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TRAFFICKING VICTIMS PROTECTION ACT OF 2000--CONFERENCE REPORT
(Senate - October 11, 2000)

Text of this article available as: TXT PDF [Pages S10164-S10188] TRAFFICKING VICTIMS PROTECTION ACT OF 2000--CONFERENCE REPORT The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senate will now proceed to the conference report accompanying H.R. 3244. The clerk will report the conference report. The legislative clerk read as follows: The Committee of Conference on the disagreeing votes of the two Houses on the amendment of the Senate on the bill, H.R. 3244, an act to combat trafficking of persons, especially into the sex trade, slavery, and slavery-like conditions, in the United States and countries around the world through prevention, through prosecution and enforcement against traffickers, and through protection and assistance to victims of trafficking, having met, have agreed that the House recede from its disagreement to the amendment of the Senate, and agree to the same with an amendment, and the Senate agree to the same, signed by a majority of the conferees on the part of both Houses. The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senate will proceed to the consideration of the conference report. (The report was printed in the House proceedings of the Record of October 5, 2000.) The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Kansas is recognized. Mr. BROWNBACK. Mr. President, I believe under the uniform unanimous consent agreement that we have, time has been allocated to several different Members of the Senate to speak on this conference report; is that correct? The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator is correct. Mr. BROWNBACK. Mr. President, let me start this debate and discussion with the story of Irina. Irina's story appeared in the New York Times not that long ago, and it is similar to the story of a number of women with whom I have met and who have been caught in this situation of sex trafficking--young ladies I met with in Nepal, and several testified in committee. I think Irina's story tells in graphic detail why this is a problem and why the Senate needs to act. Irina always assumed that her beauty would somehow rescue her from the poverty and hopelessness of village life. A few months ago, after answering a vague ad in a small Ukrainian newspaper, she slipped off a tour boat when it put in at Haifa, hoping to make a bundle dancing naked on the tops of tables. She was 21, self-assured and glad to be out of Ukraine. Israel offered a new world, and for a week or two everything seemed possible. Then, one morning, she was driven to a brothel, where her boss burned her passport before her eyes. ``I own you,'' she recalled his saying. ``You are my property and you will work until you earn your way out. Don't try to leave. You have no papers and you don't speak Hebrew. You will be arrested and deported. Then we will get you and bring you back.'' That was her master. The article goes on. It happens every single day. Not just in Israel, which has deported nearly 1,500 Russian and Ukrainian women like Irina in the past three years. But throughout the world, where selling naive and desperate young women into sexual bondage has become one of the fastest-growing criminal enterprises in the robust global economy. . . . Many end up like Irina. Stunned and outraged by the sudden order to prostitute herself, she simply refused. She was beaten and raped before she succumbed. Finally she got a break. The brothel was raided and she was brought here [to another place], the only women's prison in Israel. Now, like hundreds of Ukrainian and Russian women with no documents or obvious forgeries, she is waiting to be sent home. This is a quote from Irina: ``I don't think the man who ruined my life will even be fined,'' she said softly, slow tears filling her enormous green eyes. ``You can call me a fool for coming here. That's my crime. I am stupid. A stupid girl from a little village. But can people really buy and sell women and get away with it? Sometimes I sit here and ask myself if that really happened to me, if it can really happen at all.'' Then, waving her arm toward a muddy prison yard, where Russian is spoken more commonly than Hebrew, she whispered one last thought: ``I am not the only one, you know. They have ruined us all.'' I ask unanimous consent to have printed in the Record the full text of this article. There being no objection, the material was ordered to be printed in the Record, as follows: Traffickers' New Cargo: Naive Slavic Women (By Michael Specter) Ramle, Israel.--Irina always assumed that her beauty would somehow rescue her from the poverty and hopelessness of village life. A few months ago, after answering a vague ad in a small Ukrainian newspaper, she slipped off a tour boat when it put in at Haifa, hoping to make a bundle dancing naked on the tops of tables. She was 21, self-assured and glad to be out of Ukraine. Israel offered a new world, and for a week or two everything seemed possible. Then, one morning, she was driven to a brothel, where her boss burned her passport before her eyes. ``I own you,'' she recalled his saying. ``You are my property and you will work until you earn your way out. Don't try to leave. You have no papers and you don't speak Hebrew. You will be arrested and deported. Then we will get you and bring you back.'' It happens every single day. Not just in Israel, which has deported nearly 1,500 Russian and Ukrainian women like Irina in the past three years. But throughout the world, where selling naive and desperate young women into sexual bondage has become one of the fastest-growing criminal enterprises in the robust global economy. The international bazaar for women is hardly new, of course. Asians have been its basic commodity for decades. But economic hopelessness in the Slavic world has opened what experts call the most lucrative market of all to criminal gangs that have flourished since the fall of Communism: white women with little to sustain them but their dreams. Pimps, law enforcement officials and relief groups all agree that Ukrainian and Russian women are now the most valuable in the trade. Because their immigration is often illegal--and because some percentage of the women choose to work as prostitutes-- statistics are difficult to assess. But the United Nations estimates that four million people throughout the world are trafficked each year--forced through lies and coercion to work against their will in many types of servitude. The International Organization for Migration has said that as many as 500,000 women are annually trafficked into Western Europe alone. Many end up like Irina. Stunned and outraged by the sudden order to prostitute herself, she simply refused. She was beaten and raped before she succumbed. Finally she got a break. The brothel was raided and she was brought here to Neve Tirtsa in Ramle, the only women's prison in Israel. Now, like hundreds of Ukrainian and Russian women with no documents or obvious forgeries, she is waiting to be sent home. ``I don't think the man who ruined my life will even be fined,'' she said softly, slow tears filling her enormous green eyes. ``You can call me a fool for coming here. That's my crime. I am stupid. A stupid girl from a little village. But can people really buy and sell women and get away with it? Sometimes I sit here and ask myself if that really happened to me, if it can really happen at all.'' Then, waving her arm toward the muddy prison yard, where Russian is spoken more commonly than Hebrew, she whispered one last thought: ``I'm not the only one, you know. They have ruined us all.'' traffic patterns: russia and ukraine supply the flesh Centered in Moscow and the Ukrainian capital, Kiev, the networks trafficking women run east to Japan and Thailand, where thousands of young Slavic women now work against their will as prostitutes, and west to the Adriatic Coast and beyond. The routes are controlled by Russian crime gangs based in Moscow. Even when they do not specifically move the women overseas, they provide security, logistical support, liaison with brothel owners in many countries and, usually, false documents. Women often start their hellish journey by choice. Seeking a better life, they are lured by local advertisements for good jobs in foreign countries at wages they could never imagine at home. In Ukraine alone, the number of women who leave is staggering. As many as 400,000 women under 30 have gone in the past decade, according to their country's Interior Ministry. The Thai Embassy in Moscow, which processes visa applications from Russia and Ukraine, says it receives nearly 1,000 visa applications a day, most of these from women. Israel is a fairly typical destination. Prostitution is not illegal here, although brothels are, and with 250,000 foreign male workers--most of whom are single or here without their wives--the demand is great. Police officials estimate that there are 25,000 paid sexual transactions every day. Brothels are ubiquitous. None of the women seem to realize the risks they run until it is too late. Once they cross the border their passports will be confiscated, their freedoms curtailed and what little money they have taken from them at once. ``You want to tell these kids that if something seems too good to be true it usually is,'' said Lyudmilla Biryuk, a Ukrainian psychologist who has counseled women who have escaped or been released from bondage. ``But you can't imagine what fear and real ignorance can do to a person.'' The women are smuggled by car, bus, boat and plane. Handed off in the dead of night, many are told they will pick oranges, work [[Page S10165]] as dancers or as waitresses. Others have decided to try their luck at prostitution, usually for what they assume will be a few lucrative months. They have no idea of the violence that awaits them. The efficient, economically brutal routine--whether here in Israel, or in one of a dozen other countries--rarely varies. Women are held in apartments, bars and makeshift brothels; there they service, by their own count, as many as 15 clients a day. Often they sleep in shifts, four to a bed. The best that most hope for is to be deported after the police finally catch up with their captors. Few ever testify. Those who do risk death. Last year in Istanbul, Turkey, according to Ukrainian police investigators, two women were thrown to their deaths from a balcony while six of their Russian friends watched. In Serbia, also last year, said a young Ukrainian woman who escaped in October, a woman who refused to work as a prostitute was beheaded in public. In Milan a week before Christmas, the police broke up a ring that was holding auctions in which women abducted from the countries of the former Soviet Union were put on blocks, partially naked, and sold at an average price of just under $1,000. ``This is happening wherever you look now,'' said Michael Platzer, the Vienna-based head of operations for the United Nations' Center for International Crime Prevention. ``The mafia is not stupid. There is less law enforcement since the Soviet Union fell apart and more freedom of movement. The earnings are incredible. The overhead is low--you don't have to buy cars and guns. Drugs you sell once and they are gone. Women can earn money for a long time.'' ``Also,'' he added, ``the laws help the gangsters. Prostitution is semilegal in many places and that makes enforcement tricky. In most cases punishment is very light.'' In some countries, Israel among them, there is not even a specific law against the sale of human beings. Mr. Platzer said that although certainly ``tens of thousands'' of women were sold into prostitution each year, he was uncomfortable with statistics since nobody involved has any reason to tell the truth. ``But if you want to use numbers,'' he said, ``think about this. Two hundred million people are victims of contemporary forms of slavery. Most aren't prostitutes, of course, but children in sweatshops, domestic workers, migrants. During four centuries, 12 million people were believed to be involved in the slave trade between Africa and the New World. The 200 million--and many of course are women who are trafficked for sex--is a current figure. It's happening now. Today.'' distress calls: far-flung victims provide few clues The distress call came from Donetsk, the bleak center of coal production in southern Ukraine. A woman was screaming on the telephone line. Her sister and a friend were prisoners in a bar somewhere near Rome. They spoke no Italian and had no way out, but had managed, briefly, to get hold of a man's cell phone. ``Do you have any idea where they are, exactly?'' asked Olga Shved, who runs La Strada in Kiev, Ukraine's new center dedicated to fighting the trafficking of women in Eastern Europe and the countries of the former Soviet Union. The woman's answer was no. Ms. Shved began searching for files and telephone numbers of the local consul, the police, anybody who could help. ``Do they know how far from Rome they are?'' she asked, her voice tightening with each word. ``What about the name of the street or bar? Anything will help,'' she said, jotting notes furiously as she spoke. ``We can get the police on this, but we need something. If they call back, tell them to give us a clue. The street number. The number of a bus that runs past. One thing is all we need.'' Ms. Shved hung up and called officials at Ukraine's Interior Ministry and the Foreign Ministry. Her conversations were short, direct and obviously a routine part of her job. That is because Ukraine--and to a lesser degree its Slavic neighbors Russia and Belarus--has replaced Thailand and the Philippines as the epicenter of the global business in trafficking women. The Ukrainian problem has been worsened by a ravaged economy, an atrophied system of law enforcement, and criminal gangs that grow more brazen each year. Young European women are in demand, and Ukraine, a country of 51 million people, has a seemingly endless supply. It is not that hard to see why. Neither Russia nor Ukraine reports accurate unemployment statistics. But even partial numbers present a clear story of chaos and economic dislocation. Federal employment statistics in Ukraine indicate that more than two-thirds of the unemployed are women. The Government also keeps another statistic: employed but not working. Those are people who technically have jobs, and can use company amenities like day-care centers and hospitals. But they do not work or get paid. Three-quarters are women. And of those who have lost their jobs since the Soviet Union dissolved in 1991, more than 80 percent are women. The average salary in Ukraine today is slightly less than $30 a month, but it is half that in the small towns that criminal gangs favor for recruiting women to work abroad. On average, there are 30 applicants for every job in most Ukrainian cities. There is no real hope; but there is freedom. In that climate, looking for work in foreign countries has increasingly become a matter of survival. ``It's no secret that the highest prices now go for the white women,'' said Marco Buffo, executive director of On the Road, an anti-trafficking organization in northern Italy. ``They are the novelty item now. It used to be Nigerians and Asians at the top of the market. Now it's the Ukrainians.'' Economics is not the only factor causing women to flee their homelands. There is also social reality. For the first time, young women in Ukraine and Russia have the right, the ability and the willpower to walk away from their parents and their hometowns. Village life is disintegrating throughout much of the former Soviet world, and youngsters are grabbing any chance they can find to save themselves. ``After the wall fell down, the Ukrainian people tried to live in the new circumstances,'' said Ms. Shved. ``It was very hard, and it gets no easier. Girls now have few and opportunities yet great freedom. They see `Pretty Woman,' or a thousand movies and ads with the same point, that somebody who is rich can save them. The glory and ease of wealth is almost the basic point of the Western advertising that we see. Here the towns are dying. What jobs there are go to men. So they leave.'' First, however, they answer ads from employment agencies promising to find them work in a foreign country. Here again, Russian crime gangs play a central role. They often recruit people through seemingly innocuous ``mail order bride'' meetings. Even when they do not, few such organizations can operate without paying off one gang or another. Sometimes want ads are almost honest, suggesting that the women earn up to $1,000 a month as ``escorts'' abroad. Often they are vague or blatantly untrue. recruiting methods: ads make offers too good to be true One typical ad used by traffickers in Kiev last year read: ``Girls: Must be single and very pretty. Young and tall. We invite you for work as models, secretaries, dancers, choreographers, gymnasts. Housing is supplied. Foreign posts available. Must apply in person.'' One young woman who did, and made it back alive, described a harrowing journey. ``I met these guys and they asked if I would work at a strip bar,'' she said. ``Why not, I thought. They said we would have to leave at once. We went by car to the Slovak Republic where they grabbed my passport. I think they got me new papers there, but threatened me if I spoke out. We made it to Vienna, then to Turkey. I was kept in a bar and I was told I owed $5,000 for my travel. I worked for three days, and on the fourth I was arrested.'' Lately, the ads have started to disappear from the main cities--where the realities of such offers are known now. These days the appeals are made in the provinces, where their success is undiminished. Most of the thousands of Ukrainian women who go abroad each year are illegal immigrants who do not work in the sex business. Often they apply for a legal visa--to dance, or work in a bar--and then stay after it expires. Many go to Turkey and Germany, where Russian crime groups are particularly powerful. Israeli leaders say that Russian women--they tend to refer to all women from the former Soviet Union as Russian--disappear off tour boats every day. Officials in Italy estimate that at least 30,000 Ukrainian women are employed illegally there now. Most are domestic workers, but a growing number are prostitutes, some of them having been promised work as domestics only to find out their jobs were a lie. Part of the problem became clear in a two-year study recently concluded by the Washington-based nonprofit group Global Survival Network: police officials in many countries just don't care. The network, after undercover interviews with gangsters, pimps and corrupt officials, found that local police forces-- often those best able to prevent trafficking--are least interested in helping. Gillian Caldwell of Global Survival Network has been deeply involved in the study. ``In Tokyo,'' she said, ``a sympathetic senator arranged a meeting for us with senior police officials to discuss the growing prevalence of trafficking from Russia into Japan. The police insisted it wasn't a problem, and they didn't even want the concrete information we could have provided. That didn't surprise local relief agencies, who cited instances in which police had actually sold trafficked women back to the criminal networks which had enslaved them.'' official reactions: best-placed to help, but least inclined Complacency among police agencies is not uncommon. ``Women's groups want to blow this all out of proportion,'' said Gennadi V. Lepenko, chief of Kiev's branch of Interpol, the international police agency. ``Perhaps this was a problem a few years ago. But it's under control now.'' That is not the view at Ukraine's Parliament--which is trying to pass new laws to protect young women--or at the Interior Ministry. ``We have a very serious problem here and we are simply not equipped to solve it by ourselves,'' said Mikhail Lebed, chief of criminal investigations for the Ukrainian Interior Ministry. ``It is a human tragedy, but [[Page S10166]] also, frankly, a national crisis. Gangsters make more from these women in a week than we have in our law enforcement budget for the whole year. To be honest, unless we get some help we are not going to stop it.'' But solutions will not be simple. Criminal gangs risk little by ferrying women out of the country; indeed, many of the women go voluntarily. Laws are vague, cooperation between countries rare and punishment of traffickers almost nonexistent. Without work or much hope of a future at home, an eager teenager will find it hard to believe that the promise of a job in Italy, Turkey or Israel is almost certain to be worthless. ``I answered an ad to be a waitress,'' said Tamara, 19, a Ukrainian prostitute in a massage parlor near Tel Aviv's old Central Bus Station, a Russian-language ghetto for the cheapest brothels. ``I'm not sure I would go back now if I could. What would I do there, stand on a bread line or work in a factory for no wages?'' Tamara, like all other such women interviewed for this article, asked that her full name not be published. She has classic Slavic features, with long blond hair and deep green eyes. She turned several potential customers away so she could speak at length with a reporter. She was willing to talk as along as her boss was out. She said she was not watched closely while she remained within the garish