COUNCIL OF THE CITY OF PHILADELPHIA COMMITTEE ON CHILDREN AND YOUTH Enon Tabernacle Baptist Church 2800 West Cheltenham Avenue Philadelphia, Pennsylvania 19150 Tuesday, October 10, 2023 2:05 p.m. PRESENT: COUNCILMAN ANTHONY PHILLIPS, CHAIR COUNCILMAN JIM HARRITY
Good afternoon. I now note that the hour has come. Clerk, will you please call the roll to take attendance. Members that are in attendance, will you please indicate that you are present when your name is called.
Here. Present. Thank you. A quorum of the Committee is present and the hearing is now called to order. This is the public hearing of the Committee on Children and Youth regarding Resolution No. 230662. Clerk, will you please read the title of the resolution.
Resolution No. 15 230662, resolution authorizing the Committee on Children and Youth to hold public hearings examining the response to human trafficking in the City of Philadelphia.
Before I call the Clerk to call the first panel, would any of my colleagues like to make any opening comments? Right before one of my colleagues makes their opening comments, I'm just going to say some quick remarks. We are here at Enon for one particular reason. There is a member of this church, who is actually a leader in this church, that is our First Lady Waller who has made it a priority for human trafficking to be paid attention to not only by the City of Philadelphia, but also by the state and federal government. She contacted me and said, Councilman Phillips, is there something the City of Philadelphia can do to address this issue. And I said, absolutely, let's figure out how we can work together. So I'm glad to be here with my colleague Councilmember Quetcy Lozada, the prime sponsor of the resolution we're hearing today, and members of this Committee. Today we'll be examining the response to the human trafficking in the city of Philadelphia. This is such an important issue. Sex trafficking generates $99 billion a year with 4.5 million people forced into sexual exploitation. Similarly, labor trafficking generates $51 billion a year with million people 5 across the world falling prey to labor 6 traffickers. It is happening right in 7 our backyards. 8 Just earlier this year in 9 February, the Philadelphia Inquirer 10 reported 8 women between the ages of 11 14 and 17 forced into prostitution at 12 the Days Inn on the Roosevelt 13 Boulevard. Human trafficking is 14 disgusting and intolerable and it is 15 incumbent upon this Council to ensure 16 the City is doing everything it can do 17 to really resolve this unacceptable 18 activity and that threatens innocent 19 people. So I look forward to 20 examining this matter with my 21 colleagues and the esteemed witnesses we have today. Will any of the Committee members like to make opening remarks? The Chair recognizes Councilwoman Quetcy Lozada.
Thank you, Mr. Chair. First I'd like to thank my community member, Edwin Desamour, who on my first day said, Councilwoman, this is a topic or an issue that I'd like to bring to your attention and I'd like us to have further conversation about how we protect our young people. So I want to publicly thank him for his work and bringing it to our attention. We recognize that in the 7th Council District often times our young people find themselves, right, in walking our streets and walk into situations sometimes that are not expected but that they're curious about and end up entering in a world that is extremely dangerous. Many of our young people depend on outlets like social media, and a lot of the information that they get there is not often in their best interest and they don't know who they're actually talking to. So again, I want to say thank you to all of you who have expressed interest, who have brought this to our attention. Thank you, Chairman Phillips, for bringing us here together to start the conversation and to work together to be able to bring some solid solutions to addressing human trafficking in all of the city of Philadelphia.
I'm sorry. Hello, everyone. I'm Councilman Harrity. You know, this is just deplorable. People who practice this are no good and something needs to be done about it. I'm just glad that my colleagues have brought it up to be addressed and that maybe we can get some results out of information we're going to receive from you guys so that we can go and actually make something happen when it comes to this. Because I live in Kensington and when you're talking about this stuff, they do it in the areas of people who are most vulnerable because they're preying on them. So I'm glad to see that we're doing this, and I thank everybody for coming out today. Thank you.
Yes. I just want to thank Chairman Phillips as well as Councilwoman Quetcy Lozada for introducing this resolution on what I believe is a very, very critical issue. And I remember some time ago having discussions in City Council, particularly looking at this issue around missing girls here in the city of Philadelphia. And so, I want to thank Mr. Chairman for taking this issue to the next level. I was reading online about a week and a half ago in the city of Atlanta, it was about 37 girls who were missing in a two-month period, right. And every time that we see that a young person is missing and a poster here in the city of Philadelphia, there's a variety of different opinions and reasons as to why. But we know around the issue of sexual trafficking it plays a critical role, particularly why some of our young people get caught up in lifestyles that are very, very detrimental to themselves. And so, I just want to thank Chairman Phillips for always being on the case. I want to acknowledge and thank First Lady Waller for being the foremost leader in the city of Philadelphia addressing this issue. So thank you, young man. You keep up the good work as well.
All right. Thank you all, Councilmembers. I appreciate your remarks. And also, I want to thank Councilwoman Lozada for the work that she's doing in Kensington to make sure that this is going to be an issue that is rid of in that area. And this is part of her larger plan. Her and Councilman Harrity have been trying to tackle this for a while to really make Kensington what we know it can be. And, that is, a safe, green and wonderful place to live and play for our children and families. So, Clerk, will you please call the first panel or witness we have to testify on Resolution No. 18 230662.
The first panel is Gabe Lee, Gennifer Reed, Edwin Desamour and Ellyn Jo Waller.
Can the witnesses please approach the witness table. Thank you. (Witnesses approached Witness Table.)
And we are going to have the witnesses speak in the following order: Gabe Lee, Gennifer Reed, Edwin Desamour and First Lady Ellyn Jo Waller. Can the witnesses say their name and where they're from for public record.
Good afternoon, everyone. My name is Gabe Lee. I'm the Secretary Treasurer of Local 2187 D.C. 47. Good afternoon. Again, my name is Gabe Lee. I am the Secretary Treasurer of Local 2187. That is the Local that represents all the frontline social workers at the Department of Human Services. Interestingly, this topic is important to me. I was a social worker at the Department of Human Services for over 12-and-a-half years. During that time, I spent a significant amount of my time on the Sex Abuse Investigations Unit encountering many children who were victimized for human trafficking. I would like to share with City Council and the public that we are very lucky here in the city of Philadelphia that we have many social workers who are passionate of keeping children safe here in the City every single day at all times of the day. However, we do have serious challenges at the Department of Human Services. To begin, we are significantly understaffed and social workers are often not able to provide the attention needed to these vulnerable children. Specifically speaking toward the unit that I was a part of, we don't have enough folks there. We need to hire more social workers and it's just not quantity. It's also matter of quality. When I was on that unit, it was always the most experienced investigators assigned there. As we lose staff at the Department of Human Services, we're seeing that the staff on that unit are becoming less and less experienced and the children suffer. Secondly, the department itself is underresourced and that often results in the children that are involved in human trafficking to be enticed by the traffickers. We need to be able to provide them a level of care that will discourage these youth to fall back to their abusers. Often I've seen so many times whereas a social worker we put them in situations where they don't have much and they often go back to their abusers because their abusers give them small things like brand new shoes, brand new iPhones, and that's scary and that's dangerous. In conclusion, I want to stress as a former social worker and also as the treasurer who represents folks that are out in the streets every day, in conclusion we need more. We need to bolster our ranks. We need to be able to retain these social workers so we can keep institutional knowledge and experience in the department, and we need to provide these social workers with more resources to provide for these children. Thank you guys for your time.
Thank you. Thank you for your testimony. Please state your name for the record and proceed with your testimony.
Good day, Committee. My name is Gennifer Reed. I am the President of Local 2186 under District Council 47 and a clinical track licensed social worker. I'm coming today to speak to you from a unique perspective. I've been a City employee for over 20 years. Before coming to the union I was a social work supervisor at DHS in Child Welfare Operations. Prior to being promoted, I was a social worker in the field for 5 years, had the opportunity to engage 6 many citizens of this great city by 7 visiting and assessing the safety of 8 children and their families in 9 hundreds and hundreds of their homes 10 across our county. Additionally, I 11 worked nights and weekends in the 12 child care room at 1515 Arch Street, 13 assisting children and youth with 14 disruptive placements due to mental 15 and emotional concerns. 16 Many of the youth that I 17 served in this environment suffered from emotional issues that we as child welfare professionals could not and have not addressed. I watched youth come in at all hours of the night and day seeking attention that range from basic needs, hugs, advice and even encouragement. I sat and cried with some who were just seeking the right forever home and begged and pleaded with others to stay off the streets and give someone the chance to care and provide for them. We watched young people come in, shower, eat and barely sleep in order to leave our building to allow the streets to envelope them again. Many times I watched young people misdiagnosed with mental health diagnoses when most of what we were seeing were behavioral and emotional issues, caused by abuse, neglect and abandonment. I could go on and on with personal stories about calls I made to mothers and family members begging them to reconsider to allow the young people to come home with intensive services. But in the interest of time I will say this: It is incumbent upon us to provide proper care and supervision with appropriate emotional and behavioral services for the children and youth of Philadelphia. The mental health community has failed our children due to the lack of availability of residential treatment facilities to meet their emotional and behavioral needs, which has caused our population of children and youth to be susceptible to the cycle of emotional abuse, neglect, abandonment, and as we speak about here, trafficking. We as professionals in positions of power need to find to implement creative ways to address what we are seeing today in our City. We as professionals need to implement more persistent tried and true methods of addressing the emotional and behavioral concerns we are seeing with our youth. We need to stop criminalizing these behaviors and get these children the services they really need. Children need consistency, guidance and care specific to their emotional and behavioral needs, residential treatment facilities that provide consistent behavioral modification methods that will address the challenges and behaviors of children and youth that have been abandoned, abused, neglected and available to predatorial caregivers they are connected with. It is our responsibility to care for those that are vulnerable among us. It is our responsibility to provide the proper services to care and meet the specific needs of this vulnerable population. It is our responsibility as leaders, parents, social workers and mental health care workers to address a specific plan and focus ways the needs for emotional support for emotionally-battered children and youth. I hope we will not leave this place with these concerns listed as agenda items, but we list them as action items to be addressed with expediency and purpose. I spend a lot of sleepless nights trying to figure out ways to address these concerns, but we certainly can't do it alone. Let us work collaboratively to implement a change in how we address the emotional deficiencies we are seeing in our vulnerable population of abused and neglected children and youth.
