Political Quotes

“Mr. Speaker, I rise today in strong support of H.R. 246, a bill to improve the response to victims of child trafficking. First, I would like to commend my colleague, Representative Joyce Beatty, for her commitment to transforming the language that we use to discuss child victims of sex trafficking and for taking the lead on this important legislation. After all, a child cannot consent to sex, so a child cannot be considered a prostitute. And her exploiter should never be called a john; he should be called what he is, a child molester. While trafficking advocates and organizations have worked tirelessly over the years to ensure that the framework and language we use to describe child victims of trafficking recognizes that they are, in fact, victims, we still have a long way to go. These children have gone through enough trauma. They do not need to continue to hear language that places the blame on them for a crime that an adult committed. Phone hotlines and cyber tip lines operated by organizations throughout the country are critical to ensuring that individuals have a means to report these incidents of human trafficking and child exploitation. Under this legislation, reports of domestic minor sex trafficking to the CyberTipline of the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children would be classified as ``child sex trafficking'' and no longer as ``child prostitution.'' This change would reinforce the fact that the children are victims and not criminals.…”