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Ohio child sex trade laws earn low score

National report says state’s laws don’t go far enough to help children.

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By Laura A. Bischoff, Columbus Bureau 8:30 PM Wednesday, November 30, 2011

COLUMBUS — Despite a new, tougher law put on the books a year ago, Ohio still scored a low grade in a national report on states’ laws against child sex trafficking.

Shared Hope International gave Ohio a ‘D’ because its laws don’t do enough to distinguish between sex trafficking of adults versus children; and children caught up in the sex trade are at risk of being treated as delinquents rather than crime victims. Shared Hope International is a nonprofit group looking “to eradicate sexual slavery.”

“I’m not surprised,” said Alex Kreidenweis, a graduate student at the University of Dayton and one of the founders of New Abolitionists Movement, a UD group focused on human trafficking.

An underlying problem is that Ohio law treats 16- and 17-year-olds caught up in the sex trade as prostitutes committing crimes rather than as child victims, he said. Federal law presumes there is no such thing as an underage prostitute, said Kreidenweis, who serves on the Ohio attorney general’s human trafficking commission.

State Rep. Teresa Fedor, D-Toledo, proposed legislation in June that would mandate government services for minor trafficking victims and provide that a child working as a prostitute is not guilty of solicitation if he or she was a victim of trafficking at the time.

The report from Shared Hope International will be released today. It says Ohio’s human trafficking law doesn’t distinguish between adult and minor victims and requires the use of force, fraud or coercion on the part of the offenders; the state doesn’t outlaw facilitation of trafficking, and convicted traffickers aren’t required to register as sex offenders, the report said. Ohio also does not mandate training for law enforcement officials on human trafficking or domestic child sex trafficking, the report said.

Lisa Hackley, spokeswoman for Ohio Attorney General Mike DeWine, said, “As long as there is any domestic minor sex trafficking, there is room for us to do more. We welcome this report as a reminder that we must always put the protection of our children first.”

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