New York To Pass Milestone Anti-Trafficking Legislation!
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
May 17, 2007
Contact: NORMA RAMOS, Esq., Executive Director, CATW (212) 643-9895
The Coalition Against Trafficking in Women announces with great joy and gratitude that New York State will soon pass this nation's strongest anti-trafficking legislation. This landmark law represents the culmination of three years of advocacy by a coalition of 80 organizations and individuals throughout New York State, a major port of entry for traffickers. “We applaud Governor Spitzer and Lt. Gov. David Paterson, Speaker Sheldon Silver and Senator Joseph Bruno for agreeing to pass legislation that will serve as a precedent-setting model for our nation in the fight against human trafficking,” said Norma Ramos, Executive Director of the Coalition Against Trafficking in Women. In addition to making sex trafficking a B Felony and labor trafficking a D Felony, the new law will raise the penalty against those who patronize prostitution from a B to an A Misdemeanor.
The new law will be the first anti-trafficking law in the United States to increase penalties against the demand for commercial sex, which fuels the economic base of the global trafficking industry. “By strengthening penalties against buyers of commercial sex, New York State is sending an unmistakable message that our women and children are not for sale,” Ms.Ramos emphasized.
The law will also direct felony-level penalties against travel-related agencies operating in New York State that send men abroad to purchase the bodies of women and children in prostitution. “Sex tourism is an ugly and brutal business in which affluent men from wealthy countries travel to the most impoverished to sexually prey on women and children,” Ms. Ramos pointed out. “This new law will help put them out of business.”
“This law begins the kind of paradigm shift that was effected in the area of domestic violence twenty-five years ago,” said Dorchen Leidholdt, Director of Sanctuary for Families’ Center for Battered Women’s Legal Services, which has assisted many victims of human trafficking. She stressed that the new law is a milestone—the strongest state anti-trafficking law in the United States.