Florida is a national leader in educating students about human trafficking. The state’s K-12 students receive instruction on how to prevent child sexual abuse, exploitation, and human trafficking. But lawmakers say it’s time to require the same of teachers and other school personnel.
“By mandating yearly training for public school employees, we could potentially save a child from the lifelong trauma of being trafficked," said Laura Evans.
Evans is a third-year law student at Florida State University. She and her classmate, Taz Fields, have been testifying in legislative committees about a measure they say would fill a big gap in preventing human trafficking in Florida.
"Florida already leads the nation in educating our students, so it is time we extend that responsibility to our educators,” Evans said.
The measure would require public school personnel to be trained in how to identify students who may be victims of human trafficking, and in reporting and responding to suspected human trafficking.
Their professor at the FSU College of Law, Paolo Annino, says some of his law students researched and wrote the proposal to educate Florida’s public school students on the threat of human trafficking. In 2019, they brought it to the state Board of Education, which passed it. But then, Annino says, he and his students realized something was missing.
“It really struck us that even though we require the children to be trained, Florida did not have any regulations to require the teachers and the school personnel to be trained," he said. "So, to be honest, we only understood that after the rule was passed.”
He says this bill is vital because it would require basic training on trafficking risk factors, especially for personnel who work with students in higher-risk groups, or for staff who are most likely to notice red flags…such as school counselors, bus drivers, special education teachers, attendance officers, and school nurses.
Those people would learn to notice children with injuries, who can’t stay awake or with other signs they’re being trafficked.
Annino says when children are at risk for trafficking, there are two major red flags. One is that they’re chronic runaways.
“We know a high percentage of chronic runaways either are running away from physical violence or sexual violence," he said. "A high percentage. And once the children run away, they get exploited on the streets. On our streets. The streets of Tallahassee, the streets of Miami, the streets of Quincy, Florida.”
The other red flag is when children have been sexually exploited prior to adolescence but have not received the proper treatment.
Annino says there can be dynamics that are difficult to understand without training. For instance, he says, sometimes children fall in love with their traffickers. There can be a trauma bond between the trafficker and the victim. But research into such dynamics is a new area of law.
“We knew very little about the psychology and the dynamics of trafficking at that stage," he said. "It was like the beginning of domestic violence in our history. I mean, domestic violence has been going on since the beginning of time, also, right? But it took a certain period of time before people finally understood the dynamics of domestic violence.”
Above all, Annino says, the children most at risk for trafficking are vulnerable. There’s no one reason for that.
“A child could have a cognitive deficit," he said. "A child could have an emotional deficit. A child can be homeless. A child can have physical issues. It can be a variety of reasons why a child is vulnerable. And all of these reasons then make the child especially receptive to the exploitation.”
The House and Senate trafficking education bills are identical, and each has passed its first committee unanimously.
