COUNCIL OF THE CITY OF PHILADELPHIA COMMITTEE ON PUBLIC HEALTH AND HUMAN SERVICES Room 400, City Hall Philadelphia, Pennsylvania Monday, December 8, 2025 2:10 p.m. PRESENT: COUNCILWOMAN NINA AHMAD, CHAIR COUNCILWOMAN QUETCY M. LOZADA, VICE-CHAIR COUNCILWOMAN CINDY BASS COUNCILMAN MIKE DRISCOLL COUNCILWOMAN RUE LANDAU
Good afternoon. Welcome to Philadelphia City Council's Committee on Public Health and Human Services. I now note that the hour has come. Mr. Sham, would you please call the roll? (Brief recess.)
I note for the record that a quorum of this committee is present and this hearing is called to order. This is a public hearing of the Committee of Public Health and Human Services considering testimony on Bill No. 250990. Mr. Sham, would you please read the title of the bill.
Bill No. 2 250990, amending Chapter 9-1100 of The Philadelphia Code, entitled "Fair Practices Ordinance 5 Protections Against Unlawful Discrimination," to add protections against employment discrimination on the basis of human trafficking victim status, all under certain terms and conditions.
Before we call up the first panel, I'm recognizing myself for opening remarks and then I will hand it over to any other colleague who would like to make remarks. Good afternoon, everybody, and thank you all for being here. Today's hearing is on Bill 250990, which would add human trafficking victim status to the list of protected categories under our Fair Practices Ordinance on its face. This is a change of the Code. But in real life, it's about whether survivors are allowed a fair chance to rebuild. We know that trafficking does not happen in a vacuum. It almost always comes with violence, often against women. Nationally, more than in women experience physical or sexual violence or stalking in their lifetime. Here in Pennsylvania, that figure is just as alarming. Last year alone, 71 women were killed in domestic violence incidents across the Commonwealth. What's even more difficult is that most survivors never see justice in the traditional sense. Fewer than 5% of sexual assaults are ever reported. Out of 1000 rapes, only about 7 lead to a felony conviction. That is not because harm isn't happening. It's because the system is profoundly hard for survivors to navigate. So when someone finally escapes trafficking, they're already carrying an unbelievable weight. And then too often, we ask them to explain gaps in employment, disruption in housing or interactions with the legal system without offering any protections from discrimination tied to their victimization. People should not lose job opportunities because of what someone else did to them. This bill says something very simple and very necessary: Surviving trafficking should not follow you into a job interview. It should not be used against you when you're trying to work to provide and to move forward. We are here today to hear from advocates and survivors about how discrimination shows up after trafficking and why this protection matters in everyday life. My hope is that we stay honest about the scale of violence we are dealing with and equally clear about our obligations to remove barriers where we can. Thank you everyone who took the time to testify today. Before I begin, we begin, I would like to provide the number for the National Human Trafficking Hotline and the local Salvation Army New Day to stop trafficking hotline. The first one, which is the National Human Trafficking Hotline, is 1-888-373-7888. Once again, 1-888-373-7888. And for the Salvation Army New Day to Stop Trafficking Hotline is 267-838-5866, 267-838-5866. Thank you. And now, if any of my colleagues have any comments to make. We'll go with Councilmember Rue Landau.
Thank you so much. I just had brief remarks. First, I want to thank my colleague Councilwoman Nina Ahmad for introducing this legislation. And for me, this legislation not only protects categories of women, but in particular it also protects immigrants who are brought to the country in a way of trafficking as well as the LGBTQ+ community. It's very important that we focus on the issue and make sure that we're highlighting it as somebody who was a part of including victims of domestic violence and sexual assault in the Fair Practices Ordinance, this is a natural connection and a natural subcategory as well of folks who might not fit in there, but also who really need the same protections as well. So thank you. I'm looking forward to hearing from everyone.
Thank you, Councilmember Landau. Anybody else? (No response.)
Mr. Sham, could you please call up the first panel. The CLERK: Noting for the record that the Philadelphia Commission on Human Relations submitted written testimony in support of Bill No. 250990. First up, we have Larry Krasner, District Attorney of Philadelphia. DISTRICT ATTORNEY KRASNER: Good afternoon, and thank you all for the opportunity to say a few words and then address any and all questions that you may have on this incredibly important topic. I am here today with First Assistant Robert Listenbee, seated to your left, my right. As many of you may know, Bob Listenbee's legal career has in large part been spent trying to protect juveniles. That's what he has done ever since the early days, continues to do it. He was, in fact, the Chief of Juvenile Justice for Barack Obama in his second term as President. And seated to your right, my left, is also our Chief of our Family Violent Sexual Assault Unit, Katrina Wadas. That's W-a-d-a-s. Katrina with a K, right?
Yes. DISTRICT ATTORNEY KRASNER: All right. And we are delighted to be here because this is an issue that we care about very much. Also, somewhere nearby me is Angela Lee, who does victim services within our Family Violent Sexual Assault Unit, and is very close to some of the issues that you are considering here today. I'll try to keep my comments brief. Number one, I applaud that you don't want to blame victims. Blaming victims is ugly. It's wrong. It's something that's been going on for a very long time. And trafficking is an area, whether it's labor trafficking or sex trafficking, where blaming the victim has been routine sadly. In fact, people who held my position, either in Philadelphia or in other places, often thought it was a good idea to prosecute those who were exploited, those who have survived having been trafficked. As I'm sure you're well aware, I disagree. I think we should help victims. I think we should protect people. I don't think we should try to crush them because we don't like the conduct in which they are coerced to participate. So I just want to start out very simply saying thank you for doing this. I think it's incredibly important. And obviously, with the events we all expect to be coming in the year 2026, unfortunately there is liable to be a very robust opportunity for the criminal exploitation of people, both with sex trafficking and labor trafficking, and we don't want that. We want to make sure that people are protected, that they are safe, that they are not coerced, lured, forced or in any other way made to do these things when they should not be made to do them. We did a press conference earlier this morning on a related, but not identical issue. It was about the conviction and the sentencing of a defendant by the name of Horace Battle. And Mr. Battle lured two 11-year-old girls into his car. And then, needless to say, did not take them where he said he was going to take them. He took them to his house. One of them ended up in the house. The other one ended up leaving, essentially, to seek help. And after about 10 hours of incredibly effective but difficult police work, she was rescued from that home where unfortunately, she had already been raped by this man. This is an 11-year-old. Her sister, also 11, was traumatized obviously, horrific case. And Mr. Battle is where he needs to be, which is in custody and where I expect him to remain effectively for the rest of his life. You should know that he did have a prior incident in 2013. He was convicted and served seven years in jail for a prior incident, which was also a rape case. Yet sadly, this occurred. We cannot accept that. We cannot accept the trafficking of juveniles, young adults, adults. Whether it's for labor or it is sex trafficking, we have to protect them every way that we possibly can. And I'm happy to say that our Family Violent Sexual Assault Unit is every bit as committed to the protection of these 11-year-old girls as they are committed to the protection of girls, boys, trans people, young women, whoever they are, who are trafficked for whatever purpose by whatever person. It is a despicable crime. It's nothing that we are ever going to tolerate being perpetrated against the public and perpetrated against these individuals. I will say that you should know that our Family Violence Sexual Assault Unit tries about as many cases as our Homicide and Nonfatal Shooting unit. It's an extremely challenging, very difficult trial practice. The attorneys who are in that unit are so dedicated, that it's often very difficult to get them to do anything else during their careers. They're in love with the work and they want to continue doing the work. So we do have an A team. We have a very, very capable, skilled, experienced team when it comes to handling these kinds of cases. I will tell you though we do not all that often have referred to us by the police a case against a trafficker.
We do have a separate unit that does labor trafficking, even then this is not the usual bread and butter for municipal police departments to have a steady stream of cases against, if I may use the vernacular, the pimp, against the exploiter, against the trafficker. Historically, in the United States often the cases have been against the people who were trafficked, and that's obviously turning everything upside down. That's not going to solve the problem. That's just going to victimize people who've already been victimized. So we look forward to the opportunity to prosecute more of these cases against traffickers. We look forward to getting appropriate consequences and just outcomes for what is, in fact, a terrible crime, and we hope that we are all able to do that working together. Our commitment to supporting victims and survivors through the work of our external engagement division, which includes our Relocations Unit, our Victim Services Unit, our CARES Unit, which works with families of homicide victims during the first 45 days after a family member has been killed as well as working with our nine contracted external victim services agencies. I hope at this point it's clear -- I understand maybe eight years ago people weren't so certain -- but our work with them is very effective. We work very closely with them and we are delighted to have had the opportunity to support them in getting an increase in their funds. Thanks to you. Thanks to City Council. For the first time in about years -- I 8 mean seriously, it was like 15 9 years before these folks got any 10 more money. And while they 11 certainly need more than they 12 already have and more than the 13 increase that they've received, it 14 is truly appreciated that there was 15 some recognition of the importance and quality of their work, which is for many different kinds of victims, including victims of trafficking in its various forms. We are so committed, in fact, to working on the issues of human trafficking that we submitted a year ago a budget request to Council to launch a DAO Human Trafficking Task Force. And while that did not occur last year, we've submitted it again as part of our midyear request in hopes that we could be well-positioned to support what we anticipate will be potentially a real bad situation next year, unless we all work together. And once again, I want to thank Councilmember Ahmad and all members of Council who are here and not here for caring so deeply about this issue. We remain deeply committed to working with community groups, faith leaders, other stakeholders to see how we can continue to support and serve on this critical issue. And with that, we collectively are delighted to answer any questions or address any thoughts you may have.
Thank you so much for your testimony. It was illuminating to hear, difficult to hear as well that in 2025 we are still having 11-year-old young girls picked up and raped in such a short period of time before they were being rescued. One of the questions I have is about establishing this explicit employment protection. Would that help create a safer environment for victims to disclose their experiences and cooperate with investigations? I don't know if you encountered that as an issue in your work to prosecute these criminals, but I wondered if we changed the environment and created this kind of safe haven, at least in terms of their employment, would that have an impact? DISTRICT ATTORNEY KRASNER: The short answer is 100% yes. I can certainly elaborate briefly. You know, there's a very, very long tradition of certain people, vulnerable people, marginalized people being targeted. There's a long history of serial killers targeting people who were trafficked or had a variety of other issues. It goes back decades, if not centuries, in the United States. And we all know that part of the reason for that is it is difficult for them to report crimes against them. So if they are attacked by a serial killer, by a rapist, by a strangler, whatever, if they are attacked, historically they haven't just been able to pick up the phone and call the police, because the expectation was they would be arrested, they would be prosecuted. They would pay some consequence for that. They'd have a permanent criminal record that would disqualify them from almost every job that would get them out of the life they were trying to escape. So, yes, I think this bill is extremely important for the safety, for the rehabilitation, for the necessary treatment of people who have been exploited and victimized. I think it's also necessary for public safety period that we take people who are victims and we don't blame the victim. And fundamentally, that is what you are doing here.
I'm going to ask one more question and then hand it over to my colleagues. Are you able to say how many human traffickers have been prosecuted in 2024 or any of these preceding years? DISTRICT ATTORNEY KRASNER: I don't have the exact number, but I can tell you the flow. We prosecute these cases very vigorously when we get them. We get very few. Simply put, we get very few of these cases. And I don't say that to throw shade on anyone at all. We would love to have more people brought to justice for this activity because we all know what's going on.
So the ones who do come in front of you, are they able to be prosecuted? And what is the outcome of those prosecutions, the few that you did get? DISTRICT ATTORNEY KRASNER: Well, I can think of one in particular where you had a trafficker who was forcing women within a home to engage in sex trafficking activity. They were effectively imprisoned. One of them had to actually escape in order for the activity even to be detected. I know that that prosecution resulted in a very lengthy and, in my mind, appropriately lengthy sentence of incarceration. You're effectively talking about kidnapping. You're talking about unlawful restraint. You're talking about people being kept in what was effectively a house of horrors and made to do things that they did not want to do in terms of being trafficked. To me that's not a bad crime, that's not a real bad crime. That's a heinous crime that is extremely serious. On the other hand, the people who were trafficked, of course we don't want to prosecute. We want to support them. We want to help them. We want their testimony. We want them to be able to testify. And then to the extent that there are ways that they can be rehabilitated, they can get out of life, they can take advantage of other opportunities and go work wherever, at a grocery store, at a school, whatever it may be. Obviously, that will work better if they do not have a prostitution conviction on their record.
And the last question I have is, how many of the customers of human trafficking, not the people trafficked and not -- we already talked about the traffickers, but those who are actually buying this product, the johns in vernacular, what has been the outcome of prosecuting them? Because one of the ways we found for anything is you have to reduce the demand in order, you know, look at supply and demand. If you reduce the demand, hopefully will not be a place where people want to come and try this trade. So I wondered if you have any data on that. DISTRICT ATTORNEY KRASNER: I have to tell you I don't know when is the last time we had one of them arrested. I will check for you. But I do not know the last time that we had a "john" arrested and brought to us for the purpose of prosecution. If you'll give me just one second, I want to check with Katrina Wadas just to make sure I'm not missing something here, but I haven't seen one in quite a while. And realistically, once again not to throw shade on anyone, we all understand some of the crises that the city has faced and the necessity of our law enforcement partners making decisions about what they prioritize. But I cannot remember the last time that anyone came to me with a case involving a john. That's not to say there have been none, but let me see if I can get you more information on that. With your permission, I'm going to ask Chief Wadas to say a couple words on that point.
Yes. Good morning or good afternoon. My name is Katrina Wadas. I'm Supervisor of Family Violence and Sexual Assault at the DA's Office. Yes, to echo the DA's sentiment, there hasn't been that many arrests. In fact, I was saying to the DA that it's probably been about a decade since I've seen a real flow of those cases come in. Not to say that it's not happening and not to say that it's not criminal, but as far as arrests coming in for review for prosecution, they're not being referred.
Okay. That's frightening. And we obviously have to talk to many more partners in our law enforcement arena to address this. Because as I said, you have to reduce the demand and you'd have to make it uncomfortable and difficult where people will not find this good hunting grounds for this to occur. I will yield the floor to, I guess Congress -- I'm elevating him -- Councilmember O'Rourke.
Thank you, Madam Chair. You spoke to it. But if you could, Mr. DA -- first of all, thank you all for being here and testifying. Thank you for your work and your service to the city. Could you speak to or circle back to how this legislation could actually strengthen prosecution in terms of how is this going to be a tool for you as you go to prosecute these things as they come back to you? DISTRICT ATTORNEY KRASNER: I'm happy to do so, Councilmember, and thank you for your kind words. We're delighted to be here. There are many ways that the system makes it hard for people to report crimes against them, makes it hard for people to rehabilitate. We should try to avoid them. We actually want people who have been victimized, even if they are addressing other issues, even if they are dealing with an addiction issue, even if they are in a lifestyle that is nothing they want to talk about, we want to make it as easy as possible for them to participate against the people who exploit them. And one of the downstream consequences of traditional prosecution of these folks or if they're not being protected against discrimination is that they don't come forward, they don't participate as witnesses against the people who traffick them because of the downstream consequences. I can't get a job is a real problem when the whole point is to get them out of an exploited situation so that they can voluntarily do the kind of work they want to do. I mean simply put, if you're hiring somebody at the grocery store and that person is showing up with a criminal record that says, prostitution, prostitution, prostitution, they're not going to get hired in an awful lot of places. And that's exactly the wrong message. The message ought to be that we are here to support victims, protect victims and that we are here to make sure they're not discriminated against because perhaps more than other groups, they should have that opportunity. It's good for them, it's good for the public, it's bad for the exploiters. We should be doing it for that reason alone. So any effort to stop them being discriminated against based upon having been victimized and exploited I think is really a great idea.
Thank you and thank you for being with us this afternoon. I guess I'm kind of taken aback that johns that the -- I guess the johns, I don't know what else to call them, right, that there's not been any arrested or any prosecuted in a really long time. Because in my community, you see prostitution and sex work and human trafficking happening all the time. And so, I'm just really -- and there's always this light on the person who's being trafficked, right. But I rarely hear about the person who is coming to ask for services. And so, is there a reason why? Are they being diverted? Is there some type of a diversion program that protects them? Why? Why have we not seen prosecution in a long time and we've seen these young women who sometimes are put in these really tough situations? We see them, you know, being questioned, picked up all the time. I don't understand why. DISTRICT ATTORNEY KRASNER: Well, thank you for the question. Let me try to answer it as best I can. Because the reality is obviously the police department makes arrests and then we work off of their arrests to make prosecutions. And I don't want to guess at their decision-making. I have found over time that the police commissioner and the police department make difficult decisions after careful deliberation and for good reasons. But I will say this, looking back on my career which is now at about 38 years, something like that, looking back a couple of decades when these cases were more common, what I tended to see at that time was often a woman police officer who basically dressed up as if that person was being trafficked and they were on the street, and they would hail cars and then they would have a conversation about what would the price be to do a particular sexual act, that sort of thing. And in that context, we used to see more of those arrests occurring. I don't know why, you know. I will say that we have to remember that we have watched a historic drop in shootings and homicides. That is not one year old. It is four years old, year over year over year. And we have seen what is frankly a pretty magnificent achievement on the part of the Philadelphia police in terms of their reorganizing their investigations of shootings and improvements in terms of how they do homicides. I think it is clear that the Philadelphia Police Department with our law enforcement partners, including the DA's Office has placed a very high emphasis on getting gun violence under control. There have been moments during the pandemic when I remember a prior police commissioner saying that she was not going to make any drug arrests because of the danger at a time when there was no vaccination for COVID, the danger of having half the police force come down with COVID. Not my decision, her decision. I'm not here to second- guess all of that. But there are certainly times, especially when you are understaffed and there is understaffing all over the country in policing, there are times when they make choices and they decide what it is that they're going to prioritize. Having said that, I cannot speak for them. I cannot say whether that is the reason. I can tell you I like the Commissioner very much. I think that the Commissioner makes a lot of really smart decisions based on a long, successful, strategic, thoughtful career. So I do not want anybody to claim that I'm pointing fingers, throwing anybody under the bus. I'm not. I'm just trying to answer your question as best I can, and I'm not the best person situated to answer it.
Could it be because of how we've started to treat sex work in the district, right? So if we're not arresting the sex worker and there's not a person to be able to hold that individual accountable, right. So could it be that -- I'm asking the question, right. Again, I'm not trying to point fingers. I'm saying if we're not arresting the person who's actually providing the service, then there's no way for you to be able to bring charges against the person who was requesting the service. And could that be a part of why? And so, while we're trying -- and I'm thinking that it could be because we're protecting this individual who's doing the work, that we're allowing this other individual to get away with requesting the work or the service? DISTRICT ATTORNEY KRASNER: I believe the short answer is no, because the cases that I saw in prior decades were cases where a police officer posed as the person who was offering sex for money, put it that way, I guess, or being trafficked. I don't ever remember seeing a case in Philadelphia against a john, if I may use that term, where you had someone who had been arrested for sex work testifying against them. I didn't see that. I've been clear from the beginning that while I did not believe in the arrest and prosecution of people who were being trafficked, I was fine with the arrest and prosecution in the appropriate way that is just in the individual case for johns, and I consider the activity of traffickers to be despicable and worthy of appropriately serious consequences as well. So it has never been the policy of the Philadelphia DA's Office that we will refuse to prosecute johns. Now, I will also say that I'm sure you're aware that in the last several years there became a police diversionary program, which operates before arrest so there is no arrest. That is a program that has been positive and successful in various other cities, places like Seattle. I have no idea, because we don't see those cases, whether some of the people who are going into the police diversionary program are johns. I don't know. But I'm sure there may be information from other sources that could answer some of those questions.
Okay. I'm just curious about it. I'm actually concerned about it, right. Because if we're not responding on the street, if we're not responding to these johns the street, then we push them into the shadows so that then they are preying on younger children online, right. And sometimes we don't know -- we're not seeing them because we've moved them off of the street and into spaces that we can less control. And so, I'm very curious. DISTRICT ATTORNEY KRASNER: Councilmember, I think you raise a very important issue, which is that our legitimate marketplace has changed radically in terms of how business is done. And certainly, the same is true when it comes to illegal activity, that there's an awful lot of stuff done on the internet now that was never done before. So it is very possible that the opportunity for police that used to exist for street activity is different or is reduced or that this issue has to be addressed in a different way in light of the internet and its prevalence in economies.
And my last question, are you all or does your office have the capacity to be able to, just like we have these frequent flyers, right, there has to be johns that are frequent flyers. And does your office have the capacity to be able to keep that kind of a record where you're starting an investigation, that you can maybe track whether they've moved off of that very visible on-the-street type of solicitation to an online platform? DISTRICT ATTORNEY KRASNER: We certainly would be willing to help with that. We do have a couple of criminologists on staff. We have a data team. But I also know that I am surrounded by other witnesses who will testify for you today who have deep expertise and have dedicated, in some instances, their lives to this kind of work. They may be able to answer those questions immediately, but we are more than willing to study this, look into it, and work with you on that.
Thank you, Councilmember Lozada. Councilmember Landau.
Thank you. Just two quick questions: One, can you tell us a little bit more about any collaboration you have statewide or federally? I know it's a little harder in this administration, but in the previous administration we had a great U.S. Attorney who was focused on this issue. And then the second thing is, how will the launch of our new forensics lab help you in the work that you're doing? DISTRICT ATTORNEY KRASNER: Great question. Let me start, if I may, with the forensics lab and then I'm going to make sure I check with my subject matter expert here too. So what we have found, there's kind of a mini forensics lab that is very modern operating now in Philadelphia. It's part of the DA Office's Gun Violence Task Force, and that is a mini forensics lab that does not have anything near the bandwidth needed for the entire city or for a whole variety of crimes. It's dedicated essentially to firearm- related crimes and that sort of thing. But what we have found with that unit is that the combination of machines that will open up cell phones when cell phones are legally confiscated and open with a warrant, plus license plate readers which are getting, you know, literally millions of hits from license plates all over the city and registering where that license plate was on, what date at what time, that sort of thing, plus advanced DNA, plus the use of social media analysts, and this might get us right to one of the issues that was raised by Councilmember Lozada, if we have social media analysts who are going after this vigorously, not just going after shooting groups and their activity, we can make a real advance. The short answer is that we've seen enormous progress, and this is a hub now where the FBI brings its cases, Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms brings their cases, DEA brings cases, you know, it's become such a useful tool to solving cases that used to be unsolvable, to making a case so strong that it will be a guilty plea rather than a close trial, that sort of thing. I think what we see in that experiment is how incredibly compelling it could be to have a full-on modern forensics lab that can handle the full bandwidth of all that needs to be done in the city. Absolutely would make a huge difference here to have a whole team of social media analysts to be able to take the cell phone of a john, let's say, or the cell phone of a cooperating person who's a survivor of trafficking and be able to look at the text and the context and who these people are. We prove homicide cases these days, often without a single witness, based upon a combination of video and communications that are going on, geolocation, things of that sort, the story is there, the investigation is there. And completing and opening a well- staffed, properly-trained forensics lab in Philly could make a tremendous difference in this area as well as almost every other. Now, your other question went to -- I'm sorry. I forgot.
That's okay. A collaboration with state and federal partners. DISTRICT ATTORNEY KRASNER: Oh, sure. If I may, let me just see what the current state of that is. I know it's generally very collaborative, but let me see if I can give you more precision. Well, the good news is we have a subject matter expert here who will explain this better than I can because I'll mix up the names, but here we go.
Yes. So I was saying that currently we do attend a partnership that's actually led by New Day, which I know that they are here to speak on it, but New Day does lead an Anti- Human Trafficking Task Force, and that is something that currently the District Attorney's Office does participate in. And so, by going to those Anti-Trafficking Task Force meetings, we are meeting with other law enforcement agencies throughout the city, and we do have collaborative relationships through that partnership with the various entities.
Thank you, Councilmember Landau. Just to follow up on that, what I'm hearing is you don't get to prosecute the johns because they're not coming in front of you, so that's something for us to explore. This task force, does that give you an update on how many cases are current and what the disposition is and some data around to say, yes, we're all working collaboratively. So between this year and this year when we compare, there have been more cases or is that not the case?
That's absolutely the case. And so, usually we will do partner updates. And so, each agency will talk about -- SVU, for example, will mention how many cases have been investigated and how many cases have been referred, that they're seeing usually the numbers, as the DA mentioned, are low. For example, the last partner meeting that I attended SVU had reported only one referral and that was in 2024, so that is one of what we know is a much larger number of trafficking cases, but one actually being referred. And so, New Day does keep excellent minutes from those meetings in which they sort of record and we can look back on each agency's updates as it pertains to what we're seeing as far as investigations and prosecutions.
So just before I let this panel go, what would be your recommendation in order for us to be able to, first of all, you know, get these survivors out of, you know, give them resources, number one, identify them, and two is to prosecute the traffickers and the johns. Given where you are now participating in this task force, what would be a recommendation for us to proceed in order for those numbers to go up so that we can send the message Philadelphia is not good for that business?
Well, one thing that we already do with our partners is talk about education, and one thing that often comes from those coalition meetings is we learn about new updates in training opportunities. And I think the biggest thing in this realm that is helpful is to spreading the word, to educating not only each other, but putting word out among all of the agencies for opportunities to expand our knowledge around this subject. Because I think sometimes not knowing is often why certain things aren't being referred. Often times we'll get referrals. For example, if we do get a referral for a trafficking case and there is that component of promoting prostitution, which is the charge that usually goes hand- in-hand with prosecuting a john, for lack of better words, if we're seeing that come through charging and certain charges are missing, it's always a charge that can be added, but often times we're only seeing things that are missing because of a lack of understanding. Alternatively, we're seeing cases that will come in simply as charged as rape, for example, but there's a lack of understanding or misunderstanding about the fact that this is actually trafficking as well. And so, just better training and better understanding and spreading the word about what trafficking is, is the biggest help in this realm.
So for every case that comes for prostitution, there should be a joining case for a john. If the police are apprehending people who are providing the service, they're providing it to someone to Councilmember Lozada's point. Where is the concomitant arrest of the john who was using the services? Maybe we can get to the trafficker right away, right. We have to build a case and find them. But these two players, if we have one, we should have the other.
Not necessarily. Because sometimes just as there are officers who would dress up as individuals who were offering services, sometimes they did have Vice representatives who would dress up for the sake of sort of luring and enticing. And so, it could be an officer dressed up and trying to obtain those services and there wouldn't necessarily be a john, for lack of better words. On the other end of it, it would be an officer.
So we're just not being able to find the john. I mean, clearly, this is a multi-billion dollar business. And the fact that you can have -- when you're involved in the drug business, you know, somebody buys a hit and it's over. One person can be trafficked over and over and over again. This is hugely lucrative. So I'm just at a loss that the City of Philadelphia -- and I'm not blaming you. I just have you in front of me so you can hear me. So how is it that the City of Philadelphia tells me we don't have prosecutions for people participating in it that is causing such harm and we haven't found the tentacles to get to the traffickers? Let me just tell you not because, you know, I know there's multiple people actors to make this happen. This is unacceptable. It is unacceptable that we are not making this a priority. And I'll have the conversation with our Police Commissioner and all of them, because we have a whole campaign coming up for 2026. And thank you, Mr. DA, for being there. Because this is what we're trying to get at: That this is not an insignificant issue. The fact that there were two lawsuits settled in the recent past with these motels for millions of dollars tells you that that trade is flourishing in order for them to actually be involved in it. So we need to make this a priority. I would love to have your office at least sound the alarm that this is a priority and require your partners, which would be the police and other agencies, to really start paying attention so that when we see somebody coming to WOAR for assault, to make sure that assault is not a one-time assault, that somebody just, you know, raped somebody, it could be a pattern. We need to have those kinds of policies in place that alert anybody interacting with anybody who's a victim of sexual violence has a series of cascade of things that happen that would then link the rest of why they're there. You could prove that they were just a one-time or we could prove a whole thing. But we have to make this a priority or else it's not going to happen. And it can't be just the police's priority. It has to be the DA's priority. It has to be all our social services' priority. It has to be our hospitals. It has to be everybody. You're not alone. But I'm just saying we all need to take the piece that we can be responsible for and really start highlighting it. And of course, the education is very important, but it's already happening. Billions of dollars worth of it is happening. So did you want to say something, Mr. DA? DISTRICT ATTORNEY KRASNER: First of all, I appreciate all those comments and agree with them. But it just occurred to me that in a prior life before I was DA, 2016, 2017, I was representing a person who had information on trafficking. He was not a trafficker, but he had information on trafficking that was occurring in Chester County. It was actually occurring somewhere in the West Chester area. It was a house that was occupied by immigrants who were being trafficked. S. Attorney's Office with federal agents there on that situation, which seemed to me to be important and something that would result in some consequences. It was not. It was a situation where the information was all provided. And for reasons, you know, I'm not going to misrepresent that I know all the reasons, but I was disappointed frankly to see that the follow-up was negligible, sort of in the nature of they were not that interested or maybe they looked and it didn't seem like it was that big a deal or something to that effect. Again, I don't want to mischaracterize exactly what their thinking was, but I can tell you there was no action. As best I can tell, the information was provided in the usual way that information is provided in federal court in expectation of a serious follow-up and a possible prosecution and no 5 prosecution came from it. I know this of course because the reason you give information to the feds is for some benefit. My client was looking for some benefit.
He got no benefit because nothing came of it. So I share your concern about it. I think it's important. But I will also share this with you, if we want to get traffickers, we should get traffickers. We should go get traffickers. If you want to stop murders, go get murderers. If you want to stop shooters, go get shooters. And I think what we should do here is to vigorously go after trafficking, use all the tools at our disposal. And what we have seen in this city and in other cities is that when people focus on the crime they're trying to stop, there's success. When the focus is on sort of peripheral stuff or you're focusing the second and third priorities rather than going all in on the first priority, the number one priority here should be to go after the traffickers and to give them just an appropriate and frankly pretty serious consequences because this is a terrible crime.
Couldn't agree more. And as you know, we have a federal environment where there's a human trafficking case being talked about in the public right now. So I'm not surprised that people are not willing to go down that road for many different reasons. However, this is why we're doing this. This is why we're having a hearing. This is why we're doing a campaign. We want the public to rise up and say -- because the public are also the voters who vote these people in. I was not going to use the word I was thinking of. However, we need an awareness, which is why I need partners from law enforcement to be partners in saying, yes, this is a crime and we are happy to prosecute it. We are going to be an open door for you to come and your person who had tried to testify on this, but we have to change the culture, and that's what this is about. We are doing this law. We're going to talk about there's some other things coming down the pike and the campaign next year. So thank you for your testimony. Thank you. Just before Mr. Listenbee goes, because of your interest in young people, one of the intersections we are looking at is foster care and trafficking. Even though this hearing is specifically about a workplace accommodation, I want to make sure we are looking at that intersection and we are vigorous in making sure we can guarantee the safety of young people, particularly who are in the child welfare system. I just wanted a quick word from you because I have you here.
Thank you. I'm not very familiar with the child welfare system in terms of their involvement with trafficking. What I do know is that at the federal level when I worked there, not only was there a strong policy interest in addressing trafficking issues, but there were constant meetings at the White House and constant meetings at the Department of Human Services at the national level, constant meetings at the Department of Justice that were focused on developing the tools to be implemented to stop trafficking. There was a clear focus on victims, that they should not be prosecuted. We wrote that into policies at that level and we distributed those policies across the nation and provided funding to support those initiatives at that time. Clearly, if we're going to do it here at the local level, we need to do something similar, a strong campaign, strong announcements about it. A lot of young people don't know what trafficking is. They don't really often times know what rape is for a lot of young people. We need to educate them and provide a clear mechanism for enforcing the new policies that are going to be implemented so that young people can figure out through social media how to reach out and seek help if they're being trafficked, to seek help if their friends are being trafficked, seek help if they know where johns are, seek help if they know where the traffickers are. So that kind of communication is essential for the future.
Well, thank you. I look forward to working with all of you. Thank you all for your testimony. DISTRICT ATTORNEY KRASNER: Thank you.
Thank you. Thank you for your testimony. Mr. Sham, will you call the next panel.
We have three witnesses for this panel. One will be testifying virtually. First, we have Megan Lundstrom, Polaris CEO and human trafficking survivor.
Wonderful. C. We're a national anti-trafficking organization that has served hundreds of thousands of victims and survivors across the country over the last years. 21 Over the last decade of 22 my career, I have focused on 23 building evidence-based economic empowerment programs for survivors of human trafficking. My passion on this topic came initially from my own experience as a survivor of human trafficking myself and the challenges I encountered as I tried to regain economic stability. I'm here in support of Bill 250990. This ordinance is a meaningful step towards ensuring that survivors seeking gainful employment in Philadelphia are not punished in the workplace for the consequences of their own exploitation. In national workforce research I conducted several years ago, I found that survivors frequently experience losing jobs, facing retaliation or being pushed out of work because employers misinterpreted the impacts of trauma, economic instability or safety issues. One of the most common barriers to keeping a job was interpersonal issues with supervisors, not because of performance but because supervisors lacked trauma-informed understanding and responded with suspicion or punitive action when what survivors actually needed was flexibility or support. These challenges are backed by the National Survivor Study, the NSS, Polaris' 2023 survey of survivors across the United States, which is the largest study conducted at this time on the long-term outcomes for survivors of human trafficking. The NSS findings are powerful. We found that 43% of survivors after exploitation are living on less than $25,000 per year while supporting families of two to three individuals, many of those children. And long after leaving their trafficking situation, this continues to persist. Many survivors work multiple jobs, but still can't meet basic needs, much less begin to build savings. In fact, the study found that even seven years after exiting, 30% of survivors remain below $25,000 a year, trapped in poverty despite full participation in the workforce. Another finding from the NSS was the unique structural disadvantage survivors face. 62% of survivors surveyed had been arrested, cited or detained. And 90% of those with criminal records said their arrests were directly tied to their exploitation. A criminal record that is caused by coercion then becomes a barrier to employment, housing, education and even custody of children. For those survivors, discrimination isn't hypothetical. It is a daily reality. We know from survivor- led research that the same economic barriers that push people into vulnerability, poverty, discrimination, lack of opportunity are the ones that persist after trafficking and continue to limit survivor stability. Systemic inequities in employment disproportionately expose certain communities to trafficking in the first place, especially for children growing up in homes below the poverty level. This underscores the stakes of workplace protections. Economic stability is nice to have. It's central to both preventing exploitation in the first place and supporting long- term safety afterwards. This bill 24 provides essential protections for those harms. I want to highlight two implementation risks, not as reasons to hesitate by any means, but as reasons to continue to strengthen the city's long-term strategy. First, survivor protections cannot depend on a formal certification as a trafficking victim. Very few, likely less than 10% of survivors, ever receive formal designation through law enforcement or a government process. The vast majority never report, often due to fear, safety concerns or the simple fact that many don't even recognize their own victimization until years later. While the text of this bill does not require certification, and I support that approach, Philadelphia should issue clear employer guidance to ensure the protection applies broadly.
Second, survivors should not have to disclose their trafficking history to be treated fairly. The reality is that disclosure is very risky. It can expose survivors to retaliation, stigma or harassment in the workplace. For many, it can jeopardize their safety. Any rollout of this ordinance should ensure survivors can request accommodations or protections without being forced to reveal the details of deeply personal trauma. Finally, I want to highlight an important intersection. Many survivors of human trafficking qualify for accommodations under the Americans with Disabilities Act, but they often do not know their rights or fear retaliation for asserting them. This is an area where the city can eventually expand guidance and ensure employers understand how trauma, disability and discrimination intersect, not just for this population, but other populations disproportionately impacted by systemic exclusion. Bill 250990 is a foundational step, one that aligns survivor protections with the values and civil rights framework of the City of Philadelphia. It helps ensure that when survivors step into the workforce, they are met with fairness, not bias, with opportunity, not punishment. This ordinance also opens the door for future legislation, housing protections, criminal record relief pathways, accommodation guidance and survivor-centered anti- discrimination enforcement. Philadelphia has the opportunity to continue leading nationally in building a modern, comprehensive framework that supports survivors, not only in escaping exploitation, but in rebuilding our lives. So in closing, I urge the Council to pass this ordinance. Survivors deserve a fair chance at stability, dignity and economic security, and this bill brings that future closer. Thank you.
Thank you so -- can you hear me? Can you hear me? Maybe she can't --
Well, thank you so much for your testimony because you brought up some very important critical points. One of the questions I had was, where we meet survivors, if there was education, even before they're at the employer stage, we can start the process of how they can be mainstreamed back to life, right, where they can be who they are without having to constantly remember this burden that they carry. And you can submit this later, but if you have some thoughts about what that could look like, starting with the time when there might be in the victim crisis center all the way across until we get to the employer. That pathway is something I think we need for more people to talk about, understand, so that you don't have to tell the story over and over again and retraumatize yourself, particularly in the workspace. So we can get some thoughts from you on that in writing or we can talk later, but if you just want to summarize quickly what that could look like.
Absolutely. Yeah, I think that is very important, Councilwoman. And that is something that Polaris has been focused on for the last 7 years initially through the 8 operation of the National Human 9 Trafficking Hotline. But as we 10 move into 2026 under a new 11 strategic plan, we're going to be 12 focused ongoing on strengthening 13 the coordination and referral 14 pathways for survivors of human 15 trafficking. 16 So to your point, I do 17 think that is very important, and 18 building out those plans of where in our communities are survivors of trafficking and whether or not they identify as such, how can we be providing information in those spaces so that they know what their rights are and what resources are available to them.
Thank you so much. Do any of my colleagues have any questions? Yes. Councilmember O'Rourke.
I actually don't have any questions, Madam Chair, but thank you for giving me the mic. I just wanted to say thank you for being willing and vulnerable to share your testimony and coming before us today. All of what you share is essential in helping us be better legislators and lawmakers to make people safe, and the City of Philadelphia to be the kind of place that can host an event like next year and all people can be safe in doing so. Thank you again for your story.
Thank you so much. If there are no 2 more questions, we will let her get off her computer. Thank you so much, Megan. I appreciate it and we'll be in touch. Mr. Sham, will you call the rest of the witnesses for this panel.
Jacqueline George, Policy Advocate and survivor leader, and Karissa Wenk, Policy Advocate and survivor leader. (Witnesses approached witness table.)
Thank you so much for being here. Please state your name and begin your testimony. And I just want to give a tiny caveat. Because we want to actually vote on this bill at the end of all the testimony, if you could, I don't want to take away from your testimony, right, these are important, thoughtful testimony and very traumatizing for you to have to redo this, so if there's a way to streamline it a little bit, I just request -- but if you feel that we need to hear it, but I'm just letting you know that for this bill to proceed, we need to take a vote at the end of all of this. So please proceed. Thank you.
Thank you. All right. My name is Jacqueline George and I'm a proud homeowner in the 7th Council District. I want to begin by thanking Councilwoman Ahmad's team for inviting me to testify today and for introducing Bill No. 250990. Thank you also to the Public Health and Human Services Committee for convening this hearing today. I am currently the Co-chair of Pennsylvania's Against Human Trafficking Working Group, advocacy working group, and I previously served as an intelligence analyst with PPD, where I was assigned East Division of Kensington, and I was also deputized to the FBI Human Trafficking and Child Exploitation Task Force doing exactly what Krasner just was talking about. Some of you may know me also from my current role and past roles in city government and my current nonprofit role working closely with the Office of Public Safety. I'm here today however in my capacity as a citizen and advocate and survivor leader and not speaking on behalf of my previous roles. Regardless, I do want to say thank you for the previous questions on that panel. Those were a lot of questions that I wanted to ask myself. I do want to say too there is a connection between trafficking and shooting violence in this city and absolutely drug trafficking as well. So to say that those two are not related is to me a little bit questionable. I'm usually the data nerd who hides behind a computer, and I do feel compelled now, more than ever, to speak about the importance of legislation like this one today, which truly reflects the dignity, protection and level of respect that our government should be showing survivors. I myself am a survivor of sexual violence, and that is something that I would have never said publicly if not for legislation like this and, of course, for my survivor community. I live with various trauma-related ailments. I have complex PTSD, immune dysregulation, chronic pain, you name it. Trauma makes me break out in pretty much anything. I had shingles on my face when I was 18, and I started FMLA with the city when I was 25. I have regular flares that result in hospital stays and I'm unfortunately too familiar with the stigma of being problematic at work because I have to take time off to really take care of myself, despite looking relatively healthy. This legislation prevents people like myself from having to continually explain ourselves and the stories that we endured to be understood. I also want to thank my survivor sisters for giving me the courage to be up here. We have a group called The Philly Feminist. Their names are Jerianna and Jaycee and I also want to thank Karissa, who's here with me to my right, just for being survivor leaders and fantastic people who've shown me this way. There's another person I would like to thank as well who's not here, who really should be speaking because she's the one who's taught me everything and I know she's taught Karissa a lot. We call her mom because she's such a warrior and advocate for us, but that's Shea Rhodes with the Villanova Institute to Address Commercial Sexual Exploitation, and just wanted to thank her for being such a strong mentor and really just a great friend. So overall, I do urge you to pass this bill and thank you for your time, your attention and your commitment to justice and for survivors.
Thank you so much. And Shea was invited to testify and she actually has reviewed this bill with us, so she's very much involved in the process. But thank you for naming everybody because it matters for people to hear real people are involved in this.
Go ahead. Please state your name and begin your testimony.
Hi. Good afternoon, Chair and Committee members. My name is Karissa Wenk. Thank you for the opportunity to testify today. I am a child sex trafficking survivor. I was trafficked as a juvenile here in Philadelphia. I'm also a recent Wharton grad. I work at Penn Medicine and I serve on both the Salvation Army Survival Council and the City's Anti-Trafficking Coalition Steering Committee. I share that because it's important to understand that survivors are not a monolith. We're your neighbors, your colleagues, your classmates and your constituents. We span every background, every age and every part of the city. Right now I'm actively searching for work in victim advocacy roles where lived experience is not only relevant, but incredibly valuable. But here's the reality: By testifying publicly today, I'm naming myself as a survivor in a way that any employer can find. And with this bill that -- and without this bill, that visibility, this act of civic participation, could be used against me in the hiring process. That's backwards because we often tell survivors to speak out, to lead, to sit at policy tables. The human services field often says it values lived experience. But in practice, survivors can be viewed as a liability. Not because of anything we've done, but because of assumptions about our trauma. That contradiction leaves many survivors choosing between using their voice and safeguarding their livelihood. And these issues go far beyond stigma. Survivors face real structural barriers in the hiring process. Some have large gaps in their employment history that reflect periods of exploitation, not unreliability. Some have unstable housing or ongoing safety concerns that employers misinterpret. Some are navigating court dates, therapy or trauma recovery. All of these can be misunderstood as problems. When in reality, they are signs of someone fighting to rebuild their life. None of these circumstances make someone a bad employer unhireable. In fact, survivors are often among the most reliable, resilient, adaptable and motivated workers you will find. The challenge isn't about our capability. It's about the assumptions that people make about us. This is also a public health issue. Stable employment is one of the strongest protective factors for survivors. It determines whether someone can maintain safe housing, access medical and mental health care, stay connected to treatment and avoid the economic vulnerabilities that traffickers often exploit. If you want to prevent re-exploitation, you have to protect survivors economic stability. And from a workforce perspective, this matters as well. Philadelphia needs more advocates, more peer specialists, more trauma- informed staff, people who truly understand exploitation. Survivors offer that depth of understanding. But when we lack basic employment protections, many are discouraged from pursuing the very roles their lived experience makes them so uniquely qualified for. That is why recognizing human trafficking victim status as a protected class is so important. This bill does not require disclosure, it does not create special accommodations. It simply ensures that if an employer does learn someone is a survivor, whether through disclosure, through media coverage or through public advocacy like this, they cannot use that information to deny them a job or promotion or fair treatment. Survivor leadership strengthens the city. Survivors deserve to be part of civic life, to use our voices to serve on councils, to help shape policy, and to do so without sacrificing our economic futures. Committee members, you have the ability today to remove a significant barrier to long-term safety and stability for survivors across Philadelphia. Passing this bill ensures that no survivor has to choose between telling their truth and earning a living. It ensures that our resilience is recognized, not stigmatized.
And it ensures that survivors can build lives grounded in dignity, independence and self- determination. Thank you again for giving me the opportunity to share my experience and my support for this legislation. I'm happy to answer any questions.
Thank you. Both of you gave such detailed testimony and you read it at a nice pace, so thank you for that. But there was really important content here. One of the things I'm hearing from you, Karissa, is that training of people becomes really important, right. Whether or not they encountered someone who's a survivor or not just the awareness what we talked with the panel before, how do we elevate this. That elevation comes with a concrete issue of training, requiring some training for employers, right. Meaning, we would make sure we got training. Our team got a training from the police commissioner's office. What they do -- it could be, yes, we need to have some kind of unit that does that for the City of Philadelphia. What would you say about that being something that is necessary?
I mean, I definitely agree that training is incredibly important, both for employers, for you guys as city employees and for anyone kind of working on this legislation. I know New Day does a lot of really fantastic training, and I've been involved in kind of screening some of that as a survivor, so I think that that makes a lot of sense. I think more so though, kind of to what Krasner was saying and some of the people in the earlier panel, they spoke a lot to the focus that their city has had on gun violence over the years. And I think that if any kind of similar approach is taken towards sexual violence, towards trafficking or these other kind of what's family violence and what's the intimate partner violence, yes, so that unit within the DA's Office, a similar kind of training, community-based, peer-based approach similar to the CARES Unit, etc, is deployed within the city. I think we can really make a big difference, and that would be kind of what is needed at this point.
Yeah, I would agree as well. But I would also say that there's a big importance on the training to highlight intersectionality with human trafficking and other things as well. So there's so many like substance use, mental illness, child abuse, all of those things, like we were talking about foster care runaways is again another huge area as well. And I would also say that making sure that it's not just the specialized units who get trained but everybody gets trained. Because in my past roles, I'm trying not to speak to those roles today, but to be here as a survivor advocate, but still kind of speaking to that, you know, you would have SVU that would be trained up and down. But the people who are really encountering the survivors and victims were patrol and they didn't have the training, but they were the ones who wanted it. They were always the first line, so things like that. And again, I'm just thinking of things right now as well. But again, to kind of pick apart -- not to pick apart, but poignant things from the last panel that were starting to come out, I know we were talking about, you know, these stings and stuff too, and trainings are going to be needed for that, for Vice, but really for trafficking. All you need is a cell phone nowadays. You can find a john. You can find a pimp. You don't even need a victim. You can create a fake persona online. You don't need to put people at risk. So to say that we do not have the staff or manpower in a day of technology, it's a little bit confusing. But I would say that training both to highlight what trafficking looks like in all of its different phases, because it looks so different depending on who is being victimized.
Well, thank you for your vast knowledge in this area. Hopefully going forward, we will be talking to all of you who are here so we're informed as to what best to legislate on or to work on with the police, with the DA's Office. So thank you again. Anybody have a question? Okay.
Thank you both for sharing your story. I think that for me, what do we need to do as a committee, as a legislative body to be able to support those that are victims of sex trafficking as it relates to holding the pimp or the john more accountable, right? I think that as a government or as public safety officials, it's always about the person who is offering the service, right. It's always about the young woman or the young man or whoever it is that's providing the service. And I never hear about holding the other side accountable, right. And in order for us to be able to protect the victim, right, we need to make sure that that person no longer is harassing you or coming to find you in your places of work or in the neighborhoods that you live in, the places that you used to frequent, right. Because I could say, you know, some people who have done some of this sex work maybe have decided, okay, I'm going to change my life direction and I'm going to try to do other things and I'm going to go find a job and I'm going to, you know, try to be productive in a different way, and you can't because that pimp or that person who has used the services in the past continue to show up. So what can we do to better protect you or people who were in your situation or who find themselves in this situation? How do we better protect you?
And I say you, I mean, that's kind of in general. That's not to you.
I would like to say that I think Philadelphia is almost halfway there when it comes to the way that we approach a lot of these cases. The fact that we aren't prosecuting human trafficking survivors or going after, you know, people providing sexual services is definitely half of the battle. Because why would we want -- as Larry Krasner shared, why would we want to prosecute people who are victims. It doesn't make any sense. But the problem is, if we only leave it halfway, then there isn't that next step where there really is the capacity. Obviously, I am not a subject matter expert on this. I'm a survivor, but I also have spent a lot of time in this space and done a lot of research myself and worked on various projects having to do with, like, Johns Suppression Initiative, etc. And there are quite a few counties, I think Krasner mentioned one as well, Seattle, King County in Washington. I believe that's the same county that Seattle's in, as well as Cook County actually runs the National -- where Chicago runs the National Johns Suppression Initiative annually. There are definitely models out there that I think that our city is making progress in the right direction, but there needs to be more investment on the law enforcement side, on the prosecutorial side to actually making that step, because that is what ultimately is going to keep survivors safe, is to get their johns, their pimps, their exploiters off the street.
For me, I would say making sure that social systems properly have oversight and accountability. So our housing system, our again substance use treatment centers are ripe with exploitation. I've seen a lot of instances with people being pimped out by their landlord, instances where it looks like one thing, but it's really another. And I do want to highlight too as well that there's a lot of people who are trafficked by their family. So when you're saying we're going after these traffickers and johns, I mean we're talking about also the family structure. So when we don't have a really strong social support system here in Philadelphia -- we have DHS -- when these systems are broken, it really makes exploitation thrive. And so, I do think that when we move forward with these systems that we're creating, whether that -- again, we have a really big initiative that's going on in Kensington right now that I like to talk about with us putting people in through Wellness Court. There also is an accountability there. We're creating a new system, so maybe seeing how people can be exploited in systems such as that, because we have a lot of people with mental illness, substance use disorder and who are dealing with homelessness, so all of those vulnerabilities are the same exact vulnerabilities that make people ripe to be exploited and trafficked. So I think really when you want to try to tackle this, really it's a public health type of crime that is really ripe with power-based for people to exploit.
Could you speak again to the recommendation you were making around Wellness Court, just for my understanding?
No. I'm just saying when you create systems that have vulnerable individuals and whether that's through DHS, foster care, a new diversionary system, we're all accountable for proper oversight of those systems. And I think when you put people who have all of these intersections of vulnerabilities, that in itself is what makes trafficking thrive. And so, if we have a system or a political nature that is just not looking at the oversight and the accountability of this system, then that is how these types of things happen.
Thank you. I just wanted to take a second first to thank you so much for sharing your stories, for your courage, for coming here. What you're doing today will help us with employment protections for people who have been trafficked, but the information that you're giving us is really helping to fuel us to make sure that more people aren't trafficked in the future. I appreciate this, particularly when you, who've been doing the work for so long, can identify vulnerable systems where people are ripe to fall into and to get plucked out for trafficking. It reminds me of some of the work that I've done where you had so many experts who can see that the system was ripe for gangs, for example, right. You can see it's happening. Let's get in there now. If we don't get in there, people will get in gangs. It's very similar. So I really appreciate your looking from the outside in and highlighting for us places where we need to be careful that's places to look. So I would love all your expertise as much as you can give it to us. Thank you.
Thank you both for your testimony. Mr. Sham, would you call the next panel.
Jazmeen Austin, Program Manager for Salvation Army's New Day to Stop Trafficking Community, Anti- Trafficking Services Program; Natalie Proud, Program Director of Covenant House; Diane Mellie, US Board Member, Stop the Traffic; and Laquisha Anthony, Senior Manager of Advocacy Philadelphia Center Against Sexual Violence. (Witnesses approached witness table.)
Good afternoon, everyone. Thank you for being here. Please state your name and begin your testimony. Start with Jazmeen.
Perfect. No problem. Yep, because our stenographer has to hear.
Good afternoon. My name is Jazmeen Austin and I'm the Program Manager for the Salvation Army's New Day Stop Trafficking Community Anti- Trafficking Services. Every day I work directly with survivors of human trafficking who are rebuilding their lives after experiencing exploitation, violence, coercion and profound loss of control. On behalf of the Salvation Army, I want to thank Councilwoman Dr. Nina Ahmad for her continued leadership commitment and unwavering dedication to ending human trafficking in Philadelphia and supporting survivors on their paths to safety and stability. Her advocacy sends a powerful message to survivors that this city sees them, believes them and is taking action to protect their rights. Thank you for your work in introducing Bill No. 250990, which adds human trafficking victim status to the list of protected categories against workplace discrimination. Last year, New Day served 1335 survivors of human trafficking across Philadelphia. Of those survivors, 92 were connected to housing, 342 were enrolled into intensive case management and 226 hours of individualized case management were provided. Through our New Day New Home program, we delivered 2326 nights of safe housing to survivors actively exiting exploitation. And at our Kensington Drop-In Center, survivors accessed 1233 showers and received 6930 meals, along with basic lifesaving resources that they may have been deprived of while being trafficked. These services are crucial to giving survivors tools that they need to escape and heal from trafficking. Despite our work and those of our partners represented here today, we have found that employment is one of the most critical stabilizing forces in a survivor's recovery. It provides income, dignity, routine, independence and the ability to safely separate from an exploiter. Yet for many survivors, employment is also one of the most fragile areas of their lives. This bill recognizes a hard reality that we see every day. Trafficking victimization can directly affect a person's ability to obtain and sustain employment. And without legal protection, survivors are often punished for the very harm that they endured. I have worked with survivors who endured hardships such as being fired, demoted, have had hours reduced once an employer becomes aware of their trafficking history, along with being denied time off for court hearings, medical appointments and mental health treatments. These are just a few examples of how survivors are forced to choose between their safety, their healing and their livelihoods. I have worked with a survivor who was a single mother struggling to gain financial independence after her trafficking. She has faced numerous barriers due to employment gaps, inconsistent records or limited documentation due to her work being controlled by her traffickers. These barriers are often seen as irresponsibility or poor character rather than the result of coercion, violence and forced labor. This legislation matters because it affirms that trafficking victimization, like domestic violence and sexual assault, is not a personal failure. It is a crime committed against someone and the consequences of that crime should not continue to follow survivors into their jobs and their future stability. Employment protection is not just a workplace issue. It is a public safety issue, a recovery issue, a long-term economic stability issue. From my direct professional experience, I have witnessed the growth and the power of survivors when they are supported and maintaining employment. Their recovery outcomes improve. They stabilize faster. Their risk of re-exploitation decreases. Their dependence on emergency system drops. And most importantly, their confidence and self-sufficiency grows. This is the first step through removing one of the barriers that keep survivors trapped in cycles of exploitation and instability.
Hopefully, it will empower a survivor to heal without fear of being punished for what has been done to them. I would like to thank City Council and Councilmember Dr. Ahmad for giving me this time today. And on behalf of the 1335 survivors the Salvation Army served last year, survivors we continue to serve and the countless others still hitting the exploitation, I urge you to not stop here, but to continue to bring this issue to the forefront of City Council in our city. Thank you again for your leadership and commitment to protecting human trafficking survivors in Philadelphia.
Thank you. Please proceed with your name and testimony.
Good afternoon, Council, Councilwoman Ahmad. Thank you for your efforts in bringing human trafficking awareness and prevention to the forefront of the foundation of Philadelphia. My name is Natalie Proud, and I am here to urge Council to classify trafficking survivors as a protected class in employment discrimination. I am the current Chair of the Pennsylvanians against Human Trafficking Advocacy Work Group as well as the Co-chair of Philadelphia Anti-Trafficking Coalition. I also serve as the Program Director for Covenant House Pennsylvania, where we have provided shelter, safety and support for young people under 21, experiencing homelessness, trafficking and runaway situations in Philadelphia since 1999. On any given night, at least 104 people sleep in one of our residential programs. Every youth who comes to our door is screened using a validated screening tool known as the Quick Youth Indicators for Trafficking. Through this screener, we are able to identify survivors of both sex and labor trafficking across all genders. At Covenant House Pennsylvania, 1 in 5 youth we serve has identified themselves as a survivor of human trafficking. This makes one thing painfully clear: Trafficking is not a distant issue. It is here in our city, affecting our young people every single day. We know meaningful employment is one of the strongest predictors for long-term independence, safety and recovery for survivors. This reduces the risk of re-exploitation, supports financial independence, improves mental health, strengthens community integration and decreases the likelihood of homelessness, crime, substance use and premature death. The bill you are introducing employment protections for human trafficking survivors is one aspect of supporting survivors working towards financial independence. Traffickers exploit people for their own selfish financial gain. Victims are forced to hand over all money they earn while traffickers strip them of financial independence, personal freedom, power and the basic right to self-determination. While being exploited, some victims continue their normal routines, such as going to work or school, because traffickers do not want to raise any red flags and risk being caught. However, victims often may miss days at work unexpectedly due to the violent and controlling nature of human trafficking. An example is a victim unable to come into work due to injuries from physical or sexual assault by their trafficker. This means they may have to stay in the hospital or they have visible injuries that prevent them from going to work. These absences are not choices. They are consequences of violence after exiting their life. When survivors are seeking employment, they may have difficulties landing a position due to their criminal records. Traffickers will often force their victims to commit crimes or take blame for their traffickers' crimes. In our city, victims have been criminally charged with crimes such as prostitution, drug dealing, false ID to a cop, loitering, none of which they were willing participants. Because of the fear traffickers instill in their victims, along with ongoing trauma and overall distrust of law enforcement, victims will not cooperate. Additionally, due to the general public lack of understanding, survivors may face further harm and exploitation in the workplace. They may be bullied, touched inappropriately, asked to trade sexual favors for promotions or overtime, given unethical job responsibilities. Survivors may be judged or shamed for their past and they're often asked things like why didn't you just leave. Well, let me ask you something: If you were threatened to do something you didn't want to do or your loved one would be tortured and assaulted, what would you do?
Well, if you ask a survivor why didn't you just leave, you may hear answers like they were going to kill my son if I didn't do what they wanted, I was afraid I'd be deported if I went to the cops, because my trafficker killed the last person who tried. Adopting this bill would allow survivors to exist in a system that doesn't further exploit them, which they fought so hard to escape. We have an opportunity to create a space for survivors to become part of the local economy, not only in the workforce but also in spending power. This is the City of Brotherly Love. Survivors deserve fairness. They deserve dignity and they deserve freedom from exploitation, not just in theory but in policy. m. And we are also hosting a Hill Day in Harrisburg on January 28th. We'll have a press conference in the main Rotunda, and then we're going to advocate for legislation to be passed to protect survivors, but also attack the demand side of trafficking. Thank you.
Thank you so much for your testimony. I want to acknowledge our Council President who is here, Mr. Kenyatta Johnson. Thank you for being here. Thank you for your testimony. We'll ask questions when you're all done. Go ahead, Diane.
Thank you. Thank you, Councilwoman Ahmad, for your leadership on this critically issue facing the world as well as our region and to the other Committee members. I'm here to support Bill 11 250990 for employment protection. I'll make a few remarks that really position this issue as a big business and as a global organized crime issue. So I'll make brief remarks and then happy to answer any questions. My name is Diane Melley. I'm here on behalf of Stop the Traffick. I'm a USA trustee to Stop the Traffick. We are a global organization committed to preventing human trafficking and safeguarding those at risk. For more than years, Stop the Traffick has pioneered an intelligence-led, survivor-centered model that brings together data, technology, lived experience and community action to prevent exploitation before it takes root. At Stop the Traffick, we believe the safeguarding of workers' rights is vital, vital because these rights protect every worker, including victims and survivors of human trafficking from discrimination, vital because they allow survivors to step into stable employment, one of the core foundations of long-term recovery, vital because strong worker protections create the possibility for a resilient, independent future free from the cycles of re-exploitation that so often trap vulnerable people, and vital because these protections are upheld. We safeguard not just individuals today, but hold generations ahead of us. We also know that workers' rights don't begin the moment someone starts a job. Effective state safeguarding helps us identify where exploitation is happening, and it helps stop people from becoming victims in the first place. Yet, the International Labor Organization estimates that forced labor within the supply chains of private companies alone, including those operating across this city and state, is worth $64 billion a year. As Desmond Tutu reminded us, we need to stop pulling people out of the river. We need to go upstream and find out why they're falling in that upstream work. Finding the cause, not just treating the consequence, is exactly why Stop the Traffick exists to do. Traffickers operate like businesses. They exploit vulnerability for profit. They target major sporting events, moments of crisis and online spaces. They adapt quickly, recruit strategically and generate an estimated half a trillion dollars annually from human suffering. To truly protect victims and to prevent people from ever being victimized, we must disrupt that business model. Stop the Traffick has built the technological and analytical infrastructure to do exactly that. We use data and intelligence to reveal how traffickers operate. Through our group Global Traffic Analysis Hub, we turn lived experience into actionable intelligence. We work with financial institutions, global companies, community groups and frontline organizations to make exploitation riskier, less profitable and harder to hide. When we combine insight with coordinated action, traffickers lose their power and survivors regain theirs. We have supported legislation, legislative changes before. Stop the Traffick was instrumental in the development of Section 54 of the UK Modern Slavery Act, which set an international benchmark for business transparency and supply chain accountability. S. states. We continue to advocate for stronger due diligence requirements so that companies must not only report risk, but act on it. Alongside legislative work, we partner directly with businesses. We provide strategic intelligence on recruitment risks, supply chain, red flags and best practices for safeguarding. We help businesses recognize indicators of trafficking, strengthening audits and protect their workforce. Here in Philadelphia we invite anyone interested in this preventative intelligence-led approach to connect with us. Our work doesn't stop with business.
We collaborate with banks, law enforcement and more than 250 NGOs worldwide. And crucially, we keep people with lived experience at the center, not defined by their exploitation, but empowered to help shape solutions. Their stories shared safely, ethically and with consent, become the intelligence that drives global change here in Philadelphia. Stop the Traffick is already building a unique collaboration across youth groups, creative arts communities and neighborhood organizations. Through storytelling, education and community-led intelligence, we are equipping Philadelphians to recognize the risk, disrupt exploitation and become part of the solution. For these reasons, Stop the Traffick strongly supports the proposed legislation before Council today. This bill offers vital protection for survivors as they rebuild their lives. We urge you not only to pass this legislation, but to ensure that Philadelphia's broader strategic response continues to move upstream, to find exploitation early, to disrupt it decisively and to prevent it from happening in the first place. A safer, more resilient city is possible, and together, through data collaboration and the power of human stories, we can make the future real again. Thank you for your leadership and for your commitment to protecting the most vulnerable in our communities. Thank you.
Good afternoon, members of the Committee of Public Health and Human Services and all who are present here today. Thank you, Councilmember Nina Ahmad, for introducing this legislation and for the continued support to survivors. My name is Laquisha Anthony, and I serve as the Senior Manager of Advocacy at WOAR Philadelphia Center Against Sexual Violence, the only rape crisis center in Philadelphia, an organization that has been serving the City of Philadelphia for over 53 years. WOAR's mission is to eliminate all forms of sexual violence through specialized treatment services, comprehensive prevention education programs and advocacy for the rights of victims of sexual assault. WOAR is dedicated to providing support to survivors of sexual violence, including those that are impacted by human trafficking. I'm here today to urge support for trafficking victims through legislation like this, which prevents victims of human trafficking from workplace discrimination due to their human trafficking victim status. Victims of human trafficking are often subjected to severe exploitation and harassment, and this legislation provides workplace protection specifically for individuals with human trafficking victim status. Trafficking is a pervasive and often hidden crime that operates in plain sight that affects individuals of all ages, genders and backgrounds. In Philadelphia, it is a growing concern that impacts the most vulnerable populations, people living in poverty, youth in foster care, runaways, individuals who are unhoused and those in marginalized communities. As one of the organizations that make up the Philadelphia Anti-Trafficking Coalition who work on the front lines of this crisis, we see the profound physical, emotional, economic and physiological toll that trafficking has on victims. Data shows that the vast majority of trafficking victims identified in United States are people who have historically faced discrimination and its political, social and economic consequences. People of color, indigenous people, immigrants and people who identify as LGBTQ+ are disproportionately victimized. People living in poverty, foster care or struggling with addiction, trauma, abuse and unstable housing are all at comparatively higher risk for trafficking. Many survivors of human trafficking face complex challenges in rebuilding their lives, including access to stable employment, safe housing, health care, legal aid and mental health services. Human trafficking doesn't happen in a vacuum though. It is the end result of a range of other persistent injustices and inequalities in our society and our economy. Preventing human trafficking at the scale of the problem means changing the underlying systems, the inequalities and injustice we mentioned, I mentioned above, that make people vulnerable and therefore make trafficking possible. This bill is a step in that direction and our work across Philadelphia, we see survivors of human trafficking who are actively trying to rebuild their lives through employment. What often stands in their way is not their ability to work, but how their lived experience is misread and punished in the workplace. Many trafficking survivors have gaps in their employment or limited work documentation. These gaps are not signs of unreliability. They are the direct result of force, fraud and coercion. Survivors are often moved from place to place, forced to work off the books and prevented from keeping personal records and identification themselves when they later apply for jobs in Philadelphia. These realities are too often misinterpreted by employers as dishonesty or lack of commitment, when in fact they are evidence of resilience and survival. We also see survivors who miss work because they are still facing real safety threats, some that are actively being trafficked while already employed with traffickers controlling their schedules, confiscating their phones, monitoring communication and forcing them to miss shifts.
Others are navigating ongoing criminal cases, restraining orders, investigations instead of support. These survivors are disciplined and terminated for their circumstances rooted in danger and coercion, not poor work ethic. Survivors also need time away from work for court hearings and medical treatment and mental health care. These are essential lifesaving services. Without clear legal protection, survivors in Philadelphia are denied time off and punished for attending appointments that are directly tied to their safety and their recovery. Finally, many survivors face harmful stereotypes in a workplace. They are labeled problematic or unstable or blamed for their own exploitation. These attitudes create toxic work environments that often lead to termination, harassment and isolation. No one should be forced to endure shame and stigma simply for surviving abuse. Philadelphia has long prided itself on being a city that stands for equity and justice. Bill 250990 is aligned with those values. It ensures that survivors are not locked out of stable employment because of trauma that was inflicted upon them. I urge you to vote on Bill 250990 and I thank you for your time and commitment to our city's most vulnerable population and vulnerable residents, survivors of sexual assault and human trafficking.
Thank you. Thank you so much to all of you for your testimony. I have a question for Natalie about the human trafficking screen you mentioned. Could you elaborate on that quickly?
Sure. So since Covenant House's inception, we've serviced survivors of trafficking. We weren't able to really screen properly for that. The reason that it's important to screen for that is so they get the services that are dedicated to their complex traumas and ongoing safety issues typically at the same time. So Covenant House New Jersey created a tool called the Quick Youth Indicators for Trafficking. It was validated by Mount Sinai University. It is for specifically 18- to 21-year-olds, and it's for questions, yes, no, don't know, refused, that can potentially identify someone as someone who has been victimized by trafficking. I've never met a survivor who came to me and was like, hi, I'm a survivor, and I need housing. And so, this was a way for us to make sure that we have the numbers to support the dedicated services. And also, we don't want survivors telling their story to everyone who they come in contact with all the time. We also heard from survivors that sometimes they didn't tell their case managers or other staff and organizations because they were afraid to get them wrapped up in some criminal case or maybe they thought we had to tell the police. So under Act 105 of 2014 of Pennsylvania, people who are deemed human trafficking experts actually have confidentiality to speak with traffickers. So at Covenant House Pennsylvania, if anyone answers yes to one of those four questions, they're referred to myself or chief program officer and they can speak in full confidentiality. Meaning, we don't have to tell the law enforcement if they don't want to. We have partners that we can work with. Obviously, if they are minors, mandated reporting of trafficking is considered a mandated report, but the quick youth indicators for trafficking is actually just for 18- to 21-year- olds. And so, I can send you, if you want, the research study that was done on it and validated.
Yeah, I was just wondering can this be used by law enforcement in any kind of way to be able to identify, to just start screening people? For example, during our training we got the example of someone who was shoplifting who was actually a trafficked person, because they were shoplifting to feed their drug habit because their trafficker said you have to shoplift X number of dollars worth before I will give you your next hit. So on the surface that's a soft shoplifter, right. So if we had a system similar, maybe something like this where when you see something like that, you're able to separate people to say, okay, this person has these other vulnerabilities. That's the line of thinking. I was going to say can we do that, particularly for our law enforcement, our beat cops, right, our street cops who encounter a lot of people, if it's in, say, a place like Kensington, right. But if it was online, there's a whole other scenario. So thank you for that. We'll follow up to talk to you more about that. Anybody have any other questions? Okay. Councilman O'Rourke.
From all the testimony today, I am just reminded of how large events become kind of a breeding ground, or at least kind of an open-air marketplace for this. And so, obviously in light of 2026 we are on the world stage, but even more so in a meaningful way. Beyond this fabulous bill that has been brought before y'all, before the Council today, is there anything else that we ought to be doing, what steps this Council need to be taking to mitigate as much as possible human trafficking in our city? I would love to get that before the year closes out, if you have any suggestions.
Before you answer, I just want to make sure he knows about -- some of my colleagues might not know that we're actually embarking on a Human Trafficking Awareness and Prevention Campaign for 2026 with you mentioned multiple partners, including many of these folks who are going to advise us on what that looks like. There's going to be sort of a branding and messaging component to it and then a coordination component where we will be kind of understanding what's happening on the ground and what sort of in realtime do we need to do. The goal is for the public to have much more awareness than they do and to give the public some tools, what can you do if you were to do this. But most importantly, to elevate the issue. So past 2026, when this, you know, using this as an impetus and that's how I got the budget allocation. However, past 2026 we need to continue to really amp it up to the point that we made with the DA that we need to be, you know, firing on all cylinders on this. So just before they answer, I just wanted to make sure you had that awareness of what we were embarking on.
I would say Councilmember Ahmad is spot-on, that this is such a large issue that we give full credit to Philadelphia for recognizing that when these large events, like the FIFA World Cup, like the Semiquincentennial, we are going to see massive increases. This is not just about a john, as you were calling earlier on a corner, but there is organized crime around the world that will move tens of thousands of people into our region to be sold across -- so again, congratulations to the Councilwoman for beginning the communications campaign. And the awareness organizations like ours have apps that can be provided to help with that communication. We work very closely with Polaris and others around the world. We have another, as I mentioned in my remarks, as we move from communication and awareness and you start to build the infrastructure in our city to be able to have all of the parts that were addressed today, the police, the DA, City Council, others work together. That takes data, that takes technology. I really appreciated the young woman earlier in her testimony, those systems can begin to be built here. We saw the data when the Paris Olympics were happening and we were working there, you could begin to see months in advance the hourly rates of workers going up. So those kinds of things, we are already collaborating and providing to Philadelphia, what we're starting to see money moving and people moving to come into our region next year. And we will also be looking as we work in other cities, other FIFA cities in particular, and we happen to have one not that far by in New Jersey where we will see the workers move from our region up to New Jersey and vice versa. So your question is excellent, Councilmember O'Rourke, that we're starting something but it's enormous and using this momentum to protect and make aware as much as we can right now, but begin to lay the tracks to build the infrastructure so we stop this problem long-term.
Thank you. Anybody have any other questions for our panel? (No response.)
We actually have a lot of questions, but the time is late so we will do some follow-up, and I will inform our Committee with some more things that we might get from you so that we are advised, not just for this particular bill, but this issue, so we can talk more about it. So anybody have any other questions for our panel? (No response.)
Seeing none, thank you very much for your testimony. We really appreciate it. Mr. Sham, do we have any more panels to speak on?
Okay. We will now transition to our public comment session. Please note that the time limit for each speaker is three minutes, if we can squeeze it in. Mr. Sham, would you call the first speaker for public comment.
We have one public person offering public comment, Jen Bittner. (Witnesses approached witness table.)
Thank you. Please state your name and begin your testimony.
Hi, everyone. My name is Jen Bittner. I'm sorry. I can do this. Please bear with me. I did not plan on speaking today, but I'm tired as a survivor of feeling scared. I'm tired of feeling terrified of speaking my truth. I'm terrified -- I'm sick and tired of feeling terrified of the stigma, the discrimination and the judgment that is constantly placed on victims. Let me pull up my notes so I'm actually speaking from my notes and I'll stay on track. I'm a survivor and an advocate. This is new for me and it's absolutely terrifying. I wasn't planning on speaking because I didn't feel ready, but I'm feeling inspired thanks to my friend Jackie and all the women that are a part of Philly Feminists. I don't want to be scared of owning my truth, like I said. I want to stand up for myself and others. I wrote this five minutes ago so please bear with me. As a survivor of trafficking, I've struggled a lot. I've struggled with getting out of bed every morning, going to sleep at night, going to work, putting on a fake smile at work. I've always worked in industries where I provide service to others. So it's very, very hard to put on a mask every single day and act like I'm okay. At times, I've even been tempted to go back down the same road and environment where my trafficker found me because I've felt stuck in survival mode for a very long time. And at times, I feel like there is no escape. This bill would provide a sense of safety and security while trying to rebuild your life that survivors rarely feel and desperately need. It truly has been debilitating for me and so many others. The part that has made it most difficult for me is the stigma, judgment and discrimination that is often associated with victims. The discrimination and judgment makes it hard and scary to explain the job gaps and why you're struggling mentally and/or physically. Years ago I was involved in a case against my perpetrator. I was connected with a detective and an FBI agent and I was helping him build a case against my perpetrator and it didn't go anywhere, and we could talk about that another time. But I was going through the court process. And at one point, my lawyer advised me to do mediation and settle. And why is that? Because the stigma that is associated with survivors -- and this is an extremely common issue which keeps survivors stuck in survival mode and keeps them from healing, because they are told by their lawyers and whoever else if you go to trial, you are going to be shamed, you are going to be blamed and you are going to be retraumatized. So is it worth it for you to actually go to trial and then you might not even get justice. And we are told that as survivors -- and that's where I think the problem is. We need to stop speaking to survivors in this way and disempowering them from receiving justice. I'm going off of my notes. I get very passionate. Our culture and how trafficking is spoken about needs to change. If survivors felt protected by their employers and community, more victims would stand up and speak out. Instead, so many of us hide in the shadows and continue to feel imprisoned by our truth while perpetrators continue to walk free. Not only that, but we have been shown in our current reality that perpetrators are protected by our systems and they're even given power and wealth. When I got out of my situation, I wasn't even fully aware that I was a victim of trafficking. In fact, it took me years to accept and admit that to myself and view myself in that way. It took me -- I just kept working and struggling while trying to get my life together as quickly as possible. As a child survivor of sexual assault, I already knew about the stigma that surrounds survivors. Since I was 4 years old, I've been scared to speak up and use my voice.
I knew victims were either not believed or blamed and shamed, so I made excuses for my job gap and kept working, kept struggling financially while battling complex PTSD and mental health issues, because I knew the public and my workplace would either not care or would not recognize my trauma as trauma. It was hard enough for me to accept it and recognize that I was a survivor. So why would they look at me as a survivor. I didn't know at the time that I could possibly qualify for certain resources, disability. I actually just found that out earlier. I really was just on my own figuring everything out. And when I got out of my situation, it was the beginning of 2020. And as I said, I was working with or I was in contact with someone, a detective, an FBI agent. But the big problem is that resources are very limited and they're spread thin. And at that time, the Super Bowl was about to take place. And as many of us know, the Super Bowl is a very large event for human trafficking. And so, resources were very limited and I was basically forgotten about, and then COVID hit. And so, I was dealing with all of that coming out of that situation and then was sent right into COVID while trying to rebuild my life. And I felt extremely alone. I just didn't really know that there was even resources out there for me. I had no education. I wasn't given any resources. In fact, I only went through trauma therapy last year because I started looking into advocacy work, hoping that that would help me heal and find peace within myself. And luckily, victim services in Montgomery County informed me that I could receive free therapy, but that wasn't told to me by the detective or police, anyone that was ever involved with my case or knew about it. As I mentioned earlier, as I'm saying right now, education is extremely important. I think it's vital for survivors well-being and healing that employers and community understand what trafficking is and how it affects survivors, and that looks different for everyone. It's crucial for survivors to be given grace and support while they are actively trying to rebuild their life. Rebuilding my life has been difficult and not being aware of the resources available to me has made it even harder. That's all I have right there. And luckily, I do want to say I'm very, very, very grateful that I have privilege and that's why I'm here today, exercising my privilege in a productive way to try to make positive changes in our community and in our world. And I'm very, very blessed and grateful that I had a home to go to when I got out of that situation. I was sleeping in my mother's living room, but I would have taken a living room over the streets. And I was very, very privileged and I will never take that for granted. But a lot of survivors are not that privileged. And I went right back into serving and bartending when I came out of that, and I was able to kind of just say, oh, I have a job gap because I was a dancer in an exotic club at one point and I didn't really, you know, know what to say about it. So I just blamed it on my past choices of working in a club, even though that wasn't even telling a fraction of the story. And I just continue to work and work and work and feel that constant pressure to work and provide for myself that I felt while I was being trafficked. I've just always been in this survival mode and I really hope that you guys pass this bill today and thank you for giving me an opportunity to speak. Thank you to Philly Feminist for inspiring me to step into this advocacy role and speak up and stand up for myself and others and inviting me here today. I am very, very grateful for all of you and all of your time. Thank you so much. )
Thank you so very much. I can't tell you how grateful we are to you and all of those who have testified, particularly those who are survivors. Because not only is it eye-opening for us to hear this, but this is what is going to drive policy, the real, lived experience of people. It's great to hear from experts and everybody else, but nothing substitutes for knowing what you've been going through and what you've been facing. So I'm deeply grateful that you are here sharing in spite of the pain this is causing you as you're doing this. We understand that, but it takes leadership like this to be able to get us to a point where we can address this in a holistic manner and treat it as a public health issue and really look to make solutions for it. So thank you. Thank you so much for your testimony. Mr. Sham, do we have any other public testimony?
Madam Chair, there are no other speakers on the public comment list.
Thank you very much. Since there are no other speakers, I would like to thank all our witnesses for joining us today. We will now end the public hearing and go into the public meeting. Mr. Sham, would you please call the roll.
I will note for the record that a quorum of the committee is present. The Chair now recognizes Councilmember Lozada for a motion on Bill No. 250990.
Thank you, Madam Chair. I move that Bill No. 22 250990 be reported from this committee with a favorable recommendation and further move that the rules of Council be suspended to permit first reading of this bill at the next session of Council.
It has been moved and properly seconded that Bill No. 250990 be reported from this committee with a favorable recommendation and further move that the rules of Council be suspended to permit first reading of this bill at the next session of Council. All those in favor of the motion will signify by saying aye. (Aye.)
The ayes have it. I went ahead of myself. In the opinion of the Chair, the ayes have it. The motion carries. Bill No. 250990 will be reported from this committee with a favorable recommendation with the request that the rules of Council be suspended to permit first reading at the next session of Council. This concludes the business before the Committee on Public Health and Human Services today. Thank you all very much for your attendance. (Applause.)
Yes, we can clap it up. First time in the history of Philadelphia Code are we going to introduce the word "human trafficking," so thanks to all of you. Thank you so much. (Committee on the Environment concluded at 4:17 p.m.) C E R T I F I C A T I O N I, hereby certify that the proceedings and evidence noted are contained fully and accurately in the stenographic notes taken by me in the foregoing matter, and that this is a correct transcript of the same. __________________________________ TANEHA CARROLL