In Our Own Backyards: The Need For a Coordinated Judicial Response to Human Trafficking

Hon. Toko Serita

Introduction

In a relatively short period of time, New York State has put itself at the vanguard of the battle against human trafficking. New York has passed several laws criminalizing sex and labor trafficking, recognized that anyone younger than eighteen years of age arrested on prostitution charges is a “sexually exploited child” and a “victim of a severe form of trafficking,” and, most recently, provided a way for sex trafficking victims to vacate their prostitution convictions.

In the years since these laws took effect, I have observed that our understanding of the dynamics of domestic and foreign sex trafficking, both locally and domestically, has improved. The trafficking cases that are seen in the Human Trafficking Intervention Court (HTIC),over which I preside provide a glimpse of this expanded understanding. These cases discredit the popular notion that modern day slavery and the sexual enslavement of girls, women, and foreign undocumented persons do not occur “in our own backyards.” And yet, despite this improved understanding, defendants arrested on prostitution charges are not generally recognized as victims, but are charged as criminals. The criminal justice system has been unable to adequately identify those defendants that might be victims of trafficking. To date, there has been very little scholarship analyzing either New York’s human trafficking laws or the role prostitution diversion courts play in identifying trafficking victims and providing alternatives to incarceration. This article addresses the different types of trafficking cases that are intercepted through the criminal justice system, the current state of sex trafficking law in New York, and, finally, the role of the HTIC in identifying and providing solutions for trafficking victims. It also addresses the necessity of creating a coordinated judicial response to this human rights problem, and recommends ways that this can be accomplished.

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Preface

On Tuesday, April 5, 2011, the Review of Law and Social Change hosted a symposium: Taking Stock: A Symposium Celebrating the New York State Judicial Committee on Women in the Courts.  This issue is dedicated to that symposium.

Hon. Betty Weinberg Ellerin, then Senior Counsel to Alston & Bird and Chair of the New York State Judicial Committee on Women in the Courts, delivered the preface to this issue.

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The (In)visibility of Motherhood in Family Court Proceedings

Melissa L. Breger

Abstract

Issues of bias in Family Court in the context of race and overrepresentation of people of poverty have been extensively explored in academic literature. There is arguably a parallel overrepresentation of women, and particularly mothers, in our Family Courts. I question whether the Family Court would function as it currently does without mothers as its core litigants. Specifically, I delve into the implicit gender biases inherent in societal expectations of mothers as all-knowing, ever-nurturing, and ever-protective of their children––expectations that often ignore the complexities and nuances of motherhood. To illustrate my thesis, I focus on a case that I was involved in over a decade ago, which was subsequently featured in Professor Dorothy Roberts’ book: Shattered Bonds: The Color of the Child Welfare System. Through this narrative, the Article raises critical questions regarding the influence of implicit gender bias and the construct of motherhood in Family Court proceedings. As a result of its predominance, has the gender of Family Court litigants become virtually invisible? How might we identify, confront, and address this (in)visibility in our family justice system?

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The Idea of Violence Against Women: Lessons from United States v. Jessica Lenahan, The Federal Civil Rights Remedy, and the New York State Anti-Trafficking Campaign

Jill Laurie Goodman

Abstract

Violence against women is both a fact of life for women throughout the world and an idea growing out of the international human rights movement. As an idea, violence against women brings together various kinds of gender violence, names them, and characterizes them not as isolated incidents perpetrated by misguided individuals but as parts of culturally-created systems of gender inequality. Armed with an understanding of the idea of gender violence and the insights into its character and dynamics, activists are free to use this idea as a weapon. This paper will discuss three examples of efforts to use the idea of violence against women and its corollaries to change the lives of women and girls who live within its shadow: a case brought in the Inter-American Human Rights Commission on behalf of a United States victim of domestic violence, federal violence against women legislation, and New York State’s anti-human trafficking campaign. Each represents a different kind of action, and each met with a different kind of success. In the end, the problem of violence against women demands that we call on all of these approaches––and many more––if we are to make headway against this ancient, global blight.

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