LEXIS-NEXIS® Congressional Universe-Document

Search Terms: legal services corporation, House or Senate or Joint

Document 11 of 44.

View Related Topics

April 4, 2000, Tuesday

TYPE: COMMITTEE HEARING

LENGTH: 17055 words

COMMITTEE: NEAR EASTERN AFFAIRS SUBCOMMITTEE OF THE SENATE FOREIGN RELATIONS

HEADLINE: U.S. SENATOR SAM BROWNBACK (R-KS) HOLDS HEARING ON THE TRAFFICKING OF WOMEN AND CHILDREN

LOCATION: WASHINGTON, D.C.

BODY:

(CORRECTED COPY)

U.S. SENATE FOREIGN RELATIONS COMMITTEE'S SUBCOMMITTEE ON

NEAR EASTERN AND SOUTH ASIAN AFFAIRS HOLDS HEARING ON

THE TRAFFICKING OF WOMEN AND CHILDREN

APRIL 4, 2000

SPEAKERS: U.S. SENATOR SAM BROWNBACK (R-KS), CHAIRMAN

U.S. SENATOR JOHN ASHCROFT (R-MO)

U.S. SENATOR GORDON H. SMITH (R-OR)

U.S. SENATOR ROD GRAMS (R-MN)

U.S. SENATOR CRAIG THOMAS (R-WY)

U.S. SENATOR PAUL DAVID WELLSTONE (D-MN), RANKING MEMBER

U.S. SENATOR ROBERT G. TORRICELLI (D-NJ)

U.S. SENATOR PAUL S. SARBANES (D-MD)

U.S. SENATOR CHRISTOPHER J. DODD (D-CT)

DR. LAURA LEDERER, DIRECTOR

THE PROTECTION PROJECT

HARVARD UNIVERSITY

VIRGINIA COTO, SUPERVISING

ATTORNEY, FLORIDA IMMIGRANT

ADVOCACY CENTER

ANONYMOUS SURVIVORS FROM RUSSIA, UKRAINE AND MEXICO

*

BROWNBACK: Call the hearing room to order. I'm very pleased to be holding these hearings today with Senator Wellstone entitled The Trafficking of Women and Children: Prosecution, Testimonies and Prevention. This is the second hearing we've held on this subject, and today, we will hear testimonies on the details of prosecuting traffickers, personal stories from victim survivors, several which Paul and I have just recently met with here in the ante room, and restoration of survivors through after care and civil suits to obtain financial restitution.
I hope these proceedings will help pry open a door of freedom just a little further for those who are presently trapped and in despair. We must continue to speak out about this insidious practice called trafficking. Every time we expose its tactics through hearings, conferences and other gatherings, another ray of light invades the darkness. I want to encourage many of you sitting in this audience today to not give up your selfless advocacy that you've done for so many years.

I want to particularly add a note of thanks to Senator Wellstone's wife, who has done much in that effort in that regard as well. Thank you for your tireless advocacy.

You are challenging the shame and the ignorance, which still pervades this subject. It's a long road ahead but a worthy road which leads to freedom and to dignity. Many remain who are lost. We think there are millions worldwide who are suffering in the trafficking networks, enslaved, held against their will, including children.

Conservatively, at least 700,000 women and children are forced into trafficking each year, which is an overwhelming number, but it's possible to take one person at a time just like we're doing today and to hear their story and the rays of light that they bring forward to tell about this terrible thing that's happening across the world.

Dr. Laura Lederer has extended tremendous efforts to bring the survivor witnesses to this hearing today. We will hear testimony from three survivors, all of them women, who were trafficked against their will.

Dr. Lederer, thank you for your generosity of heart and determination of spirit. These witnesses would not be here today but for you.

Dr. Lederer, is she in the audience or - She's in the back visiting with her witnesses.

International sex trafficking is the new slavery. It includes all the elements associated with slavery, including being abducted from your family and home, taken to a strange country where you don't speak the language, losing your identity and freedom, being forced to work against your will with no pay. Being beaten and raped, having no defense against the one who rules you, and eventually dying early because of this criminal misuse.

Now imagine this happening at a very young age and having your entire life stolen from you in this brutal way. I have visited with young girls, women before that this has happened to, and we'll hear from several today.

This is one of the cruelest human rights abuses existing. Moreover, it's growing now, which has increased dramatically this growth in this area over the last 10 years. It's a new phenomenon and doesn't really look like anything we've seen before. So that is why we've invited our first panel, Bill Yeomans, the chief of staff of the Civil Rights Division of the Department of Justice, who will discuss the parameters of prosecution and additional legal tools needed to stem the trafficking trade.

Our second panel is comprised of three witnesses, survivors, one from Mexico and two from Russia, who will share their stories of entrapment and escape. The third panel will include two after-care providers who help victims restore their lives once they leave trafficking in Russia and Thailand, and one civil attorney who represented the Mexican women who were abducted in Florida escaped, sued and finally received a civil judgment against their captors.

I'd like to make a very important request, if I could, of those in the crowd and those filming this. Please do not take any photos of the women on the second panel who are survivors of trafficking. They have come here at great personal risk themselves and photos could be used to bring to them and their families great harm. And so I'd ask you please not to photograph them.

I want to thank you all for your attendance here today and I look forward to the testimonies and questioning.

First, I want to turn over for an opening statement to Senator Wellstone, who has worked on this issue for several years tirelessly. And we've been working together on this issue and I'm delighted to be able to join him and his leadership on this very important subject.

Senator Wellstone.

WELLSTONE: Thank you, Senator Brownback.

Mr. Yeomans, thank you for being here, and all.

Let me just ask unanimous consent that my full statement be included in the record...

BROWNBACK: Without objection.

WELLSTONE: ... so that I can be briefer and we can get - we can go forward with the excellent testimony. I do want to thank the chairman, Senator Brownback, for his commitment, not only to hearings, but to passing legislation that's going to make a difference. We're working together and I think we will have a very good piece of legislation. We're going to work very hard together to make that happen. And as a good coalition, Senator Brownback and I don't agree on all issues. That may be the understatement of the year, but we do agree on this.

BROWNBACK: We agree on this one.

WELLSTONE: And after having worked on this for several years, Senator Feinstein and Boxer and Senator Snowe have been there but I don't think I've ever found anybody that has been more committed to this issue and working harder than Senator Brownback.

I think, Mr. Chairman, that we're seeing more and more of a focus on the trafficking of women. It's just - and children for purposes of prostitution, sexual exploitation, forced labor. But it continues to be in spite of the focus. I think we also have to admit to a reality, which today I think is one of the darkest aspects of the globalization of the world economy. It's becoming more insidious and it's becoming more widespread. In this last decade, I think that's what we've seen.

Now, Mr. Chairman, there was just this past weekend in "The New York Times," there was a very important piece dealing with the CIA report or analysis of the international trafficking of women in the United States, which was called a quote, "contemporary manifestation of slavery." They were talking about 50,000 women and children each year brought to the United States of America. That's our country; maybe as many as two million women that are trafficked throughout the world economy. And we intend to do something about it.

We're not having these hearings and asking today women to come at real peril to themselves and to make this kind of sacrifice for symbolic politics reasons. We're doing it because we intend to pass some legislation that can make a positive difference.

I want to just conclude by saying that I can't emphasize enough that trafficking - that this trafficking is a human rights problem and it requires a human rights solution. And all too often, what happens is that our government and other governments today, the status quo, end up either deliberately or more often just because of the way the laws are right now, what happens is that the victims are the ones that are hounded and the traffickers go free. We have to change that. We have to change that.

The women are treated as criminals and not as victims of gross human rights abuses, and that's the way they should be treated, as the victims of these abuses. And we intend to change that.

Now this has been an ineffective and cruel approach towards trafficking victims and we're trying to change this for the better. I first introduced the bill in the Congress a while ago, I think it was the first bill, to try to get at this. And as I say, Senators Boxer and Snowe and others, Feinstein, were very helpful. Then the House of Representatives have taken up their own measure, The Trafficking Victims Protection Act. And now, I think perhaps most important of all from the point of view of actually passing legislation, I feel very fortunate in being able to work with the chairman, Senator Brownback.

I want to thank everyone here today, especially the victims for their courage in coming forward to testify, and the advocates, the advocates, who will never become millionaires but who just don't stop, you know, really speaking out and advocating for people. I want to thank you.

I thank the administration for moving forward. And I do believe, I do believe that we will be able, Senator Brownback, we'll introduce legislation. I think we'll have a good bipartisan bill, and I believe we'll be able to pass it. Thank you.

BROWNBACK: Thank you, Senator Wellstone. I, too, believe that we'll be able to pass this bipartisan legislation. And, yes, they may not be millionaires here, those advocates; they have riches in other places.

Mr. Yeomans, thank you very much for joining us. He is chief of staff of the Civil Rights Division of the Department of Justice. We appreciate you coming in front of us today. The floor is yours.

YEOMANS: Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Mr. Chairman and Senator Wellstone, I thank you for the opportunity to appear today to present testimony on the subject of trafficking in human beings. It is profoundly troubling but is necessary to have this hearing as we move into the new millennium. But is necessary. While we discuss this problem using such terms as trafficking and forced labor, we should make no mistake about it. We are talking about slavery, slavery in its modern manifestations.

While some of the schemes and practices employed reflect the sophistication of the modern world, others are as basic and barbaric as the trade that brought African-Americans to this continent. Regardless of how sophisticated or simple trafficking enterprises may be, at bottom, they all deny the essential humanity of the victims and turn them into objects for profit.

It is extremely difficult to produce reliable estimates on the number of victims subjected to trafficking each year. Recent estimates have ranged from 50,000 to 100,000 people brought in each year to this country in some condition of exploitation. It appears that the number is growing. The explanation lies in several factors, I think. First, economic dislocation, particularly the lack of economic opportunity for women in so many societies; the increased porousness of borders; the ease of transportation and of international communication; and the fact that until now, trafficking has been a fairly high-profit and low-risk enterprise.

