Criminal justice. Finding Relief

• Author: Amanda Robert
• Pages: 16-17

edited by

BLAIR CHAVIS

blair.chavis@americanbar.org

CRIMINAL JUSTICE

Finding

Relief

States help trafficking survivors

overcome criminal records

BY AMANDA ROBERT

Rebekah Charleston didn’t

say a word when she was

arrested in 2006 and asked

about the happenings in

the Nevada home she shared with her

traf cker and two other women.

She didn’t tell federal authorities she

was forced into prostitution at age 17

and raped countless times. She didn’t

tell them she had been both robbed and

strangled at gunpoint and battered by

violent men in hotel rooms across the

country. Her traf cker, whom she  rst

met in Texas, made sure of it.

“He made us get on the  oor on

our hands and knees in front of him,”

Charleston says. “He would punch us

in the face and say, ‘Bitch, what’s your

name?’ We would have to say ‘lawyer.’

He would punch us in the face until we

fell over and got back up. ‘Bitch, what’s

your address?’ We would say ‘lawyer,’

and he would punch us in the face until

we fell back over.

“It was literally beaten into us that

the only word we were allowed to say

was ‘lawyer.’”

Federal authorities arrested Charles-

ton in connection with a prostitu-

tion investigation into her traf cker.

Charleston refused to turn on him and

was charged with conspiracy to commit

tax evasion. She accepted a plea deal

and spent 13 months in prison.

By the time she moved to Texas to

restart her life at age 30, she had at

least 10 arrests

for theft, solicita-

tion and trespass-

ing, a large gap in

employment history and almost $1 mil-

lion of debt—largely due to her traf ck-

er putting homes, cars and credit cards

in her name and not paying the bills.

She went to college, earning both

bachelor’s and master’s degrees in

criminal justice, and now she serves as

the executive director of Valiant Hearts ,

a North Texas nonpro t organization

that seeks to end sexual exploitation.

Despite her success, Charleston

found that life wasn’t without its strug-

gles. Like many traf cking survivors

with criminal records, she felt shame

when forced to explain her history

when applying for a job or when trying

to  nd a place to live.

The Traf cking Victims Protec-

tion Act, the  rst federal anti-human

traf cking law , was enacted in 2000,

around the same time the international

community formally recognized the

issue. States soon followed with their

own laws that largely focused on how

to catch and prosecute traf ckers.

But states failed to recognize that

victims also got caught in the criminal

justice system, often facing arrests and

convictions for theft, drug possession,

prostitution and other crimes that oc-

curred during their traf cking.

In recent years, Hawaii, Nebraska

and Nevada introduced laws to help

traf cking survivors clear their records

and overcome obstacles to employment,

housing and education. Other states,

including Connecticut, Kansas , New

Jersey and New York , are moving for-

ward with more proposed legislation.

“Generally, for women in prostitu-

tion, it began as children for them, and

they stayed in because of all of those

barriers to exiting exploitation and how

hard it is, especially when you get a

criminal record,” Charleston says. “You

have a scarlet letter on your chest.

“People look at you from the outside

and think, obviously, you are choosing

to be there, you can get away anytime

you want. But they have no idea how

we get treated in public when we do

get away.”

Def‌i ning the problem

Karen Countryman-Roswurm describes

human traf cking as the commodi ca-

tion and exploitation of a person for

the purpose of sex or labor. Despite a

National Pulse

Rebekah

Charleston

speaks at a

TedX event.

Photo courtesy of Rebekah Charleston

ABA JOURNAL | FEBRUARY–MARCH 2020

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