confines of the ``health club.'' ``I didn't plan to do this,'' she said, looking sourly at the rich red walls and leopard prints around her. ``They took my passport, so I don't have much choice. But they do give me money. And believe me, it's better than anything I could ever get at home.'' * * * * * Mr. BROWNBACK. Mr. President, Irina's story is told all too often and is reenacted all too often around the world today. Our Government estimates that between 600,000 and 2 million women are trafficked each year beyond international borders. They are trafficked for the purpose of sexual prostitution by organized crime units and groups that are aggressively out making money off the trafficking of human flesh. It is wrong. This bill seeks to deal with that wrong and that tragedy that has occurred and is occurring around the world today. This is significant human rights legislation that this body is going to pass. I hope, predict, and pray that it will pass today. It is significant human rights legislation for those poor young victims who are trafficked and who are caught sometimes with the view that, ``I am just stupid, I got caught in this,'' but who live this horrible, hellish life they have been put into and trafficked into and can't find their way out. The conference report is entitled ``The Victims of Trafficking and Violence Protection Act of 2000.'' As I mentioned previously, it passed the House of Representatives on Friday, October 6, by a vote of 371-1. The Senate will vote on this conference report today, with the lead underlying bill being the Brownback-Wellstone anti-trafficking legislation. Senator Wellstone and I have been working for the last year on this legislation, which is a companion to the Smith-Gejdenson bill in the House known as the Trafficking Victims Protection Act of 2000. I want to thank and recognize my staff, Sharon Payt and Karen Knutson, two people who have worked tirelessly and endlessly to deal with this particular issue. Our anti-trafficking bill is the first complete legislation to address the growing practice of international ``trafficking'' worldwide. This is one of the largest manifestations of modern-day slavery internationally. Notably, this legislation is the most significant human rights bill of the 106th Congress, if passed today, as hoped for. This is also the largest anti-slavery bill that the United States has adopted since 1865 and the demise of slavery at the end of the Civil War. Therefore, I greatly anticipate this vote today in the Senate on this legislation. Senator Wellstone's and my trafficking bill, which passed in the Senate on July 27 of this year, was conferenced to reconcile the differences with the House bill, and the conference report was filed on October 5, Thursday, of last week. The final conference package contains four additional pieces of legislation which are substantially appropriate to our bill. Most significant among those bill amendments is the Violence Against Women Act, known as VAWA, which provides relief and assistance to those who suffer domestic violence in America. Thus, the additional four bills included in this conference report include the Violence Against Women Act. This is a reauthorization of the initial bill which was passed in 1994 as part of the Omnibus Crime Control Act; this legislation renews several grant programs to assist law enforcement officers, social service providers, and others dealing with sexual crime and domestic violence. Also in this package is Aimee's law, which provides for interstate compensation for the costs of incarceration of early-release sex offenders who commit another sex crime in a second State. It is based on the circumstances of what happened in a Pennsylvania case where a murderer was released early out of a Nevada prison, went to Pennsylvania, and kidnapped and brutally raped and murdered a young girl there who was in the very flower of life and coming forth. This law is built upon that terrible crime that took place in Pennsylvania. Also in this package is the 21st Amendment Enforcement Act, which allows for State attorneys general to enforce their State alcohol control laws in Federal court, including laws prohibiting sales to minors, which strengthens the grant of authority to States under the 21st amendment to the Constitution; and the Justice for Victims of Terrorism Act, which authorizes the payment of foreign seized assets to American victims of international terrorism. The last step to adopting this legislative package in Congress rests with the Senate today. Before I continue describing this urgently needed legislation, I would like to take a few moments to thank some key people who have brought us to this point today. Some of them are in the Galleries as I speak. They are people of heart, courage, and intelligence whose advocacy made a way for this bill--whose dedication pried open the doors and let the light shine into this darkness. Among them is Senator Wellstone who started this work long before I came on board. He and his wife, most notably, 3 years ago started advocating on this particular issue. I know he stands firmly and strongly today as one of the principal advocates to set this aside, and he brought this forward and seeks to go forward from here to help those who are victims of these crimes. I also thank Congressmen Chris Smith and Sam Gejdenson. I would also like to thank Gary Haugen of the International Justice Mission and Dr. Laura Lederter of the Protect Project at Johns Hopkins University. Dr. Laura Lederter of the Protect Project at Johns Hopkins University is the foremost authority in the country on tracking from where and to where these victims are trafficked. I have up here one of the maps she introduced of women who have been trafficked out of Russia and Ukraine with the fall of the Soviet Union. With the increased travel out of there to freedom, we have seen a huge amount of trafficking also taking place. These are the routes out of Russia and Ukraine and where they go--to Canada, to the United States, to Mexico, to Europe, to Africa and Asia, to Australia and New Zealand. This is the work of her project. I also want to thank Michael Horowitz of the Hudson Institute, and Gloria Steinem, whom I am not noted to thank, is part of this coalition; Chuck Colson, Jessica Neuworth, William Bennett, the National Association of Evangelicals, the Southern Baptist Convention, among others I'm sure I'm forgetting. I would also like to thank the staff for both the Senate and House, including Joseph Rees, David Abramowitz, Charlotte Oldham-Moore, Jill Hickson, Mark Lagon, and my staff Karen Knutson and Sharon Payt. Thank you all. We are here today at final passage because of all your efforts. This legislation is our best opportunity to challenge the largest manifestation of slavery worldwide, known as ``trafficking.'' This practice of trafficking involves the coercive transportation of persons into slavery-like conditions, primarily involving forced prostitution, among other forms of slavery-like conditions. Trafficking is the new slavery of the world. These victims are routinely forced against their will into the sex trade, transported across international borders, and left defenseless in a foreign country. This bill also addresses the insidious practice known as ``debt bondage,'' wherein a person can be enslaved to the money lender for an entire lifetime because of a $50 debt [[Page S10167]] taken by the family for an emergency. This is a common practice in countries throughout the South Asian region. People of conscience have fought against the different manifestations of slavery for centuries. This anti-slavery legislation is in the tradition of William Wilberforce and Amy Carmichael of England, who were ardent abolitionists against different forms of slavery. Amy Carmichael was a British missionary to India at the turn of last century, in the early 1900's. Upon arrival, she was mortified to discover the routine practice of forced temple prostitution. This was and continues to be a practice wherein young girls, from age six onward, are dedicated to the local temple, and are then forced into prostitution against their will to generate income. Upon this morbid discovery, Amy Carmichael began to physically steal the young girls away from this incredibly degrading form of slavery, hiding the girls to escape the inevitable backlash of violence. Eventually, the government outlawed this practice of forced temple prostitution, as a result of her efforts. However, it bears noting that this terrible practice continues today, in a lesser degree, in rural villages throughout South Asia, including India. This bill challenges the myriad forms of slavery including sex trafficking, temple prostitution, and debt bondage, among other forms. This new phenomenon of sex trafficking is growing exponentially. Some report that it is, at least, $7 billion per year illicit trade, exceeded only by the international drug and arms trade. Its victims are enslaved into a devastating brutality against their will, with no hope for release or justice, while its perpetrators build criminal empires on this suffering with impunity. Our legislation will begin to challenge these injustices. This is the new slavery of the world, Dr. Kevin Bales of the University of Surrey in England recently testified for us before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. He astutely observed that the new slavery has a peculiar quality which does not look like the old forms associated with lifetime bondage as a chattel slave, but it is slavery nonetheless. Sex trafficking is among the most common forms of the new slavery and typically entails shorter periods of bondage, usually asking for 5 to 6 years, or whenever something like AIDS or tuberculosis is contracted, after which the victim is thrown out on the street, broken, without community or resources, left to die. I have met with people caught in that condition. Women and children are routinely forced against their will. Sex traffickers favor girls aging in the range of 10 to 13. I have a number of other things I could say, but my time is limited. I know a number of people want to speak on this bill. I ask to reserve the remainder of my time. I will turn the floor over to Senator Wellstone. I ask unanimous consent on any quorum calls that might be called during the discussion of this conference report, that time be allotted and assessed against all allocated time to speak under the bill, including myself and Senator Wellstone, along with Senator Biden, Senator Hatch, and Senator Leahy, who have all been allocated time. I ask the quorum calls be equally divided between those who have time under the bill. The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered. Mr. BROWNBACK. I finally note to others who seek to speak on this bill, I invite Members to come to the floor to make comments. At the conclusion of our presentation, a vote will occur on this conference report. I yield the floor. The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Minnesota. Mr. WELLSTONE. Mr. President, I thank the Chair. I thank my colleague, Senator Brownback, for his very gracious remarks. It has been an honor to work with him on this legislation. I think a very strong friendship has come out of this effort. There are some times when we can work and reach out and have the most interesting and I hope important coalition. Working with Senator Brownback, Sharon Payt, and Karen Knutson has been the best legislative work. At the end of the day, I believe today we will pass this legislation. Members can feel they have done something really good. They can make a positive difference. I thank Senator Brownback for his great leadership and his great work for each step along the way. In all the negotiations, all the work that has been done, the Senator has been there. I thank the Senator. I want to talk about Charlotte Oldham-Moore and Jill Hickson, who have worked with me and our staff, who have done a great job. There are other people who will be on the floor who put this together--especially the Violence Against Women Act--Senator Leahy, Senator Biden, Senator Hatch, and others, and Sam Gejdenson and Chris Smith have been phenomenal. I thank them for their yeoman work on the House side. I also thank Frank Loy and Harold Koh at the State Department for their work. The trafficking of human beings for forced prostitution and sweatshop labor is a rapidly growing human rights abuse. It is one of the greatest aspects of the globalization of the world economy. The Victims of Trafficking and Violence Protection Act of 2000 is the first piece of legislation to address the widespread practice of the trafficking of men, women, and children into sweatshop labor and sexual bondage. My wife Sheila urged me to do something about this problem several years ago. Consequently, she and I spent time with women trafficked from the Ukraine to work in brothels in Western Europe and the United States. They told us after the breakup of the Soviet Union and the ascendancy of the mob, trafficking in women and girls became a booming industry that destroyed the lives of the youngest and most vulnerable in their home countries. We began work on the bill then, and 3 years later, after extraordinary bipartisan effort, tremendous leadership from Senators Brownback and Leahy, and Sam Gejdenson and Chris Smith, and others, it passed the House with a vote of 371-1. Now it is poised to pass the Senate. Our Government estimates that 2 million people are trafficked each year. Of those, 700,000 women and children, primarily young girls, are trafficked from poor countries to rich countries and sold into slavery, raped, locked up, physically and psychologically abused, with food and health care withheld. Of those, as many as 50,000 immigrants are brought into the United States each year, and they wind up trapped in brothels, sweatshops, and other types of forced labor, abused and too fearful to seek help. Traffickers exploit the unequal status of women and girls, including harmful stereotypes of women as property and sexual objects to be bought and sold. Traffickers have also taken advantage of the demand in our country and others for cheap, unprotected labor. For the traffickers, the sale of human beings is a highly profitable, low-risk enterprise as these women are viewed as expendable and reusable commodities. Overall, profit in the trade can be staggering. It is estimated that the size of this business is $7 billion annually, only surpassed by that of the illegal arms trade. Trafficking has become a major source of new income for criminal rings. It is coldly observed that drugs are sold once while a woman or a child can be sold 10 or 20 times a day. In the United States, Thai traffickers who incarcerated Thai women and men in sweatshops in El Monte, CA, are estimated to have made $8 million in 6 years. Further, Thai traffickers who enslaved Thai women in a New York brothel made about $1.5 million over 1 year and 3 months. Last year, Albanian women were kidnapped from Kosovo refugee camps and trafficked to work in brothels in Turkey and Europe. Closer to home, organized crime has trafficked Russian and Ukranian women into sexually exploitive work in dozens of cities in the United States of America. Just next door, law enforcement authorities suspected mafia involvement in the gruesome murder of a Russian woman trafficked to Maryland. All of these cases reflect a new condition: Women whose lives have been disrupted by civil wars or fundamental changes in political geography, such as the disintegration of the Soviet Union or the violence in the Balkans, have fallen prey to traffickers. Seeking financial security, many innocent persons are lured by traffickers' [[Page S10168]] false promises of a better life and lucrative jobs abroad. Seeking this better life, they are lured by local advertisements for good jobs in foreign countries at wages they could never imagine at home. However, when they arrive, these victims are often stripped of their passports, held against their will, some in slave-like conditions, in the year 2000. Rape, intimidation, and violence are commonly employed by traffickers to control their victims and to prevent them from seeking help. Through physical isolation and psychological trauma, traffickers and brothel owners imprison women in a world of economic and sexual exploitation that imposes a constant threat of arrest and deportation, as well as violent reprisals by the traffickers themselves to whom the women must pay off ever-growing debts. That is the way this works. Many brothel owners actually prefer foreign women, women who are far from help and from home, who do not speak the language, precisely because of the ease of controlling them. Most of these women never imagined they would enter such a hellish world, having traveled abroad to find better jobs or to see the world. Many in their naivete believe nothing bad can happen to them in the rich and comfortable countries such as Switzerland or Germany or the United States. Others are less naive, but they are desperate for money and opportunity. But they are no less hurt by the trafficker's brutal grip. Trafficking rings are often run by criminals operating through nominally reputable agencies. In some cases overseas, police and immigration officials of other nations participate and benefit from the trafficking. Lack of awareness or complacency among government officials such as border control and consular offices contributes to the problem. Furthermore, traffickers are rarely punished, as official policies often inhibit victims from testifying against their traffickers, making trafficking a highly profitable, low-risk business venture for some. Trafficking abuses are occurring not just in far-off lands but here at home in America as well. The INS has discovered 250 brothels in 26 different cities which involve trafficking victims. This is from a CIA report. This is the whole problem of no punishment--being able to do this with virtual impunity. In a 1996 trafficking case involving Russian and Ukrainian women who answered ads to be au pairs, sales clerks and waitresses, and were forced to provide sexual services and live in a massage parlor in Bethesda, MD, the Russian-American massage parlor owner was fined. He entered a plea bargain and charges were dropped with the restriction that he would not operate a business again in Montgomery County. The women, who had not been paid any salary and were charged $150 for their housing, were deported or left the United States voluntarily. There was no charge at all. Teenage Mexican girls were held in slavery in Florida and the Carolinas, and they were forced to submit to prostitution. Russian and Latvian women were forced to work in nightclubs in the Midwest. According to charges filed against the traffickers, the traffickers picked the women up upon their arrival at the airport, seized their documents and return tickets, locked them in hotels and beat them. This is in our country. The women were told that if they refused to work in sexually exploitive conditions, the Russian Mafia would kill their families. Furthermore, over a 3-year period, hundreds of women from the Czech Republic who answered advertisements in Czech newspapers for modeling were ensnared in an illegal prostitution ring. Trafficking in persons for labor is an enormous problem as well. The INS has also worked on cases involving South Asian children smuggled into the United States to work in slavery-like conditions. In one case, about 100 Indian children, some of them as young as 9 or 10, were brought into New York and shuffled around the country to work in construction and restaurants--ages 9 and 10, in the United States; today, in the United States--2000. Some of the children appear to have been sold by their parents to the traffickers. In Woodbine, MD, a pastor bought Estonian children, ages 14 to 17, promising them they would attend Calvery Chapel Christian Academy, but then forcing them to clean roach-invested apartments and to do construction. The children worked 15 hours a day. The children were threatened and punishments included denial of food and being forced to stand in one spot for prolonged periods. The bitter irony is that quite often victims are punished more harshly than the traffickers because of their illegal immigration status, their serving as prostitutes, or their lack of documents, which the traffickers have confiscated in order to control the victims. A review of the trafficking cases showed that the penalties were light and did not reflect the multitude of human rights abuses perpetrated against these women. In a Los Angeles case, traffickers kidnapped a Chinese woman, raped her, forced her into prostitution, posted guards to control her movements, and burned her with cigarettes. Nevertheless, the lead defendants received 4 years and the other defendants received 2 and 3 years. That is what they received. In a tragic case involving over 70 Thai laborers who had been held against their will, systematically abused, and made to work 20-hour shifts in a sweatshop, the seven defendants received sentences ranging from 4 to 7 years with one defendant receiving 7 months. In another case where Asian women were kept physically confined for years with metal bars on the windows, guards, and an electronic monitoring system, and were forced to submit to sex with as many as 400 customers to repay their smuggling debt, the traffickers