The Justice Department is working to combat this problem. In 1995, we discovered that more than 70 Thai women and men had been smuggled into the United States and held captive in El Monte, California for up to seven years. The workers were held in a guarded compound and forced to work in a sweatshop environment. The operation was one of the most egregious cases of worker exploitation in the history of this country.

The U.S. Attorneys Office in Los Angeles and the Civil Rights Division successfully prosecuted sweatshop owners for violations of involuntary servitude, conspiracy and immigration laws.

YEOMANS: In 1997, we learn that dozens of hearing-impaired Mexican nationals were enslaved and forced to pedal trinkets on the streets of New York, Los Angeles and Chicago. Their captors held them through beatings, physical restraint and torture. This case shocked the conscience of the nation because the victims were exploited, not only because of their poverty and their immigration status, but also because of their disability. Eighteen defendants eventually pled guilty to slavery conspiracy charges, as well as immigration, money laundering and obstruction of justice offenses.

In 1998, concerned that these cases suggested a bigger problem, the Department of Justice took the lead in forming the Worker Exploitation Task Force. This task force is co-chaired by the Acting Assistant Attorney General for Civil Rights, Bill Lann Lee, and the Solicitor of Labor, Henry Solano.

This effort has brought a range of investigative and prosecutorial agencies to the table. Justice Department components include the Civil Rights Division, the Criminal Division, the FBI, INS, the U.S. attorneys, the Office for Victims of Crime and the Violence Against Women Office. Our outside partners include the Departments of Labor, State and Agriculture and the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission. We are convinced that by pooling information, expertise and resources and using all of the legal authority available to these agencies, we can make a difference.

What does the task force accomplish? First, we brought additional prosecutions. Last year, we obtained seven guilty pleas in a case in which Mexican girls and women, some as young as 14, were lured into the United States by the promise of legitimate jobs and forced to work as prostitutes and sex slaves in brothels frequented by migrant laborers in Florida and the Carolinas. The victims were forced to engage in sexual acts with as many as 130 men a week.
They were beaten and assaulted and some were forced to have abortions when they became pregnant.

We also secured guilty pleas last year from three defendants in the Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands, who were indicted for luring unsuspecting women from China to the CNMI with false promises of good jobs, only to enslave them in a karaoke bar brothel and force them to submit to prostitution.

In addition to prosecuting these and other cases, the Worker Exploitation Task Force has set up 15 regional task forces. Each one has points of contact from local U.S. Attorneys' offices, the INS, the FBI, the Department of Labor and state and local law enforcement agencies. The regional task force approach has allowed investigators and prosecutors to share information and coordinate their efforts.

We've also tried to increase public awareness of worker exploitation. We set up worker exploitation - a worker exploitation complaint line. And since the complaint line phone number was publicized in "Parade" magazine just six weeks ago, we have received over 250 calls. And based on those calls, we've opened another 20 investigations, and we've also referred a number of complaints to other agencies for processing.

Despite these successes, the task force has also highlighted the shortcomings and our ability to combat trafficking and worker exploitation. We need legislation that will strengthen the prosecutorial tools available to law enforcement. First, current law permits prosecution of traffickers only in limited situations, such as when the victim is being trafficked for the purpose of the sex trade. We must criminalize a broader range of trafficking. We must reach individuals trafficked into domestic servitude, migrant labor or sweatshop labor, as well as prostitution.

Second, we must create the tools to prosecute those who knowingly profit, knowingly profit from the forced labor of persons held in unlawfully exploitive labor conditions. Present criminal law does not reach, for example, farm labor contractors and other types of employment relationships that provide a liability shield between the direct oppressor and the economic beneficiary of the slave labor.

Third, we need to expand the types of coercion that can be used to demonstrate involuntary servitude under federal law. One of the biggest enforcement hurdles that we face is the requirement of federal law that we show that the defendant used actual force, threat of force or legal coercion to enslave the victim. As a result, federal law enforcement cannot reach those who use more subtle but no less heinous forms of coercion and wrongfully hold victims in bondage.

A prime example of this is the situation in the U.S. against Kosminski (ph), a case in which the Supreme Court announced this narrow interpretation of federal law. In that case, a couple in Michigan had picked up two retarded men along the road, taken them back to their farm, where they were held and made to work for years. They were kept in a barn. They were fed rancid food. And they were convinced through psychological coercion that they had no alternative but to stay at that farm and work. Yet, the Supreme Court held that absent the use of physical force or legal coercion, federal law did not reach this situation.

In order to prosecute cases like this, we have to expand the definition of coercion to cover situations that fall short of force or threat of force but in which the victim has no valid alternative but to submit to a condition of servitude.

In particular, the law has to acknowledge that some immigrants and foreign nationals upon whom traffickers prey are particularly susceptible to coercion because of their unfamiliarity with our language, laws and customs.

Fourth, we must increase the statutory penalties for violations of involuntary servitude P&H (ph) and related laws from the current 10 years to 20 years. These penalties have to be made commensurate with the severity of these crimes.

And finally, we need to support the creation of a new non- immigrant classification, a T visa, that would be available to victims of trafficking. Too often, law enforcement authorities are hampered in their ability to combat trafficking by the reluctance of victims to come forward, for fear of deportation or other adverse immigration consequences. This new category would strengthen the ability of law enforcement to detect, investigate and prosecute trafficking offenses, while simultaneously offering a temporary safe haven to victims.

In conclusion, the Department of Justice has recognized the need to devote more effort and resources to combating trafficking. The efforts of the Worker Exploitation Task Force, however, have demonstrated that we need stronger laws to prosecute traffickers. Gaps in federal law make it impossible to prosecute some truly reprehensible forms of abuse. Those gaps should be filled.

I'd be pleased to answer any questions.

BROWNBACK: Thank you very much, Mr. Yeomans, for your testimony for the work within the administration. I have some questions. I want to run the clock at 10 minutes. Maybe that will remind Paul and I back and forth. We have two other panels here to go to as well.

Mr. Yeomans, I appreciated all the comments you made on what you were seeking on additional legislative authority. I want to go right at a particular issue, though, that you raised within this. You talked about needing authority to broaden the - what coercion is and to broaden that definition. You gave one example of the coercion that you're talking about.

Are there other examples of what you are talking about? We, you know, one, build a legislative record about what we mean about coercion. What else would you identify as coercion you would be talking about here?

YEOMANS: Well, I think from looking at our cases, we can pick out a number of kinds of coercion. And unfortunately, not a typical situation is that women are brought into this country with false documents or smuggled in. If they have documentation when they arrive, it's taken away from them. So they are left adrift in society.

Frequently, they are charged the cost of their transportation for being brought into the country, and they are told that they have to work in prostitution or in some other form of labor to pay off their debts. And they're given no choice. Frequently, they are told that if they do not, they will suffer consequences, whether legal or otherwise.

Frequently, the people who are brought into this country have very little knowledge of our society and of our customs, and they are told that, for instance, if they go outside the house, they will be set upon by horrible people. So these are the kinds of deception that really give the victim no sense of an alternative to staying put and doing the work that they're being told to do.

We have also had situations where the use of physical force is really unnecessary. For instance, when people are brought in from societies with the caste system, and when upper-class people - lower-class people are used to accepting orders and they will accept those orders under conditions that simply would not be tolerated in this country. So there are a number of ways that coercion can be brought to bear short of an actual direct threat of force.

BROWNBACK: I want to invite you for our record after this hearing is over to submit to us a number of different examples of the coercion, because I want to build into that record: here are all the types of coercion, some of the types. This would not be an exclusive list, but of a coercion that we're talking about.

Because what my experience has been in talking with women that have been forced in these circumstances, that much of it is trickery. And then once tricked across the border, you're captured because you have papers, and then those papers are taken from you. So you went by trick and then you're captured because of documentation loss or feeling of lack of any sort of power or ability; that all is a form of coercion. And I would hope that we could get that down with some clarity.

I presume the administration has been able to infiltrate some of the rings that are operating now in this sex trafficking or in labor trafficking. How are you finding that they operate, particularly in bringing people into this country? Are there certain areas that they're bringing people from, certain countries into the United States? And how do these rings - how do they operate?

YEOMANS: Well, a couple of recent...

WELLSTONE: Excuse me, can you add to that when you're answer it sort of which countries you might - is the worse offender countries, maybe some sense of...

YEOMANS: I think I can answer that with a couple of recent examples from our prosecutions. Just this past year, we prosecuted a case in Florida that I mentioned in my testimony where women were brought in from Mexico.

BROWNBACK: Was this done by a ring?

YEOMANS: It was - We ended up prosecuting 16 defendants who constituted a ring, who brought women across the border, frequently using coyotes to smuggle them across the border. And they were lured with promises of legitimate jobs. They were told that when they reached the United States, they would have restaurant jobs or agricultural jobs or work as domestic servants.

When they arrived in the country, they were basically imprisoned and forced to work as prostitutes. And they were held in brothels that served migrant laborers and they were moved along with migrant laborers or to different migrant labor camps to give the migrant laborers variety. So that's one example of the way people come in. And certainly, Mexico is one of the principal source countries for this kind of activity.

In another recent case, another one I mentioned in the CNMI, women were brought in from China. And we have seen a number of people brought in from China. And, again, they were brought with the promise of legitimate jobs, this time working in restaurants. And when they arrived, again, they were forced into prostitution. Their documentation was taken away. They were, of course, afraid to come to the authorities because they were there unlawfully. And they were forced to serve as prostitutes.

