TESTIMONY

BILL NO: House Bill 1559

TITLE: Human trafficking and commercial sexual exploitation; provide services for
victims through approved services.
DATE: March 12, 2020
POSITION: SUPPORT

Shared Hope International is a national NGO mobilizing sustainable legislative change at the state and
federal levels to protect youth survivors of sex trafficking and hold offenders to account. Since 2010, we
have utilized a comprehensive, 41 component legislative framework to analyze and grade existing laws
related to child sex trafficking in all 50 states and D.C. When we issued the first State Report Card in
2011, Mississippi received a “D” grade; in 2019, the state’s tremendous multi-year efforts were
recognized with an “A” grade. However, we were candid in the delivering the news to our Mississippi
allies and fellows advocates, making clear that an “A” grade should not signal a finalized effort and, like
every other state and D.C, gaps remained in Mississippi’s laws, policies, and practices.

House Bill 1559 responds directly to both our call for continued progress and local stakeholder’s expert
needs assessment. This bill both complements and amplifies the responses that are effective, while
providing alternative avenues for ensuring the provision of comprehensive care for survivors.
Ultimately, this public-private partnership will serve to support state agencies currently tasked with
providing services to all identified trafficking victims.

Similar models have proven enormously effective in other states and regions, including in the northern
neighboring state of Tennessee. The Tennessee Anti-Slavery Alliance (TASA) is a statewide, partially-
government funded partnership formed in 2016 between NGO service providers across the state.
Together with relevant state agencies, TASA ensures the coordination and delivery of specialized
services for survivors. This network has played an important role in preventing a single organization or
government agency from carrying the burden of ensuring immediate and long-term care for identified
victims of trafficking. Similarly, supporting Mississippians Against Human Trafficking in the
development and coordination of a statewide network of service providers will ensure survivors of
trafficking are connected with the immediate and long-term holistic care and services that are imperative
to healing.

Additionally, HB 1559 empowers the Department of Child Protection Services to, importantly, provide
an array of child sex trafficking specific responses, including the utilization of specialized: emergency
child sex trafficking MDTs, screening and investigation tools, and procedures to facilitate appropriate
responses to identified youth. Specifically, proper identification and specialized responses at the outset
prove enormously helpful in positively impacting a youth survivor’s trajectory. Utilizing community
based organizations, in tandem with CPS care and services, is an effective way of ensuring survivor-
centered practices.

We have been pleased to observe the enormous anti-trafficking work this body and Mississippians have
undertaken in the last five years and we are proud to support this bill to complement and sustain those
efforts. Your support for HB 1559 will ensure that Mississippi is not only an “A” in law and policy, but
an “A” for the most vulnerable kids. We are grateful for the legislature’s dedication to this issue and for
allowing Shared Hope the opportunity to illuminate the importance of this bill.

1
 TESTIMONY

Sincerely,

Sarah Bendtsen, J.D.

Policy Counsel
Institute for Justice & Advocacy
Shared Hope International

For questions or additional information:

sarah@sharedhope.org