received 4 years and 9 years--in the United States of America, in the year 2000. I thank Senator Brownback for his work. It is important. A review of the trafficking cases showed that the penalties were light and they did not reflect the multitude of the human rights abuses perpetrated against these women. The statutory minimum for sale into involuntary servitude is only 10 years, whereas the maximum for dealing in small quantities of certain drugs is life. Let me repeat that. The statutory minimum for sale into involuntary servitude is only 10 years, whereas the maximum for dealing in small quantities of certain drugs is life. Few State and Federal laws are aimed directly at people who deliver or control women for the purpose of involuntary servitude or slavery in sweatshops or brothels. Consequently, prosecutors are forced to assemble cases using a hodgepodge of laws, such as document fraud and interstate commerce, and accept penalties that they believe are too light for the offense. Up until this legislation, there was no way for the prosecutors to go after these traffickers. The Victims of Violence and Trafficking Protection Act of 2000 establishes, for the first time, a bright line between the victim and the perpetrator. It punishes the perpetrator and provides a comprehensive approach to solving the root problems that create millions of trafficking victims each year. This legislation aims to prevent trafficking in persons, provide protection and assistance to those who have been trafficked, and strengthen prosecution and punishment for those who are responsible for the trafficking. It is designed to help Federal law enforcement officials expand antitrafficking efforts here and abroad, to expand domestic antitrafficking and victim assistance efforts, and to assist nongovernment organizations, governments and others worldwide, who are providing critical assistance to victims of trafficking. It addresses the underlying problems which fuel the trafficking industry by promoting public antitrafficking awareness campaigns and initiatives in other countries to enhance economic opportunity, such as microcredit lending programs and skills training, for those who are most susceptible to trafficking, and have an outreach so women and girls as young as 10 and 11 know what they might be getting into. It also increases protections and services for trafficking victims by establishing programs designed to assist in the safe reintegration of victims into their communities and ensure that such programs address both the physical and mental health needs of trafficking victims. [[Page S10169]] Imagine what it would be like to be age 12 or 13, a young girl, to go through this. We have, in Minnesota, the Center for the Treatment of Torture Victims. It is a holy place. I have had an opportunity to meet with staff and meet with many men and women who have been helped by this center. These girls, these women, have gone through the same living hell. This legislation also increases protections and services for trafficking victims by providing community support. Furthermore, the bill seeks to stop the practice--and this is so important. I am sitting next to Senator Kennedy who has done so much with the immigration work. This bill seeks to stop the practice of immediately deporting the victims back to potentially dangerous situations by providing them with some interim immigration relief. Victims of ``severe forms of trafficking,'' defined as people who were held against their will-- ``for labor or services through the use of force, fraud, or coercion for the purpose of subjection to involuntary servitude, peonage, debt bondage or slavery''--would be eligible for a special visa letting them stay in the country at least through the duration of their captors' prosecution, and perhaps permanently.*****-*****- -Name: -Payroll No. - Folios: -Date: -Subformat: Right now, if you are a Ukrainian girl or woman in a massage parlor in Bethesda, and you step forward to get some help, you are deported. The trafficker is hardly prosecuted. The victim is automatically deported. This provides temporary visa protection. I will give an example. In a 1996 trafficking case involving Russian and Ukrainian women who had answered ads to be au pairs, sales clerks, and waitresses but were forced to provide sexual services and live in a massage parlor in Bethesda, MD, 2 miles from here, the Russian American massage parlor owner was fined. He entered a plea bargain and charges were dropped with the restriction that he would not operate his business again in Montgomery County. The women, who had not been paid any salary, were forced into prostitution, and were charged for their housing, were deported. This legislation toughens current Federal trafficking penalties, criminalizing all forms of trafficking in persons and establishing punishment commensurate with the heinous nature of this crime. The bill establishes specific laws against trafficking. Violators can be sentenced to prison for 20 years to life, depending on the severity of the crime. Yes, if you are trafficking a young girl and forcing her into prostitution, you can face a life sentence. They can also be forced to make full restitution to their victims, paying them the salary that would have been due for their months or years of involuntary service. This bill requires expanded reporting on trafficking, including a separate list of countries which are not meeting minimum standards for the elimination of trafficking. It requires the President to suspend ``nonhumanitarian and nontrade'' assistance to only the worst violators on the list of countries which do not meet these minimum standards and who actively condone this human rights abuse. This is a major piece of human rights legislation. This is a major human rights bill. These are the rare governments which are openly complicit in trafficking people across their borders. It allows the Congress to monitor closely the progress of countries in their fight against trafficking, and it gives the administration flexibility to couple its diplomatic efforts to combat trafficking with targeted enforcement action. Finally, the bill provides three generous waivers. By passing the Victims of Violence and Trafficking Act today, this Chamber will take a historic step toward the elimination of trafficking in persons. Thanks to the partnership of Jewish and Evangelical groups, women and human rights organizations, and others, we will take a historic and effective step against organized crime rings and corrupt public officials who each year traffic more than 2 million people into desperate, broken lives of bondage and servitude. Something important is in the air when such a broad coalition of people, including Bill Bennett, Gloria Steinem, Rabbi David Sapperstein, Ann Jordan, and Chuck Colson work together for the passage of this legislation. I am thankful for their support, I am thankful for the support of the administration, and I am thankful for your support today in seeking to end this horrible, widespread, and growing human rights abuse. By way of conclusion, I say to my colleagues, starting with Senator Brownback, I believe with passage of this legislation--I believe it will pass today and the President will sign it--we are lighting a candle. We are lighting a candle for these women and girls and sometime men forced into forced labor. I also think because of the work of so many in the House and the Senate, this can be a piece of legislation that other governments in other parts of the world can pass as well. This is the beginning of an international effort to go after this trafficking, to go after this major, god-awful human rights abuse, this horrible exploitation of women, sometimes men, and of girls. I am very proud of this legislation. I thank my colleague from Kansas. I thank other colleagues as well. Mr. President, how much time do I have remaining? The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mr. Hagel). The Senator has 36 minutes remaining. Mr. WELLSTONE. Mr. President, I reserve the remainder of my time. The other part of this legislation that is so significant, and I know colleagues are here to speak about it, is the reauthorization of the Violence Against Women Act. I want to reserve time to speak about that very important piece of legislation. For me, to see both of these bills pass and to see it happen today is one of the best days I can have in the Senate. I yield the floor. The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Vermont. Mr. LEAHY. Mr. President, if the Senator from Massachusetts will withhold for a moment, is my understanding correct that the Senator from Vermont has 3 hours? The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator is correct. Mr. LEAHY. Mr. President, for the information of colleagues, I do not intend to use all that time. At some point, I am going to yield back a considerable amount of time. I know there are Senators on both sides of the aisle who have commitments tonight, some connected with the debates of the two parties' Presidential nominees. It is my hope we will be voting fairly early this afternoon--a vote on the Thompson point of order and final passage. I yield such time as the Senator from Massachusetts needs, and I ask unanimous consent that I then be able to yield to the Senator from California. The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered. The Senator from Massachusetts. Mr. KENNEDY. Mr. President, I greatly appreciate the absolutely splendid presentation by my friend and colleague, Senator Wellstone. I agree with him on so many issues. His statement today was one of his very best. We can certainly understand the extraordinary work he has done, along with Senator Brownback and others, to make sure this legislation is considered. All of us will forever be grateful to him for his leadership in this extremely important area. I certainly am. I thank him for an absolutely splendid presentation. Mr. President, I'm pleased that the Senate is finally about to pass the re-authorization of the Violence Against Women Act. The current authorization for the Act expired on September 30, and it has taken far too long to bring this important extension to the Senate floor. A woman is beaten every 15 seconds as a result of domestic violence. Every year, one-third of the women who are murdered are killed by their husbands or partners, and approximately one million women are stalked. Conservative estimates indicate that 60 percent of disabled women, up to 25 percent of pregnant women, and 1 out of 25 elderly people have suffered domestic violence. This isn't a problem that only affects adults. Each year, 3.3 million children are exposed to domestic violence. In homes where abuse of women occurs, children are 1,500 times more likely to be abused as well. Whether they witness the violence or are actually assaulted by the abuser, many children learn shocking behavior from adults. 12 percent of high school dating couples [[Page S10170]] have suffered abuse in their relationships, and often these teenagers are themselves victims of abuse at home. Eighteen year-old Tanyaliz Torres and her mother were stabbed to death by her father in Springfield, Massachusetts. Fifty-eight-year-old Mabel Greineder of Wellesley, Massachusetts was stabbed and bludgeoned to death by her husband. From October 1999 through September 2000, 24 Massachusetts women and children were killed as a result of domestic violence. It is a national epidemic that touches every community in the country. The Violence Against Women Act was enacted in 1994 to address this problem and provide greater safety and peace of mind for millions of women and their families. The act creates a partnership between the public sector and the private sector at every level--Federal, State, and local. Its goal is to establish a safety net of new programs and policies, including community-based services for victims, a National Domestic Violence Hotline, needed technological assistance, and larger numbers of well-trained law enforcement officers and prosecutors. The national Hotline gives women across the country immediate access to the help they need. Since its initiation in 1996, it has received over 500,000 calls. When a Spanish-speaking woman in Arizona needed shelter for herself and her three children, the Hotline called a shelter in Phoenix, found a Spanish-speaking counselor, and gave the caller the counselor's name and directions to the shelter. In the countless cases, the Hotline is an invaluable resource, and we must do all we can to support it. In Massachusetts, $20 million under the Violence Against Women Act has been awarded to advocacy organizations, law enforcement personnel, and State and local governments. The Wampanoag Tribe of Gay Head received funding to develop and strengthen tribal justice strategies to remedy violent crimes against Indian women and to develop and strengthen services for victims. The act also supports HarborCOV--Harbor Communities Overcoming Violence--a Massachusetts program serving Chelsea and Greater Boston. In addition to its core services, HarborCOV has an economic development component which helps survivors move from welfare to work. Employment training and employment referrals are also provided to help domestic violence victims find jobs. The reauthorization will ensure that support for these programs and others will continue. It also includes important new measures, such as transitional housing assistance and a $175 million authorization for shelters, which will be significant additional tools in the battle against domestic violence. One of the most important provisions in the bill is the Battered Immigrant Protection Act. This provision helps battered immigrants by restoring access to a variety of legal protections undermined by the 1996 immigration laws. The Violence Against Women Act passed in 1994 included provisions that allowed battered immigrants to apply for legal status without the cooperation of their abusers, and enabled victims to seek protective orders and cooperate with law enforcement officials to prosecute crimes of domestic violence. Unfortunately, the subsequent changes in immigration laws have reduced access to those protections. Thousands of battered immigrants are again being forced to remain in abusive relationships, out of fear of being deported or losing their children. The pending bill removes obstacles currently hindering the ability of battered immigrants to escape domestic violence safely and prosecute their abusers. It restores and expands vital legal protections like 245(i) relief. This provision will assist battered immigrants, like Donna, who have been in legal limbo since the passage of the 1996 immigration laws. Donna, a national of Ethiopia, fled to the U.S. in 1992 after her father, a member of a prominent political party, was murdered. In 1994, Donna met Saul, a lawful permanent resident and native of Ethiopia. They married and moved to Saul's home in Massachusetts. Two years later, Saul began drinking heavily and gradually became physically and verbally abusive. The abuse escalated and Donna was forced to flee from their home. She moved in with close family friends who helped her seek counseling. She also filed a petition for permanent residence under the provisions of the Violence Against Women Act. Unfortunately, with the elimination of 245(i), the only way for Donna to obtain her green card is to return to Ethiopia, the country where her father was murdered. The possibility of returning there terrifies her. This legislation will enable her to obtain her green card here, where she has the support and protection of family and access to the domestic violence counseling she needs. Under this act, battered immigrants will also have up to one year from the entry of an order of removal to file motions to reopen prior deportation orders. The Attorney General may waive the one year deadline on the basis of extraordinary circumstances or hardship to the battered immigrant's child. This Act will also expand remedies for battered immigrants living abroad with spouses and parents serving in the United States military or other federal positions. Current law only allows battered immigrants residing in the United States to request this relief. This bill will make it easier for these immigrants and their children to escape abusive relationships and obtain the help they deserve. The legislation also grants the Attorney General the discretion to waive certain bars to immigration relief for qualified applicants. For example, battered immigrant women acting in self-defense are often convicted of domestic violence crimes. Under the 1996 immigration law, they became deportable and are denied relief under the Violence Against Women Act. The Attorney General will be able to use the waiver authority to help battered immigrants who otherwise qualify for relief. Also, recently divorced battered immigrants will be able to file self-petitions. Current law allows only battered immigrant women currently married to their abusive spouses to qualify for relief. As a result, many abusers have successfully rushed to the court house to obtain divorces, in order to deny relief to their immigrant spouse. This provision will prevent this unfair result and ensure that victims are not wrongly deprived of the legal protection they need. These and ot

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TRAFFICKING VICTIMS PROTECTION ACT OF 2000--CONFERENCE REPORT
(Senate - October 11, 2000)

Text of this article available as: TXT PDF [Pages S10164-S10188] TRAFFICKING VICTIMS PROTECTION ACT OF 2000--CONFERENCE REPORT The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senate will now proceed to the conference report accompanying H.R. 3244. The clerk will report the conference report. The legislative clerk read as follows: The Committee of Conference on the disagreeing votes of the two Houses on the amendment of the Senate on the bill, H.R. 3244, an act to combat trafficking of persons, especially into the sex trade, slavery, and slavery-like conditions, in the United States and countries around the world through prevention, through prosecution and enforcement against traffickers, and through protection and assistance to victims of trafficking, having met, have agreed that the House recede from its disagreement to the amendment of the Senate, and agree to the same with an amendment, and the Senate agree to the same, signed by a majority of the conferees on the part of both Houses. The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senate will proceed to the consideration of the conference report. (The report was printed in the House proceedings of the Record of October 5, 2000.) The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Kansas is recognized. Mr. BROWNBACK. Mr. President, I believe under the uniform unanimous consent agreement that we have, time has been allocated to several different Members of the Senate to speak on this conference report; is that correct? The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator is correct. Mr. BROWNBACK. Mr. President, let me start this debate and discussion with the story of Irina. Irina's story appeared in the New York Times not that long ago, and it is similar to the story of a number of women with whom I have met and who have been caught in this situation of sex trafficking--young ladies I met with in Nepal, and several testified in committee. I think Irina's story tells in graphic detail why this is a problem and why the Senate needs to act. Irina always assumed that her beauty would somehow rescue her from the poverty and hopelessness of village life. A few months ago, after answering a vague ad in a small Ukrainian newspaper, she slipped off a tour boat when it put in at Haifa, hoping to make a bundle dancing naked on the tops of tables. She was 21, self-assured and glad to be out of Ukraine. Israel offered a new world, and for a week or two everything seemed possible. Then, one morning, she was driven to a brothel, where her boss burned her passport before her eyes. ``I own you,'' she recalled his saying. ``You are my property and you will work until you earn your way out. Don't try to leave. You have no papers and you don't speak Hebrew. You will be arrested and deported. Then we will get you and bring you back.'' That was her master. The article goes on. It happens every single day. Not just in Israel, which has deported nearly 1,500 Russian and Ukrainian women like Irina in the past three years. But throughout the world, where selling naive and desperate young women into sexual bondage has become one of the fastest-growing criminal enterprises in the robust global economy. . . . Many end up like Irina. Stunned and outraged by the sudden order to prostitute herself, she simply refused. She was beaten and raped before she succumbed. Finally she got a break. The brothel was raided and she was brought here [to another place], the only women's prison in Israel. Now, like hundreds of Ukrainian and Russian women with no documents or obvious forgeries, she is waiting to be sent home. This is a quote from Irina: ``I don't think the man who ruined my life will even be fined,'' she said softly, slow tears filling her enormous green eyes. ``You can call me a fool for coming here. That's my crime. I am stupid. A stupid girl from a little village. But can people really buy and sell women and get away with it? Sometimes I sit here and ask myself if that really happened to me, if it can really happen at all.'' Then, waving her arm toward a muddy prison yard, where Russian is spoken more commonly than Hebrew, she whispered one last thought: ``I am not the only one, you know. They have ruined us all.'' I ask unanimous consent to have printed in the Record the full text of this article. There being no objection, the material was ordered to be printed in the Record, as follows: Traffickers' New Cargo: Naive Slavic Women (By Michael Specter) Ramle, Israel.