Another example is the El Monte case from 1995 that I mentioned, where scores of workers were brought in from Thailand to work in sweatshops in California. So I think that generalizing from our prosecutions, we have seen Mexico and Latin America, China and Southeast Asia as very significant areas.

BROWNBACK: Mr. Yeomans, I presume the administration will be strongly supportive of legislation moving through the Congress to put forward the sort of legislative vehicles, the prosecution tools that are needed for us to use this. I would note that the administration is adverse to naming countries which flagrantly accommodate trafficking.

Now I would be curious as to your rationale on this, because from what we've heard of previous testimony, when I visited with some people, there are certain countries that seem to have more trafficking flowing from than others, some seem to be more interested in this topic than other countries.

Why you choose not to name countries or propose any sort of tools to use from the United States as a country against a country where the trafficking might occur from?

YEOMANS: Well, the administration, of course, has opposed sanctions. The rationale is that, at least from the perspective of the Department of Justice, is that if we are to root out this problem, one of the most effective things for us to do is to form close working relationships with law enforcement agencies in the countries from which people come, from which the trafficked human beings come.

And as soon as we impose sanctions or as soon as we try to make an international pariah out of one of these countries, that kind of cooperation tends to shut down.

YEOMANS: So it is our - And it's a difficult balance but it's our calculation that we will make more progress by working closely with law enforcement in those countries than we will by imposing sanctions and shutting down that cooperation.

BROWNBACK: Mr. Yeomans, thank you for being here today. And let me just say as a conclude, I hope the administration will make this one of their top foreign policy priorities, if not one of their top total legislative priorities during this Congress. There's companion type of legislation. I know people disagree on the elements within it that's going - moving forward in the House. We hope to put that forward here and we would hope the administration would lean in aggressively to help us pass this legislation this year.

YEOMANS: Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

WELLSTONE: Mr. Chairman, I think what I'll do is, again, try to be relatively brief because I know we have other panelists and we want to hear from everyone.

Mr. Yeomans, actually, as I was listening to Senator Brownback, one of the things that we have been focusing on in negotiations with the administration - And I certainly know there is strong support. Secretary Koh (ph), Merrill Koh (ph), has just been very focused on this, and I think have been a great - really given both of us very good advice and others as well.

But let me ask you this. On the naming of countries, it would seem to me that what we could do is, you know, your - the administration is right that in some cases, it's not the governments of the country that are really responsible. But what I think - Since it's going to be key that those governments cooperate, you just set up a threshold and say, look, this is what - this is the test that needs to be met to show, Sam, these governments are, in fact, working with us. If they don't meet the threshold, then they're named. If they meet the threshold, then it's different. But I think we do need to have some way of really providing, if you will, the incentive for these governments to cooperate.

BROWNBACK: Would you respond to that very point on naming, not about sanctioning but about naming the countries? Mind me jumping in on that?

WELLSTONE: Not at all. We're working together, aren't we? You can jump in, yeah.

YEOMANS: I think my reasoning on that is the same as it would be on sanctions, that while obviously we want to identify where the problems are, our approach is to try to solve those problems and to try to get at those problems through law enforcement and through working with the people who are in those countries, and we hope the governments of those countries, to try to do something about the problem.

And it's very difficult for us simply to catch it on this end. You know, we need to be able to reach back to those countries. You know, we have a number of instances where we have prosecuted people who have fled and gone back to these countries. And we need their cooperation very much. So I think that we are very reluctant to name countries or to impose sanctions.

WELLSTONE: Well, I don't want to argue with you today. I appreciate your being here, but I think Senator Brownback and I may be fairly firm on this, and I think there's a - there comes a point where there is a standard of reasonableness where you do require - you ask those governments to meet a threshold of tests as to whether they're cooperating or not. And it seems to me that it's appropriate to name those countries that are unwilling to do so. Maybe no need to if those governments are cooperating.

I want to - I think in the legislation that we're considering and working on, there's sort of the three P's. And you've talked about, two of them; I want to ask you about one. One is preventing trafficking, one is prosecuting traffickers. And you talked about that. And one is protecting the human rights of trafficked persons. And I agree with you about that as well. But the irony right now is people worried about being deported. They're scared to death. People can't defend themselves and we've got to change that.

On the goal of preventing trafficking, where do you - what do you recommend there? What do we need to be looking at?

YEOMANS: Well, I think, you know, of course, I confess that I approach this from the perspective of a Department of Justice prosecutor.

WELLSTONE: I understand.

YEOMANS: And I believe strongly that prosecution contributes greatly to prevention. And as I said in my opening statement, for a long time now, trafficking in human beings has been a fairly low risk, high-profit activity. We need to change that. We need to make people who are engaging in trafficking pay. And we need to make them think that they are likely to get caught. So that's something that we can do on this end.

Obviously, the ultimate solution to all of this is providing economic opportunities, because people who have economic opportunities are going to be less susceptible to the kinds of deceit, the kinds of fraud that get them into these situations. So I think those are my two answers.

WELLSTONE: I think - I appreciate it. I, too, have met with women who have gone through this living hell, and I quite often - I mean, it's - No matter what the country is, I think it is the same story, which is people come here from countries that are devastated by war or economic chaos, and people come here for opportunities. And I think you're right.

Could you - Maybe this is putting you on the spot, I don't know, but I want to come back to the whole issue of the worse case trafficking offenders. Is this maybe what you don't want to name? Let's just go back to the question.

Maybe this is the question that we were disagreeing on, which case I ought to just - Is that the problem? I mean, I'd be interested in some of the countries that you view as the worse case offenders.

YEOMANS: And my answer really took me to the extent of my knowledge.

WELLSTONE: You gave some examples, OK.

YEOMANS: Based on our prosecutions, those are the countries that we have found to be contributing.

WELLSTONE: Let me ask you then something different. On the 50,000 or thereabouts, women and children, does that include - that doesn't include men? Is that correct?

YEOMANS: As I said, the estimates are soft but one estimate certainly is it's 50,000 women and children, not including men.

WELLSTONE: So if we were to include men like the ones that were drafted to the Northern Mariana Islands or the deaf Mexican case...

YEOMANS: The deaf Mexicans, yeah.

WELLSTONE: ... which goes into agriculture or whatever it is. Has anyone collected the data to determine the numbers of men who were trafficked to the United States?

YEOMANS: I have not seen a separate number for men. You know, the difficulty of collecting this data is obvious, because the victims simply are invisible for the most part and are forced to remain that way.

WELLSTONE: Well, one quick recommendation I'll just mention is that it would seem to me that this inter-agency subcommittee - FBI, CIA and others - that's one of the things they could do in addition to collecting the data on women, children and men that are in these situations. I just would point that out.

Well, I think your testimony was very helpful. I thank you for being here.

Appreciate your work that you do as well.

YEOMANS: Thank you very much, senator.

BROWNBACK: Thank you, Mr. Yeomans. And we look forward to working with the administration to pass this legislation this year. We'll solicit your input and your cooperation in working with us as well, because we'll need every bit of it to get it on through.

YEOMANS: Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I hope we can get it done.

BROWNBACK: Thank you.

Next panel we'll call forward will be introduced by Dr. Laura Lederer. Dr. Lederer, who I mentioned in my opening statement, is the director of the Protection Project at Harvard University. She's worked extensively and tirelessly on determining and mapping the paths that traffickers are taking and moving, primarily women and children internationally. She'll be actually introducing the panel.

I would reiterate yet again anybody with a camera in the audience, if you would, not photograph the women that will be testifying. And the television cameras we've asked previously to shoot below their faces so that the women would not be endangered back home. They have come here at great personal risk themselves. I appreciate their bravery and their courage in coming here.

Dr. Lederer, again, both Senator Wellstone and I and millions of people around the world are grateful to you and your work, and the other organizations that have done so much, to bring this issue out into the open and hopefully shine some light; that we can start solving this issue that's been in front of us now and has either been ignored or not really particularly paid much attention to at all. Thank you for the work here that you've done and thank you for bringing this panel together so that we could hear directly from people that are involved in it.

Dr. Lederer.

LEDERER: Mr. Chairman, members of the committee, thank you so much for the opportunity to bring trafficking survivors to this hearing. I'm Laura Lederer, director of the Protection Project of the Women in Public Policy Program at Harvard University. For the last four years, we've been gathering the laws addressing commercial sexual exploitation of women and children from 220 countries and territories around the world.

The purpose of the project is to create a database that will house the laws, statistics on the scope of the problem, trafficking routes, legal cases and survivor stories. The preliminary database will be complete in a couple of months and will be available to policymakers, human rights advocates, legal scholar students and others working to stop trafficking.

I'm very pleased to be here today to introduce to you three young women who have come a long way to tell their stories. They come here in the hope that in speaking, they can prevent what happened to them from happening to other young women and girls, for their stories sadly are being repeated by the hundreds of thousands in countries around the world.

In fact, we founded the Protection Project, but almost every country in the world has a trafficking problem of one sort or another. The United States, a receiver country, has as much a problem as Russia, a sender country. Recognition of this problem is now largely due to an extraordinary coalition of faith-based women's and children's groups.

For those of us who have been working in this field for over 20 years, it's really thrilling to see the progress that's being made in this matter to bring it to national attention since the powerful commitment of church groups such as Southern Baptist Conference, the National Association of Evangelicals, Prison Fellowship and others.

As John Busby (ph), national commander of the Salvation Army, reminds us, they're simply keeping faith with their own religious traditions when centuries ago, they worked to stop another kind of slavery.

I also want to recognize Rabbi David Sapperstein (ph) of the Religious Action Council for Reformed Judaism, and Jay Lintner (ph) of the National Council of Churches, who have joined together with Jessica Neuwirth (ph) and Gloria Steinem of Equality Now, Gloria Feld (ph) of Planned Parenthood, Ellie Sneal (ph) of Feminist Majority, and a number of other women's organizations who have been working tirelessly to stop trafficking of women and children.

