Delegates push bill to battle human trafficking

MORGANTOWN, W.Va. — Two Monongalia County delegates are behind legislation in Charleston to raise awareness of human trafficking and develop a statewide plan to prevent it in the Mountain State.

House Bill 2161, sponsored by Democrat Barbara Evans Fleischauer and Republican Amanda Pasdon, is considered a uniform act on the prevention of and remedies for human trafficking.

Human trafficking has become a billion dollar industry in the United States. It includes sex and labor trafficking or selling individuals to work or for commercial sexual purposes.

For Fleischauer, it is a bipartisan plan to address what she said is already happening in West Virginia.

“We know that it’s going on in the northern district. It’s probably going on everywhere. We just need to learn more about it. That’s one of the main reasons we’re having a forum,” said Fleischauer.

The delegates, Monongalia County Prosecuting Attorney Marcia Ashdown and William Ihlenfeld, the U.S. Attorney for the Northern District of West Virginia, held an educational forum at the courthouse in Morgantown Tuesday.

Ihlenfeld worked in conjunction with the FBI and homeland security officials to conduct a sting in the northern part of the state that targeted human trafficking in the summer of 2014.

“The numbers of people that continued to show up at this operation who were interested in engaging in illicit sex with either minor or adult females was just incredible,” said Ihlenfeld. “We were just piece of a much larger national operation. ”

According to Ihlenfeld, prosecutions have gone up significantly in the nation in the last 5 years.

“We need to continue to do that with our partners so that we can target those who are in the commercial business of exploiting and selling human beings because it is happening in West Virginia.”

Oftentimes, victims are homeless or runaways who are targeted by crime leaders. Ihlenfeld said the victims are often taken in, given a place to live, fed and provided with drugs before they are sold in a human trafficking ring.

According to Fleischauer, hospital staff members have already been seeing and treating human trafficking victims.

What she learned at a meeting for domestic violence and rape victims opened her eyes to not just a national problem, but a statewide concern.

“I was there when they talked about the case of a Colombian woman who thought she was coming to WVU to go to school. Instead, she came to Morgantown and was raped for two days,” said Fleischauer. “I find that very shocking to think that was happening in my hometown.”





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