Political Quotes

“I thank my friend and colleague for his leadership on this and many other issues, really taking up this cause and being a champion for the voiceless. Last month I was in my district in Hawaii, and we traveled all across the State, on every island, holding townhall meetings on a variety of issues, but one of the meetings and forums that I participated in was at the University of Hawaii at Hilo, and it was specifically around this issue of human trafficking, of sex trafficking. In this small community in Hawaii, many people had gathered--it was a full room--trying to increase their own awareness and share more information about the prevalence of this issue, not just in places in other parts of the world, but in our communities right here at home. I think that is something that surprises a lot of folks that I talk to, is you can read about these human trafficking problems in cities in Asia or other parts of the world, but very rarely do people think that it is happening in their own backyard, in their own hometown, when the reality is that this is a very real issue that exists in far too many of our hometowns and our communities all across the country. In my own home State of Hawaii, girls as young as 11 years old have been recruited from schools, from beaches, from malls through an intricate network of sex traffickers. In 2016, last year, 30 cases of human trafficking were reported to the human trafficking hotline in Hawaii.…”