And finally, we have a wonderful partnership with the U.S. Fund of UNICEF, FPAC (ph) and several other children's groups. This extraordinary coalition is determined that America will play the same role in stopping this new form of slavery as Britain did years ago stopping of African slavery.

There have also been a number of individuals and organizations who helped me bring the survivors, and I need to recognize them now. In the United States, Equality Now made the first contacts abroad, and through them, we located Olga and Marsha. In Russia, the American Bar Association Central and Eastern European law initiatives served as the central clearinghouse for weeks as we brought the young women from various corners of the country.

I want to also thank Maryon Bell (ph), Lisa Thompson (ph), J. Robert Flores (ph), and Michael Horowitz (ph), who have played a tremendous role behind the scenes. Thanks also to my staff and students, Sierra Wade (ph) and to Sharon Pates (ph), Senator Brownback's office for all your very hard work.

All of these people worked to make it possible for you now to hear the firsthand stories of these trafficking survivors. So we have here today with us Marsha, Olga and Maria, who are going to share their stories. And in addition, we're going to read into the record for the first time the story of Rosa, who was the child who was trafficked as part of the Kadena ring.

Together, these stories provide a powerful impetus for us here in the United States to act. We are the ones who can help young women and children who have been trafficked. We can draw attention to their plight. We can create the prevention programs and the after-care facilities, and we can help to arrest and prosecute those responsible. Together, we can stop the traffickers for good.

I'd like to start with Marsha's story.

MARSHA, VICTIM SURVIVOR FROM RUSSIA (reads from transcript, speaking in Russian):

BROWNBACK: Excuse me. Just if I could, maybe, Dr. Lederer, we could do this simultaneously. If it's a written form or a...

LEDERER: Senator Brownback, what they're going to do is read their first paragraph in Russian, and the rest will be in English.

BROWNBACK: OK.

LEDERER: And then they will not read the whole...

BROWNBACK: Wonderful.

MARSHA, (THROUGH TRANSLATOR): Mr. Chairman, my name is Marsha and I am from Southern Russia. In 1996, when I was 24, I visited St. Petersburg. I was preparing to return home to my village and waiting at the train station when a woman approached me. She started talking to me about life's problems, encouraging me to share mine with her. We had a nice talk, and the woman suggested that she could help me get work somewhere abroad.

She told me that she had an acquaintance in Germany, a woman who could contact me with a family for whom I could work as a house maid.

She told me that she had an acquaintance in Germany, a woman who could contact me with a family for whom I could work as a house maid. I was issued a tourist visa to Spain and left on a bus tour of Europe in February 1997.

I was supposed to get off the bus in Germany. There, I was met by a woman named Jana (ph), who had a flat in Hamburg. She took me to an apartment there where I met about 20 other girls who had come from Russia and Poland. Most of them were younger than I.

After a few days, Jana (ph) told me she could not find a family who would hire me as a house maid. She said I owed her 2,000 German marks (ph), which is approximately one thousand U.S. dollars, and said that I could earn that money by providing sexual services to men. I was shocked. I was afraid to say no because she had my passport and I didn't know any German.

She and her husband, who was a drug dealer, threatened to beat me if I tried to leave and said that if I went to the police, I would be deported. They said no one would care what happened to me and that no one would help.

The girls who would not cooperate were taken down to the basement of the bar where they were beaten across their backs where it would not show but would still be painful and possibly would cause kidney damage. I was afraid they would use drugs and alcohol to force me to prostitute myself. I had seen other girls given cocaine and beaten into submission.

Jana (ph) tried to tell me that it didn't happen, but her husband threatened that I would suffer this fate if I did not go along with them. Downstairs from our apartment, there was a bar where we were told to find clients for sex. I tried not to attract attention by dressing modestly and sitting by myself.

The girls who had come to Germany knowing they would be prostitutes were regularly beaten. Our passports were kept behind the bar, but we were afraid to take them because big, burley guards watched us all the time. The bar had surveillance cameras covering the bar and the road so that they could see clients or police coming.

I was kept there for two months and never made much money. I only had a tourist visa good for one month but Jana (ph) told me she could prepare documents that would say I was married to a German man. She would do this if I would stay longer and work for her. I refused, and so she sold me to a Greek pimp who was operating in Germany.

Shortly after that, the police raided the bar and I was taken along with the other girls to the station. I was not given a chance to explain what had happened to me, that I never wanted to be there, that I had been tricked, threatened and intimidated into staying. Instead, I was charged with prostitution and held in the jail cell.

I was issued an order to leave Germany or face deportation. The Greek pimp gave me money for a ticket back to Russia. Some would say that he took pity on me, but in reality, this helped him avoid being arrested and charged with pimping. He was never charged and the German police never attempted to do anything about the network of people who had trafficked me: from the woman who recruited me to the agent who got me the visa, to the Russian woman pimp and her husband.

OLGA, VICTIM SURVIVOR FROM SIBERIA, RUSSIA (reads from transcript, speaking in Russian)

OLGA, (THROUGH TRANSLATOR): Mr. Chairman, my name is Olga. I am from Siberia in Russia. In December of 1998, a female acquaintance of mine returned from a trip to Israel with a lot of money. She told me that she had worked as a house maid. She had worked in shops and in bars and that I could also get a job. I asked her how she found work without knowing the language. She told me that there were many Russian immigrants in Israel who wanted to hire Russian women so that their children would not forget their heritage and their native tongue.

I had no money for a ticket to Israel but the woman told me not to worry, "I'll buy your ticket. You'll make so much money that you'll be able to pay me back in no time."

I decided to go and got a travel visa. She went on ahead of me to Israel telling me that she would meet me at the airport. When I arrived, she was waiting with two big, bulky Israeli men. We went to a small city in Israel where they showed me around, introduced me to many people, and they spoke in Hebrew so that I could not understand.

They told me they were people who might hire me. For a few days, it was as if I was a tourist just visiting the country. Then the men came back and told me that they had a job for me, but because I did not have a visa to work in Israel, I would have to give them my passport.

A couple of days later, they returned a passport to me, a false passport with my picture but was the name of an Israeli woman. Then another Israeli man came and my friend told me to put my things in his car, that he would take care of everything. He took me to Tel Aviv. He told me then that I had been sold to him for $10,000 and that I would have to pay him back. He told me I would have to prostitute myself. I was angry and infuriated. I screamed and fought every time he tried to take me from the apartment where I was staying.

Because of this, he separated me from the other Russian women he owned. Every day, I was taken to the brothel where all the other women were Israeli. I was still resisting so I wasn't making much money for my captor.

He then told me that I had earned only $8,000 of my debt and that he would find me another job to make the rest of the money. He promised I would not have to be a prostitute anymore.

He took me to a hotel and told me to wait for my new employer. Two men came to meet me there. They gave me something to drink which turned out to be drug. I lost consciousness. When I woke up, I was locked in a dark room with no furniture. I could hear people speaking Arabic but I could not understand what they were saying. I tried to escape but the men caught me quickly and again gave me some drug to take to calm me down. They told me to just sit down and that if I behaved well, everything would be OK.

A Russian-speaking Arab told me that I had been kidnapped and was in Palestine. I was - began to be very afraid that they would sell me to a harem in Iraq or someplace worse. The men there didn't tell me what I was to do. I told them that I was Muslim, hoping that that would provide me with some protection.

Several days later, they sold me back to another brothel in Israel. I told the brothel owners there that I would never work for them, so they locked me in an apartment and sent clients into the apartment anyway.

If I refused to work, they would not feed me. They beat me but only across the back near my kidney so it would not hurt my appearance. It was very painful. I saw only clients who spoke no Russian, so I couldn't tell them my story. I was forced to see between 15 to 20 customers a day, and the brothel owners gave me drugs so that I would continue working.

I began to feel that I was losing my mind, and they gave me some pills supposedly to cure my headaches. I found out later that it was a drug called ecstasy, a drug that makes you relax and more willing to be intimate.

After three weeks, I became dependent, addicted to the pills and began to ask for them every day.

I began also to learn some Hebrew from my clients so that I could explain to them what had happened to me. Unfortunately, these customers never came back. But finally, I told a Polish Jew of my plight and he contacted the police. The brothel was raided in May of 1999 and I was deported back to Russia.

MARIA, VICTIM SURVIVOR FROM MEXICO (reads from transcript, speaking Spanish

MARIA, (THROUGH TRANSLATOR): Good afternoon. I would like to thank the Foreign Relations Committee for the opportunity to speak to you on behalf of trafficking survivors. My name is Maria. I am in disguise today because I am in fear that my captors would recognize me and just place my life and that of my family's in danger.

My story begins in May of 1997 in Veracruz, Mexico. I was approached in Mexico by an acquaintance about some jobs in the United States. She told me that there were jobs available in restaurants or bars. I was working as a domestic helper in Mexico and had a job at a general retail store. This seemed like a great opportunity for me to earn more money for my daughter and family. I accepted the job and soon was brought by a coyote to Texas.

Once over the border, I was kept at a safe house. Then I was transported to Florida. Once in Florida, Arez Galena (ph), one of the ring leaders told me I would be working a brothel as a prostitute. I told him he was mistaken and that I was going to be working in a restaurant not a brothel. He then ordered me to work in a brothel. He said I owed him a smuggling debt of approximately $2,200, and the sooner I paid it off, the sooner I could leave. I was 18 years old and had never been far from home and had no money or way to get home.

Next, I was given tight clothes to wear and was told what I must do. There would be armed men selling tickets to customers in the trailers, Tickets were condoms. Each ticket would be sold for $22 to $25 each. The client would then point at the girl he wanted and the girl would take him to one of the bedrooms.

