End Online Sex Trafficking

The US Senate is scheduled to take up H.R. 1865, the Allow States and Victims to Fight Online Sex Trafficking Act (FOSTA). The legislation and the companion Senate bill – S. 1693, the Stop Enabling Sex Traffickers Act (SESTA) – sponsored by Senator Rob Portman (OH) make it clear that trafficking websites such as Backpage.com are not protected from accountability by the Communications Decency Act.

The National Federation of Republican Women (NFRW) has been a leader in the fight to stop human trafficking

• The NFRW provided important support to secure passage of the Justice for Victims of Trafficking Act in 2015 and the Abolish Human Trafficking Act in 2017.
• Founded in 1938, the NFRW is one of the largest women’s political organizations in the U.S. with tens of thousands of members in over 1,400 clubs around the country.

Human Trafficking is a crime that disproportionately affects women

• The average victim is a girl between the ages of 12 and 14 years old.
• More than 90 percent of suspected sex trafficking cases and 57 percent of labor trafficking cases tracked by the National Human Trafficking Resource Center in 2015 involved women.
• Human trafficking occurs in every state in the U.S.

The Internet has facilitated explosive growth in human trafficking

• The National Center for Missing and Exploited Children reported an 846% increase in reports of suspected child sex trafficking from 2010 to 2015.
• The organization found the spike to be “directly correlated to the increased use of the internet to sell children for sex.”

The Communications Decency Act is being used to shield sex traffickers

• Congress put criminal penalties in place to guard against sex trafficking in the Trafficking Victims Protection Act.
• Court rulings have made it clear that Congress must amend the Communications Decency Act to hold accountable those who run sites that facilitate sex trafficking.

FOSTA-SESTA will help prosecute sex traffickers and bring justice to victims.

• FOSTA-SESTA eliminates the Communications Decency Act as a defense for websites that knowingly facilitate sex trafficking.
• The legislation empowers state law enforcement to enforce criminal statutes against websites and introduces new civil penalties for violations of federal criminal law relating to online sex trafficking.