Amendment would erase criminal record for sex-trafficking victims in Mass.

Local nonprofit leaders are mobilizing to encourage legislators to pass an amendment that would give victims of sex trafficking — such as forced prostitution — the opportunity to erase their criminal records and give them access to state resources.

 

The New England Trafficking Aftercare Coalition (NETAC), comprising small nonprofits from Maine, Massachusetts, New Hampshire and Rhode Island, formed earlier this year to combine resources and share information. Its mission is similar to that of the Boston-based Massachusetts Coalition to End Human Trafficking, an alliance of nonprofit leaders, private citizens and faith-based organizations that joined forces last year.

 

What authorities once viewed as prostitution is now being viewed as something more complex, with prostitutes being seen more often as victims in need of rescuing from pimps who law enforcement officials say are enslaving them for profit. For this reason, “human trafficking” is becoming the more-common term, with a sex-trafficking victim defined as anyone who engages in a commercial sex act, such as prostitution, as the result of force, fraud or coercion.

 

A bill in the state Senate this week was sent to the Legislature’s joint Committee on the Judiciary that would give women with criminal records of prostitution and related charges the opportunity to expunge their criminal record, enabling them to have access to resources such as job training or addiction services that are unavailable to those with a record. As the state Senate finalizes its fiscal 2017 budget, members of the Massachusetts coalition are hoping legislators will preserve the amendment as the conference committee debates which parts of the budget will end up in the final version, when the new fiscal year begins on July 1.

 

The number of sex-trafficking victims rescued in New England has more than tripled in the past few years — from 54 in 2014 to 183 in 2015, according to the U.S. Department of Homeland Security office in Boston.

 

One of the founding members of the New England coalition, Stephanie Clark, executive director of Amirah Inc., a safe home for rescued trafficking survivors located on the North Shore of Boston, said decriminalizing women who have been trafficked is the first step toward helping them heal, and eventually get the training and support they need to join the workforce. These women are not only overcoming the stigma of serving jail time, but they are coming out of the criminal justice system with a host of other issues. "The truth of the matter is that we're not just dealing with addiction-recovery issues, and not just emotional trauma recovery issues, it's all of those things 'on steroids,'" Clark said. "These women are not doing this by their own choice."