At the end of the night, I turned in the condom wrappers. Each wrapper represented its posed deduction to my smuggling fee. We tried to keep our own records but the bosses would destroy them. We were never sure what we owed.

There were up to four girls kept at each brothel. We were constantly guarded and abused. If anyone refused to be with a customer, we were beaten. If we adamantly refused, the bosses would show us a lesson by raping us brutally. They told us if we refused again, it would even be worse the next time.

We were transported every 15 days to another trailer in a nearby city. This was to give customers variety of the girls and also so we would never know where we were in case we tried to escape. I could not believe this was happening to me.

We worked six days a week and 12-hour days. We mostly had to serve 32 to 35 clients a day. Weekends were worse. Our bodies were utterly sore and swollen. The bosses did not care. We worked no matter what. This included during menstruation.

Clients would become enraged if they found out. The bosses instructed us to place a piece of clothing over the lamps to darken the room. This, however, did not protect us from the clients' beatings. Also, at the end of the night, our work did not end. It was now the boss's turn with us.

If anyone became pregnant, we were forced to have abortions. The cost of the abortion would then be added to our smuggling debt. The bosses carried weapons; they scared me. The brothels were often in isolated areas. I never knew where I was.

It was all so strange to me. We were not allowed to go outside the brothels. I knew if I tried to escape, I would not get far because everything was so unfamiliar. The bosses told me that if I escaped INS would catch me, beat me and tie me up. This frightened me.

I did know of one girl who escaped. The bosses searched for her and they said they were going to get their money that she owed from their family. They said they would get their money one way or another.

I know of another girl that escaped and was hunted down. The bosses found her and beat her severely. The bosses showed her a lesson by beating and raping her brutally. All I could do is stand there and watch. I was too afraid to try to escape. I also did not want my family put in danger.

I was enslaved for several months.

MARIA (THROUGH TRANSLATOR): Other women were enslaved for up to a year. Our enslavement finally ended when the INS, FBI and local law enforcement raided the brothels and rescued us. We weren't sure what was happening on that day of the raid. Our captors had told us over and over never to tell the police of our conditions. They told us that if we told, we would find ourselves in prison for the rest of our lives. They told us that the INS would rape us and kill us, but we learned to trust INS and FBI and assisted them in the prosecution of our enslavers. Unfortunately, this was difficult.

After the INS and FBI freed us from the brothels, we were put in detention centers for many months. Our captors were correct. We thought we would be imprisoned for the rest of our lives.

Later, our attorneys were able to get us released to a women's domestic violence center where we received comprehensive medical attention including gynecological exams for the first time and then to health counseling.

Thanks to the United States government, some of our captors were brought to justice and were sent to prison. Unfortunately, not all. Some of them are living in Mexico in our hometown of Veracruz. They have threatened some of our families; they have even threatened to bring our younger sisters to the United States and force them to work in brothels as well.

I would never have done this work. No one I know would have done this work. I am speaking out today because I never want this to happen to anyone else. However, in order to accomplish this goal, women like me need your help. We need the laws to protect us from this horror. We need the immigration laws to provide victims of this horror with permanent legal residence.

We came to the United States to find a better future, not to be prostitutes. If anyone thinks that providing protection to trafficking survivors by affording them permanent residence isn't (inaudible) for other immigrants like myself, they are wrong. No woman or child would want to be a sex slave and endure the evil that I have gone through. I am in fear for my life more than ever. I helped put these evil men in jail. Please help me. Please help us. Please do not let this happen to anyone else. Thank you.

COTO: I am going to read a statement from a minor survivor who was 14 at the time that she was brought over into the United States and trafficked.

BROWNBACK: Without objection.

COTO: Pardon me?

BROWNBACK: Without objection, please enter it into the record.

COTO: Thank you. This is a story of Rosa: "When I was 14, a man came to my parents' house in Veracruz, Mexico and asked me if I was interested in making money in the United States. He said I could make many times as much money doing the same things that I was doing in Mexico. At the time, I was working in a hotel cleaning rooms and I also helped around my house by watching my brothers and sisters. He said I would be in good hands and would meet many other Mexican girls who had taken advantage of this great opportunity. My parents didn't want me to go but I persuaded them.

A week later, I was smuggled into the United States through Mexico to Orlando, Florida. It was then the men - it was then when the men told me my employment would consist of having sex with men for money. I had never had sex before and I had never imagined selling my body. And so my nightmare began.

Because I was a virgin, the men decided to initiate me by raping me again and again to teach me how to have sex. Over the next three months, I was taken to a different trailer every 15 days. Every night, I had to sleep in the same bed which I had been forced to service customers all day.

I couldn't do anything to stop it. I wasn't allowed to go outside without a guard. Many of the bosses had guns. I was constantly afraid. One of the bosses carried me off to a hotel one night where he raped me. I could do nothing to stop him.

Because I was so young, I was always in demand with the customers. It was awful. Although the men were supposed to wear condoms, sometimes they didn't. So eventually, I became pregnant and was forced to have an abortion. They sent me back to the brothel almost immediately.

I cannot forget what has happened. I can't put it behind me. I find it nearly impossible to trust people. I still feel shame. I was a decent girl in Mexico. I used to go to church with my family. I only wish none of this ever happened. Thank you."

BROWNBACK: Thank all of you for your testimony and your bravery in coming here today, which you do at sacrifice to yourselves, and reliving a story of hell that each of you have experienced. And we hope that it will be something that we'll try to prevent this from happening to others and stop this ever-growing tide that's growing.

As I sit here, when you read the story of a 14-year-old girl, my oldest turns 14 this year, it's real easy to visualize. I also myself met with young girls from Nepal that were trafficked to India, most of them 11, 12, 13 years old when they were tricked out of their Nepalese villages and then moving into Bombay into the brothel district.

And when I met with them, they were returning to Nepal and they were in Katmandu at a treatment, an after-care facility which we'll hear from later.

But I was so struck by the lady who was a great, great lady of kindness that ran the place, who herself was ill, but she pointed out the number of girls there saying, "She's dying. She's dying. She's dying." And their numbers were two-thirds were coming back with AIDS and/or tuberculosis at age 17, 18 years of age coming home to die. It was just one of the most awful things I've seen anywhere in the world.

And people that had had gone through forced abortions and it was just a - it was a disgusting situation that I don't know if I've seen anything anywhere than really just how these girls were taken from their childhood and tricked into just a hell most couldn't even imagine. So I'm glad, you know, finally people are stepping up and looking at this some.

If I could, to any of the ladies - although I think maybe Sonya might be best to answer this, did you - In talking with any of the other women that had been tricked into this, did you find their stories were different from yours of what their experiences were that took them to the same place that you were? If you could get the microphones - OK.

UNIDENTIFIED WITNESS (THROUGH TRANSLATOR): For the most part, there were many women who had been tricked just like I had been. But there were also women who had gone voluntarily.

BROWNBACK: When she says tricked as she was in much of the same way, offered a ticket to be - to do domestic work and then...

UNIDENTIFIED WITNESS (THROUGH TRANSLATOR): You know, there's a whole marketing scheme developed. Girls that return from these type of jobs, it's in their interest to try to trick as many girls as they can to go abroad to work, you know, in prostitution. And so that's what they do.

BROWNBACK: Now when she says there's a whole marketing scheme, are these girls that return part of the overall network and they get paid to trick others?

UNIDENTIFIED WITNESS (THROUGH TRANSLATOR): Yes, it's a network. Girls are encouraged to go back, and they are given money. They're told that if they will bring other girls, they will get money for each girl that they manage to trick. And it's a very organized network.

BROWNBACK: Did - Is this part of the - some of the Russian organized crime? Is it within Israel organized crime that your experience was associated?

UNIDENTIFIED WITNESS (THROUGH TRANSLATOR): Doubtless. It's - Yes, most definitely. It's part of the organized crime networks.

BROWNBACK: Can you name any of the families that are in it through your experience, what you experienced?

UNIDENTIFIED WITNESS (THROUGH TRANSLATOR): I am very...

BROWNBACK: Please, ma'am, if - Yes, ma'am, if I could, don't answer with any names if you think that's of any problem.

UNIDENTIFIED WITNESS (THROUGH TRANSLATOR): I am afraid to give names because these criminals that are part of this network are located in my native town, and I cannot give you names.

BROWNBACK: I certainly respect that. Do any of the others know of other ways that different women were tricked or coerced into international sex trafficking?

UNIDENTIFIED WITNESS (THROUGH TRANSLATOR): The agencies or the organizations that are involved in this type of trickery are now currently they are tourist groups that arrange for tourists for dance groups or marriage organizations that are, you know, arranging marriages. They get people to come abroad in search of husbands and/or to go with the dance troop to dance, and this is how they get people in their clutches.

BROWNBACK: Anybody else care to respond to that, other methods? What would each of you like to see the United States do?

MARIA (THROUGH TRANSLATOR): To help and protect women, young women like ourselves and to stop trafficking, and so they will not suffer as we did in bringing us to the United States where we were tricked into coming here. We want men to stop trafficking women, young women like ourselves and to educate the public and especially to let mothers know that they must be aware of this and protect their young children.

UNIDENTIFIED WITNESS (THROUGH TRANSLATOR): The Russian Federation does not have any laws against trafficking, and of course, that is a Russian problem.

But perhaps there is some way that the U.S. can influence the adoption of laws.

UNIDENTIFIED WITNESS (THROUGH TRANSLATOR): There are other way - the other thing that the U.S. could do is perhaps offer assistance to humanitarian organizations, to human rights organizations so that they can educate the public so that they can publicize the plight and this situation, and also, offer assistance to victims and survivors.

BROWNBACK: Thank you all.

Senator Wellstone?

WELLSTONE: Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I'll speak slowly so the translation can be done. I also want to thank you again for testifying before this committee. And I want you to know that we're both committed to passing legislation that will help put a - if not a stop, dramatically reduce this.

