In a past DVM For Hope blog post, I wrote about sex trafficking in my home state of Georgia. Recently, Shared Hope International gave Georgia a grade of “B” in their Protected Innocence Challenge, meaning that the state has made great strides in the fight against sex trafficking. The news…

In my last blog post entitled Human Trafficking In Native American Communities, I wrote that human traffickers are experts at exploiting vulnerable populations. That post includes a list of risk factors that make persons vulnerable to these predators. On June 5th, Polaris, a leading organization in the fight against human…

Although I have been researching and writing about human trafficking for some time, it wasn’t until I attended volunteer training with Atlanta based Out Of Darkness that I came face to face with the problem of sex trafficking in Georgia. Georgia is a beautiful state, and I’ve lived here for over…

When Cyntoia Brown was 16 years old, she shot and killed Johnny Mitchell Allen, a man who had hired her as a prostitute in Nashville, TN. She has now served 13 years of a sentence for murder and robbery (1). On the surface, this may seem like an open-and shut-case.…

Last week, a poll on the DVM For Hope Facebook page asked the question, “How many readers know the signs of human trafficking, particularly signs of sex trafficking.” The results revealed that 63% of those responding knew none of the signs of sex trafficking. The poll, of course, had a purpose:…

Every year, Shared Hope International releases their Protected Innocence Challenge report in which each state in the U.S. gets a grade based on the sufficiency of their anti-trafficking laws. The report tracks 41 different legislative factors important in the fight against Domestic Minor Sex Trafficking (DMST). Shared Hope also recognizes…