“Restoring Human Dignity: Women Lawyers Push Back Against Human Trafficking”

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That’s the title of this article, with a short excerpt below:

Every lawyer who works on the issue of human trafficking has a powerful memory of someone like Katya, whose life has been torn asunder by what is seen as a growing, if hidden, worldwide criminal enterprise. Katya is one of as many as 17,500 people who are trafficked to the United States each year, according to the U.S. Department of State; some nonprofits put the figure as high as 100,000. In 2006, the U.S. government appropriated $152 million for international and domestic anti-trafficking efforts.

For Suzanne Tomatore, director of the Immigrant Women and Children Project of the City Bar Justice Center in New York City, the enduring image is of a client in her twenties who had been trafficked from Africa at age six. Forced to work as a domestic servant, the client had never been to school, could not read or write, and had remained unseen until a neighbor called authorities.

“Human trafficking touches on so many different areas:gender issues, economic issues, education issues,”says Tomatore, who began working with immigrants after graduating from law school in 2000.”It’s a new way of thinking of an age-old problem:slavery in general. This is a modern way of enslaving someone. You assume that this happened in the past or in some other country.”

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