Protect the victims

According to Jessica Tschida, founder of the Coeur d’Alene chapter of the Coalition to Abolish Human Trafficking in the Inland Northwest, human trafficking is the fastest growing criminal industry in the world.

She and others in the group are advocating for Idaho legislators to work with a Washington group called Shared Hope International to write and pass legislation that protects juveniles from the criminal charges they may otherwise receive as a result of human trafficking.

“A lot of times the laws and the mindset of the community go hand in hand. So if the law says child victims of sex trafficking are child prostitutes, that puts the blame on the child … they are doing a criminal activity,” Tschida said. “If the law says they’re not there by choice … they are victims of abuse and we need to treat and protect them. If we can get the laws to say something different, that goes with the truth, then hopefully people’s mindsets will see this as a problem as well.”

Tschida said the coalition’s goals for this year are to gain community awareness of human trafficking and to change Idaho laws to benefit the victims.

She defines human trafficking as a situation in which an individual is coerced into doing something, usually sex or labor, and becomes a victim for someone else’s commercial gain.

The coalition has been meeting with Idaho legislators to go over what is happening and how it can be addressed. Tschida and other coalition members sat down with Rep. Eric Redman, R-Athol, to get support for their proposal.

“I think it’s an important thing we have to be concerned about. This is a worldwide challenge,” Redman said in an interview with The Press. “This is certainly something we don’t want to become a problem in our community and state.”

In 2006 the Idaho Legislature passed House Bill 536 that increased punishment for people whose crimes included human trafficking. It also “provides for restitution and rehabilitation costs for victims, and requires reports regarding human trafficking victim resources in Idaho.”

In 2015, Senate Bill 1103 was introduced, read and printed before the state senate but never got a hearing on the floor. The bill would have allowed “victims of human trafficking to petition [Idaho] courts to vacate convictions and expunge records of prostitution charges and other non-violent offenses that result from their condition of being enslaved.”

The Coalition to Abolish Human Trafficking in the Inland Northwest hopes to have its legislation drafted and heard during the next legislative session.

The coalition does not operate as a nonprofit, but is a loosely organized a group of concerned citizens that want to make a difference.

“We decide what we can do for our community to prevent victims in our community, raise awareness and, eventually, make [human trafficking] go on the downward slope, but it’s becoming a train wreck,” Tschida said. “Child prostitution is on the rise in North Idaho, including male victims, and that’s disturbing and not OK.”

The Pacific Northwest is known to have a network and highway of human trafficking. The biggest stops are in the bigger cities like Seattle, Spokane, Boise, Portland and Salt Lake City. Coeur d’Alene is definitely on the map, Tschida said.

Tschida added that most trafficking communication advertising meeting places and cargo happens online because it’s more hidden and easier to pull off. The website backpage.com is one of the main ways people contact pimps and pimps offer their services to buyers.

The site is a place where people can sell their couches and look for house rentals. However, it also has an “escort” page.

“It’s the only page they charge you for posting on,” Tschida said. “It is very lucrative because people use it very much.”

In 2012, three girls who were trafficked on backpage.com brought a lawsuit against the website, according an ABC news article.

Last March, Washington courts ruled in favor of protections for internet publishers that provide user-generated content. Even though the website was being used to traffic people and profiting from it, the site was not held responsible for the trafficking itself.

Tschida and other community members say they have been working with the Coeur d’Alene Police Department and other law enforcement agencies to collect information about human trafficking.

Coeur d’Alene Police Detective Jared Reneau said the police department is looking at human trafficking more and more because it is happening more in Spokane. They have reached out to hotel owners and managers to help the police identify any situations that don’t seem right.

“We recently started addressing it and have changed how we look at and interview runaways,” Reneau said. “We try to identify victims and help them and we want them to help us, too.”

Tschida said changing Idaho legislation to decriminalize children who are victims of human trafficking is important.

“As it is, criminalizing juvenile sex trafficking victims is unfair to the victims. It implies the victims are responsible for the crimes committed against them,” Tschida said. “We want our kids rescued and restored, not re-traumatized and criminalized for something they’re not responsible for.”