Sabini: Stamp Out Modern Slavery, Forced Prostitution
BY JOHN TOSCANO

State Senator John Sabini has introduced a bill that punishes human traffickers and provides social and medical services for their victims. He announced the new legislation in Corona near the site of a major trafficking operation that was raided by federal authorities. Standing with him is Christine Dickinson, Assistant Counsel to the New York State Senate Minority.

Declaring that human trafficking, such as forcing women into prostitution, is the modern equivalent of slavery, state Senator John Sabini has introduced legislation that severely punishes perpetrators of such crimes and also provides assistance to victims.

Sabini's measure creates new felony crimes to punish human traffickers and those who promote sex tourism and also punishes those who patronize trafficking victims for prostitution.

For victims, the bill provides secure medical and mental health treatment, shortand longterm housing options. child care, proper immigrant status and job training and placement.

Sabini (D-Jackson Heights) declared: "The victims of human trafficking are most often women and children, forced into prostitution and drug use, subjected to violence and unspeakable acts in a foreign land far from their families.

"It is essential that we increase the penalties for the perpetrators of these horrific crimes, but we must also consider that the victims of these crimes often have nowhere to go and no one to turn to, once they have been rescued. It is incumbent upon us to help them as they try to rebuild their lives and regain their dignity."

Sabini, who's running for re-election, noted that federal immigration and customs officials recently completed a 15-month investigation that resulted in the arrest of 31 people operating 20 brothels in Queens and six states. The arrests freed more than 70 suspected Korean sex slaves from the huge human trafficking ring.

The probe had begun when a couple who owned and operated a chain of brothels in Queens tried to bribe an undercover New York City Police detective, Sabini said.

Summarizing the episode, Sabini stated, "The size of this operation is shocking."

Speaking at the site of a previously exposed human trafficking operation in Corona, which is in his district, Sabini added, "But now that the arrests have been made, it's time to think about what will become of the victims, the young women who were tricked and forced into slavery."

Lawmakers in Albany have been attempting to pass competing bills in the legislature, which resulted in a stalemate, Sabini explained.

But, he said, his bill combines the best elements of the other legislation as a third and more comprehensive option. Part of his bill, he said, was offered as an amendment to the senate Republican majority's human trafficking bill. It was modified after receiving input from the City Bar Justice Center, "which has experience working on high-profile human trafficking cases."

Sabini explained that the Corona case involved two brothers who had allegedly smuggled a number of Mexican women to New York to force them into prostitution. The women had been promised jobs and marriage by their captors, Sabini said, but were instead forced into prostitution.

Sabini said, "Prosecutors in the case said the perpetrators would recruit young, uneducated women and girls from impoverished areas of Mexico and use some combination of deception, fraud, coercion, rape, forced abortion, threats and violence to compel them to prostitute themselves."

Sabini expressed concern that the women victims involved would be forced to return to their homeland without being medically examined.

"What will become of these women once they are sent home?" he asked. "These women have been forced into a world in which drug addiction, disease, mental illness, beatings and violent death are commonplace. This takes an horrific and tragic toll on them physically and mentally and we must provide them the services they need if they are ever to live normal, healthy and productive lives."