The United States Commission on Civil Rights will hold a public briefing on Friday, April 13, 2012 at 9:30 AM ET to hear testimony on the effectiveness of federal enforcement of the Trafficking Victims Protection Act of 2000 (TVPA). The briefing will take place at Commission headquarters, 624 9th St. NW, Washington, DC 20425, 5th floor conference room. Interested persons are invited to attend, and no reservation is necessary.

The trafficking of persons has been called a modern form of slavery in which most victims are female. The TVPA established an interagency task force to combat trafficking with the participation of more than a dozen agencies. The Commission has requested information from the task force and the Departments of Justice, State, and Health and Human Services, as to enforcement efforts. The Commission will also hear testimony on sex trafficking as a form of gender discrimination. The briefing will include three panels of experts.

Panel I will include Maggie Wynne, Director of the Division of Anti-Trafficking in Persons, HHS, and Greg Zoeller, Attorney General of the State of Indiana and a representative of the National Association of Attorneys General.

Panel II will include Bridgette Carr, Professor and Director of the Human Trafficking Clinic, University of Michigan Law School and member of the Michigan Human Trafficking Task Force; Salvador Cicero, Cicero Law Firm and member of the Anti-Trafficking Task Force, Cook County, Illinois; Merrill Matthews, Resident Scholar, Institute for Policy Innovation and Chairman of the Texas SAC; and Karen Hughes, Lieutenant, Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department, manager of the Vice Section of the Vice/Narcotics Bureau.

Panel III includes Mary Ellison, human rights lawyer and Director of Policy, Polaris Project; Amy Rassen, Licensed Clinical Social Worker and Senior Advisor, SAGE Project; Rhacel Parrenas, Professor and Chair, Sociology Department, University of Southern California and author of ‘Illicit Flirtations:  Labor, Migration, and Sex Trafficking in Tokyo’; and Tina Frundt, Executive Director/Founder of Courtney’s House and a survivor of domestic child sex trafficking.

Deaf or hearing-impaired persons who will attend the meeting and require the services of a sign language interpreter should contact Pam Dunston at (202) 376-8105 as soon as possible.

The U.S. Commission on Civil Rights is an independent, bipartisan agency charged with monitoring federal civil rights enforcement.  Members include Chairman Martin R. Castro and Commissioners Roberta Achtenberg, Todd Gaziano, Gail Heriot, Peter Kirsanow, David Kladney, Abigail Thernstrom, and Michael Yaki. Commission meetings and briefings are open to the general public.  The Commission’s website is http://www.usccr.gov.

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