Former Congresswoman Linda Smith of Vancouver is taking her campaign against sex trafficking of minors to Olympia.
Smith, a Republican, represented the 3rd Congressional District from 1994 to 1998. After losing a U.S. Senate campaign in 1998, she began a new career as founder of Shared Hope International, an organization that has worked to rescue women and children who are victims of sex trafficking rings internationally and, more recently, in the United States.
Smith and her staff train the spotlight on traffickers and their methods of ensnaring children and transporting them from city to city, including along the Interstate 5 corridor. Her organization has conducted research for the U.S. Department of Justice documenting the prevalence of sex trafficking of minors in the United States.
That research concluded that more than 100,000 American minors are trafficked annually to feed a growing market for children between the ages of 11 and 14.
Now Smith is focusing on getting state legislatures to act, including the one closest to home.
“We decided we had to work on all fronts,” she said Monday. “We are coming into several states, and we are finding that there aren’t services for these domestic victims. Quite a few organizations have been asking for help to keep these girls safe and secure. Our goal would be to move them to a safe harbor rather than arrest them.”
Smith will testify in favor of three bills regarding sex trafficking. Today, she’ll go before the Senate Labor, Commerce and Consumer Protection Committee to support Senate Bill 6330, which would authorize the Washington Department of Transportation to place informational posters about sex traffickers in state rest areas, and Senate Bill 6332, which would require agencies that recruit foreign workers to provide them with pamphlets that inform them of their rights under state and federal labor law.
Testifying with her will be a La Center 18-year-old who was recruited to work in a Seattle strip club in December. Smith said the young woman narrowly escaped being coerced to move out of state and sever ties with her family until Shared Hope International and the Vancouver Police Department intervened.
Smith will return Friday at 8 a.m. to testify before the Human Services and Corrections Committee on Senate Bill 6476, which would require far-reaching changes in the way the criminal justice system treats young girls arrested for prostitution and those who exploit them.
The bill, sponsored by Sen. Val Stevens, R-Arlington, would require that minors arrested for prostitution be treated as victims and connected with social and health services. It would authorize the impoundment of customers’ vehicles. And it would ramp up the penalties for traffickers and their customers.
SB 6476 would raise the promotion of commercial sex abuse of a minor, or “pimping,” to a Class A felony, carrying a seven- to 26-year prison sentence and a maximum $5,000 fine. The crime is now a Class B felony, which carries a minimum sentence of 21 months.
And the bill would elevate commercial sex abuse of a minor, or buying, from a Class C felony with a $550 fine to a Class B felony, with a 21-month to 12-year sentence and an additional $5,000 fine.
“With adult prostitution, law enforcement officers are trained to arrest and charge the prostitute, only marginally addressing the seller and buyer,” Stevens said in a statement. “Minors kidnapped or coerced into prostitution are victims. They had no choice. These children and young teens are so abused they don’t know who to trust. They have no safe place to go. To treat them as criminals simply adds another bad dream to an already nightmarish existence.”
