County recognizes National Human Trafficking Prevention Month
‘Human trafficking can happen to anyone, but certain populations are disproportionately at risk, including people affected by prior abuse or sexual violence, poverty, and unstable living situations or homelessness’
Photo by Tom Rivers
ALBION – Orleans County Legislator Fred Miller, right, presents a proclamation from the County Legislature last week to Teresa Elam-Zwifka, Director of Child & Family Services for the Department of Social Services (left), and Heather Jackson, a senior caseworker at DSS.
The Legislature issued a proclamation declaring January as National Human Trafficking Prevention Month.
Legislators highlighted human trafficking which is a commercial sex act induced by force, fraud, or coercion or when a person induced to perform such an act is not yet 18 years old.
Legislators also said trafficking is the recruitment, harboring, transportation, provision, or obtaining of a person for labor or services, through the use of force, fraud, or coercion for the purpose of subjection to involuntary servitude, peonage, debt bondage, or slavery.
“Human trafficking is a public health issue and crime affecting individuals, families, and communities across generations, in every state and territory across the United States, exploiting the most vulnerable among us and weakening our collective well-being,” the proclamation states.
People can be trafficked in person and online, and in industries such as restaurants, cleaning services, construction and factories, legislators said. People can be trafficked by strangers or someone they know, including partners, parents and other family members.
“Human trafficking can happen to anyone, but certain populations are disproportionately at risk, including people affected by prior abuse or sexual violence, poverty, and unstable living situations or homelessness, as well as those systemically marginalized and underserved,” legislators stated in the proclamation.