I maybe could get your reaction to two provisions in our legislation, see if you think it would be helpful. One would be beyond what the USAID office does already to get more - to provide much more information in your countries' brochures, written information that people would have so that you - so that women could, if approached the way you were, would have a better idea of what was happening to them, that they would have a better understanding of this trafficking operation so that they wouldn't be so exploited.

And the second provision I want to mention and just get your reaction would be to make sure that for women who have been through this like you have, that there is some assistance to help people regain their health so that they can be - go back to their community or be - live good lives. In other words, so much of this is essentially the equivalent of torture. To make sure there's some treatment for women that have gone through this. I see that Laura is nodding her head. Would this be helpful, these provisions be helpful?

UNIDENTIFIED WITNESS (THROUGH TRANSLATOR): Yes. We think that would certainly be very helpful.

WELLSTONE: And...

UNIDENTIFIED WITNESS (THROUGH TRANSLATOR): I think that education, educating the public is probably the most important aspect, because a lot of these girls...

WELLSTONE: Can I get the mike a little closer if you could - so people can hear?

UNIDENTIFIED WITNESS (THROUGH TRANSLATOR): Education is really essential to solving this problems, because there is just not enough information as to what kind of dangers they face and what the situation is.

WELLSTONE: Dr. Lederer, if you want to respond, please feel free to as well.

UNIDENTIFIED WITNESS (THROUGH TRANSLATOR): There is also an enormous need to finance, support crisis centers, to create new ones because there is just no place where you can turn.

WELLSTONE: After you've been through this?

UNIDENTIFIED WITNESS (THROUGH TRANSLATOR): Yes.

WELLSTONE: Yes.

LEDERER: I think you've hit it on the head. It is a form of torture, and there is a post-traumatic stress syndrome that we see.

WELLSTONE: Right.

LEDERER: And it lasts a long time. It's not something that is very easily recovered from so - and it's a particular syndrome. It can't be fit into the domestic violence syndrome. It is going to need its own types of crisis and rehabilitation and so on.

Virginia, you might want to speak to that a little bit, too.

COTO: I agree with Dr. Lederer.

WELLSTONE: Please identify yourself for the record, will you, please?

COTO: Pardon me?

WELLSTONE: Would you please identify yourself for the record.

COTO: OK, sure. I'm Virginia Coto. I am the supervising attorney of the Florida Immigrant Advocacy Center and represent Maria and 13 other girls in the Kadena case.

WELLSTONE: Thank you.

COTO: And I have been involved in the case as of February of '98, and we'll talk a little bit about that in the next panel. But one of the things that I agree with Dr. Lederer is I think the services are very unique. I think - I work specifically with domestic violence victims and I have a project that directly assists battered immigrant women. And additionally, I also work with forced labor and sexual trafficking clients.

But I think that the issues are very different. It was very difficult for the battered women's center to be able to really give them kind of support of psychological assessments or even find these kinds of services for them because there just weren't any. This was something that we certainly had not heard of until the Kadena case. And it was very difficult to treat. But I think we definitely need crisis centers. I think also funding for services specifically targeting trafficking victims or survivors.

WELLSTONE: Just to finish, and we're out of time, our legislation, we do provide resources for that and we do put a very strong emphasis on the prosecution. We heard about that earlier and not making this. And we do put a very strong emphasis on the rights of women just so that they don't automatically be deported back to their countries, all of which we've heard from everyone.

Thank you very much for being here. Thank you for your testimonies.

BROWNBACK: Dr. Lederer, if I could, you've had more of a chance to visit with these witnesses. Are there things that they've told you that we should hear here in the committee or that you think would add illumination to this?

LEDERER: Well, I can say that we spent four hours yesterday hearing their stories and getting from them the details that I think we need to know if we're going to address this in its entirety. Oftentimes, these young women when they come in will say it was just horrible, it was terrible. And we have to find out exactly how was it horrible, how was it terrible. We have to find out exactly what are the mechanisms for recruitment and what are the trafficking routes, who's cooperating and how does it work. And all of that takes a great deal of time and questioning and so on. And I think we're at the very beginning of that.

In terms of the three young women here, we have a more detailed record of our conversations with them, which we can share with you later.

BROWNBACK: If you could, I think that would be good. And also, even this - the nature of the after care of what's needed. Did they describe to you - I don't know if any of them would be willing to describe what their - what they go through in or after this has happened to them. I don't know if any would feel willing to state that, what they are going through themselves now. And if you don't and if it's too personal, I would sure understand. I don't want to put anybody where they shouldn't be. But I do think if it's something they can share, it's something that will illuminate just how difficult and hard and harsh this is.

MARIA (THROUGH TRANSLATOR): Yes, I had a very difficult time because after I came out of this, I had to, among other things, fight off the narcotics addiction that was forced on me. So I needed a lot of psychological assistance and help. And I am still constantly bothered by flashbacks and, you know, the horror of what I had to go through.

COTO: Maria's case was very similar other than the drug addiction. But Maria, as well as the other Kadena survivors were numb. They were afraid to speak to people, trust people. They did not go outside. They were afraid to go outside. They were so used to being imprisoned that they couldn't go outside. And that took - It was a long process for them to be able to do that.

Flashbacks. One of the things that some of the survivors had to go through was they were taken to bars. And at the bars, they recruited new clients and also were forced to have sex in cars, in the bosses' vans. And so every time they would see, say, a yellow-colored van, passing by, they would have horrible flashbacks. Walking down the street was extremely difficult to do because they didn't know how to do that in the United States. They were afraid that cars would come around them or they would be kidnapped. So it's a series of psychological affects and traumas that they've had to try to overcome.

MARIA (THROUGH TRANSLATOR): Well, what I would like to say is that what I went through absolutely morally destroyed me. I felt like I had - that my sense of self was completely taken away, that I had no control over my life, that I was nothing, that I was with the - they totally destroyed me as a human being.

It's been three years and I still feel traumatized. The St. Petersburg Crisis Center has helped me a great deal, but I still have a lot of psychological assistance that I will - I know I will need in the future ahead. And what really pains me is to know that the people who were responsible for everything that I had to bear have remained completely unpunished.

LEDERER: Can I just say in closing that I think the psychological, physical, emotional, mental and spiritual degradation in this kind of a crime is complete, and that the rehabilitation process has to be comprehensive in order to deal with all of that.

WELLSTONE: Can I...

BROWNBACK: Before we take...

WELLSTONE: Spaciba (ph).

LEDERER: Marsha?

WELLSTONE: Spaciba (ph) and gracias.

BROWNBACK: Thank you all very much. This has been quite illuminating. God bless you all for being willing to step forward in a really difficult situation and illuminate this. And we hope that we're able to respond in kind at a high level of commitment that we will do something as a country to stop this horrible thing from continuing at the level that it is. Thank you all very much.

Our next panel will be Dr. Lauran Bethel, director of the New Life Center from Thailand. That's been an after-care center in Thailand associated with the American Baptist Church. Next will be Virginia Coto, director of the Florida Immigration Center, attorney representing Mexican survivors of trafficking in Florida who we've had as a translator as well on this prior panel; and Natalia Khodyreva, president of the Angel Coalition.

Dr. Bethel, thank you very much for joining us here today, and we look forward to your testimony. The floor is yours.

BETHEL: Thank you. I must say that the previous testimony elicits a great deal of emotion from me. Testimony is very similar to the many, many, many stories I've heard in Asia as well. I'm honored to be invited to speak before the subcommittee and sincerely thank Mr. Chairman and subcommittee members for their time and effort in addressing these issues involved in the international trafficking of women and children.

My name is Lauran Bethel and I am a missionary with the America Baptist Churches in the USA and have been the director of the New Life Center in Chiengmai, Thailand for the past 13 years.

BETHEL: Our center works with women and girls from the ethnic hill tribe minority groups of northern Thailand both in prevention and from their exploitation. And also, we work in the after care for young women who have been exploited in the sex and labor industry.

Many young women who have been trafficked over the border from Burma into Thailand have come through our doors, and in most cases, we have ultimately been able to help them back to their home country allowing for some after-care time.

Eleven-year-old Meda (ph) was one of our residents who was sold by her opium-addicted father to a prostitute buyer who brought her - who sold her again to a brothel near Bangkok. For four months, this young Aka (ph) Hill tribe woman had to sexually service men until finally she was rescued in a police raid and eventually brought to the New Life Center.

Here, the Aka (ph) staff members of the center were able to hear her story in her own language, assist her to receive medical care, register her in the Thai government's adult education program, and help her to receive vocational training.

She was also able to produce handcrafts and make an income for herself while living at the center. Her natural leadership abilities were recognized, and eventually, she was hired to work part-time at the New Life Center while she completed her high school diploma in adult school. Last year, she was married and now works alongside her husband in drug rehabilitation.

Meda's (ph) story illustrates the most significant aspects that any after-care program should include. Number one, staff members who are caring and committed to their work and who can relate culturally and linguistically to the clients are key to the success of any program.

At the New Life Center, two-thirds of the staff came from our client base, and therefore, feel a very strong commitment to their mission. All of the staff, with the exception of me, are tribal women who speak the languages of the residents.

Immediate attention to medical needs, number two, including HIV pre and host test counseling needs to be provided, and provisions need to be made for those who are symptomatic HIV, especially if they cannot be cared for by their families at home.

Number three, opportunity for education towards literacy in the major language of the home country needs to be a priority. Participation in school programs leading toward a diploma should be pursued whenever possible. Literacy is essential for having choices in one's life.

Number four, vocational skill education enabling the residents to have vocational choices after leaving the program should be offered. Attendance at government vocational school, which leads towards a diploma, should be pursued.