--Irina always assumed that her beauty would somehow rescue her from the poverty and hopelessness of village life. A few months ago, after answering a vague ad in a small Ukrainian newspaper, she slipped off a tour boat when it put in at Haifa, hoping to make a bundle dancing naked on the tops of tables. She was 21, self-assured and glad to be out of Ukraine. Israel offered a new world, and for a week or two everything seemed possible. Then, one morning, she was driven to a brothel, where her boss burned her passport before her eyes. ``I own you,'' she recalled his saying. ``You are my property and you will work until you earn your way out. Don't try to leave. You have no papers and you don't speak Hebrew. You will be arrested and deported. Then we will get you and bring you back.'' It happens every single day. Not just in Israel, which has deported nearly 1,500 Russian and Ukrainian women like Irina in the past three years. But throughout the world, where selling naive and desperate young women into sexual bondage has become one of the fastest-growing criminal enterprises in the robust global economy. The international bazaar for women is hardly new, of course. Asians have been its basic commodity for decades. But economic hopelessness in the Slavic world has opened what experts call the most lucrative market of all to criminal gangs that have flourished since the fall of Communism: white women with little to sustain them but their dreams. Pimps, law enforcement officials and relief groups all agree that Ukrainian and Russian women are now the most valuable in the trade. Because their immigration is often illegal--and because some percentage of the women choose to work as prostitutes-- statistics are difficult to assess. But the United Nations estimates that four million people throughout the world are trafficked each year--forced through lies and coercion to work against their will in many types of servitude. The International Organization for Migration has said that as many as 500,000 women are annually trafficked into Western Europe alone. Many end up like Irina. Stunned and outraged by the sudden order to prostitute herself, she simply refused. She was beaten and raped before she succumbed. Finally she got a break. The brothel was raided and she was brought here to Neve Tirtsa in Ramle, the only women's prison in Israel. Now, like hundreds of Ukrainian and Russian women with no documents or obvious forgeries, she is waiting to be sent home. ``I don't think the man who ruined my life will even be fined,'' she said softly, slow tears filling her enormous green eyes. ``You can call me a fool for coming here. That's my crime. I am stupid. A stupid girl from a little village. But can people really buy and sell women and get away with it? Sometimes I sit here and ask myself if that really happened to me, if it can really happen at all.'' Then, waving her arm toward the muddy prison yard, where Russian is spoken more commonly than Hebrew, she whispered one last thought: ``I'm not the only one, you know. They have ruined us all.'' traffic patterns: russia and ukraine supply the flesh Centered in Moscow and the Ukrainian capital, Kiev, the networks trafficking women run east to Japan and Thailand, where thousands of young Slavic women now work against their will as prostitutes, and west to the Adriatic Coast and beyond. The routes are controlled by Russian crime gangs based in Moscow. Even when they do not specifically move the women overseas, they provide security, logistical support, liaison with brothel owners in many countries and, usually, false documents. Women often start their hellish journey by choice. Seeking a better life, they are lured by local advertisements for good jobs in foreign countries at wages they could never imagine at home. In Ukraine alone, the number of women who leave is staggering. As many as 400,000 women under 30 have gone in the past decade, according to their country's Interior Ministry. The Thai Embassy in Moscow, which processes visa applications from Russia and Ukraine, says it receives nearly 1,000 visa applications a day, most of these from women. Israel is a fairly typical destination. Prostitution is not illegal here, although brothels are, and with 250,000 foreign male workers--most of whom are single or here without their wives--the demand is great. Police officials estimate that there are 25,000 paid sexual transactions every day. Brothels are ubiquitous. None of the women seem to realize the risks they run until it is too late. Once they cross the border their passports will be confiscated, their freedoms curtailed and what little money they have taken from them at once. ``You want to tell these kids that if something seems too good to be true it usually is,'' said Lyudmilla Biryuk, a Ukrainian psychologist who has counseled women who have escaped or been released from bondage. ``But you can't imagine what fear and real ignorance can do to a person.'' The women are smuggled by car, bus, boat and plane. Handed off in the dead of night, many are told they will pick oranges, work [[Page S10165]] as dancers or as waitresses. Others have decided to try their luck at prostitution, usually for what they assume will be a few lucrative months. They have no idea of the violence that awaits them. The efficient, economically brutal routine--whether here in Israel, or in one of a dozen other countries--rarely varies. Women are held in apartments, bars and makeshift brothels; there they service, by their own count, as many as 15 clients a day. Often they sleep in shifts, four to a bed. The best that most hope for is to be deported after the police finally catch up with their captors. Few ever testify. Those who do risk death. Last year in Istanbul, Turkey, according to Ukrainian police investigators, two women were thrown to their deaths from a balcony while six of their Russian friends watched. In Serbia, also last year, said a young Ukrainian woman who escaped in October, a woman who refused to work as a prostitute was beheaded in public. In Milan a week before Christmas, the police broke up a ring that was holding auctions in which women abducted from the countries of the former Soviet Union were put on blocks, partially naked, and sold at an average price of just under $1,000. ``This is happening wherever you look now,'' said Michael Platzer, the Vienna-based head of operations for the United Nations' Center for International Crime Prevention. ``The mafia is not stupid. There is less law enforcement since the Soviet Union fell apart and more freedom of movement. The earnings are incredible. The overhead is low--you don't have to buy cars and guns. Drugs you sell once and they are gone. Women can earn money for a long time.'' ``Also,'' he added, ``the laws help the gangsters. Prostitution is semilegal in many places and that makes enforcement tricky. In most cases punishment is very light.'' In some countries, Israel among them, there is not even a specific law against the sale of human beings. Mr. Platzer said that although certainly ``tens of thousands'' of women were sold into prostitution each year, he was uncomfortable with statistics since nobody involved has any reason to tell the truth. ``But if you want to use numbers,'' he said, ``think about this. Two hundred million people are victims of contemporary forms of slavery. Most aren't prostitutes, of course, but children in sweatshops, domestic workers, migrants. During four centuries, 12 million people were believed to be involved in the slave trade between Africa and the New World. The 200 million--and many of course are women who are trafficked for sex--is a current figure. It's happening now. Today.'' distress calls: far-flung victims provide few clues The distress call came from Donetsk, the bleak center of coal production in southern Ukraine. A woman was screaming on the telephone line. Her sister and a friend were prisoners in a bar somewhere near Rome. They spoke no Italian and had no way out, but had managed, briefly, to get hold of a man's cell phone. ``Do you have any idea where they are, exactly?'' asked Olga Shved, who runs La Strada in Kiev, Ukraine's new center dedicated to fighting the trafficking of women in Eastern Europe and the countries of the former Soviet Union. The woman's answer was no. Ms. Shved began searching for files and telephone numbers of the local consul, the police, anybody who could help. ``Do they know how far from Rome they are?'' she asked, her voice tightening with each word. ``What about the name of the street or bar? Anything will help,'' she said, jotting notes furiously as she spoke. ``We can get the police on this, but we need something. If they call back, tell them to give us a clue. The street number. The number of a bus that runs past. One thing is all we need.'' Ms. Shved hung up and called officials at Ukraine's Interior Ministry and the Foreign Ministry. Her conversations were short, direct and obviously a routine part of her job. That is because Ukraine--and to a lesser degree its Slavic neighbors Russia and Belarus--has replaced Thailand and the Philippines as the epicenter of the global business in trafficking women. The Ukrainian problem has been worsened by a ravaged economy, an atrophied system of law enforcement, and criminal gangs that grow more brazen each year. Young European women are in demand, and Ukraine, a country of 51 million people, has a seemingly endless supply. It is not that hard to see why. Neither Russia nor Ukraine reports accurate unemployment statistics. But even partial numbers present a clear story of chaos and economic dislocation. Federal employment statistics in Ukraine indicate that more than two-thirds of the unemployed are women. The Government also keeps another statistic: employed but not working. Those are people who technically have jobs, and can use company amenities like day-care centers and hospitals. But they do not work or get paid. Three-quarters are women. And of those who have lost their jobs since the Soviet Union dissolved in 1991, more than 80 percent are women. The average salary in Ukraine today is slightly less than $30 a month, but it is half that in the small towns that criminal gangs favor for recruiting women to work abroad. On average, there are 30 applicants for every job in most Ukrainian cities. There is no real hope; but there is freedom. In that climate, looking for work in foreign countries has increasingly become a matter of survival. ``It's no secret that the highest prices now go for the white women,'' said Marco Buffo, executive director of On the Road, an anti-trafficking organization in northern Italy. ``They are the novelty item now. It used to be Nigerians and Asians at the top of the market. Now it's the Ukrainians.'' Economics is not the only factor causing women to flee their homelands. There is also social reality. For the first time, young women in Ukraine and Russia have the right, the ability and the willpower to walk away from their parents and their hometowns. Village life is disintegrating throughout much of the former Soviet world, and youngsters are grabbing any chance they can find to save themselves. ``After the wall fell down, the Ukrainian people tried to live in the new circumstances,'' said Ms. Shved. ``It was very hard, and it gets no easier. Girls now have few and opportunities yet great freedom. They see `Pretty Woman,' or a thousand movies and ads with the same point, that somebody who is rich can save them. The glory and ease of wealth is almost the basic point of the Western advertising that we see. Here the towns are dying. What jobs there are go to men. So they leave.'' First, however, they answer ads from employment agencies promising to find them work in a foreign country. Here again, Russian crime gangs play a central role. They often recruit people through seemingly innocuous ``mail order bride'' meetings. Even when they do not, few such organizations can operate without paying off one gang or another. Sometimes want ads are almost honest, suggesting that the women earn up to $1,000 a month as ``escorts'' abroad. Often they are vague or blatantly untrue. recruiting methods: ads make offers too good to be true One typical ad used by traffickers in Kiev last year read: ``Girls: Must be single and very pretty. Young and tall. We invite you for work as models, secretaries, dancers, choreographers, gymnasts. Housing is supplied. Foreign posts available. Must apply in person.'' One young woman who did, and made it back alive, described a harrowing journey. ``I met these guys and they asked if I would work at a strip bar,'' she said. ``Why not, I thought. They said we would have to leave at once. We went by car to the Slovak Republic where they grabbed my passport. I think they got me new papers there, but threatened me if I spoke out. We made it to Vienna, then to Turkey. I was kept in a bar and I was told I owed $5,000 for my travel. I worked for three days, and on the fourth I was arrested.'' Lately, the ads have started to disappear from the main cities--where the realities of such offers are known now. These days the appeals are made in the provinces, where their success is undiminished. Most of the thousands of Ukrainian women who go abroad each year are illegal immigrants who do not work in the sex business. Often they apply for a legal visa--to dance, or work in a bar--and then stay after it expires. Many go to Turkey and Germany, where Russian crime groups are particularly powerful. Israeli leaders say that Russian women--they tend to refer to all women from the former Soviet Union as Russian--disappear off tour boats every day. Officials in Italy estimate that at least 30,000 Ukrainian women are employed illegally there now. Most are domestic workers, but a growing number are prostitutes, some of them having been promised work as domestics only to find out their jobs were a lie. Part of the problem became clear in a two-year study recently concluded by the Washington-based nonprofit group Global Survival Network: police officials in many countries just don't care. The network, after undercover interviews with gangsters, pimps and corrupt officials, found that local police forces-- often those best able to prevent trafficking--are least interested in helping. Gillian Caldwell of Global Survival Network has been deeply involved in the study. ``In Tokyo,'' she said, ``a sympathetic senator arranged a meeting for us with senior police officials to discuss the growing prevalence of trafficking from Russia into Japan. The police insisted it wasn't a problem, and they didn't even want the concrete information we could have provided. That didn't surprise local relief agencies, who cited instances in which police had actually sold trafficked women back to the criminal networks which had enslaved them.'' official reactions: best-placed to help, but least inclined Complacency among police agencies is not uncommon. ``Women's groups want to blow this all out of proportion,'' said Gennadi V. Lepenko, chief of Kiev's branch of Interpol, the international police agency. ``Perhaps this was a problem a few years ago. But it's under control now.'' That is not the view at Ukraine's Parliament--which is trying to pass new laws to protect young women--or at the Interior Ministry. ``We have a very serious problem here and we are simply not equipped to solve it by ourselves,'' said Mikhail Lebed, chief of criminal investigations for the Ukrainian Interior Ministry. ``It is a human tragedy, but [[Page S10166]] also, frankly, a national crisis. Gangsters make more from these women in a week than we have in our law enforcement budget for the whole year. To be honest, unless we get some help we are not going to stop it.'' But solutions will not be simple. Criminal gangs risk little by ferrying women out of the country; indeed, many of the women go voluntarily. Laws are vague, cooperation between countries rare and punishment of traffickers almost nonexistent. Without work or much hope of a future at home, an eager teenager will find it hard to believe that the promise of a job in Italy, Turkey or Israel is almost certain to be worthless. ``I answered an ad to be a waitress,'' said Tamara, 19, a Ukrainian prostitute in a massage parlor near Tel Aviv's old Central Bus Station, a Russian-language ghetto for the cheapest brothels. ``I'm not sure I would go back now if I could. What would I do there, stand on a bread line or work in a factory for no wages?'' Tamara, like all other such women interviewed for this article, asked that her full name not be published. She has classic Slavic features, with long blond hair and deep green eyes. She turned several potential customers away so she could speak at length with a reporter. She was willing to talk as along as her boss was out. She said she was not watched closely while she remained within the garish confines of the ``health club.'' ``I didn't plan to do this,'' she said, looking sourly at the rich red walls and leopard prints around her. ``They took my passport, so I don't have much choice. But they do give me money. And believe me, it's better than anything I could ever get at home.'' * * * * * Mr. BROWNBACK. Mr. President, Irina's story is told all too often and is reenacted all too often around the world today. Our Government estimates that between 600,000 and 2 million women are trafficked each year beyond international borders. They are trafficked for the purpose of sexual prostitution by organized crime units and groups that are aggressively out making money off the trafficking of human flesh. It is wrong. This bill seeks to deal with that wrong and that tragedy that has occurred and is occurring around the world today. This is significant human rights legislation that this body is going to pass. I hope, predict, and pray that it will pass today. It is significant human rights legislation for those poor young victims who are trafficked and who are caught sometimes with the view that, ``I am just stupid, I got caught in this,'' but who live this horrible, hellish life they have been put into and trafficked into and can't find their way out. The conference report is entitled ``The Victims of Trafficking and Violence Protection Act of 2000.'' As I mentioned previously, it passed the House of Representatives on Friday, October 6, by a vote of 371-1. The Senate will vote on this conference report today, with the lead underlying bill being the Brownback-Wellstone anti-trafficking legislation. Senator Wellstone and I have been working for the last year on this legislation, which is a companion to the Smith-Gejdenson bill in the House known as the Trafficking Victims Protection Act of 2000. I want to thank and recognize my staff, Sharon Payt and Karen Knutson, two people who have worked tirelessly and endlessly to deal with this particular issue. Our anti-trafficking bill is the first complete legislation to address the growing practice of international ``trafficking'' worldwide. This is one of the largest manifestations of modern-day slavery internationally. Notably, this legislation is the most significant human rights bill of the 106th Congress, if passed today, as hoped for. This is also the largest anti-slavery bill that the United States has adopted since 1865 and the demise of slavery at the end of the Civil War. Therefore, I greatly anticipate this vote today in the Senate on this legislation. Senator Wellstone's and my trafficking bill, which passed in the Senate on July 27 of this year, was conferenced to reconcile the differences with the House bill, and the conference report was filed on October 5, Thursday, of last week. The final conference package contains four additional pieces of legislation which are substantially appropriate to our bill. Most significant among those bill amendments is the Violence Against Women Act, known as VAWA, which provides relief and assistance to those who suffer domestic violence in America. Thus, the additional four bills included in this conference report include the Violence Against Women Act. This is a reauthorization of the initial bill which was passed in 1994 as part of the Omnibus Crime Control Act; this legislation renews several grant programs to assist law enforcement officers, social service providers, and others dealing with sexual crime and domestic violence. Also in this package is Aimee's law, which provides for interstate compensation for the costs of incarceration of early-release sex offenders who commit another sex crime in a second State. It is based on the circumstances of what happened in a Pennsylvania case where a murderer was released early out of a Nevada prison, went to Pennsylvania, and kidnapped and brutally raped and murdered a young girl there who was in the very flower of life and coming forth. This law is built upon that terrible crime that took place in Pennsylvania. Also in this package is the 21st Amendment Enforcement Act, which allows for State attorneys general to enforce their State alcohol control laws in Federal court, including laws prohibiting sales to minors, which strengthens the grant of authority to States under the 21st amendment to the Constitution; and the Justice for Victims of Terrorism Act, which authorizes the payment of foreign seized assets to American victims of international terrorism. The last step to adopting this legislative package in Congress rests with the Senate today. Before I continue describing this urgently needed legislation, I would like to take a few moments to thank some key people who have brought us to this point today. Some of them are in the Galleries as I speak. They are people of heart, courage, and intelligence whose advocacy made a way for this bill--whose dedication pried open the doors and let the light shine into this darkness. Among them is Senator Wellstone who started this work long before I came on board. He and his wife, most notably, 3 years ago started advocating on this particular issue. I know he stands firmly and strongly today as one of the principal advocates to set this aside, and he brought this forward and seeks to go forward from here to help those who are victims of these crimes. I also thank Congressmen Chris Smith and Sam Gejdenson. I would also like to thank Gary Haugen of the International Justice Mission and Dr. Laura Lederter of the Protect Project at Johns Hopkins University. Dr. Laura Lederter of the Protect Project at Johns Hopkins University is the foremost authority in the country on tracking from where and to where these victims are trafficked. I have up here one of the maps she introduced of women who have been trafficked out of Russia and Ukraine with the fall of the Soviet Union. With the increased travel out of there to freedom, we have seen a huge amount of trafficking also taking place. These are the routes out of Russia and Ukraine and where they go--to Canada, to the United States, to Mexico, to Europe, to Africa and Asia, to Australia and New Zealand. This is the work of her project. I also want to thank Michael Horowitz of the Hudson Institute, and Gloria Steinem, whom I am not noted to thank, is part of this coalition; Chuck Colson, Jessica Neuworth, William Bennett, the National Association of Evangelicals, the Southern Baptist Convention, among others I'm sure I'm forgetting. I would also like to thank the staff for both the Senate and House, including Joseph Rees, David Abramowitz, Charlotte Oldham-Moore, Jill Hickson, Mark Lagon, and my staff Karen Knutson and Sharon Payt. Thank you all. We are here today at final passage because of all your efforts. This legislation is our best opportunity to challenge the largest manifestation of slavery worldwide, known as ``trafficking.'' This practice of trafficking involves the coercive transportation of persons into slavery-like conditions, primarily involving forced prostitution, among other forms of slavery-like conditions. Trafficking is the new slavery of the world. These victims are routinely forced against their will into the sex trade, transported across international borders, and left defenseless in a foreign country. This bill also addresses the insidious practice known as ``debt bondage,'' wherein a person can be enslaved to the money lender for an entire lifetime because of a $50 debt [[Page S10167]] taken by the family for an emergency. This is a common practice in countries throughout the South Asian region. People of conscience have fought against the different manifestations of slavery for centuries. This anti-slavery legislation is in the tradition of William Wilberforce and Amy Carmichael of England, who were ardent abolitionists against different forms of slavery. Amy Carmichael was a British missionary to India at the turn of last century, in the early 1900's. Upon arrival, she was mortified to discover the routine practice of forced temple prostitution. This was and continues to be a practice wherein young girls, from age six onward, are dedicated to the local temple, and are then forced into prostitution against their will to generate income. Upon this morbid discovery, Amy Carmichael began to physically steal the young girls away from this incredibly degrading form of slavery, hiding the girls to escape the inevitable backlash of violence. Eventually, the government outlawed this practice of forced temple prostitution, as a result of her efforts. However, it bears noting that this terrible practice continues today, in a lesser degree, in rural villages throughout South Asia, including India. This bill challenges the myriad forms of slavery including sex trafficking, temple prostitution, and debt bondage, among other forms. This new phenomenon of sex trafficking is growing exponentially. Some report that it is, at least, $7 billion per year illicit trade, exceeded only by the international drug and arms trade. Its victims are enslaved into a devastating brutality against their will, with no hope for release or justice, while its perpetrators build criminal empires on this suffering with impunity. Our legislation will begin to challenge these injustices. This is the new slavery of the world, Dr. Kevin Bales of the University of Surrey in England recently testified for us before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. He astutely observed that the new slavery has a peculiar quality which does not look like the old forms associated with lifetime bondage as a chattel slave, but it is slavery nonetheless. Sex trafficking is among the most common forms of the new slavery and typically entails shorter periods of bondage, usually asking for 5 to 6 years, or whenever something like AIDS or tuberculosis is contracted, after which the victim is thrown out on the street, broken, without community or resources, left to die. I have met with people caught in that condition. Women and children are routinely forced against their will. Sex traffickers favor girls aging in the range of 10 to 13. I have a number of other things I could say, but my time is limited. I know a number of people want to speak on this bill. I ask to reserve the remainder of my time. I will turn the floor over to Senator Wellstone. I ask unanimous consent on any quorum calls that might be called during the discussion of this conference report, that time be allotted and assessed against all allocated time to speak under the bill, including myself and Senator Wellstone, along with Senator Biden, Senator Hatch, and Senator Leahy, who have all been allocated time. I ask the quorum calls be equally divided between those who have time under the bill. The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered. Mr. BROWNBACK. I finally note to others who seek to speak on this bill, I invite Members to come to the floor to make comments. At the conclusion of our presentation, a vote will occur on this conference report. I yield the floor. The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Minnesota. Mr. WELLSTONE. Mr. President, I thank the Chair. I thank my colleague, Senator Brownback, for his very gracious remarks. It has been an honor to work with him on this legislation. I think a very strong friendship has come out of this effort. There are some times when we can work and reach out and have the most interesting and I hope important coalition. Working with Senator Brownback, Sharon Payt, and Karen Knutson has been the best legislative work. At the end of the day, I believe today we will pass this legislation. Members can feel they have done something really good. They can make a positive difference. I thank Senator Brownback for his great leadership and his great work for each step along the way. In all the negotiations, all the work that has been done, the Senator has been there. I thank the Senator. I want to talk about Charlotte Oldham-Moore and Jill Hickson, who have worked with me and our staff, who have done a great job. There are other people who will be on the floor who put this together--especially the Violence Against Women Act--Senator Leahy, Senator Biden, Senator Hatch, and others, and Sam Gejdenson and Chris Smith have been phenomenal. I thank them for their yeoman work on the House side. I also thank Frank Loy and Harold Koh at the State Department for their work. The trafficking of human beings for forced prostitution and sweatshop labor is a rapidly growing human rights abuse. It is one of the greatest aspects of the globalization of the world economy. The Victims of Trafficking and Violence Protection Act of 2000 is the first piece of legislation to address the widespread practice of the trafficking of men, women, and children into sweatshop labor and sexual bondage. My wife Sheila urged me to do something about this problem several years ago. Consequently, she and I spent time with women trafficked from the Ukraine to work in brothels in Western Europe and the United States. They told us after the breakup of the Soviet Union and the ascendancy of the mob, trafficking in women and girls became a booming industry that destroyed the lives of the youngest and most vulnerable in their home countries. We began work on the bill then, and 3 years later, after extraordinary bipartisan effort, tremendous leadership from Senators Brownback and Leahy, and Sam Gejdenson and Chris Smith, and others, it passed the House with a vote of 371-1. Now it is poised to pass the Senate. Our Government estimates that 2 million people are trafficked each year. Of those, 700,000 women and children, primarily young girls, are trafficked from poor countries to rich countries and sold into slavery, raped, locked up, physically and psychologically abused, with food and health care withheld. Of those, as many as 50,000 immigrants are brought into the United States each year, and they wind up trapped in brothels, sweatshops, and other types of forced labor, abused and too fearful to seek help. Traffickers exploit the unequal status of women and girls, including harmful stereotypes of women as property and sexual objects to be bought and sold. Traffickers have also taken advantage of the demand in our country and others for cheap, unprotected labor. For the traffickers, the sale of human beings is a highly profitable, low-risk enterprise as these women are viewed as expendable and reusable commodities. Overall, profit in the trade can be staggering. It is estimated that the size of this business is $7 billion annually, only surpassed by that of the illegal arms trade. Trafficking has become a major source of new income for criminal rings. It is coldly observed that drugs are sold once while a woman or a child can be sold 10 or 20 times a day. In the United States, Thai traffickers who incarcerated Thai women and men in sweatshops in El Monte, CA, are estimated to have made $8 million in 6 years. Further, Thai traffickers who enslaved Thai women in a New York brothel made about $1.5 million over 1 year and 3 months. Last year, Albanian women were kidnapped from Kosovo refugee camps and trafficked to work in brothels in Turkey and Europe. Closer to home, organized crime has trafficked Russian and Ukranian women into sexually exploitive work in dozens of cities in the United States of America. Just next door, law enforcement authorities suspected mafia involvement in the gruesome murder of a Russian woman trafficked to Maryland. All of these cases reflect a new condition: Women whose lives have been disrupted by civil wars or fundamental changes in political geography, such as the disintegration of the Soviet Union or the violence in the Balkans, have fallen prey to traffickers. Seeking financial security, many innocent persons are lured by traffickers' [[Page S10168]] false promises of a better life and lucrative jobs abroad. Seeking this better life, they are lured by local advertisements for good jobs in foreign countries at wages they could never imagine at home. However, when they arrive, these victims are often stripped of their passports, held against their will, some in slave-like conditions, in the year 2000. Rape, intimidation, and violence are commonly employed by traffickers to control their victims and to prevent them from seeking help. Through physical isolation and psychological trauma, traffickers and brothel owners imprison women in a world of economic and sexual exploitation that imposes a constant threat of arrest and deportation, as well as violent reprisals by the traffickers themselves to whom the women must pay off ever-growing debts. That is the way this works. Many brothel owners actually prefer foreign women, women who are far from help and from home, who do not speak the language, precisely because of the ease of controlling them. Most of these women never imagined they would enter such a hellish world, having traveled abroad to find better jobs or to see the world. Many in their naivete believe nothing bad can happen to them in the rich and comfortable countries such as Switzerland or Germany or the United States. Others are less naive, but they are desperate for money and opportunity. But they are no less hurt by the trafficker's brutal grip. Trafficking rings are often run by criminals operating through nominally reputable agencies. In some cases overseas, police and immigration officials of other nations participate and benefit from the trafficking. Lack of awareness or complacency among government officials such as border control and consular offices contributes to the problem. Furthermore, traffickers are rarely punished, as official policies often inhibit victims from testifying against their traffickers, making trafficking a highly profitable, low-risk business venture for some. Trafficking abuses are occurring not just in far-off lands but here at home in America as well. The INS has discovered 250 brothels in 26 different cities which involve trafficking victims. This is from a CIA report. This is the whole problem of no punishment--being able to do this with virtual impunity. In a 1996 trafficking case involving Russian and Ukrainian women who answered ads to be au pairs, sales clerks and waitresses, and were forced to provide sexual services and live in a massage parlor in Bethesda, MD, the Russian-American massage parlor owner was fined. He entered a plea bargain and charges were dropped with the restriction that he would not operate a business again in Montgomery County. The women, who had not been paid any salary and were charged $150 for their housing, were deported or left the United States voluntarily. There was no charge at all. Teenage Mexican girls were held in slavery in Florida and the Carolinas, and they were forced to submit to prostitution. Russian and Latvian women were forced to work in nightclubs in the Midwest. According to charges filed against the traffickers, the traffickers picked the women up upon their arrival at the airport, seized their documents and return tickets, locked them in hotels and beat them. This is in our country. The women were told that if they refused to work in sexually exploitive conditions, the Russian Mafia would kill their families. Furthermore, over a 3-year period, hundreds of women from the Czech Republic who answered advertisements in Czech newspapers for modeling were ensnared in an illegal prostitution ring. Trafficking in persons for labor is an enormous problem as well. The INS has also worked on cases involving South Asian children smuggled into the United States to work in slavery-like conditions. In one case, about 100 Indian children, some of them as young as 9 or 10, were brought into New York and shuffled around the country to work in construction and restaurants--ages 9 and 10, in the United States; today, in the United States--2000. Some of the children appear to have been sold by their parents to the traffickers. In Woodbine, MD, a pastor bought Estonian children, ages 14 to 17, promising them they would attend Calvery Chapel Christian Academy, but then forcing them to clean roach-invested apartments and to do construction. The children worked 15 hours a day. The children were threatened and punishments included denial of food and being forced to stand in one spot for prolonged periods. The bitter irony is that quite often victims are punished more harshly than the traffickers because of their illegal immigration status, their serving as prostitutes, or their lack of documents, which the traffickers have confiscated in order to control the victims. A review of the trafficking cases showed that the penalties were light and did not reflect the multitude of human rights abuses perpetrated against these women. In a Los Angeles case, traffickers kidnapped a Chinese woman, raped her, forced her into prostitution, posted guards to control her movements, and burned her with cigarettes. Nevertheless, the lead defendants received 4 years and the other defendants received 2 and 3 years. That is what they received. In a tragic case involving over 70 Thai laborers who had been held against their will, systematically abused, and made to work 20-hour shifts in a sweatshop, the seven defendants received sentences ranging from 4 to 7 years with one defendant receiving 7 months. In another case where Asian women were kept physically confined for years with metal bars on the windows, guards, and an electronic monitoring system, and were forced to submit to sex with as many as 400 customers to repay their smuggling debt, the traffickers received 4 years and 9 years--in the United States of America, in the year 2000. I thank Senator Brownback for his work. It is important. A review of the trafficking cases showed that the penalties were light and they did not reflect the multitude of the human rights abuses perpetrated against these women. The statutory minimum for sale into involuntary servitude is only 10 years, whereas the maximum for dealing in small quantities of certain drugs is life. Let me repeat that. The statutory minimum for sale into involuntary servitude is only 10 years, whereas the maximum for dealing in small quantities of certain drugs is life. Few State and Federal laws are aimed directly at people who deliver or control women for the purpose of involuntary servitude or slavery in sweatshops or brothels. Consequently, prosecutors are forced to assemble cases using a hodgepodge of laws, such as document fraud and interstate commerce, and accept penalties that they believe are too light for the offense. Up until this legislation, there was no way for the prosecutors to go after these traffickers. The Victims of Violence and Trafficking Protection Act of 2000 establishes, for the first time, a bright line between the victim and the perpetrator. It punishes the perpetrator and provides a comprehensive approach to solving the root problems that create millions of trafficking victims each year. This legislation aims to prevent trafficking in persons, provide protection and assistance to those who have been trafficked, and strengthen prosecution and punishment for those who are responsible for the trafficking. It is designed to help Federal law enforcement officials expand antitrafficking efforts here and abroad, to expand domestic antitrafficking and victim assistance efforts, and to assist nongovernment organizations, governments and others worldwide, who are providing critical assistance to victims of trafficking. It addresses the underlying problems which fuel the trafficking industry by promoting public antitrafficking awareness campaigns and initiatives in other countries to enhance economic opportunity, such as microcredit lending programs and skills training, for those who are most susceptible to trafficking, and have an outreach so women and girls as young as 10 and 11 know what they might be getting into. It also increases protections and services for trafficking victims by establishing programs designed to assist in the safe reintegration of victims into their communities and ensure that such programs address both the physical and mental health needs of trafficking victims. [[Page S10169]] Imagine what it would be like to be age 12 or 13, a young girl, to go through this. We have, in Minnesota, the Center for the Treatment of Torture Victims. It is a holy place. I have had an opportunity to meet with staff and meet with many men and women who have been helped by this center. These girls, these women, have gone through the same living hell. This legislation also increases protections and services for trafficking victims by providing community support. Furthermore, the bill seeks to stop the practice--and this is so important. I am sitting next to Senator Kennedy who has done so much with the immigration work. This bill seeks to stop the practice of immediately deporting the victims back to potentially dangerous situations by providing them with some interim immigration relief. Victims of ``severe forms of trafficking,'' defined as people who were held against their will-- ``for labor or services through the use of force, fraud, or coercion for the purpose of subjection to involuntary servitude, peonage, debt bondage or slavery''--would be eligible for a special visa letting them stay in the country at least through the duration of their captors' prosecution, and perhaps permanently.*****-*****- -Name: -Payroll No. - Folios: -Date: -Subformat: Right now, if you are a Ukrainian girl or woman in a massage parlor in Bethesda, and you step forward to get some help, you are deported. The trafficker is hardly prosecuted. The victim is automatically deported. This provides temporary visa protection. I will give an example. In a 1996 trafficking case involving Russian and Ukrainian women who had answered ads to be au pairs, sales clerks, and waitresses but were forced to provide sexual services and live in a massage parlor in Bethesda, MD, 2 miles from here, the Russian American massage parlor owner was fined. He entered a plea bargain and charges were dropped with the restriction that he would not operate his business again in Montgomery County. The women, who had not been paid any salary, were forced into prostitution, and were charged for their housing, were deported. This legislation toughens current Federal trafficking penalties, criminalizing all forms of trafficking in persons and establishing punishment commensurate with the heinous nature of this crime. The bill establishes specific laws against trafficking. Violators can be sentenced to prison for 20 years to life, depending on the severity of the crime. Yes, if you are trafficking a young girl and forcing her into prostitution, you can face a life sentence. They can also be forced to make full restitution to their victims, paying them the salary that would have been due for their months or years of involuntary service. This bill requires expanded reporting on trafficking, including a separate list of countries which are not meeting minimum standards for the elimination of trafficking. It requires the President to suspend ``nonhumanitarian and nontrade'' assistance to only the worst violators on the list of countries which do not meet these minimum standards and who actively condone this human rights abuse. This is a major piece of human rights legislation. This is a major human rights bill. These are the rare governments which are openly complicit in trafficking people across their borders. It allows the Congress to monitor closely the progress of countries in their fight against trafficking, and it gives the administration flexibility to couple its diplomatic efforts to combat trafficking with targeted enforcement action. Finally, the bill provides three generous waivers. By passing the Victims of Violence and Trafficking Act today, this Chamber will take a historic step toward the elimination of trafficking in persons. Thanks to the partnership of Jewish and Evangelical groups, women and human rights organizations, and others, we will take a historic and effective step against organized crime rings and corrupt public officials who each year traffic more than 2 million people into desperate, broken lives of bondage and servitude. Something important is in the air when such a broad coalition of people, including Bill Bennett, Gloria Steinem, Rabbi David Sapperstein, Ann Jordan, and Chuck Colson work together for the passage of this legislation. I am thankful for their support, I am thankful for the support of the administration, and I am thankful for your support today in seeking to end this horrible, widespread, and growing human rights abuse. By way of conclusion, I say to my colleagues, starting with Senator Brownback, I believe with passage of this legislation--I believe it will pass today and the President will sign it--we are lighting a candle. We are lighting a candle for these women and girls and sometime men forced into forced labor. I also think because of the work of so many in the House and the Senate, this can be a piece of legislation that other governments in other parts of the world can pass as well. This is the beginning of an international effort to go after this trafficking, to go after this major, god-awful human rights abuse, this horrible exploitation of women, sometimes men, and of girls. I am very proud of this legislation. I thank my colleague from Kansas. I thank other colleagues as well. Mr. President, how much time do I have remaining? The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mr. Hagel). The Senator has 36 minutes remaining. Mr. WELLSTONE. Mr. President, I reserve the remainder of my time. The other part of this legislation that is so significant, and I know colleagues are here to speak about it, is the reauthorization of the Violence Against Women Act. I want to reserve time to speak about that very important piece of legislation. For me, to see both of these bills pass and to see it happen today is one of the best days I can have in the Senate. I yield the floor. The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Vermont. Mr. LEAHY. Mr. President, if the Senator from Massachusetts will withhold for a moment, is my understanding correct that the Senator from Vermont has 3 hours? The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator is correct. Mr. LEAHY. Mr. President, for the information of colleagues, I do not intend to use all that time. At some point, I am going to yield back a considerable amount of time. I know there are Senators on both sides of the aisle who have commitments tonight, some connected with the debates of the two parties' Presidential nominees. It is my hope we will be voting fairly early this afternoon--a vote on the Thompson point of order and final passage. I yield such time as the Senator from Massachusetts needs, and I ask unanimous consent that I then be able to yield to the Senator from California. The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered. The Senator from Massachusetts. Mr. KENNEDY. Mr. President, I greatly appreciate the absolutely splendid presentation by my friend and colleague, Senator Wellstone. I agree with him on so many issues. His statement today was one of his very best. We can certainly understand the extraordinary work he has done, along with Senator Brownback and others, to make sure this legislation is considered. All of us will forever be grateful to him for his leadership in this extremely important area. I certainly am. I thank him for an absolutely splendid presentation. Mr. President, I'm pleased that the Senate is finally about to pass the re-authorization of the Violence Against Women Act. The current authorization for the Act expired on September 30, and it has taken far too long to bring this important extension to the Senate floor. A woman is beaten every 15 seconds as a result of domestic violence. Every year, one-third of the women who are murdered are killed by their husbands or partners, and approximately one million women are stalked. Conservative estimates indicate that 60 percent of disabled women, up to 25 percent of pregnant women, and 1 out of 25 elderly people have suffered domestic violence. This isn't a problem that only affects adults. Each year, 3.3 million children are exposed to domestic violence. In homes where abuse of women occurs, children are 1,500 times more likely to be abused as well. Whether they witness the violence or are actually assaulted by the abuser, many children learn shocking behavior from adults. 12 percent of high school dating couples [[Page S10170]] have suffered abuse in their relationships, and often these teenagers are themselves victims of abuse at home. Eighteen year-old Tanyaliz Torres and her mother were stabbed to death by her father in Springfield, Massachusetts. Fifty-eight-year-old Mabel Greineder of Wellesley, Massachusetts was stabbed and bludgeoned to death by her husband. From October 1999 through September 2000, 24 Massachusetts women and children were killed as a result of domestic violence. It is a national epidemic that touches every community in the country. The Violence Against Women Act was enacted in 1994 to address this problem and provide greater safety and peace of mind for millions of women and their families. The act creates a partnership between the public sector and the private sector at every level--Federal, State, and local. Its goal is to establish a safety net of new programs and policies, including community-based services for victims, a National Domestic Violence Hotline, needed technological assistance, and larger numbers of well-trained law enforcement officers and prosecutors. The national Hotline gives women across the country immediate access to the help they need. Since its initiation in 1996, it has received over 500,000 calls. When a Spanish-speaking woman in Arizona needed shelter for herself and her three children, the Hotline called a shelter in Phoenix, found a Spanish-speaking counselor, and gave the caller the counselor's name and directions to the shelter. In the countless cases, the Hotline is an invaluable resource, and we must do all we can to support it. In Massachusetts, $20 million under the Violence Against Women Act has been awarded to advocacy organizations, law enforcement personnel, and State and local governments. The Wampanoag Tribe of Gay Head received funding to develop and strengthen tribal justice strategies to remedy violent crimes against Indian women and to develop and strengthen services for victims. The act also supports HarborCOV--Harbor Communities Overcoming Violence--a Massachusetts program serving Chelsea and Greater Boston. In addition to its core services, HarborCOV has an economic development component which helps survivors move from welfare to work. Employment training and employment referrals are also provided to help domestic violence victims find jobs. The reauthorization will ensure that support for these programs and others will continue. It also includes important new measures, such as transitional housing assistance and a $175 million authorization for shelters, which will be significant additional tools in the battle against domestic violence. One of the most important provisions in the bill is the Battered Immigrant Protection Act. This provision helps battered immigrants by restoring access to a variety of legal protections undermined by the 1996 immigration laws. The Violence Against Women Act passed in 1994 included provisions that allowed battered immigrants to apply for legal status without the cooperation of their abusers, and enabled victims to seek protective orders and cooperate with law enforcement officials to prosecute crimes of domestic violence. Unfortunately, the subsequent changes in immigration laws have reduced access to those protections. Thousands of battered immigrants are again being forced to remain in abusive relationships, out of fear of being deported or losing their children. The pending bill removes obstacles currently hindering the ability of battered immigrants to escape domestic violence safely and prosecute their abusers. It restores and expands vital legal protections like 245(i) relief. This provision will assist battered immigrants, like Donna, who have been in legal limbo since the passage of the 1996 immigration laws. Donna, a national of Ethiopia, fled to the U.S. in 1992 after her father, a member of a prominent political party, was murdered. In 1994, Donna met Saul, a lawful permanent resident and native of Ethiopia. They married and moved to Saul's home in Massachusetts. Two years later, Saul began drinking heavily and gradually became physically and verbally abusive. The abuse escalated and Donna was forced to flee from their home. She moved in with close family friends who helped her seek counseling. She also filed a petition for permanent residence under the provisions of the Violence Against Women Act. Unfortunately, with the elimination of 245(i), the only way for Donna to obtain her green card is to return to Ethiopia, the country where her father was murdered. The possibility of returning there terrifies her. This legislation will enable her to obtain her green card here, where she has the support and protection of family and access to the domestic violence counseling she needs. Under this act, battered immigrants will also have up to one year from the entry of an order of removal to file motions to reopen prior deportation orders. The Attorney General may waive the one year deadline on the basis of extraordinary circumstances or hardship to the battered immigrant's child. This Act will also expand remedies for battered immigrants living abroad with spouses and parents serving in the United States military or other federal positions. Current law only allows battered immigrants residing in the United States to request this relief. This bill will make it easier for these immigrants and their children to escape abusive relationships and obtain the help they deserve. The legislation also grants the Attorney General the discretion to waive certain bars to immigration relief for qualified applicants. For example, battered immigrant women acting in self-defense are often convicted of domestic violence crimes. Under the 1996 immigration law, they became deportable and are denied relief under the Violence Against Women Act. The Attorney General will be able to use the waiver authority to help battered immigrants who otherwise qualify for relief. Also, recently divorced battered immigrants will be able to file self-petitions. Current law allows only battered immigrant women currently married to their abusive spouses to qualify for relief. As a result, many abusers have successfully rushed to the court house to obtain divorces, in order to deny relief to their immigrant spouse. This provision will prevent this unfair result and ensure that victims are not wrongly deprived of the legal protection they need. These and other important measures will do a

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TRAFFICKING VICTIMS PROTECTION ACT OF 2000--CONFERENCE REPORT
(Senate - October 11, 2000)

Text of this article available as: TXT PDF [Pages S10164-S10188] TRAFFICKING VICTIMS PROTECTION ACT OF 2000--CONFERENCE REPORT The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senate will now proceed to the conference report accompanying H.R. 3244. The clerk will report the conference report. The legislative clerk read as follows: The Committee of Conference on the disagreeing votes of the two Houses on the amendment of the Senate on the bill, H.R. 3244, an act to combat trafficking of persons, especially into the sex trade, slavery, and slavery-like conditions, in the United States and countries around the world through prevention, through prosecution and enforcement against traffickers, and through protection and assistance to victims of trafficking, having met, have agreed that the House recede from its disagreement to the amendment of the Senate, and agree to the same with an amendment, and the Senate agree to the same, signed by a majority of the conferees on the part of both Houses. The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senate will proceed to the consideration of the conference report. (The report was printed in the House proceedings of the Record of October 5, 2000.) The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Kansas is recognized. Mr. BROWNBACK. Mr. President, I believe under the uniform unanimous consent agreement that we have, time has been allocated to several different Members of the Senate to speak on this conference report; is that correct? The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator is correct. Mr. BROWNBACK. Mr. President, let me start this debate and discussion with the story of Irina. Irina's story appeared in the New York Times not that long ago, and it is similar to the story of a number of women with whom I have met and who have been caught in this situation of sex trafficking--young ladies I met with in Nepal, and several testified in committee. I think Irina's story tells in graphic detail why this is a problem and why the Senate needs to act. Irina always assumed that her beauty would somehow rescue her from the poverty and hopelessness of village life. A few months ago, after answering a vague ad in a small Ukrainian newspaper, she slipped off a tour boat when it put in at Haifa, hoping to make a bundle dancing naked on the tops of tables. She was 21, self-assured and glad to be out of Ukraine. Israel offered a new world, and for a week or two everything seemed possible. Then, one morning, she was driven to a brothel, where her boss burned her passport before her eyes. ``I own you,'' she recalled his saying. ``You are my property and you will work until you earn your way out. Don't try to leave. You have no papers and you don't speak Hebrew. You will be arrested and deported. Then we will get you and bring you back.'' That was her master. The article goes on. It happens every single day. Not just in Israel, which has deported nearly 1,500 Russian and Ukrainian women like Irina in the past three years. But throughout the world, where selling naive and desperate young women into sexual bondage has become one of the fastest-growing criminal enterprises in the robust global economy. . . . Many end up like Irina. Stunned and outraged by the sudden order to prostitute herself, she simply refused. She was beaten and raped before she succumbed. Finally she got a break. The brothel was raided and she was brought here [to another place], the only women's prison in Israel. Now, like hundreds of Ukrainian and Russian women with no documents or obvious forgeries, she is waiting to be sent home. This is a quote from Irina: ``I don't think the man who ruined my life will even be fined,'' she said softly, slow tears filling her enormous green eyes. ``You can call me a fool for coming here. That's my crime. I am stupid. A stupid girl from a little village. But can people really buy and sell women and get away with it? Sometimes I sit here and ask myself if that really happened to me, if it can really happen at all.'' Then, waving her arm toward a muddy prison yard, where Russian is spoken more commonly than Hebrew, she whispered one last thought: ``I am not the only one, you know. They have ruined us all.'' I ask unanimous consent to have printed in the Record the full text of this article. There being no objection, the material was ordered to be printed in the Record, as follows: Traffickers' New Cargo: Naive Slavic Women (By Michael Specter) Ramle, Israel.--Irina always assumed that her beauty would somehow rescue her from the poverty and hopelessness of village life. A few months ago, after answering a vague ad in a small Ukrainian newspaper, she slipped off a tour boat when it put in at Haifa, hoping to make a bundle dancing naked on the tops of tables. She was 21, self-assured and glad to be out of Ukraine. Israel offered a new world, and for a week or two everything seemed possible. Then, one morning, she was driven to a brothel, where her boss burned her passport before her eyes. ``I own you,'' she recalled his saying. ``You are my property and you will work until you earn your way out. Don't try to leave. You have no papers and you don't speak Hebrew. You will be arrested and deported. Then we will get you and bring you back.'' It happens every single day. Not just in Israel, which has deported nearly 1,500 Russian and Ukrainian women like Irina in the past three years. But throughout the world, where selling naive and desperate young women into sexual bondage has become one of the fastest-growing criminal enterprises in the robust global economy. The international bazaar for women is hardly new, of course. Asians have been its basic commodity for decades. But economic hopelessness in the Slavic world has opened what experts call the most lucrative market of all to criminal gangs that have flourished since the fall of Communism: white women with little to sustain them but their dreams. Pimps, law enforcement officials and relief groups all agree that Ukrainian and Russian women are now the most valuable in the trade. Because their immigration is often illegal--and because some percentage of the women choose to work as prostitutes-- statistics are difficult to assess. But the United Nations estimates that four million people throughout the world are trafficked each year--forced through lies and coercion to work against their will in many types of servitude. The International Organization for Migration has said that as many as 500,000 women are annually trafficked into Western Europe alone. Many end up like Irina. Stunned and outraged by the sudden order to prostitute herself, she simply refused. She was beaten and raped before she succumbed. Finally she got a break. The brothel was raided and she was brought here to Neve Tirtsa in Ramle, the only women's prison in Israel. Now, like hundreds of Ukrainian and Russian women with no documents or obvious forgeries, she is waiting to be sent home. ``I don't think the man who ruined my life will even be fined,'' she said softly, slow tears filling her enormous green eyes. ``You can call me a fool for coming here. That's my crime. I am stupid. A stupid girl from a little village. But can people really buy and sell women and get away with it? Sometimes I sit here and ask myself if that really happened to me, if it can really happen at all.'' Then, waving her arm toward the muddy prison yard, where Russian is spoken more commonly than Hebrew, she whispered one last thought: ``I'm not the only one, you know. They have ruined us all.'' traffic patterns: russia and ukraine supply the flesh Centered in Moscow and the Ukrainian capital, Kiev, the networks trafficking women run east to Japan and Thailand, where thousands of young Slavic women now work against their will as prostitutes, and west to the Adriatic Coast and beyond. The routes are controlled by Russian crime gangs based in Moscow. Even when they do not specifically move the women overseas, they provide security, logistical support, liaison with brothel owners in many countries and, usually, false documents. Women often start their hellish journey by choice. Seeking a better life, they are lured by local advertisements for good jobs in foreign countries at wages they could never imagine at home. In Ukraine alone, the number of women who leave is staggering. As many as 400,000 women under 30 have gone in the past decade, according to their country's Interior Ministry. The Thai Embassy in Moscow, which processes visa applications from Russia and Ukraine, says it receives nearly 1,000 visa applications a day, most of these from women. Israel is a fairly typical destination. Prostitution is not illegal here, although brothels are, and with 250,000 foreign male workers--most of whom are single or here without their wives--the demand is great. Police officials estimate that there are 25,000 paid sexual transactions every day. Brothels are ubiquitous. None of the women seem to realize the risks they run until it is too late. Once they cross the border their passports will be confiscated, their freedoms curtailed and what little money they have taken from them at once. ``You want to tell these kids that if something seems too good to be true it usually is,'' said Lyudmilla Biryuk, a Ukrainian psychologist who has counseled women who have escaped or been released from bondage. ``But you can't imagine what fear and real ignorance can do to a person.'' The women are smuggled by car, bus, boat and plane. Handed off in the dead of night, many are told they will pick oranges, work [[Page S10165]] as dancers or as waitresses. Others have decided to try their luck at prostitution, usually for what they assume will be a few lucrative months. They have no idea of the violence that awaits them. The efficient, economically brutal routine--whether here in Israel, or in one of a dozen other countries--rarely varies. Women are held in apartments, bars and makeshift brothels; there they service, by their own count, as many as 15 clients a day. Often they sleep in shifts, four to a bed. The best that most hope for is to be deported after the police finally catch up with their captors. Few ever testify. Those who do risk death. Last year in Istanbul, Turkey, according to Ukrainian police investigators, two women were thrown to their deaths from a balcony while six of their Russian friends watched. In Serbia, also last year, said a young Ukrainian woman who escaped in October, a woman who refused to work as a prostitute was beheaded in public. In Milan a week before Christmas, the police broke up a ring that was holding auctions in which women abducted from the countries of the former Soviet Union were put on blocks, partially naked, and sold at an average price of just under $1,000. ``This is happening wherever you look now,'' said Michael Platzer, the Vienna-based head of operations for the United Nations' Center for International Crime Prevention. ``The mafia is not stupid. There is less law enforcement since the Soviet Union fell apart and more freedom of movement. The earnings are incredible. The overhead is low--you don't have to buy cars and guns. Drugs you sell once and they are gone. Women can earn money for a long time.'' ``Also,'' he added, ``the laws help the gangsters. Prostitution is semilegal in many places and that makes enforcement tricky. In most cases punishment is very light.'' In some countries, Israel among them, there is not even a specific law against the sale of human beings. Mr. Platzer said that although certainly ``tens of thousands'' of women were sold into prostitution each year, he was uncomfortable with statistics since nobody involved has any reason to tell the truth. ``But if you want to use numbers,'' he said, ``think about this. Two hundred million people are victims of contemporary forms of slavery. Most aren't prostitutes, of course, but children in sweatshops, domestic workers, migrants. During four centuries, 12 million people were believed to be involved in the slave trade between Africa and the New World. The 200 million--and many of course are women who are trafficked for sex--is a current figure. It's happening now. Today.'' distress calls: far-flung victims provide few clues The distress call came from Donetsk, the bleak center of coal production in southern Ukraine. A woman was screaming on the telephone line. Her sister and a friend were prisoners in a bar somewhere near Rome. They spoke no Italian and had no way out, but had managed, briefly, to get hold of a man's cell phone. ``Do you have any idea where they are, exactly?'' asked Olga Shved, who runs La Strada in Kiev, Ukraine's new center dedicated to fighting the trafficking of women in Eastern Europe and the countries of the former Soviet Union. The woman's answer was no. Ms. Shved began searching for files and telephone numbers of the local consul, the police, anybody who could help. ``Do they know how far from Rome they are?'' she asked, her voice tightening with each word. ``What about the name of the street or bar? Anything will help,'' she said, jotting notes furiously as she spoke. ``We can get the police on this, but we need something. If they call back, tell them to give us a clue. The street number. The number of a bus that runs past. One thing is all we need.'' Ms. Shved hung up and called officials at Ukraine's Interior Ministry and the Foreign Ministry. Her conversations were short, direct and obviously a routine part of her job. That is because Ukraine--and to a lesser degree its Slavic neighbors Russia and Belarus--has replaced Thailand and the Philippines as the epicenter of the global business in trafficking women. The Ukrainian problem has been worsened by a ravaged economy, an atrophied system of law enforcement, and criminal gangs that grow more brazen each year. Young European women are in demand, and Ukraine, a country of 51 million people, has a seemingly endless supply. It is not that hard to see why. Neither Russia nor Ukraine reports accurate unemployment statistics. But even partial numbers present a clear story of chaos and economic dislocation. Federal employment statistics in Ukraine indicate that more than two-thirds of the unemployed are women. The Government also keeps another statistic: employed but not working. Those are people who technically have jobs, and can use company amenities like day-care centers and hospitals. But they do not work or get paid. Three-quarters are women. And of those who have lost their jobs since the Soviet Union dissolved in 1991, more than 80 percent are women. The average salary in Ukraine today is slightly less than $30 a month, but it is half that in the small towns that criminal gangs favor for recruiting women to work abroad. On average, there are 30 applicants for every job in most Ukrainian cities. There is no real hope; but there is freedom. In that climate, looking for work in foreign countries has increasingly become a matter of survival. ``It's no secret that the highest prices now go for the white women,'' said Marco Buffo, executive director of On the Road, an anti-trafficking organization in northern Italy. ``They are the novelty item now. It used to be Nigerians and Asians at the top of the market. Now it's the Ukrainians.'' Economics is not the only factor causing women to flee their homelands. There is also social reality. For the first time, young women in Ukraine and Russia have the right, the ability and the willpower to walk away from their parents and their hometowns. Village life is disintegrating throughout much of the former Soviet world, and youngsters are grabbing any chance they can find to save themselves. ``After the wall fell down, the Ukrainian people tried to live in the new circumstances,'' said Ms. Shved. ``It was very hard, and it gets no easier. Girls now have few and opportunities yet great freedom. They see `Pretty Woman,' or a thousand movies and ads with the same point, that somebody who is rich can save them. The glory and ease of wealth is almost the basic point of the Western advertising that we see. Here the towns are dying. What jobs there are go to men. So they leave.'' First, however, they answer ads from employment agencies promising to find them work in a foreign country. Here again, Russian crime gangs play a central role. They often recruit people through seemingly innocuous ``mail order bride'' meetings. Even when they do not, few such organizations can operate without paying off one gang or another. Sometimes want ads are almost honest, suggesting that the women earn up to $1,000 a month as ``escorts'' abroad. Often they are vague or blatantly untrue. recruiting methods: ads make offers too good to be true One typical ad used by traffickers in Kiev last year read: ``Girls: Must be single and very pretty. Young and tall. We invite you for work as models, secretaries, dancers, choreographers, gymnasts. Housing is supplied. Foreign posts available. Must apply in person.'' One young woman who did, and made it back alive, described a harrowing journey. ``I met these guys and they asked if I would work at a strip bar,'' she said. ``Why not, I thought. They said we would have to leave at once. We went by car to the Slovak Republic where they grabbed my passport. I think they got me new papers there, but threatened me if I spoke out. We made it to Vienna, then to Turkey. I was kept in a bar and I was told I owed $5,000 for my travel. I worked for three days, and on the fourth I was arrested.'' Lately, the ads have started to disappear from the main cities--where the realities of such offers are known now. These days the appeals are made in the provinces, where their success is undiminished. Most of the thousands of Ukrainian women who go abroad each year are illegal immigrants who do not work in the sex business. Often they apply for a legal visa--to dance, or work in a bar--and then stay after it expires. Many go to Turkey and Germany, where Russian crime groups are particularly powerful. Israeli leaders say that Russian women--they tend to refer to all women from the former Soviet Union as Russian--disappear off tour boats every day. Officials in Italy estimate that at least 30,000 Ukrainian women are employed illegally there now. Most are domestic workers, but a growing number are prostitutes, some of them having been promised work as domestics only to find out their jobs were a lie. Part of the problem became clear in a two-year study recently concluded by the Washington-based nonprofit group Global Survival Network: police officials in many countries just don't care. The network, after undercover interviews with gangsters, pimps and corrupt officials, found that local police forces-- often those best able to prevent trafficking--are least interested in helping. Gillian Caldwell of Global Survival Network has been deeply involved in the study. ``In Tokyo,'' she said, ``a sympathetic senator arranged a meeting for us with senior police officials to discuss the growing prevalence of trafficking from Russia into Japan. The police insisted it wasn't a problem, and they didn't even want the concrete information we could have provided. That didn't surprise local relief agencies, who cited instances in which police had actually sold trafficked women back to the criminal networks which had enslaved them.'' official reactions: best-placed to help, but least inclined Complacency among police agencies is not uncommon. ``Women's groups want to blow this all out of proportion,'' said Gennadi V. Lepenko, chief of Kiev's branch of Interpol, the international police agency. ``Perhaps this was a problem a few years ago. But it's under control now.'' That is not the view at Ukraine's Parliament--which is trying to pass new laws to protect young women--or at the Interior Ministry. ``We have a very serious problem here and we are simply not equipped to solve it by ourselves,'' said Mikhail Lebed, chief of criminal investigations for the Ukrainian Interior Ministry. ``It is a human tragedy, but [[Page S10166]] also, frankly, a national crisis. Gangsters make more from these women in a week than we have in our law enforcement budget for the whole year. To be honest, unless we get some help we are not going to stop it.'' But solutions will not be simple. Criminal gangs risk little by ferrying women out of the country; indeed, many of the women go voluntarily. Laws are vague, cooperation between countries rare and punishment of traffickers almost nonexistent. Without work or much hope of a future at home, an eager teenager will find it hard to believe that the promise of a job in Italy, Turkey or Israel is almost certain to be worthless. ``I answered an ad to be a waitress,'' said Tamara, 19, a Ukrainian prostitute in a massage parlor near Tel Aviv's old Central Bus Station, a Russian-language ghetto for the cheapest brothels. ``I'm not sure I would go back now if I could. What would I do there, stand on a bread line or work in a factory for no wages?'' Tamara, like all other such women interviewed for this article, asked that her full name not be published. She has classic Slavic features, with long blond hair and deep green eyes. She turned several potential customers away so she could speak at length with a reporter. She was willing to talk as along as her boss was out. She said she was not watched closely while she remained within the garish confines of the ``health club.'' ``I didn't plan to do this,'' she said, looking sourly at the rich red walls and leopard prints around her. ``They took my passport, so I don't have much choice. But they do give me money. And believe me, it's better than anything I could ever get at home.'' * * * * * Mr. BROWNBACK. Mr. President, Irina's story is told all too often and is reenacted all too often around the world today. Our Government estimates that between 600,000 and 2 million women are trafficked each year beyond international borders. They are trafficked for the purpose of sexual prostitution by organized crime units and groups that are aggressively out making money off the trafficking of human flesh. It is wrong. This bill seeks to deal with that wrong and that tragedy that has occurred and is occurring around the world today. This is significant human rights legislation that this body is going to pass. I hope, predict, and pray that it will pass today. It is significant human rights legislation for those poor young victims who are trafficked and who are caught sometimes with the view that, ``I am just stupid, I got caught in this,'' but who live this horrible, hellish life they have been put into and trafficked into and can't find their way out. The conference report is entitled ``The Victims of Trafficking and Violence Protection Act of 2000.'' As I mentioned previously, it passed the House of Representatives on Friday, October 6, by a vote of 371-1. The Senate will vote on this conference report today, with the lead underlying bill being the Brownback-Wellstone anti-trafficking legislation. Senator Wellstone and I have been working for the last year on this legislation, which is a companion to the Smith-Gejdenson bill in the House known as the Trafficking Victims Protection Act of 2000. I want to thank and recognize my staff, Sharon Payt and Karen Knutson, two people who have worked tirelessly and endlessly to deal with this particular issue. Our anti-trafficking bill is the first complete legislation to address the growing practice of international ``trafficking'' worldwide. This is one of the largest manifestations of modern-day slavery internationally. Notably, this legislation is the most significant human rights bill of the 106th Congress, if passed today, as hoped for. This is also the largest anti-slavery bill that the United States has adopted since 1865 and the demise of slavery at the end of the Civil War. Therefore, I greatly anticipate this vote today in the Senate on this legislation. Senator Wellstone's and my trafficking bill, which passed in the Senate on July 27 of this year, was conferenced to reconcile the differences with the House bill, and the conference report was filed on October 5, Thursday, of last week. The final conference package contains four additional pieces of legislation which are substantially appropriate to our bill. Most significant among those bill amendments is the Violence Against Women Act, known as VAWA, which provides relief and assistance to those who suffer domestic violence in America. Thus, the additional four bills included in this conference report include the Violence Against Women Act. This is a reauthorization of the initial bill which was passed in 1994 as part of the Omnibus Crime Control Act; this legislation renews several grant programs to assist law enforcement officers, social service providers, and others dealing with sexual crime and domestic violence. Also in this package is Aimee's law, which provides for interstate compensation for the costs of incarceration of early-release sex offenders who commit another sex crime in a second State. It is based on the circumstances of what happened in a Pennsylvania case where a murderer was released early out of a Nevada prison, went to Pennsylvania, and kidnapped and brutally raped and murdered a young girl there who was in the very flower of life and coming forth. This law is built upon that terrible crime that took place in Pennsylvania. Also in this package is the 21st Amendment Enforcement Act, which allows for State attorneys general to enforce their State alcohol control laws in Federal court, including laws prohibiting sales to minors, which strengthens the grant of authority to States under the 21st amendment to the Constitution; and the Justice for Victims of Terrorism Act, which authorizes the payment of foreign seized assets to American victims of international terrorism. The last step to adopting this legislative package in Congress rests with the Senate today. Before I continue describing this urgently needed legislation, I would like to take a few moments to thank some key people who have brought us to this point today. Some of them are in the Galleries as I speak. They are people of heart, courage, and intelligence whose advocacy made a way for this bill--whose dedication pried open the doors and let the light shine into this darkness. Among them is Senator Wellstone who started this work long before I came on board. He and his wife, most notably, 3 years ago started advocating on this particular issue. I know he stands firmly and strongly today as one of the principal advocates to set this aside, and he brought this forward and seeks to go forward from here to help those who are victims of these crimes. I also thank Congressmen Chris Smith and Sam Gejdenson. I would also like to thank Gary Haugen of the International Justice Mission and Dr. Laura Lederter of the Protect Project at Johns Hopkins University. Dr. Laura Lederter of the Protect Project at Johns Hopkins University is the foremost authority in the country on tracking from where and to where these victims are trafficked. I have up here one of the maps she introduced of women who have been trafficked out of Russia and Ukraine with the fall of the Soviet Union. With the increased travel out of there to freedom, we have seen a huge amount of trafficking also taking place. These are the routes out of Russia and Ukraine and where they go--to Canada, to the United States, to Mexico, to Europe, to Africa and Asia, to Australia and New Zealand. This is the work of her project. I also want to thank Michael Horowitz of the Hudson Institute, and Gloria Steinem, whom I am not noted to thank, is part of this coalition; Chuck Colson, Jessica Neuworth, William Bennett, the National Association of Evangelicals, the Southern Baptist Convention, among others I'm sure I'm forgetting. I would also like to thank the staff for both the Senate and House, including Joseph Rees, David Abramowitz, Charlotte Oldham-Moore, Jill Hickson, Mark Lagon, and my staff Karen Knutson and Sharon Payt. Thank you all. We are here today at final passage because of all your efforts. This legislation is our best opportunity to challenge the largest manifestation of slavery worldwide, known as ``trafficking.'' This practice of trafficking involves the coercive transportation of persons into slavery-like conditions, primarily involving forced prostitution, among other forms of slavery-like conditions. Trafficking is the new slavery of the world. These victims are routinely forced against their will into the sex trade, transported across international borders, and left defenseless in a foreign country. This bill also addresses the insidious practice known as ``debt bondage,'' wherein a person can be enslaved to the money lender for an entire lifetime because of a $50 debt [[Page S10167]] taken by the family for an emergency. This is a common practice in countries throughout the South Asian region. People of conscience have fought against the different manifestations of slavery for centuries. This anti-slavery legislation is in the tradition of William Wilberforce and Amy Carmichael of England, who were ardent abolitionists against different forms of slavery. Amy Carmichael was a British missionary to India at the turn of last century, in the early 1900's. Upon arrival, she was mortified to discover the routine practice of forced temple prostitution. This was and continues to be a practice wherein young girls, from age six onward, are dedicated to the local temple, and are then forced into prostitution against their will to generate income. Upon this morbid discovery, Amy