On the recordMay 20, 2014
I thank the chairman of the Judiciary Committee for yielding me this time and also for his support and work on this legislation, and I thank the ranking member as well. Also, I want to thank my friend across the aisle, Carolyn Maloney from New York, for being the chief cosponsor of this legislation on the Democrat side. Madam Speaker, Cheryl Briggs is one of many American children that got caught in the slave trade. When she was 12 years of age, she ran away from home because she was being assaulted by her father. Not long after that, she was picked up as a hitchhiker by a trucker, and then soon after that, she was put in the slave trade where she was forced to have sex with men several times a day. She also was forced to work at a strip club during the daytime, sold at night, and also was forced to do that work in the daytime. She was able to escape that trafficker because a patron at one of the clubs figured out she was a mere child and called the police. Sex trafficking of minor children happens all over the world. It happens in America. Recently, I was in South America. I went to a shelter in Peru, and I met several girls. One of them was named Lilly. At 10 years of age--she was 10--she was sold by her mother for a cell phone to a sex trafficker. Lilly gave me this bracelet when I was there, and she asked me to remember her and the other girls that were at the rescue shelter.…