Number five, opportunities to make an income for themselves while they are receiving an education needs to be a key component of the program.
If the residents are still in contact with their families, it is likely that they will receive a great deal of pressure from the family to provide finances, particularly in our cultural communities in Asia. If they cannot make money, then they will most likely abandon their education and their hopes for increasing choices for their lives.

Number six, psychotherapeutic intervention can be a very helpful tool, essential in the healing process, especially if it is a part of the local cultural practice but should not be considered essential if it is not. And in many cases, trained counselors who speak the languages of the clients, especially in our situation, are simply not available.

We in the West should not automatically assume that psychotherapy has to be a part of any after-care program. In many cultures where community is core, inclusion into a caring supportive group with programs that offer hope for the future seem to be as effective as Western models toward healing the wounds of exploitation.

Number seven, after-care projects generally work best when they start small both in numbers and focus of the program. They can grow naturally as staff become available from the client base and the need to widen the focus becomes evident.

Number eight, after care and prevention programs can be integrated depend local - depending on local cultural issues and attitudes. As mentioned above, inclusion into a caring community can be a valuable therapy on its own, and sometimes girls who have been exploited are happy that they are being treated, quote, unquote, "normal," rather than being stigmatized and put in a special place.

Number nine, after-care programs work best when government and non-government organizations cooperate. Government-sponsored organizations often appear to punish its victims, though sometimes unintentionally, and can behave like cold bureaucracies.

Non-government organizations often have visionary leadership and well-intentioned staff but lack accountability on some issues. GO AND NGO partnerships can be the most effective way to address the issues with the GO wielding its power and creatively enabling the NGO to do its most effective, caring work at the grass-roots level. And small government grants to NGOs could have a more potent and long-lasting effect on the lives of women and children than large government-to- government grants.

Girls and young women who were tricked or sold or betrayed or who have little or no control over their lives in the brothels and have been kept as slaves see little or no money, are the ones most likely to remain in after-care programs and pursue alternatives for their lives.

For those who were able to make money, who had control over their situations, the rates of recidivism are very high. Those working in after-care situations should realize that runaways, though very heartbreaking, are common and should not become discouraged because of them. After care should not be hurried. There is no quick fix. The residents of the New Life Center take three to five years to complete the program. True life change and healing takes time.

Again, Mr. Chair, I thank you for the opportunity to meet with you and the subcommittee and will certainly be praying for the success of this process.

BROWNBACK: Thank you, Dr. Bethel, and thank you for your work that you do. And best to you as it continues.

Ms. Coto, thank you very much for being here today. And let me say as well on another note, I appreciate very much your working on this so diligently as an attorney and the various capacities. You've really brought a fine focus and a great understanding to the issue. On behalf of the committee, I deeply appreciate your expertise bringing light to us. Thanks.

COTO: Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman. It is a great honor to be here and speak on behalf of trafficking survivor advocates. As I said earlier, my name is Virginia Coto and I am supervising attorney of the Florida Immigrant Advocacy Center and the director of Lucia (ph) Women's Legal Project, which focuses on assisting battered immigration women, immigration matters.

Florida Immigrant Advocacy Center is a private nonprofit organization dedicated to promoting and protecting the rights of immigrants of all nationalities. As I said earlier, I am currently representing 14 survivors of the Kadena case of women who were sexually trafficked from Mexico into Florida.

I first became involved in the case when I read an article in "The Miami Herald" describing the arrests of some of the Kadena ring traffickers. The article also described these 14 girl and women being detained as material witnesses. We began to make telephone calls and eventually spoke to the Department of Justice, INS and FBI who almost immediately put us in contact with these victims at the Criminal Detention Center.

We were able to negotiate their release to a battered women's shelter under very stringent restrictions as material witnesses. But nevertheless, they were, at the time, placed which I feel in a very appropriate shelter or the most adequate that we could find.

I do want to say that Safe Space, which is the battered women's shelter in Miami, Florida, really stepped up to the challenge as did many other members in the community. Since my involvement in the case in February of 1998, I've learned a lot about trafficking of women and children, and I've learned that it's not unique. However, the survivors' needs are unique and they need to be treated as such.

The survivors in the Kadena case face criminal and immigration detention for up to five months. They did not receive medical or psychological treatment. They did not have adequate legal assistance. They did not have adequate information about their rights or translation services. They did not understand what was happening to them or what was going to happen to them. What they did know is that they were terrified and needed help.

The survivors in this instance were not eligible for any public benefits due to their immigration status. So as I said, we asked the community for help. They stepped up to the challenge. They provided housing, food, clothing, medical and psychological treatment, employment services and training and other social services.

As we discussed today, trafficked persons are an extremely vulnerable group. The horrors which you've heard today must be addressed by this Congress. Trafficking survivors have special needs that cannot be addressed without legislation. We are very fortunate that the community in Miami helped to address some of the survivors' needs, but this is not the case throughout the United States.

Survivors need protection from their captors. Survivors need to be released from detention as soon as possible and be housed in appropriate shelter. Survivors need food and clothing. Survivors need medical and psychological treatment. Survivors need legal assistance. Legal Services Corporations need to expand its services to include traffic persons without regard to their immigration status. Survivors need to obtain lawful permanent residency and need employment authorization in the interim.

Moreover, if I can address this issue of lawful permanent residency more specifically. The survivors in the Kadena ring have fully participated in the prosecution of their captors. They, as well as their families, have been targets of threats. The government successfully prosecuted seven of the 16 indicted. Eight defendants are still at large and are presently living in the survivors' hometowns. They know their families, they know where they live. They recruited them there and convinced and persuaded their parents to let them come to the United States.

Instead of meeting their promises of legitimate jobs, the survivors were raped, tortured and enslaved. These are survivors who are in fear for their lives and that of their families. They cannot return to their same neighborhoods where the captors live and surely would retaliate against them.

The only way in which these survivors can be protected is by granting them permanent residency. The choice to survive cannot be one of revictimization by their enslavers. Freedom is the only choice we must afford them. Furthermore, survivors want justice. Sentencing guidelines do not reflect the rape, torture or heinous crimes survivors have endured. Restitution in civil action must be granted as well. We've seen a number of - the number of sex trafficking increasing annually in the United States and internationally. This is a grave violation of human rights.

In order to deter international trafficking and to bring its perpetrators to justice, the United States must act now. Survivors need protection not punishment. Thank you.

BROWNBACK: Thank you, Ms. Coto.

And finally, we have Natalia Khodyreva, president of the Angel Coalition from Russia, has an after-care program in Russia. Welcome.

KHODYREVA: Thank you, Mr. Chairman and members of the committee. My name is Natalia Khodyreva. I am director of crisis center for women...

BROWNBACK: Pull that microphone down. There you can pull it down to...

KHODYREVA: ... in St. Petersburg and the president of International Anti-Traffic Coalition Angel. The crisis center runs prevention of trafficking of Russian women projects, conducts research, and provides support for trafficking survivors. We work with the mass media concerning our work and many women callers on our hotline.

We heard about the first trafficking case six years ago, but still there is not a government-supported program against trafficking and women. We tried to work with and inform our state structures concerning this issue. Trafficking of women is a consequence of a social-economical situation in Russia and job discrimination against women. So many educated women cannot find the appropriate job which will provide good living conditions. They have no choice but to take a job with low qualification abroad. But most of them find themselves in forced prostitution or slavery-like conditions.

Our research shows that together with a high level of enthusiasm to work abroad, these women do not have information about possibilities for illegal job abroad, of what is an appropriate visa for working abroad. One-third of the women we have researched are going to work abroad in their profession. The rest are in the various social service jobs.

KHODYREVA: No one dreams of working as a prostitute. Now one percent of the representative group of young women from six million people in the St. Petersburg region are the victim of trafficking. But only three women have appealed to the law enforcement structures. But even these few cases were closed because there are no special articles in the Russian federation communal (inaudible) against trafficking.

Our hotline statistics shows that one out of five women or her relatives call to ask how to return home. These women face serious difficulties returning to their homes after being trafficked. Some of them run away from brothels and need money for return ticket. Some try to return with children from foreign husbands. But almost all of them need psychological, medical, legal support after trafficking incidents.

The other four out of five women need valid information on obtaining a valid work visa, immigration rules, addresses of women organizations and embassies abroad.

The Angel Coalition consists of 20 Russian non-government organizations I think the American Charitable Institute (inaudible). The Angel Coalition is in preparation to run a public campaign and disseminate prevention information all over Russia. We will also try to lobby for law against trafficking in the state of Duma. But the plan of the coalition cannot become reality without funding.

Russian women urgently need valid information. We have already lost many years and many women continue to suffer from this act of being trafficked.

We should not repeat our grievous mistakes. Members of the Angel Coalition work all over Russia, in Siberia, Ural'sk Sofen (ph) Russia in the Far East and in Europe.

The traffickers are very adaptable in their methods of recruitment. They recruited women under the false pretenses for studying languages, professional training in tourist service, using a pair visa on culture exchange. Let us - We need negotiation between governments on legal job agreements and immigration rules. With strict immigration laws, more women are vulnerable to traffickers, to trafficking.

I would like to thank the unit - United States Senate for the opportunity to represent the Russian women voices here and for extremely urgent organization for this visit. Thank you for your attention.

BROWNBACK: Thank you very much. And thank you for coming here to share with your after-care programs.

Dr. Bethel, let me start with you if I could. What's the size of the problem where you're dealing with? You deal with some in an after- care. Do you have any notion of the size within the populations you're dealing?

BETHEL: I really have no idea. The numbers are just so fluid. There's just - The statistics are all over the place as far as what kind of numbers we're dealing with in Thailand. Of course, the issues in Thailand are you've got the girls coming over from the Burma border into Thailand being trafficked. You've got within Thailand people being trafficked from the hill areas down to the cities. And, of course, the vast number of women being trafficked out of Thailand to other places in the world, particularly Japan and other countries and the U.S.