If we don't, we will see more behaviors that lead to truancy, higher drop-out rates, vandalism, violence, senseless deaths and obviously kidnapping and the like. We need to be more intentional and strategic in providing appropriate services through our child welfare and mental health systems. Thank you for your time.
Thank you so much for your testimony. Can the next speaker state your name for the record and also your affiliation and proceed with your testimony.
Thank you. My Edwin Desamour. I'm the Executive Director of the Lighthouse and I am a member of the Board for the Exodus Road. The Exodus Road is an organization that exists in order to disrupt the darkness of modern day slavery, which is critical for citizens living here in Philadelphia. I joined this organization because I am a father, a grandfather and if my kids were missing, I would want to know that someone was out there looking for them. Being a part of this Board gives me firsthand knowledge of locations, what happened, why it happens, the damage that it's done. On the flip side, I also see the strength and the will to survive through these travels and interactions with people all over the world. Meeting survivors personally and hearing from their stories allow me to believe that there is still hope when there are people supporting this initiative. Humans are resilient and do have the strength to bounce back. My role in Philadelphia is as Executive Director at the Lighthouse and a community advocate in North Philadelphia has given me the unique opportunity to work both in the Kensington community and the educational setting. On a multitude of occasions I have come across situations with young people that are being trafficked, exploited right in their own backyard. We also have predators online who are trying to set our children up to lead down these roads. Sexual exploitation is a billion dollar industry with an estimated 27.6 million victims around the world. Many people think this only happens overseas, but it's rampant in our City. Philadelphia is like an open air market that invites predatory invitation with our young people. Trafficking is an epidemic that is plaguing our world. Pennsylvania and Philadelphia are no 4 exception to the rule. To believe that this is something that cannot happen in our community would be the greatest mistake of arrogance because it's already happening to our children. I stand here before you today as a Board member of the Exodus Road, as a father, as a brother, as a son, as a community member and as a citizen hoping that we could find and prevent human trafficking and also bring awareness to protect our children. And I just want to end it with this: I want to thank each and every one of you for even speaking on this. I want to thank you for just touching on this topic. I have traveled overseas, around the world and I've seen trafficking aggressive and I have seen it bold, but I've also seen symptoms of it happening here in Philadelphia, so thank you.
Thank you so much for your testimony. For our next panelist, please state your name for the record and proceed with your testimony. Thank you.
Good afternoon and thank you to the illustrious Councilmembers for hosting this. My name is Ellyn Jo Waller. I am the pastor's wife of Enon Tabernacle, also the founder of She's My Sister Ministry, which I want to talk about as part of my testimony. Human trafficking is alive and well in Philly, and it makes me incredibly sad to know we are sitting in this space almost 10 years to the day of having this conversation previously. I appreciate Councilman Johnson for saying he knows there's been these meetings before, these hearings before. And part of the difficulty is we meet, we meet, we meet and kids in Philly are falling through the cracks over and over and over again. For the past years, I have 5 been engaged in the fight against 6 human trafficking. Started out 7 internationally in 2005 and then I was 8 blown away to know and to learn that 9 it was happening right here in our 10 backyard. Sometimes we hear people 11 say things like, oh, it's happening in 12 your backyard and we pretend that the 13 backyard is somehow the reason for it 14 happening. But we have to think about 15 where we are placed. 16 One of the things that I think 17 people don't recognize is why Philly 18 is such a hub. And it's a hub because of where you can be along the road from Philly. More than 10 years ago, a couple of us in this room have been in this same space. We've looked at the issue. We've talked about the issue. We have talked about ways that we could find solutions. And it's sad that over and over again a lot of times the conversation is just that, a conversation. And so, I'm hoping that in this years, this new decade to look 6 at it, that we'll be able to make 7 something work. The She's My Sister 8 Ministry of Enon Tabernacle Baptist 9 Church was founded in 2011 after we 10 did a documentary viewing of the film Very Young Girls, and did it because we knew the issue was real, we knew it was happening. The documentary, if you all don't know, is placed, it's set in New York City. But as we watched that documentary, we realized it's right here as well. And so, the ministry was formed at that point to raise awareness, particularly in the faith community. There are lots of organizations you've heard them talk about on this panel, and there are others to come that will talk about the awareness raising that's happening. My concern was that it was not happening in the faith community. And often we turn a blind eye to what is right in front of our faces. And so, we host annually an awareness conference every January where we share with the faith community and beyond. So again, the people in this room have been a part of that. We have heard from survivors. We have heard from folks who have been victimized domestically and also internationally. We've heard from children who, and I don't mean no 15 harm, were supposed to be protected by child protective services across this country and in this City who were being victimized right under your noses. I'm happy to hear that the social worker shared that there's just not enough, there's not enough support for our social workers. We live in a city with such a high rate of poverty and we pretend as if our children aren't vulnerable because of just that. Black and Brown children are disproportionately represented in our systems and, therefore, are disproportionately represented as victims. And so, when we start thinking about what can happen, what can we do, we have to do more than have conversations. We have to decide that there are steps that we're willing to take. There are people we're willing to anger that there is nothing more important than protecting our children. And so, I also want to just share that we do a walk, run. Again, She's My Sister Ministry is advocacy, awareness and outreach. It's bringing awareness. It's calling attention to the issue, and we hear about what human trafficking is. We get all of these definitions. We get all of the information about the industry.
One thing I want us to remember is you can sell drugs and guns one time, but you can sell a human being over and over and over again. And I've sat in spaces with persons who have been victimized, with survivors where I've looked into the eyes of folk who are hopeless because it seems that all we do is talk, and we have to do something very different. If we're going to make a difference, it's important that we change the misnomer of us being the City of Brotherly Love and Sisterly Affection to really being that, to really loving our brother and sister and caring enough to make a difference. I've sat in spaces where children was supposed to be helped. And I've looked at faces of folks who were supposed to be the helpers that have failed. This past March I was in a situation where I watched multiple systems fail a child in our City. We can't keep letting this happen. We have to make a difference. And if we are willing, we will look around our region to cities like Baltimore that are doing amazing work. We can look around the country to cities like Houston who have offices that really address this issue. And if we do nothing else, I think we've got to think about how do we figure out how to do something for real in our City to save the lives of our children.
Thank you, Panel, for your testimony. Really riveting discussion here and we learned a lot. Are there any questions or comments from members of the Committee for this panel? Chair recognizes Councilman Jim Harrity.
And thank you for your testimony again. You've been working on this for 10 years, and I really thank you for that. It's actually a question for all of you: If there was a wishlist let's say of what we could help you get that would help in this fight, what would that be? And I'm sure each of you have a different wishlist, so that's why I'm asking all of you the same question because I want to get ideas on how we can actually do something about this rather than just having a conversation.
I would like to add a potential answer of my wishlist would be I've been working at DHS since 1998 and --
Oh, I thought I was. I could hear myself. So I've been working at DHS since 1998 and years ago there were placements called residential treatment facilities. And when children have emotional issues and behavioral issues, this is my thing, over the years they've closed them down with the thought that people need forever homes, children need to be in homes and what's considered possibly an institution, it's not conducive to good living or teaching children prosper -- to be lived prosper -- you know what I'm trying to say. Anyway, so what's happened over the years because of abuse, some of these systems were closed. But for years children were getting what they needed. Some do and some don't. Some specifically to meet their emotional needs and behavioral needs, some children need discipline. So we've gotten away from it. Discipline is not punishment. There are two different things between discipline and punishment. Discipline is about guidance, teaching and that's over and over again. As a young person, how do you learn how to tie your shoe? You practiced it over and over again. How do you learn how to be kind to people? You're taught. You're told that over and over again. Some of these children missed those pieces, right. So a lot of what I was saying was the years when we went to these treatment facilities, they were being abused and some of them have closed, thinking that the best way to address challenging behaviors would be that children would go into homes. Some of these children can't go in people's homes. I've worked as I mentioned at DHS in the child care room and these children come in night and day with disruptive placements, never getting what they need literally emotionally and behaviorally. Their behaviors need to be -- children are children and children need to be taught. Children need to be guided. Time needs to be taken with them. Some of these children, like Gabe said, they'll make themselves available for a phone. They'll make themselves available for some sneakers. Why? Because they're looking to replace what they're not getting. They need to be taught, loved in an environment that is productive and peaceful. That's not the words I want to use, but it's an environment where they're taught how to behave and they get their emotional needs met. A lot of children are subject to these predatory individuals because there's some attachment issues. They don't have someone to give them a hug, to take the time to even engage them. So this is what we're seeing. So we've gotten away from that. We've closed many places, but some children cannot go into regular homes. They can't. They can't be in a regular family home and they don't stay. They keep coming back to DHS and coming in and out, using drugs and doing all kinds of things, making themselves available for whatever happens. And I've seen these little beautiful young children, male and female, that are being used by those predators in the street, and they are not getting the services that they need. So if I had a wishlist, again I would say that we would open treatment facilities, commun -- what am I trying to say, Gabe -- treatment facilities that meet behavioral and emotional needs, but they're under strict guidelines so that there's no 13 abuse that occurs in those systems because that's the kind of thing that will close those places down.
Thank you, Mr. Chair. I just want to echo your sentiments. I've had conversations with different City agencies, right, regarding how we treat trauma and mental health amongst our young people. And there's a study that a lot of the City agencies are saying it's more effective for a child to be in a household, right, to receive services as opposed to going away, right. And my response to that was, my rebuttal was that you're trying to get a young person that's dealing with a lot of issues to actually recover in that same environment where the trauma's taking place, rather it's the mom, the dad, the family members, the neighbors, the friends. We're saying you have to recover and you have to get your life together in that very same environment not taking a look at when you are away in a suburban county somewhere outside of your immediate environment, for some it's an opportunity to get away from what they only know, which is a one-block radius, two-block radius, right. And then that actual treatment facility, get that type of help that they need. Now, there were some major issues at places like Glen Mills and we shut down Sleighton Farms, but now they have a crisis where you got children sleeping on the floor at the youth study center because there's no 8 place to send them. So, yes, we do have to go back and took a look at that model. But I also want to touch on your key point that you talked about, and I'm thinking about from lived experience, is that telling a young person to try to get their lives together in an environment that has a significant amount of obstacles can be very, very challenging. I was able -- I went to Mansfield University. And people always say, how you go to Mansfield. And many of you may or may not know, Mansfield is called God's country. It's in Upstate Pennsylvania next to New York. But the reason I went to Mansfield was because it was 100 miles away from the city of Philadelphia where I was seeing people being murdered in te 1990s day-in and day-out. So for me it was a chance to get away, right, focus on my schooling, right, but also not be subjected to the environment which day-in and day-out either I'm seeing people being murdered, I'm dealing with my own family's trauma and issues. And so, I just want to acknowledge -- because there's a thought of school out there, a very left thought of school that says if we want young people to go to treatment, well, I guess we're supporting mass incarceration. That's not necessarily the case. It's just that we need to have different alternatives to helping our young people to get their lives together because obviously what's going on right now is not working. And so, I just want to say you're definitely correct and just wanted to acknowledge at least from my perspective your comments. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Yes. Thank you again for your testimony. In Districts like mine, there are issues that the City thinks are exasperated. This being no different, right. When I came into office back in November with the help of Councilmember Curtis Jones, we put together a Marshall Plan. And that plan basically called all of the City services to come together to tell us what types of services were happening in my District. And I'm going to speak about my District because it's who I represent, it's what I know well, it's where I live, it's where I'm raising my family and I'm sure that many of my colleagues experience it in theirs as well, but their perspective is different than mine, right. What I can tell you is that when we brought the Marshall Plan public hearing into the community, what we found was that there are millions of dollars and hundreds of programs who are supposed to be used to address needs like this one, right. The problem is that no one wants to address or avoids the conversation of who are the program providers that are not providing that service and how do we pull their funding and reallocate them to be able to support programs that are actually doing the work with potentially less funding than someone else who is getting majority of the money. And so, I say that to say that as we work towards creating a plan, turning conversations into action items which is what myself and my colleagues are working towards doing, know that we're aware of these things. We see these things happening, right. I drive down Kensington Avenue, I drive around in the Harrowgate community every day and see women who are working against their will. I have taken the opportunity to talk to many of them about how can we connect you to services now, why are you here, do you feel that you are in danger. Some of them kind of brush me off because someone is within view, right. And so, I want you to know that there is a commitment. We're not just here -- I'm not just here to hear you. I'm here to listen and learn, ultimately to create conversations and an action plan, but also coming from the perspective of, yeah, we may need more resources. The resources may already be there. We just need to redirect them, right. And that's not always an easy conversation. It's not always a popular conversation, but it is a conversation that I am working towards, and that any one of my colleagues that I have talked to is in support of it. So I think that we're in a good place. This is a conversation that is not easy, right. I think that there are certain policies in government that also don't help us, that kind of work together and work against this particular issue. And so, I think that as time goes on and we meet like this, we will have to bring others to the table to help us reallocate funds, re-asses policies that are put in place that will again help us bring real action into addressing this problem.
Do any other Councilmembers have questions or comments? (No response.)
No, no, this is good. This is really piggybacking off of you speaking to the young lady or a couple of the ladies and they're worried about who's watching. Some of the things I want to -- because it's a long wishlist, I'm going to just hit one. Usually when I drive by, everything's billboards, signage, right. If you commit fraud, here's 10 years, right, insurance companies and stuff like that. So I would love to see more billboards and signage out around the City in different languages, not just Spanish but Asian -- no, different dialects, right, because people are being trafficked in our City. But basically something that's more than, hey, get this much time for trafficking, on something that identifies what is trafficking, but also signage where here's a 1-800-number and someone will be there to direct you to the many different organizations that are providing services and support. You know, have a little list and making sure that these services are being done and that person will make sure that they hang or hold that person to that support system, but I think signage would be very good, because when someone's on their down- and-out whether they're in a car, they can memorize a number, if they're in a dangerous situation, they know later on when they get a chance they can make a call and know that there's help out there. And also, our young people who could fall in the trap of being predators not knowing that this is a serious offense and they need to know this is trafficking, if you get caught doing it, you can get this much time for it.
Just one last question: I know that all of you provide a very specific service. But have you all ever talked to each other? Have you all worked with another in your work to cross- collaborate, share resources? If not, this is an opportunity to do that, right. I recommend that we start to network and share information with one another. I'd love to make sure that I get everybody's information for future conversations.
And I'll just add this last bit to the wishlist, and I do appreciate -- I cannot say how much I appreciate you all for doing this even 10 years later because there was a gap. And so, you're stepping in so I greatly appreciate that. I think wishlist, changing how we view those who are victimized. Changing, you know, getting away from the Hollywood sensationalized story of trafficking. It's not always the snatching folk off the street. It's the gradual victimization that then gets the person to the place of brainwashing and all of those things, so I think that's important. I think we have to be careful that we view Brown and Black girls the same way we view blond young ladies. We look for Gabby Petito forever more. We got Black and Brown girls missing in this City every day nobody's looking for. So the wishlist would be changing the view. The second thing would be to have funding. We talked about housing. We talked about -- but we need funding for an office where identification is really happening. Identifications and training and support and housing for those who have been victimized. And also, don't forget survivors. Because I think sometimes what happens is we get this mentality that we're rescuing and we've got to do the next steps. And like you were saying, just making sure that there's something there that's ongoing. Increasing the number of social service workers. We just heard -- but social service workers that are specifically training for trafficking because traffick trauma is different. So when we start talking about trauma, that's real across the board and our kids are suffering, but traffick trauma is different, so we're making sure we're doing that. Also, the willingness. Nothing against you all, but join us all in press, and the willingness to really prosecute, the willingness to hold people accountable. The willingness to provide signage. I was in New York at a hotel. The back of the door had the human trafficking information on it. We need more billboards. There are some that are blue campaign, but we need to do stuff in the City that's for the people. We just did a partnership in January with SEPTA. They put more signs, so signage. Pressing on our sports. In our stadiums we should have signage in every bathroom in our stadiums. And then also, willingness to make sure that the laws that exist are actually followed. So that's mine.
I had a question. Is the Office of Homelessness here today? (No response.)
I was just wondering because I know also First Lady Waller kind of touched on this, the Hollywood perspective of trafficking. And I would think a lot of times we look at youth and homelessness, right. It's also another pathway that young lady or that young man who definitely have the faith to stay, but then they start hanging out with somebody who's older, right. That older person befriends them and one thing leads to another. Just talking about the need for us also having a comprehensive strategy around providing homeless opportunities, particularly for young people and specifically for young people that age out, right, who don't have a family home to go back when they age out, right, and they make that transition to go back to their community when they're out of DHS. That's something we can also explore as well. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
I just want to answer Councilman Harrity's -- I would be remiss not to give my wishlist for the workers that are out there with these kids now. One of our wishes is to echo Ms. Reed, we need structured programs. Congregate care has been stressed as such an evil thing in the City, but I work with the kids who have been successful in these programs, and a lot of these kids we need to know need that structure and they need to work with professionals. We talk about kinship care all the time, how some of these kids can't go to grandma and grandpa. Some professionals can't even handle these children in the child care room. What makes you think that grandma and grandpa are equipped to be able to handle these unique behaviors. We're putting children at risk sometimes who just literally -- not any of their fault, but they are not equipped. These programs that we used to have aren't there anymore. A lot of them, they've been shut down. So the wishlist and social workers themselves would be, and this comes to the resources, is proper programs for folks, not to trap them in a program but so that they can get professional specialized help.
Thank you. I just want to also ask -- I want to ask one question about -- I'm not sure if any Councilmembers have questions, but I wanted to see -- I heard Ellyn Jo Waller mention that other cities are doing better at this than we are. Do you know any of the pieces of legislation or policies that are place in other cities? I know you mentioned some recommendations. But what are some of the cities doing better than us so we can replicate here in the city of Philadelphia immediately?
There is federal legislation. It's called the independent living bulletin, right. And so --
Sorry. The independent living bulletin speaks to young people that aged -- that are vulnerable and aged out, providing the basic needs. And so, what happens is say you want to have an agency that would provide basic needs services, meaning teaching children how to clean their laundry and how to budget, et cetera, so there's federal funding for that. And so, if people would present an RFP to open up a system, Valley Youth House provides that service for DHS individuals and beyond. And, Councilmember, you spoke of homelessness. This process, this IO bulletin funding and programming leads to a process of homes for young people, but they have to meet certain stipulations. They have to be in school or they have to work. Additionally, legislation that really is a barrier for young people is a legislation that speaks to the fact that a 14-year-old can decide whether or not they can receive services, mental health and emotional behavioral services. That's a problem. A 14-year-old's brain is not developed enough to understand what it is that they need. We as adults, parents, social workers and caregivers need to be able to address children's behaviors without them telling us I'm not doing that. years old, your brain 7 develops until you're 25, right. So 8 at 14 years old you know what you 9 need? I don't think so. And if 10 anybody ever had any problems with 11 teenagers, and I had four, they don't 12 know what they need. You got to tell 13 them. You got to teach them. You got 14 to provide for them. So they don't have the wherewithal to even speak intelligently about what are the things they need. That's the legislation. I don't know where that came from, but it's a mess and it causes a lot of problems when children can't get what they need.
So you're saying to me that right now a 14-year-old has to agree to social services even though their parent recommended their 14-year-old, a teenager, pretty much an adolescent has to agree to make for something to happen?
Yes, they can agree not to take medication that has been prescribed for them. They can agree not to engage in the behavioral services, mental health services -- mostly mental health behavior, not behavior perhaps because we have changed that whole behavioral service system. It's almost nonexistent. This is why we see what we see now. You see a lot of these children's behaviors being criminalized. I just talked about PJJSC, what we're seeing there. What they're not getting and we see the result of it at PJJSC. We see the result of it at DHS child care room. It's like a revolving door, right. Not addressing these behaviors, not addressing these emotional issues appropriately because they can say I'm not doing that. They can't -- no, unh-unh. It's almost like a 3-year-old saying, oh, I'm just not going to do it. That's a mess.
I think part of the problem, and I'm going to say this probably at every hearing I participate in, accountability. We as adults are afraid to hold each other accountable. We're afraid to hold our families accountable. We're afraid of -- and I don't know how we got there, how we got to where we are today. But holding each other accountable is a huge problem, and agreeing to enforcement is a problem. All of it is an issue that we as government need to take a step back and reassess how we are doing things. I'm going to use -- my frustration comes from an organization who gets I'm going to say millions but I think billions of dollars to address emotional and behavioral issues with young people in their facility. And when I ask some of my public safety partners to give me an assessment of why is police always called to this particular address, they tell me, we're trying to figure it out, right. In a 12-month period, this particular facility has reported over 500 missing persons. These people get I'm going to say millions again, but I believe it's more, to address mental and emotional health for children in our community who on a regular basis has to file missing persons reports. These children are just walking out of the facility, creating havoc in the neighborhood and then when they feel like rolling back in, they do or they don't show up and then become a part of one of our other systems. And so, again accountability, enforcement, responsibility, conversations into actions, all of those things are important. But we are going to have to look at all of these contracts that we have in government and take some very serious actions about how do we reallocate the funds who often times are organizations that have contracts who will be pissed off because we pulled their contract. And many of you who are sitting in this room are a part of these service providers who I'm sure at times you may say to yourself, I'm not really sure if we're providing the services we say we're providing. You are the people we need to hear from because we're not going to know, but our children are at risk as a result of the silence. And that has to change if we want to change the direction that our young people are going in.
I thank you for giving us some things to look into, and I agree with my colleague Quetcy. You know, you can see for yourself there's a few new faces up here and we have our senior member with us who I know has personally taken it on himself with gun violence and our kids in the neighborhood. We all live in the neighborhood. Me and Quetcy live in Kensington, you know what I mean. I'm there. I'm at G and Allegheny. And the reason I ran was because nobody was fighting for the kids in my neighborhood. They're happy kids right now, but I know that time is not their friend. And one thing else I know is that in neighborhoods like ours lack of hope is brutal. And for a child to have no 18 hope, that's not right and we need to do better. So you can best believe that we're going to be looking at these departments. We're going to look at these subcontractors and we're to see which ones are doing what they're supposed to be doing. And the ones that are not, we're going to take their funding. That you have our word.
Thank you. I just want to say I will pass on information for the Council from the Exodus Road on best practices across the United States and even some around (inaudible), what is working and what is not working. I would love to share all that information, so I'll make sure I send it to Quetcy Lozada's office, Councilwoman's office. I'll collect all the data from Exodus Road on best practices that are going around across the country, and maybe we can take something from that and see what we can instill it in our City.
Thank you all so much. We really learned a lot. We really appreciate you coming forward. We're looking forward to learning more from other panels. Thank you.
And I just want to give a quick shout-out to Edwin, the work you're doing up there in my colleague's District. I've been following you for a while. I think at the last event we were at was the Father's Day Committee honoring Bilal Qayyum. Just keep up the good work and staying on the case as you have been doing. And, First Lady Waller, thank you for holding us accountable to make sure we continue to do what we need to do to keep our young girls safe. Thank you. Thank you for your testimonies. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Absolutely. Yeah, again the church has been a beacon of light in Philadelphia communities for a long time. And I wanted our City officials to really understand that we have a partner in this church when it comes to this issue. So thank you, Ellyn Jo Waller, for hosting us today. I also want to -- let's call on our second panel. So we can have our second panelist come forward to testify on Resolution No. 230662. That would be, Clerk?
Shea Rhodes, Nadeem Bezar, Kelly Sagastume and Heather LaRocca. (Witnesses approached Witness Table.)
All right. Thank you so much. Clerk, will you please call the second panel of witnesses we have to testify on Resolution 230662.
Shea Rhodes, Nadeem Bezar, Kelly Sagastume and Heather LaRocca.
Thank you. Good afternoon. Please state your name for the record and proceed with your testimony.
Hi. I'm Shay Rhodes. And I'm the Director and the co-founder of the Institute to Address Commercial Sexual Exploitation out of Villanova Law School. Councilmembers, thank you so much for this amazing opportunity to be here today. I'm actually really thrilled. Along with Dr. Waller, in December of 2012 I had the pleasure of testifying before City Council on this same issue, so it's actually almost 11 years later here we sit. And I can look back at the last 11 years or so and see a lot of progress that the City has made. And I do want to say that when I did provide that testimony in December of 2012, it was one of the very last things that I did as a prosecutor here in the city and county of Philadelphia. And I quit my job as a prosecutor because of this very issue, and I am a lawyer obviously and have a skill set of being able to read laws and apply laws but also to effectuate legal change. And at the time, I did not like the way the law was being applied. I didn't run for office so obviously no one voted to elect me, but I thought I have a unique skill set and I would like to change the laws to reflect who is seen as a victim of trafficking and exploitation, and to hold the perpetrators accountable. And, Councilman Harrity, I want to start by answering your question what do we need. And the fact that four of you are sitting here is exactly what we need, because nothing, absolutely nothing gets done without political will. And we need the political will to effectuate change. I can give you solution after solution after solution. And again, I'm a lawyer so I thought the best way to effectuate change was to change the laws. And in 2014, we did. We changed the law. Here in the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania we enacted a comprehensive human trafficking law. It defines labor trafficking and it defines sex trafficking. But our state legislature cut the fiscal note. So what I have learned in the last nine years of watching this law throughout our entire Commonwealth, and I'm a constituent here in the city and county of Philadelphia, so what Philadelphia does is very important to me. And I also think that we're poised to be a leader. But because that fiscal note was passed, the biggest part of new laws was truly stunted which is implementation. We can change laws all day every day, I think you all know that, make things up. But without someone to coordinate the implementation, it's almost meaningless. I want to focus on 2018 and the fact that we enacted another law that I was really fortunate to be at the table during drafting and negotiations, which is really relevant to why we're here today. It's the Safe Harbor for Sexually Exploited Childrens Act, and that went into effect in 2018. A lot of us here in this room advocated for four long years to get this law passed. It repealed prostitution out of the Juvenile Act because there is no such thing as a child prostitute. They're a victim of child abuse, and our child protective services law reflects that. So when that law went into effect, we built a couple of things into it. Funding the Safe Harbor for Sexually Exploited Childrens Fund. Part of that fund is to be used for training and another part of that fund is to be used for statewide public awareness campaign, focusing on anti-demand. Every single dollar that a sex trafficker makes comes out of the wallet of a sex buyer. Again, the fund is to be populated from successful convictions of sex traffickers and successful conviction of sex buyers. You can read my testimony to see the statistics regarding the convictions here in Philadelphia County for both sex trafficking and sex buying. But what I think is critical is that the mandatory fine to be imposed at sentencing to the best of our knowledge, and again we can only look at what's publicly available in dockets, we can't see that the fine was imposed, so that's quite troubling to us.
I think the other thing that's really important is that just because the law calls for a statewide public awareness campaign focusing on demand, again every dollar a sex trafficker makes comes out of the wallet of a sex buyer, it doesn't preclude Philadelphia County from creating its citywide campaign on anti-demand. And what goes along with that has to be a credible threat that buying sex is not going to be tolerated in our City. It's just not going to be tolerated in our City. And I think again you all can set an example of what you want to tolerate and what you don't. I know that Mr. Bezar from Kline & Specter is unable to be here today. He's preparing for trial, but he is actively holding the hotels in this City accountable for allowing traffickers to do their business inside of their hotels, and I don't want to speak for him. But also, they are known locations to go to buy sex. I want to tell you one more thing. I've been around a really long time. And when I started my career in the late '90s, there wasn't even a federal trafficking victims protection act. And I was doing volunteer work as a pro bono attorney for the Support Center for Child Advocates. And I can look back at those cases that I was appointed to represent those children on, and the facts of their victimization squarely fit what we now have the language for, which is that those children were being sexually exploited sometimes by family members, sometimes by so-called boyfriends. But the law now matches what has been going on at least my entire almost 27-year career now. So I turned 50 in the summer of 2022. And I tell you that only because I took the day off on my 50th birthday. And I got a phone call from a dear friend who was a criminal defense attorney here in the City. And she wanted me to give her my expert opinion on a case that was scheduled to go to trial in Juvenile Court either the next day or a couple days later. And she gave me the facts, which again are in my testimony. But the child who was facing being adjudicated, it's only one at trial, was a passenger in a car that was stopped by police for a traffic violation. The driver of that car was a registered sex offender from another state. The child told the police the driver of the car had rented a hotel room for her close to the airport and that she'd run way from home. Again, the alleged victim of this case was the driver of the car, again who was a registered sex offender from another state. And the child allegedly threatened him verbally. The child was arrested and charged and was being held in custody at the Juvenile Justice Center. The alleged victim in the case was listed in the police report as the uncooperative victim. And to the best of my knowledge and to my friend who's the criminal defense attorney, he was not investigated for being a registered sex offender from another state or why he was in the city of Philadelphia to begin with. I informed the criminal defense that I absolutely believe that child to be a victim of sex trafficking. Again, under the law there doesn't need to be third party control for a child to be a victim of sex trafficking. What that means simply is there doesn't need to be pimp control. If you buy sex from a child, you are a trafficker in the eyes of both the federal law and our state. I offered to call the Chief of the Juvenile Unit at the DA's Office and ultimately I did. And that case was dismissed and the child was returned home to her family. And to the best of my knowledge, the child is doing well. But that's just an example of why implementation of the law is so important. We need to ensure that every member of our police department knows how to recognize trafficking, how to hand it off, how we operate in silos here in this City. We have tremendous victim services organizations. We have tremendous lawyers, defense attorneys, prosecutors, investigators at the federal and state level. We're operating in silos.
I think that there needs to be someone in charge here in the City of coordinating the entire operation involving sex trafficking, not just of our children but of our adults because just because you turn years old does not make 18 you no longer a victim. Every single one of my clients is a victim of sex trafficking and has a criminal record directly because of their victimization. I know that Heather LaRocca is here. She's going to testify about the great work they're doing in Kensington. But the lawyers who work for me, we provide office hours at the Drop-in Center in Kensington and the referral source for our clients. Yes, I was a prosecutor. But I quite my job because I didn't like who was being prosecuted under the law. We changed the law. And now, we need your help to implement it here in our City. Thank you.
Thank you. Thank you for your testimony. Can we move to our next panelist. Please state your name for the record. MS. LaROCCA: Heather LaRocca. So hello. My name is Heather LaRocca. And I'm the Director of the Salvation Army's New Day to Stop Trafficking Program, which is located here in Philadelphia. And we operate a program for survivors of trafficking. All that we do is solely focused on working with survivors. Shae already mentioned our Drop-in Center in Kensington where we served almost 900 individuals last year. We have a diversion program as a part of the City's PAD initiative, Police-Assisted Diversion. We have case management services, housing, a 24-hour hotline and we also do trainings, outreach and awareness. So thank you so much for showing up today, for caring and being willing to listen to what we have to say about this crisis in our City. There are a lot of issues to care about, a lot of things that we all have on our plates, especially here in our City, so we really do appreciate this time dedicated to this issue. And thank you also to our fellow panelists. It's been really helpful and good to hear what we all have to say. And to your question earlier, we are all collaborating and trying to do this work together. There are a few new faces to the table, but I think we'll continue to connect and collaborate. I personally have been on the front lines of this issue of trafficking through both my work at New Day and also my work at Women Against Abuse prior for almost years. 7 And I just want to say that I 8 don't believe that the word 9 trafficking really explains what 10 trafficking is. The word just doesn't 11 answer. Like when you hear that, you 12 don't think about someone going after 13 vulnerable individuals here in our 14 City. You don't necessarily think 15 about youth without placement with a 16 history of childhood abuse and trauma. 17 You definitely often don't think about those folks that we see on the streets of Kensington who are struggling with homelessness and substance use. That's not the image that we get when we think of trafficking. I was hoping that today we're giving a different image. So just to kind of talk about a little bit of our experience, we've worked with young individuals, we've worked with youth, we've worked with adults. We worked with an 11-year-old child who's experienced abuse, has run away from their home, left placement and has been in that placement that we kind of talked about earlier, has spent some time in an RTF, maybe spent some time in a group and then they are without placement staying in the child care room that we heard spoken about earlier and then do continue to be exploited. So they have that history of childhood abuse and then that continues in our system. We've also worked with adults who've grown up in let's just say a home in South Philly. They've grown up in a home of substance abuse, poverty, lack of resources. And a lot of times when we talk to these individuals that we're working with, they'll talk about how the first person that sold them for sex was the parent or a family member. And we've worked with youth that the mom is also at our drop-in centers. We've actually worked with generations now of folks who've been victimized by trafficking. And we've seen unfortunately now, we've been doing this work for over years, we've seen that young 10 people then grow up and become that individual that we see on the streets of Kensington as I've spoken about before and even have seen a mother-daughter situation. And as a lot of our other panelists have spoken about, 10 years ago we sat before City Council. We explained what trafficking was and why we as a city should care about this issue. And Salvation Army wasn't at that table 10 years ago. And us with our partners decided to do something about the issue.
We started a Drop-in Center 10 years ago in Kensington where we knew vulnerable folks were and where they could come in, get a warm meal, clothes, a shower and ultimately know that someone cares about them. And even since that time we have individuals that are still coming in years later that we're 7 still building that relationship with 8 and we have seen success. We have 9 seen folks get out. 10 We have seen -- a lot of my team is here today. They could each tell you 10 stories about the individuals that they've worked with. In 2022, we served 1,377 survivors through all of our services. We now not only have a drop-in center in Kensington, but we also have a 16-bed transitional housing program just for survivors of trafficking in our City as well as let 10 families in the Rapid Rehousing program. We're able to serve up to 10 families. We have a mobile case management team who is out in the community. They're boots on the ground, working with folks, sitting with them while they wait to get into treatment, sitting with them while they wait for a bed in a homeless shelter. They are out there and they are meeting with youth and adults. We are also part of the City's diversion program for individuals arrested for prostitution. Sitting the Vice Unit here behind me, when they do their operations, they're able to now divert folks to us for services rather than charges. And we've also been integral in co-leading the Philadelphia Anti-trafficking Task Force. Again, some of our law enforcement officials are here for that. We also are a part of the City's specialty family court for trafficked youth called WRAP Court. We've helped our City looked at its housing system and implement screening for trafficking, and we have continued to advocate along with our partners like Villanova Support Center, Enon to make a dent in this crisis. So I just finished telling you how the innovative, amazing work that we are doing. But as you're hearing today it's just not enough. We're continuing to see this problem get worse. It was just a few months ago that we served our youngest survivor yet. We're seeing it happen younger. We're seeing our youth be more vulnerable. We're seeing the drug supply, as you all are very well aware, worsen. And so, we do need actionable change as everyone here has already spoken about. We need to seriously look at our vulnerable youth. And we also, as Sister Ellyn spoke about already, to think outside of the kidnapped blonde little girl that we see in the movies and that we see in Hollywood, but to think about our Black and Brown kids who are often treated as delinquent and problem kids rather than children who have been exploited by adults. I have sat in courtrooms as Shae as already shared about where 14-year-olds are seen as criminals and delinquents when it is known in the courtroom that they are a trafficking survivor and have been trafficked all over the City. We need meaningful investigations at the federal and local level with resources and accountability. When we started the Task Force in 2015, we had officers who were fully dedicated to anti-trafficking investigations. And since that grant ended, we have not had officers that are fully dedicated to that. We need to send a message that it's not okay. It will not be tolerated in our City. So just kind of an ending, 10 years ago we sat before you. We had this conversation. We talked about the 11-year-old child who was trafficked. 10 years later that person is 21. They're at our Drop-in Center. They're experiencing homelessness and substance use and we have failed that child of years ago. Our systems 4 didn't understand that exploitation. 5 We treated them like delinquents. I 6 ask you today to think about who are 7 those 11-year-olds today, who are 8 those 15-year-olds, who are those 9 kids. And then also, when we work 10 with those adults, where were they 10 years ago and what happened that brought them to where they are.
So I invite you to come and to see the work that we're doing in our City, to see the work in Kensington, to see the work at our Drop-in Center and our housing program and to learn about what it is that we're doing, the work that's already happening because there's a lot of folks here in the City, some are represented here today and some are not, that are doing this work. And I invite you to come and listen and hear and see that work and see ways that we can enhance the work that's already being done.
Thank you so much for your testimony. Will our next panelist please state your name for the record.
Yes. Good afternoon. I want to start off by thanking Councilmember Anthony Phillips for inviting me to speak to City Council on the important issue of human trafficking. My name is Kelly Sagastume and I'm the Program Manager of Project PROTECT at Support Center for Child Advocate, where I have worked for almost five years. In my role, I represent child victims of human trafficking in our City's child welfare system. I coordinate Philadelphia's Youth Anti- trafficking Coalition and convene our Youth Survivor Advisory Board, a group of human trafficking survivors ages 18 to 26, who consult on the coalition. Three of them are here with us tonight. Thanks to funding from the Pennsylvania Commission on Crime and Delinquency, our Youth Survivor Advisory Board has been working diligently over the past year to determine a policy solution to address the issue of child trafficking. They have identified the need for a 24/7 youth drop-in center in Philadelphia to prevent youth from being exploited and to connect them with supports and services. While Philadelphia has some spaces in drop- in center, there is no youth drop-in center that is available to young people hours, 7 days a week. 16 Existing youth drop-in centers 17 are often closed after business hours 18 and are affiliated with systems like 19 the child welfare and juvenile justice 20 system, which can act as a deterrent 21 for young people who had negative 22 system experiences. In order to make 23 this drop-in center a success and a 24 reality -- I apologize. I lost my place. We need the support of community members, professionals and young people which is why we urge you to consider the need for this community space and support us in our endeavors. The 24/7 youth drop-in center would serve as critical resource in our fight against human trafficking, preventing violence in our community and connecting youth people to much- needed safety and trauma-informed support. Young people experiencing homelessness are often forced to exchange their bodies for basic needs such as food, clothing and shelter. Insufficient placement options, lack of affordable housing and inadequate opportunities for quality education and employment leave youth vulnerable to traffickers exploiting tactics. In fact, in homeless youth are victims of human trafficking. A multi-city study, which included Philadelphia data, reported that traffickers approached 62 percent of the youth respondents while they were homeless. 41 percent of those youth respondents were targeted on just their very first night of homelessness. In addition, youth involved in the child welfare and juvenile justice systems and LGBTQ+ youth are disproportionately impacted by human trafficking. A 24/7 youth drop-in center would provide many people with safe and secure environment when they can seek refuge from violence and exploitation, receive access to basic needs, case management and escape trafficker and buyer control. On average, young people attempt to escape their trafficker seven times before successfully leaving them for good. Victims often encounter countless barriers when attempting to access services leaving them no choice but to return to harmful individuals to meet their needs. By offering a safe space and support, a 24/7 youth drop-in center can prevent revictimization and provide resources to break the cycle of trafficking. When youth are able to get their basic needs met and afford quality long-term stability, they are less likely to rely on exploitative adults and are better-equipped to lead healthy, happy lives. The center would play a vital role in raising awareness about human trafficking and empowering young people to identify the signs, red flags and ways to support one another when in potential danger. Survivors can connect to youth in a way others without lived experience cannot. Interested young people would be able to connect with survivor mentors on site.
In summary, I urge you to consider allocating the necessary resources and support to establish this 24/7 youth drop-in center in our community. By doing so, we can demonstrate our commitment to the well-being and safety of our young people and send a strong message that human trafficking will not be tolerated in Philadelphia. Currently other cities across the country operate drop-in centers for trafficked youth and youth at risk of being trafficked. We hope the successful creation of this drop-in center will serve as a litmust test for other cities to develop 24/7 youth drop-in centers as well. And finally, a few words on the need from some of our Youth Survivor Advisory Board Members. One said, A drop-in center would provide youth with a safe space where they can be heard, have their short- and their long-term needs met, receive care and support without judgment. Another one said, A drop-in center would be a safe space to be heard and to find a permanent solution, not just a temporary fix. And I just wanted to add, this was not part of my testimony but in hearing what others have said, specifically my colleague Shae and others here, I did just want to address in my role I see too often young people criminalized and villainized for their abuse and exploitation. I see professionals and systems charge these young people, send them far away, take them from their homes, remove them from communities. And what that says to those young people is that they are to blame, they are at fault and they have done something, they are the criminals. They have done nothing wrong. They are victims of child abuse, trauma and those that have committed offenses are the traffickers and buyers, and we should hold them accountable and treat young people as the victims that they are. Thank you.
thank you so much for your testimony. Are there any questions or comments from members of the Committee for this panel? I recognize Councilman Kenyatta Johnson.
Yes. I want to thank all three of you for your testimony. We were just having this conversation. So in the city of Philadelphia, how many drop-off stations are there for young people?
That's a great question. So we're doing that research ourselves right now. There's a couple. Like I said, there's ones that are affiliated with the City's child welfare and juvenile justice system. There's a couple that we're making outreach right now that have late hours that aren't 24/7, so I can't respond to your question as to how many. But it's something we're conducting research on right now. And I think our intention would be to collaborate with them. It wouldn't be to invent another drop-in center. It would be to provide resources, staffing, funding, support to existing drop-in centers to further meet the needs of the young people.
When you finish the research, can you provide the Chair with that information?
Are there any other questions from members of the Committee? I have a question -- oh, go ahead. The Chair recognizes Councilman Jim Harrity.
I'm sorry. I didn't catch your name. I was in the restroom and I apologize for that, but I did hear your comments and your statement. So you were saying about implementing our own fund just as the State. The State has a fund that we get from the conviction of these individuals now, right?
I'm Shea Rhodes, and I'm the Director and the co-founder of the CSE Institute out of Villanova's Law School. It's nice to meet you. There is a state fund that was established when the Safe Harbor for Sexually Exploited Children's law was passed. It's called the Safe Harbor for Sexually Exploited Children's Fund. And I believe that the Pennsylvania Commission on Crime and Delinquency is the point agency to be disseminating that fund. I think 50 percent goes to training. I know that 40 percent of it is to go to a state-wide public awareness campaign. We don't know how much money is in that fund. We don't know if I'm even the right person to ask that question. But I don't believe that what the law calls for is a statewide public awareness campaign, focusing on anti-demand, meaning the sex buyers. Just because the State has not done that yet, it doesn't preclude Philadelphia from doing its own public awareness campaign. And if the City chose to do so, you can really be setting the example for the rest of the Commonwealth to follow and get up to speed.
This is a question for actually Shae and others can address it. I was curious to learn -- earlier you said political will is really important to push this agenda forward. I couldn't agree with you more. But I also wanted to learn more about what are some current laws or policies that are in place that we need to do a better job ensuring that it's enforced to protect our children and our babies?
I think law enforcement has the law, right. We have a comprehensive law that defines sex trafficking. It gives very clear definitive elements for a prosecutor to ultimately go to court and prove beyond a reasonable doubt. I think what's really critical is -- and this is not unique to Philadelphia or even our common law. It's nationally. There is a conversation that we have to go after traffickers. Yes, that is true. The traffickers are in the business of doing one thing and one thing only, and that's making money. So we should target traffickers, but we have to target what we refer to as a third party facilitator, those that are knowingly benefiting financially, meaning they're making money from helping traffickers do what they do. And we also need to use our trafficking law, not just our buying sex law which is called patronizing prostitutes which is stigmatizing, the name in and of itself, a conversation I'm happy to have on a different day, that's legislation that Speaker McClinton is getting ready to propose, again this session, she did it last session. But we can use our sex trafficking stat sheet to target sex buyers as traffickers. If you buy sex from a child, you are a trafficker, and the law shows that. It's very clear. So I think that if we spin our wheels as a collective United States of America on targeting traffickers only, okay, great, a bad guy's going away. Another bad guy is going to move in because there's a market for him to make money. It's economics.
Thank you all so much for your testimony. I really, really appreciate it. It was quite riveting to hear some of the stories as well as your recommendations.
Just really quickly. So I'm assuming that we are saying that some of the laws that are in place are currently not working to deter the behavior or are we not -- or are we just not enforcing those laws in the way that we can?
I think that's a resource issue and I think that there needs to be a clear political will from all of the powers in the City on where to spend those resources.
Got it. Yeah, I think that's what's hitting all of our brains right now about how are we spending these resources. And even this 24-hour center, one of the things I'm curious about is the center will be able to help bring in young people who are being trafficked, but then are there going to be people on the streets who may be working alongside the police department trying to get these people to utilize the center so that these folks feel comfortable. Those are the things that are crossing my mind because as Councilmember Lozada said, she will go up to someone that clearly looks like they're being trafficked. Yet they would not feel comfortable with taking a resource because one of the traffickers are nearby. So those are things like I said about how do we roll out the 24-hour center.
We'll just add something that we've been talking about as a Youth Survivor Advisory Board Committee is the idea of various sites throughout the City. So something that our Youth Survivor Advisory Board members have talked about is that there are a lot of concerns from young people around being in neighborhoods that aren't their own, being in neighborhoods where there might be territorial issues or violence issues and also just access, right. So why would you go across the City to a drop-in center in West Philly when you live in North Philly and that's the area that you know. So one of the discussions that we had was about having sort of various locations across the City, and that's why I mentioned partnering with existing drop-in centers that do exist across the City to just better support them to be able to offer services 24/7. I think there's definitely a conversation we need to have about safety and what safety looks like because there is a reality. I will just note that unfortunately traffickers are really astute as much as we don't like to admit it and they already know where young people who vulnerable are. It's why we know that they hang around group homes. They know where the DHS building is in Center City. This is something that they already know, so just addressing it head-on and figuring out how we can to turn the young people to spaces that are safe.
Are there currently laws on the books for us to go after these third party individuals such as hotels?
Yes. MS. LaROCCA: Just real quickly I'd also add to the question around engaging the folks who are being trafficked. I will say that I will agree with you that even when we have folks come into our center and we start hearing about their story, there are not ever -- it's very rare and you could ask any of my staff that are here today how many people would be like I'm being trafficked, please help me. What we found in doing this work for a long time is it's about building the relationship and building safety and trust, and it really is getting out of trafficking and then healing from trafficking is a long game. It's a lifetime of healing and getting out is also as mentioned earlier with leaving multiple times, so it's really having programs that are like ours that are in the spaces. We also do outreach to our child care room. We're building relationships with those youth. But again, we don't have youth just come to us and say we're trafficked. But I will say after a few months of just meeting with them, building a relationship and getting that started, they have disclosed what happened to them when they were at the group home when they were younger. So it's not insurmountable. But I will say that we served over 1300 survivors last year and we have a team of 30 staff. We have two part-time individuals who work the floor of our Drop-in Center where we see up to 50, 60, 80 women a day and we only have two part-time staff because we lack the funding and there's not a lot of federal or state grants that really look at drop-in centers as something -- there's not, like, it doesn't fit the niche of funding sources, so that is still an issue. And I think just one more thing I want to bring up, is that we currently have in our Mayor's Office an Office of Domestic Violence Strategies where again there's two staff dedicated to ensuring that our entire City is looking at the issue of domestic violence and having accountability in a system that responds in a trauma-informed manner. So there is a skeleton structure here. I would suggest even looking at that office, making it more about gender-based violence in general, so looking at trafficking and domestic violence and sexual assaults, looking at those issues and giving behind their work, some ability to have accountability. Earlier it was mentioned about Houston having an office like this or Baltimore having an office like this. We have at least a small start-up version of that so how could we expand that and how could we give them accountability to ensure that we are looking at this issue across our City.
Thank you. Thank you all so much for your testimony. Very appreciated. Will the Clerk call the third panel to testify on Resolution 230662.
Amanda David and available for questions are Lieutenant Oronde Watson and Officer Stanley Kaluza. (Witnesses approached Witness Table.)
Thank you so much. We're going to start on our left side. If you can please state your name for the record and proceed with your testimony.
Good afternoon. My name is Dr. Jean Wright. I'm the Deputy Commissioner for the Department for the Behavioral Health and Intellectual Disabilities Service and I'm here to support my colleague Amanda David.
Good afternoon, Committee Chair Phillips, Committee Vice-Chair Thomas and members of the Committee. I'm Amanda David, Chief Program Officer and Director for the DBHIDS's Division of Behavioral Health. Joining me today is Dr. Jean Wright, Deputy Commissioner, DBHIDS's Behavioral Health Division Director. I'm happy to provide testimony for Resolution No. 230662 on the efforts of the Department of Behavioral Health and Intellectual Disabilities Services, DBHIDS in combating human trafficking in the city of Philadelphia. As referenced in Councilmember Lozada's resolution calling for this hearing, DBHIDS provides a wide array of information and resources of human trafficking as part of our comprehensive efforts to blanket the City with trauma supports through a variety of evidence-based initiatives, including our human trafficking awareness initiative. DBHIDS follows the Federal Department of Health and Human Services definition of human trafficking as a form of modern day slavery that occurs both within the United States and around the world. Human trafficking can be broken down into two main types, sex trafficking wherein an individual is obtained for the purposes of commercial sex acts induced by force, fraud or coercion and labor trafficking, wherein an individual is obtained for labor services by force, fraud or coercion, and all together generates $150 billion per year, and almost million people worldwide 7 find themselves forced into sexual 8 exploitation or labor. 9 In addition to providing 10 resources and awareness, DBHIDS works 11 with and supports several community 12 groups and organizations dedicated to 13 combating human trafficking in 14 Philadelphia and providing 15 comprehensive services and supports 16 for victims looking to get their lives 17 back. Three key programs that are or 18 have been supported by DBHIDS over the 19 years include the Salvation Army New 20 Day Center in Kensington; Project Dawn 21 Court; the WOAR, Philadelphia Center 22 Against Sexual Violence. 23 I'll give a bit of details on 24 each of these three key programs. The 25 Salvation Army New Day Center, which we heard from earlier, provides individualized person- and family-centered support and drug and alcohol case management services to individuals with substance use disorder and co-occurring disorders who present multiple needs and require advocacy and assistance in accessing services. A key feature of the New Day Center is specialized drug and alcohol case management services for individuals, particularly female-identifying persons who are victims of human trafficking. The New Day Center captures these individuals not currently accessing the behavioral health system on a grassroots level, provides them with specialized trauma- informed care and connects them to a wide array of services, including behavioral and physical health care services, access to government entitlement and support programs and housing. These services are available through medical assistance and funding is facilitated by DBHIDS through the Community Behavioral Health. Project Dawn Court was founded in January 2010 to address the growing number of women arrested for prostitution who were violating the conditions of their probation and parole by relapse or recidivism. Project Dawn Court provides treatment and support services for women so they can break free from the cycle of re-arrest and incarceration, specifically targeting women with three or more prior prostitution or prostitution-related convictions. Project Dawn Court participations go through a four-phase recovery program that includes attendance at intensive treatment services as well as collateral services provided through the Joseph J. Peters Institute, what we call JJPI, which provides mental health and specialized services. Finally, the WOAR, Philadelphia Center Against Sexual Violence is the oldest and largest rape crisis center in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.
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. Survivor services at WOAR include bilingual and bicultural individual therapy for survivors and their loved ones, group therapy for victims and survivors, forensic accompaniment and court accompaniment. Direct services are offered for free to all survivors of sexual harassment, sexual abuse, sexual assault, sex trafficking, human trafficking and commercial sexual exploitation. While WOAR is no longer contracted with DBHIDS through CBH, the services it provides are billable through state medical assistance. In addition to these programs, DBHIDS works tirelessly to educate its staff on the realities of human trafficking to ensure they provide informed care and services to victims. Internal initiatives have included a presentation from the New Day Center on their efforts and workshop on human trafficking prevention as part of our Advocating for Equity Lunch and Learn series facilitated by our DEI team. Furthermore, DBHIDS provides clinical care manager specialists to family court through Community Behavioral Health to make recommendations for behavioral health services for children and families to address their unique behavioral health needs, including individuals who have been victims of human trafficking. CBH also provides specialists on the Working to Restore Adolescents Power, WRAP Court, in conjunction with the District Attorney, Public Defender, FBI, SVU, the Child Advocate, DHS and Salvation Army Anti-human Trafficking case managers. WRAP Court functions as a trauma-informed diversion court to meet the needs of domestic violence -- domestic sex and laboring trafficking victims in Philadelphia. Currently there are seven youth involved in the WRAP Court between the ages of and 11 20. Each of these youth are linked to 12 behavioral health services. 13 In closing, we appreciate the ongoing support of City Council in all of our efforts, especially those to provide trauma-informed care and supports to those most vulnerable, including victims of human trafficking. DBHIDS is committed to working with our City partners, community stakeholders and provider network to safeguard the health and well-being of victims of human trafficking in Philadelphia. We look forward to continuing to work with these stakeholders as well as the City Council to advocate for resources to support these individuals. My colleagues and I welcome the opportunity to meet with Councilmembers at their convenience to engage in further discussions regarding the content I've presented before you today. My colleagues and I are happy to respond to questions.
Thank you for your testimony. Can our next panelist please state your name for the record and proceed with your testimony. DEPUTY COMMISSIONER HEALY: Good afternoon. My name's Deputy Commissioner Fran Healy. I oversee the Offices of Legal Affairs and Professional Responsibility. On behalf of the Commissioner, we appreciate the opportunity to be here. We were asked to come to provide subject matter experts, so we don't have written testimony per se, but we're here to answer any questions you may have. With me I have the commanding officer of the Vice unit, Oronde Watson. I have with me Officer Stanley Paluza -- Kaluza from the FBI, PPD and FBI Anti-trafficking Task Force. I also have subject matter experts from the Special Victims Unit, Captain and commanding officer Margo Alleyne-Parker is here to answer any questions you may have. But I want to say one thing. I do give kudos to my own people when they deserve them. You mentioned Dawn's Court. The issue with Dawn's Court is people have to be arrested for Dawn's Court to actually be applicable. We all understand in the last several years there's been a lot less arrests of prostitution or prosecutions, so it was --
Speak up. DEPUTY COMMISSIONER HEALY: Sorry. It was actually at the outreach of the Vice Unit to actually expand our Police-Assisted Diversion program, which I helped to bring into Philadelphia, so it was actually at their request we expanded the scope of the PAD program to include prostitution offenses. So that was another mechanism that the Police Department, Vice Unit specifically sought ways to find resources for these women as best they possibly could, so that's kudos to them reaching out to me to actually expand that program. And as such, they've been in well over two-and-a-half years, I believe. While we're here, happy to answer any questions from both the Vice Unit as well as from the Special Victims Unit perspectives.
I just have two questions. For DBHIDS, we talked earlier about providers and services on the ground. Do you know how many providers specifically you all have addressing this particular issue? And of those providers, how many have received contracts from the City for five-plus years?
I do not have that information with me, but we can provide that to your office.
If you can, that would be great. If you can send it to the Chair, that will be awesome. Thank you. And then to the Police Department, I've said many times I'm not a big fan of diversion programs. I think that we have tons of them. And as opposed to getting rid of one diversion program because it doesn't work, we tend to create another diversion program to fill in the gaps from the previous one. And so, tell me how the diversion program that you all use has helped bring or connect services to some of these women who are conducting sex work? DEPUTY COMMISSIONER HEALY: The whole purpose of the program is if individuals are arrested for certain low-level offenses, they have basically opportunity if they in lieu of being arrested were cited for those low-level offenses to volunteer to go into services, so we have drop-off points on Kensington Avenue as to where we bring most of the individuals. So it's surely a voluntary program, but it's an opportunity. Is it an end-all be-all? Without any doubt, no. But it's an entity to give some people the services or access to the services, but it's only one hour and equivalent without any doubt.
And when did you all start this diversion program? DEPUTY COMMISSIONER HEALY: I believe 2017 or 2018. It's been quite some time we've had it running now.
Can you tell us how many people actually have gone through the program? How many people have accepted services or how many people have come in and walked out? DEPUTY COMMISSIONER HEALY: Absolutely. We have all that data available. I can get that to you.
I'm just wondering how many actual arrests and convictions have we had for sex trafficking in Philadelphia in the last year, say?
How are you doing? Lieutenant Oronde Watson from the Citywide Vice Unit. So this year we had 206 prostitution arrests -- I'm sorry, 216. Out of those 216 prostitution arrests, we had 212 declamations. Declamation is the actual arrest and facts of the case will go to the District Attorney's Office and based on their criteria, they withdrew all of the charges. So 216 arrests, 212 have been declined. So --
Sex workers, right. Have we had any convictions of any actual sex traffickers?
Well, one is identification. Identification purposes, like when we get someone in our custody that gives us a hint that they are willing to talk to someone saying that they are being a victim of human trafficking, then we take them over to our Special Victims Unit. They have professionals. They can actually have conversations with them and get them to come forward to say exactly what happened. Without a victim, it's really nothing we can do. And it's a small window. As soon as we get them in, we got to get them to Special Victims so they can actually have a conversation with the professionals. So as of right now, there hasn't been any.
So is there a difference in labeling from pimps to traffickers? Because I would say the pimp's a trafficker.
Yeah, they're basically one in the same. A pimp is a trafficker, yes.
But we have no convictions of anybody at the top, just the actual people who are being forced to be trafficked?
Is there a reason for that? Is there a lack in the law or --
No, it's just identifying the victims. Getting the victims willing to come forward and say, listen, this is exactly what's happening to me. I mean, that's --
Okay. So the victims are not providing that information?
I just wanted to comment just based off of Shea Rhodes' remarks earlier, that trying to find the third party individual is probably the most productive thing that we can possibly do. Because the reality is that some of the people who are the buyers, yes, we can get those people. Yet they, themselves, need help and support as well, right. There's some things that they're going through that's causing this type of bad behavior. But we need to prevent this all together, as Shea has mentioned. And I think how do we get to what work are we doing currently in the city of Philadelphia to get to the individuals who are the third party individuals who are profiting big time from human trafficking?
I'm sorry. I didn't hear the whole question. But just to introduce myself --
Yeah, go ahead -- I'll repeat my question and you can introduce yourself. I just wanted to ask, what are we doing to get to the individuals who are the major players and profiting from human trafficking, those are the third party individuals who are actually behind the scenes making the profits from this, this and that?
Okay. So my name is Captain Margo Alleyne- Parker and I'm the commanding officer of the Special Victims Unit. I can say with our team that we have put together we also work with our state and federal partners, so we have open investigations. Last year we had an arrest, but that case is still open. There hasn't been a conviction yet. So we still have investigations with our partners. As far as targeting the traffickers, that can be kind of difficult because like Lieutenant Watson said we have to have a complainant, a victim. And as we heard testimony, they typically don't come forward and say, hi, I'm being trafficked. It takes years and years of being comfortable with a person to finally come forward. But I work with New Day. I've been to the Drop-in Center, so we just make sure we tell them when the victim does want to come forward, we are willing to speak to them and we will begin the investigation.
I want to follow up on that question. In terms of your unit, is there a unit within the District Attorney's Office that works with you regarding going after traffickers? But then also, are there any other City agencies at the table when y'all coordinating together, like the mental health, the behavioral health organizations to help address this issue?
Yes. At the DA's Office, we work with the family violence section. We work closely with (inaudible). We also work with New Day. We have the Anti- trafficking Human Task Force. We work with state agencies like the Attorney General's Office. We work with Homeland Securities. We work with the FBI and we all have close relationships, and also the Behavioral Health Unit and Citywide Vice.
The women that have come forward that you all have referred to your diversion programs, do you all follow them in the process? How successful have they been in going through these diversion programs? And have they kind of -- I don't want to say relapse, right, but have they decided, yeah, I'm here, I had originally thought that I wanted to address this issue and have changed my mind and find them back on the street again, and how often does that happen?
My experience, when a person fits the criteria to be in the PAD program, it's really no 23 criteria of what a successful diversion means. That can be just give them the information that they have in order to see when they do want help, they know exactly where to go. A lot of problems is they don't know where to go to find the help. So part of the PAD program is they go there and they know that these resources are available to you and this is the number you call, this is the address we go to, so they have that information. So when they are ready, it might not be the day that they get arrested by the police. It might be a month later, two months. But they do know, listen, I need help and this is where I can go. Based on my experience when a person gets entered into the PAD program, I don't see them back out on the street. Once they're in the PAD program, we don't see them again. So it is working, it is.
I would just add that those that are diverted from the PAD program to the DBHIDS we can get you the information that they -- what Councilwoman Lozada talked about in terms of the outcomes with the partnership.
Thank you. So based off earlier testimonies from Heather, Kelly, Ellyn Jo Waller, I was thinking about the idea of they're on the ground working with these victims every single day, them and their colleagues. Is there a way in which you all are meeting with them monthly or biweekly just to check in to get information that they need to get in to really catch these third party candidates, because one of the things I'm curious about is how can City Council assist in overcoming these challenges, but also how can you all work together with -- are you working with these organizations or how can you work better with these organizations that kind of get the answers that we need?
Yeah. So generally, we have meetings, especially with Salvation Army. We have meetings with them. We try to do it once a month just to touch base, what is working, how can we improve, how can we make things better because we want to get better day by day. It is working now, but how can we better our best. So we do have meetings every month with our partners.
So what is the conviction rate of these predators that's going after these kids because we are talking about kids? I know with the prostitution some of them are not kids. But ones that we are catching with children under the age of whatever is the law, what are we doing to them? Are they actually being prosecuted?
I don't have that information in front of me. I'm pretty sure we can get that to the Councilman when this is over.
Yeah, I'd love to see the numbers of actual convictions. We're in a church so I'll keep it nice. But I'd love to know what we're doing with them. DEPUTY COMMISSIONER HEALY: Yes, sir. If I could also, this kind transcends multiple jurisdictions and that's why the FBI and AG's Office are involved in our Task Force. Often times when they cross different jurisdictional boundaries, they're the best agency for the prosecution, for the most part maximum penalties. So we'll try to work out and see what the total conviction rate is. I don't want to give a misgiving that there's no action being done on this, where often times the federal and state take priority over the prosecution if something happens in Philadelphia County, Bucks County, Montgomery County and Delaware County. But we will look into that and get back to you as soon as possible.
Thank you. So what it is, is sometimes it will be picked up by the state, so then the FBI. So you guys, then the state and then the FBI? DEPUTY COMMISSIONER HEALY: Yes.
And it would be better to be picked up by the higher so we can get bigger charges? DEPUTY COMMISSIONER HEALY: And that was the very purpose of creating the Task Force so all the players of law enforcement as well as some social services, Salvation Army were a part of that. I actually helped draft that original agreement to make sure that we had the regular meetings with the different agencies. But, yeah, we are trying to do the best we can. But the feds and the state have probably more power and more resources and actually have the ability to actually do some very strong prosecutions through the U.S. Attorney's Office.
You know I thank you for your work. You know, it cannot be easy for you. We talk about their trauma, but I know there's trauma that you guys are facing just from what you see every day. So thank you.
Are there continued training programs in place for law enforcement officers to help them to identify and respond to human trafficking? This is a question that was also brought up by one of our (inaudible)? DEPUTY COMMISSIONER HEALY: The answer to that question is yes. The IACP put together about a year or so ago a program for identifying and it's actually geared towards a patrol officer when they make that vehicle stop, what to look for, what are cues and signs. I have the video. We're looking to modify it slightly for Philadelphia. But, yes, we're looking to do those awareness type of campaigns. We've done a similar one in the past but it wasn't as robust as what the IACP, which is the International Association of Chiefs of Police. And I've just been recently asked to work on another -- they're looking to expand the scope of some policy improvements at the IACP on the issue of human trafficking, and I volunteered to develop those standardized protocols that I can bring back to Philadelphia to bolster what we're already doing.
Also, last question from me: What measures are in place to protect the human trafficking victims during investigations and prosecution because maybe if one of the organizations that works closely with these victims can work closely with you, they may be more comfortable with, you know, understanding that they're going to be protected if they come forth and testify? DEPUTY COMMISSIONER HEALY: Again, part of the agreement that we have with Salvation Army is actually to act as that conduit for law enforcement and they've been a great partner. They actually helped draft the protocol along with us. And I believe Shea Rhodes was involved as well in the development of that protocol. So I appreciate all the help and the commitment and passion that they bring to the table and for everything they do.
Thank you. Are there any other questions from Councilmembers or comments?
I don't have a question. I just want to say thank you to all of you who work on this issue. I know it's extremely sensitive. I know it's extremely difficult, especially when you're working with young people and you see how they're impacted by this activity or by the environment that they find themselves in. I just want to say thank you because I know that often times outreach with their social workers, case managers, police department, mental health providers, often times we don't say thank you enough to them. And we talk about the victims who are suffering, but not the person or we don't address or recognize the people that are providing the necessary support and services to them. And so, you are appreciated. And sometimes we ask typical questions. We tend to beat people up sometimes, but your work is appreciated and it is recognized and it is absolutely necessary in order for us to be able to improve the quality of life for all of us in the City.
Yeah, I just had one additional comment from the criminal justice standpoint, right. If we can possibly get some judges to the table, because I'm always seeing these stories where there's a young lady who takes the life of the trafficker or the young lady who shoots the trafficker, right, it's the young lady that winds up doing the time. And again, I can't say I know the whole dynamics of what happened, but that's usually how they play out in terms of the young lady giving her story about she's been trafficked against her own will, and I guess one day she may have a breakthrough and winds up turning on the actual person. And I'm not saying it's right to turn on them, but at the same time there's some trauma as it relates to why I think that situation may be different than another situation. And so, obviously I'm an advocate of accountability but in this particular case hopefully the judicial system should be able to just kind of give a whole perspective as to why some of this may take place. I just wanted to put that out there. That's all. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Thank you, Councilman. I just really want to thank Councilwoman Lozada for leading the charge on this particular issue as part of her Marshall Plan for the city of Philadelphia. I know that she's excited about making sure that the rest of us at City Council are held accountable on this issue, and also Jim Harrity is like a partner in this effort as well, Councilman Jim Harrity as well. So I just want to thank all of us, including Councilman Kenyatta Johnson of being supportive of this initiative. I want to thank our Council -- I also want to thank our host for today, Ellyn Jo Waller, and so forth. Before we go forward, there being no further panels to testify today I'll ask if there is anyone else here to testify on Resolution No. 12 230662 whose name has not yet been called? If so please, raise your hand. (No response.)
All right. Seeing no hands have been raised, Clerk, will you please call --
Okay. All right. That's it. Thank you for your testimony, everyone. And seeing there are no questions and so forth, we would like to -- there being no 1 further questions from the members of the Committee and no witnesses to testify, this concludes the business before the Committee on Children and Youth today. Thank you all very much for your attendance. God bless. (Hearing concluded at 4:19 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