Friday, January 16, 2015
By Marc Kovac
COLUMBUS
Gov. John Kasich urged Ohioans to take a stand against human trafficking and spread the word about the crime throughout their communities.
“Tell them what you’re doing,” the governor told an audience at the Statehouse during a daylong conference Thursday focused on the issue. “Tell them that you’ve decided to take a stand in our society, that you have taken a stand in our culture to make a difference, because if we’re waiting for someone else or if we’re waiting for the government, we’re going to be waiting a long time.”
He added, “And for the folks of faith, get out of the pew and get out of the synagogue and get out in the streets, because that’s where we need to be.”
Kasich offered the comments at the annual Human Trafficking Awareness Day at the Statehouse, an event aimed at combating forced prostitution and labor.
About 1,000 young Ohioans and 700 others are trafficked in the state each year, said Celia Williamson, a social-work professor at the University of Toledo who has focused on trafficking issues for nearly two decades.
“Today, our goal is to celebrate freedom and progress, continue to educate and advocate to where we need a bigger Statehouse to hold the people at our annual Human Trafficking Awareness Day, and we need to focus on those achievable next steps that we’re hearing from law enforcement,” said Rep. Teresa Fedor, D-Toledo.
She added that prostitution is “the oldest oppression of women and people in the world. It’s not a victimless crime.”
Last summer, Kasich signed into law the End Demand Act, which makes soliciting a minor for sex for pay a felony rather than a misdemeanor crime. Other law changes included allowing closed-circuit testimony from minor victims as part of human-trafficking legal proceedings, terminating parental rights of those convicted of trafficking their children, prohibiting sex-for-hire advertisements and extending the statute of limitations on related crimes.
“When somebody has abused you, we’re not putting you on the stand to have you destroyed,” Kasich said. “We’re going to go after the perpetrator, and that’s what we passed in that bill.”
He added, “We’re fighting this thing tooth and nail. We are not going to rest until we do everything within our power to wipe out this terrible scourge and this terrible crime.”