BROWNBACK: But so no feel at all from any official or unofficial numbers?

BETHEL: Well, I really couldn't give any statistics.

BROWNBACK: That's fine. But that in and of itself is troubling. You know, if you've got that size and nature of a problem, you have no notion that - what the size and scale of this is.

BETHEL: I'm sure that some agencies have numbers but that's not my field of expertise.

BROWNBACK: Right, no, I understand. And I'm not saying that it should be yours. You have a different one. At what age are these girls frequently trafficked in Thailand? What age are they taken?

BETHEL: Oh, it can be from as young - we've had girls - probably the youngest girls are about 11, 12 years old that we've worked with that have been trafficked or have gone into prostitution.

BROWNBACK: What's the average age? Is there an average age?

BETHEL: Probably 14, 15, 16, 17.

BROWNBACK: Is the average age?

BETHEL: Would be the average ages, yeah.

BROWNBACK: I appreciate your suggestions on the after care and the breadth of approach that needs to be taken and the listing of those items.

Ms. Coto, you heard the legislative recommendations from the administration witness that was here. What were your - Do you have any thoughts or comments on that list of legislation items that were put forward by the administration?

COTO: Somewhat. I do agree that we need to expand the definition of what coercion is in order to be able to successfully prosecute some of these cases. I represent some other forced labor cases where we had domestic workers who were held in involuntary servitude, and it has been very difficult to prove involuntary servitude because of the elements that are necessary to prove that. And so I think we need to expand that.

BROWNBACK: If I could invite you, I think it would be - after this hearing, if you could resubmit to us maybe a statement of what you think the coercion should include. If you've worked on some of these cases directly and you know in prosecuting a case, you've got to hit the definition on the head in bringing a successful prosecution to court. I would hope you would submit to us your thoughts on how to define coercion.

COTO: Certainly. One of the things that I would like to point out is working on both types of these cases, I really feel that we need legislation on both ends. However, I think that sexual trafficking by its nature of - where victims are sexually exploited versus exploited labor worker, I think we need to have some really - division or separate portion that really addresses the needs of sexually trafficked persons because I think it's really unique.

Although you have some of the same elements with forced labor, and I think the nature - the sexual nature of the trafficking is so specific and so heinous that it also needs different types of after- care programs that forced labor maybe necessarily does not that I would actually - I would like to see that addressed in the legislation, because I do think that it needs to be separated or distinguished.

BROWNBACK: That would seem like correct to me as well. These are different types of crimes that are going to need to be defined, defined differently.

COTO: Some of the other things the Department of Justice have put forward with I'm in agreement is immigration status. I think there has to be lawful permanent residency and also a way for victims to obtain employment authorization in the interim. I think it needs to be in a timely basis. I don't think there needs to be a three-year wait. I think it needs to be more of a timely basis. For example, the girls that I represent, it's been almost three years and they have no legal status or any permanent status.

They're still working their way through a temporary status and it has been very difficult for them to move on with their lives not knowing whether the Department of Justice in their discretion is going to grant them lawful permanent residency. So they don't know if they get to stay or they get to go. And whether that means, you know, whether they get to live or not.

The other thing is I also, which I had mentioned, I think, that the sentencing guidelines are not stiff enough. In the Kadena case, we're talking two defendants got two years, two years for enslaving these girls. That was to me disgusting. I think that sentencing guidelines really need to be strengthened and much stricter if we're going to have any kind of enforcement or deterrence.

And the other issue which I didn't agree with the Department of Justice is I think there should be sanctions on other governments who are not agreeing to human rights standards. And I think that we need to have some kind of accountability in those countries where, again, there could be more of a mechanism to hold them accountability and actually engage them in stopping or reducing, as Senator Wellstone said, trafficking.

BROWNBACK: Those are very thoughtful and I appreciate any others that you might submit for the record later on.

Natalia, any idea of the size of the problem of trafficking in Russia or even in the area that you serve that you could give us some ideas here?

KHODYREVA (THROUGH TRANSLATOR): I just want to reiterate what I already said in my presentation that among the young women that we studied, there were 4,000 to 5,000 who were victims of trafficking. This is just young women from the St. Petersburg area. And there are many big cities in Russia.

BROWNBACK: Did she find an organized crime ring nature to those that she studied in trafficking? Was it part of an organized crime effort?

KHODYREVA (THROUGH TRANSLATOR): I think that in Russia, this is all very well organized, beginning with small agencies in the cities that recruit the women, that have their branches in other countries. It's a trans-border, trans-international organization that is very, very well organized.

BROWNBACK: And I hope all of you will share with us ideas, if you have further ones, on after-care that would be the best things that we could support.

Dr. Bethel, you mentioned specific items in yours.

The rest of you, any - we have your testimony but anything else you'd like to tell us about of what should be included in after-care, we'd like to have that as well.

COTO: I would just like to stress the need to make things - to make sure that after-care is culturally sensitive and that the determination for a receipt of funding if after-care is going to be provided, funding for after care is going to be provided in the legislation that it not necessarily be dictated by people who are not taking into account the different kinds of cultural needs in these specific settings in which we're working.

BROWNBACK: I think it's a good and valid point.

Senator Wellstone?

WELLSTONE: Thank you, Mr. Chairman. You've asked - we've been at the hearing for a while and you've asked some of the questions I want to ask. I'll - I think that I'll - I think that Dr. Bethel mentioned about culturally sensitive is important. It does seem to me that regardless of culture or country, there's some things that are pretty clear from what we've heard today.

One of them is above and beyond the obvious, just being physically, sexually abused, there's just the whole question of post-traumatic stress syndrome and the need for mental health services.

I mean, this is just, it's - We have in Minnesota a very special place that's called the Torture Treatment Center and in some ways, I think people have gone through - that's what people have gone through here is torture.

I wanted to ask Natalia or Lauren, I guess, do you see any similarities as to who the women and children are, I mean, who the victims are? Is it that they're low income, poor, unemployed, without work? Who do they tend to be...

BETHEL: Socio-economic...

WELLSTONE: ... in Thailand or in Russia?

BETHEL: Right. Uneducated. Education is absolutely key. I mean, these young women mostly are not literate or have a very, very low level of education, from very poor communities and communities where they are socialized and raised to believe that they are economically responsible for their families. And they will, in fact, sacrifice themselves and work as prostitutes if that's what they feel that they can do to support their families.

In our situations and many other situations in Asia, that is absolute core.

And so what you have to do in order to - in terms of after care, you have to make sure that you are providing them with alternatives to make sure that they are able to support their families.

BETHEL: And that is key in the healing process as well, providing that kind of hope for the future for their families.

WELLSTONE: Right.

KHODYREVA (THROUGH TRANSLATOR): There is the Russian case is unique because for the most part, the Russian women who are trafficked tend to be well-educated and they tend to be older than the women who become victims in the Far East. And the reason for this is that they cannot find proper employment.

And there is another unique aspect for the Russian case, and that is there is, for all practical purposes, no protection from the law authorities.

WELLSTONE: In all - So if I understand what you've said, the bitter irony in some of the countries like Russia and some of the other countries that used to be in the former Soviet Union, the bitter irony is that the economic disintegration means that these women are not necessarily - they have not always been poor or many of them were actually highly educated who at one time may have been gainfully employed and now they have no employment.

And thus - so they're looking for a way to go to another country to find a job but not, of course, being forced into prostitution?

KHODYREVA (THROUGH TRANSLATOR): Yes, you're absolutely correct.

WELLSTONE: My father was - grew up in Russia, fled the country, so some of what you say is very personal to me.

Can I ask you just one question? You've been at this a long time. The Immigration and Naturalization Act, does that help you or hurt you, the laws?

BETHEL: Currently?

WELLSTONE: Yeah. I mean, do the people feel like they could bring charges against the traffickers? I mean, do they know their rights? Are they afraid to speak out? We've been through this.

BETHEL: In trafficking cases or generally?

WELLSTONE: Yeah. If you can do both. I'll bet you want to.

BETHEL: Well, generally, the immigration reform in 1996 was extremely harsh. And immigrants are finding themselves in situations where they're being more and more exploited because of the harshness in the immigration reform law in 1996.

As to trafficking, there are no protections. There are simply no protections to assist immigrants for being exploited sexually or otherwise. And because of this and of many of the other things that we talked about today, they're finding themselves in situations where they don't come forward, they just won't come forward.

WELLSTONE: I don't even know why I asked you the question because I already knew the answer. I mean, I was just thinking to myself: "Why did I ask that question?" We already know that, Sam. I mean, we know that for sure. I mean, that's what we've been focusing on and we know it has to be changed.

I'd like to just thank all of you for being here. I thank you for your work. I very much admire what you do.

BETHEL: Thank you very much.

BROWNBACK: Thank you all very much, and God bless you, too, for helping out all those young women that are different places around the world. You provide a ray of hope to them. Keep that hope alive. We really appreciate it. Thank you for all attending the hearing. I think it's been very illuminating. The hearing is adjourned.

END

NOTES:
Unknown - Indicates speaker unknown.
Inaudible - Could not make out what was being said.
off mike - Indicates could not make out what was being said.

PERSON: LAURA LEDERER (67%); PAUL DAVID WELLSTONE (65%); SAM BROWNBACK (60%); JOHN DAVID ASHCROFT (57%); CRAIG THOMAS (56%); ROBERT G TORRICELLI (55%); PAUL DAVID (55%); PAUL S SARBANES (55%); PAUL WELLSTONE (52%);

LOAD-DATE: April 8, 2000

Document 11 of 44.


Search Terms: legal services corporation, House or Senate or Joint
To narrow your search, please enter a word or phrase: