would require training for police to identify human trafficking.
A Senate proposal, sponsored by Sen. David Goodman, a Columbus Republican, has similar provisions. Both versions would make human trafficking a first-degree felony, punishable by up to 10 years in prison.
The Ohio Prosecuting Attorneys Association opposes both bills, saying they could clash with existing laws that often are used to prosecute prostitution. Worse for the bills, state Rep. Louis Blessing, a Cincinnati Republican, who chairs the Judiciary Committee that would hear the House bill, agrees with the prosecutors group.
But Kathleen Davis, an advocate for a state law, says the existing statutes can only cover certain aspects of the crime such as rape and assault.
"But the biggest problem is we don't have a definition of human trafficking, and the pimps are smart, they know the law," she said.
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