Carmichael began to physically steal the young girls away from this incredibly degrading form of slavery, hiding the girls to escape the inevitable backlash of violence. Eventually, the government outlawed this practice of forced temple prostitution, as a result of her efforts. However, it bears noting that this terrible practice continues today, in a lesser degree, in rural villages throughout South Asia, including India. This bill challenges the myriad forms of slavery including sex trafficking, temple prostitution, and debt bondage, among other forms. This new phenomenon of sex trafficking is growing exponentially. Some report that it is, at least, $7 billion per year illicit trade, exceeded only by the international drug and arms trade. Its victims are enslaved into a devastating brutality against their will, with no hope for release or justice, while its perpetrators build criminal empires on this suffering with impunity. Our legislation will begin to challenge these injustices. This is the new slavery of the world, Dr. Kevin Bales of the University of Surrey in England recently testified for us before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. He astutely observed that the new slavery has a peculiar quality which does not look like the old forms associated with lifetime bondage as a chattel slave, but it is slavery nonetheless. Sex trafficking is among the most common forms of the new slavery and typically entails shorter periods of bondage, usually asking for 5 to 6 years, or whenever something like AIDS or tuberculosis is contracted, after which the victim is thrown out on the street, broken, without community or resources, left to die. I have met with people caught in that condition. Women and children are routinely forced against their will. Sex traffickers favor girls aging in the range of 10 to 13. I have a number of other things I could say, but my time is limited. I know a number of people want to speak on this bill. I ask to reserve the remainder of my time. I will turn the floor over to Senator Wellstone. I ask unanimous consent on any quorum calls that might be called during the discussion of this conference report, that time be allotted and assessed against all allocated time to speak under the bill, including myself and Senator Wellstone, along with Senator Biden, Senator Hatch, and Senator Leahy, who have all been allocated time. I ask the quorum calls be equally divided between those who have time under the bill. The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered. Mr. BROWNBACK. I finally note to others who seek to speak on this bill, I invite Members to come to the floor to make comments. At the conclusion of our presentation, a vote will occur on this conference report. I yield the floor. The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Minnesota. Mr. WELLSTONE. Mr. President, I thank the Chair. I thank my colleague, Senator Brownback, for his very gracious remarks. It has been an honor to work with him on this legislation. I think a very strong friendship has come out of this effort. There are some times when we can work and reach out and have the most interesting and I hope important coalition. Working with Senator Brownback, Sharon Payt, and Karen Knutson has been the best legislative work. At the end of the day, I believe today we will pass this legislation. Members can feel they have done something really good. They can make a positive difference. I thank Senator Brownback for his great leadership and his great work for each step along the way. In all the negotiations, all the work that has been done, the Senator has been there. I thank the Senator. I want to talk about Charlotte Oldham-Moore and Jill Hickson, who have worked with me and our staff, who have done a great job. There are other people who will be on the floor who put this together--especially the Violence Against Women Act--Senator Leahy, Senator Biden, Senator Hatch, and others, and Sam Gejdenson and Chris Smith have been phenomenal. I thank them for their yeoman work on the House side. I also thank Frank Loy and Harold Koh at the State Department for their work. The trafficking of human beings for forced prostitution and sweatshop labor is a rapidly growing human rights abuse. It is one of the greatest aspects of the globalization of the world economy. The Victims of Trafficking and Violence Protection Act of 2000 is the first piece of legislation to address the widespread practice of the trafficking of men, women, and children into sweatshop labor and sexual bondage. My wife Sheila urged me to do something about this problem several years ago. Consequently, she and I spent time with women trafficked from the Ukraine to work in brothels in Western Europe and the United States. They told us after the breakup of the Soviet Union and the ascendancy of the mob, trafficking in women and girls became a booming industry that destroyed the lives of the youngest and most vulnerable in their home countries. We began work on the bill then, and 3 years later, after extraordinary bipartisan effort, tremendous leadership from Senators Brownback and Leahy, and Sam Gejdenson and Chris Smith, and others, it passed the House with a vote of 371-1. Now it is poised to pass the Senate. Our Government estimates that 2 million people are trafficked each year. Of those, 700,000 women and children, primarily young girls, are trafficked from poor countries to rich countries and sold into slavery, raped, locked up, physically and psychologically abused, with food and health care withheld. Of those, as many as 50,000 immigrants are brought into the United States each year, and they wind up trapped in brothels, sweatshops, and other types of forced labor, abused and too fearful to seek help. Traffickers exploit the unequal status of women and girls, including harmful stereotypes of women as property and sexual objects to be bought and sold. Traffickers have also taken advantage of the demand in our country and others for cheap, unprotected labor. For the traffickers, the sale of human beings is a highly profitable, low-risk enterprise as these women are viewed as expendable and reusable commodities. Overall, profit in the trade can be staggering. It is estimated that the size of this business is $7 billion annually, only surpassed by that of the illegal arms trade. Trafficking has become a major source of new income for criminal rings. It is coldly observed that drugs are sold once while a woman or a child can be sold 10 or 20 times a day. In the United States, Thai traffickers who incarcerated Thai women and men in sweatshops in El Monte, CA, are estimated to have made $8 million in 6 years. Further, Thai traffickers who enslaved Thai women in a New York brothel made about $1.5 million over 1 year and 3 months. Last year, Albanian women were kidnapped from Kosovo refugee camps and trafficked to work in brothels in Turkey and Europe. Closer to home, organized crime has trafficked Russian and Ukranian women into sexually exploitive work in dozens of cities in the United States of America. Just next door, law enforcement authorities suspected mafia involvement in the gruesome murder of a Russian woman trafficked to Maryland. All of these cases reflect a new condition: Women whose lives have been disrupted by civil wars or fundamental changes in political geography, such as the disintegration of the Soviet Union or the violence in the Balkans, have fallen prey to traffickers. Seeking financial security, many innocent persons are lured by traffickers' [[Page S10168]] false promises of a better life and lucrative jobs abroad. Seeking this better life, they are lured by local advertisements for good jobs in foreign countries at wages they could never imagine at home. However, when they arrive, these victims are often stripped of their passports, held against their will, some in slave-like conditions, in the year 2000. Rape, intimidation, and violence are commonly employed by traffickers to control their victims and to prevent them from seeking help. Through physical isolation and psychological trauma, traffickers and brothel owners imprison women in a world of economic and sexual exploitation that imposes a constant threat of arrest and deportation, as well as violent reprisals by the traffickers themselves to whom the women must pay off ever-growing debts. That is the way this works. Many brothel owners actually prefer foreign women, women who are far from help and from home, who do not speak the language, precisely because of the ease of controlling them. Most of these women never imagined they would enter such a hellish world, having traveled abroad to find better jobs or to see the world. Many in their naivete believe nothing bad can happen to them in the rich and comfortable countries such as Switzerland or Germany or the United States. Others are less naive, but they are desperate for money and opportunity. But they are no less hurt by the trafficker's brutal grip. Trafficking rings are often run by criminals operating through nominally reputable agencies. In some cases overseas, police and immigration officials of other nations participate and benefit from the trafficking. Lack of awareness or complacency among government officials such as border control and consular offices contributes to the problem. Furthermore, traffickers are rarely punished, as official policies often inhibit victims from testifying against their traffickers, making trafficking a highly profitable, low-risk business venture for some. Trafficking abuses are occurring not just in far-off lands but here at home in America as well. The INS has discovered 250 brothels in 26 different cities which involve trafficking victims. This is from a CIA report. This is the whole problem of no punishment--being able to do this with virtual impunity. In a 1996 trafficking case involving Russian and Ukrainian women who answered ads to be au pairs, sales clerks and waitresses, and were forced to provide sexual services and live in a massage parlor in Bethesda, MD, the Russian-American massage parlor owner was fined. He entered a plea bargain and charges were dropped with the restriction that he would not operate a business again in Montgomery County. The women, who had not been paid any salary and were charged $150 for their housing, were deported or left the United States voluntarily. There was no charge at all. Teenage Mexican girls were held in slavery in Florida and the Carolinas, and they were forced to submit to prostitution. Russian and Latvian women were forced to work in nightclubs in the Midwest. According to charges filed against the traffickers, the traffickers picked the women up upon their arrival at the airport, seized their documents and return tickets, locked them in hotels and beat them. This is in our country. The women were told that if they refused to work in sexually exploitive conditions, the Russian Mafia would kill their families. Furthermore, over a 3-year period, hundreds of women from the Czech Republic who answered advertisements in Czech newspapers for modeling were ensnared in an illegal prostitution ring. Trafficking in persons for labor is an enormous problem as well. The INS has also worked on cases involving South Asian children smuggled into the United States to work in slavery-like conditions. In one case, about 100 Indian children, some of them as young as 9 or 10, were brought into New York and shuffled around the country to work in construction and restaurants--ages 9 and 10, in the United States; today, in the United States--2000. Some of the children appear to have been sold by their parents to the traffickers. In Woodbine, MD, a pastor bought Estonian children, ages 14 to 17, promising them they would attend Calvery Chapel Christian Academy, but then forcing them to clean roach-invested apartments and to do construction. The children worked 15 hours a day. The children were threatened and punishments included denial of food and being forced to stand in one spot for prolonged periods. The bitter irony is that quite often victims are punished more harshly than the traffickers because of their illegal immigration status, their serving as prostitutes, or their lack of documents, which the traffickers have confiscated in order to control the victims. A review of the trafficking cases showed that the penalties were light and did not reflect the multitude of human rights abuses perpetrated against these women. In a Los Angeles case, traffickers kidnapped a Chinese woman, raped her, forced her into prostitution, posted guards to control her movements, and burned her with cigarettes. Nevertheless, the lead defendants received 4 years and the other defendants received 2 and 3 years. That is what they received. In a tragic case involving over 70 Thai laborers who had been held against their will, systematically abused, and made to work 20-hour shifts in a sweatshop, the seven defendants received sentences ranging from 4 to 7 years with one defendant receiving 7 months. In another case where Asian women were kept physically confined for years with metal bars on the windows, guards, and an electronic monitoring system, and were forced to submit to sex with as many as 400 customers to repay their smuggling debt, the traffickers received 4 years and 9 years--in the United States of America, in the year 2000. I thank Senator Brownback for his work. It is important. A review of the trafficking cases showed that the penalties were light and they did not reflect the multitude of the human rights abuses perpetrated against these women. The statutory minimum for sale into involuntary servitude is only 10 years, whereas the maximum for dealing in small quantities of certain drugs is life. Let me repeat that. The statutory minimum for sale into involuntary servitude is only 10 years, whereas the maximum for dealing in small quantities of certain drugs is life. Few State and Federal laws are aimed directly at people who deliver or control women for the purpose of involuntary servitude or slavery in sweatshops or brothels. Consequently, prosecutors are forced to assemble cases using a hodgepodge of laws, such as document fraud and interstate commerce, and accept penalties that they believe are too light for the offense. Up until this legislation, there was no way for the prosecutors to go after these traffickers. The Victims of Violence and Trafficking Protection Act of 2000 establishes, for the first time, a bright line between the victim and the perpetrator. It punishes the perpetrator and provides a comprehensive approach to solving the root problems that create millions of trafficking victims each year. This legislation aims to prevent trafficking in persons, provide protection and assistance to those who have been trafficked, and strengthen prosecution and punishment for those who are responsible for the trafficking. It is designed to help Federal law enforcement officials expand antitrafficking efforts here and abroad, to expand domestic antitrafficking and victim assistance efforts, and to assist nongovernment organizations, governments and others worldwide, who are providing critical assistance to victims of trafficking. It addresses the underlying problems which fuel the trafficking industry by promoting public antitrafficking awareness campaigns and initiatives in other countries to enhance economic opportunity, such as microcredit lending programs and skills training, for those who are most susceptible to trafficking, and have an outreach so women and girls as young as 10 and 11 know what they might be getting into. It also increases protections and services for trafficking victims by establishing programs designed to assist in the safe reintegration of victims into their communities and ensure that such programs address both the physical and mental health needs of trafficking victims. [[Page S10169]] Imagine what it would be like to be age 12 or 13, a young girl, to go through this. We have, in Minnesota, the Center for the Treatment of Torture Victims. It is a holy place. I have had an opportunity to meet with staff and meet with many men and women who have been helped by this center. These girls, these women, have gone through the same living hell. This legislation also increases protections and services for trafficking victims by providing community support. Furthermore, the bill seeks to stop the practice--and this is so important. I am sitting next to Senator Kennedy who has done so much with the immigration work. This bill seeks to stop the practice of immediately deporting the victims back to potentially dangerous situations by providing them with some interim immigration relief. Victims of ``severe forms of trafficking,'' defined as people who were held against their will-- ``for labor or services through the use of force, fraud, or coercion for the purpose of subjection to involuntary servitude, peonage, debt bondage or slavery''--would be eligible for a special visa letting them stay in the country at least through the duration of their captors' prosecution, and perhaps permanently.*****-*****- -Name: -Payroll No. - Folios: -Date: -Subformat: Right now, if you are a Ukrainian girl or woman in a massage parlor in Bethesda, and you step forward to get some help, you are deported. The trafficker is hardly prosecuted. The victim is automatically deported. This provides temporary visa protection. I will give an example. In a 1996 trafficking case involving Russian and Ukrainian women who had answered ads to be au pairs, sales clerks, and waitresses but were forced to provide sexual services and live in a massage parlor in Bethesda, MD, 2 miles from here, the Russian American massage parlor owner was fined. He entered a plea bargain and charges were dropped with the restriction that he would not operate his business again in Montgomery County. The women, who had not been paid any salary, were forced into prostitution, and were charged for their housing, were deported. This legislation toughens current Federal trafficking penalties, criminalizing all forms of trafficking in persons and establishing punishment commensurate with the heinous nature of this crime. The bill establishes specific laws against trafficking. Violators can be sentenced to prison for 20 years to life, depending on the severity of the crime. Yes, if you are trafficking a young girl and forcing her into prostitution, you can face a life sentence. They can also be forced to make full restitution to their victims, paying them the salary that would have been due for their months or years of involuntary service. This bill requires expanded reporting on trafficking, including a separate list of countries which are not meeting minimum standards for the elimination of trafficking. It requires the President to suspend ``nonhumanitarian and nontrade'' assistance to only the worst violators on the list of countries which do not meet these minimum standards and who actively condone this human rights abuse. This is a major piece of human rights legislation. This is a major human rights bill. These are the rare governments which are openly complicit in trafficking people across their borders. It allows the Congress to monitor closely the progress of countries in their fight against trafficking, and it gives the administration flexibility to couple its diplomatic efforts to combat trafficking with targeted enforcement action. Finally, the bill provides three generous waivers. By passing the Victims of Violence and Trafficking Act today, this Chamber will take a historic step toward the elimination of trafficking in persons. Thanks to the partnership of Jewish and Evangelical groups, women and human rights organizations, and others, we will take a historic and effective step against organized crime rings and corrupt public officials who each year traffic more than 2 million people into desperate, broken lives of bondage and servitude. Something important is in the air when such a broad coalition of people, including Bill Bennett, Gloria Steinem, Rabbi David Sapperstein, Ann Jordan, and Chuck Colson work together for the passage of this legislation. I am thankful for their support, I am thankful for the support of the administration, and I am thankful for your support today in seeking to end this horrible, widespread, and growing human rights abuse. By way of conclusion, I say to my colleagues, starting with Senator Brownback, I believe with passage of this legislation--I believe it will pass today and the President will sign it--we are lighting a candle. We are lighting a candle for these women and girls and sometime men forced into forced labor. I also think because of the work of so many in the House and the Senate, this can be a piece of legislation that other governments in other parts of the world can pass as well. This is the beginning of an international effort to go after this trafficking, to go after this major, god-awful human rights abuse, this horrible exploitation of women, sometimes men, and of girls. I am very proud of this legislation. I thank my colleague from Kansas. I thank other colleagues as well. Mr. President, how much time do I have remaining? The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mr. Hagel). The Senator has 36 minutes remaining. Mr. WELLSTONE. Mr. President, I reserve the remainder of my time. The other part of this legislation that is so significant, and I know colleagues are here to speak about it, is the reauthorization of the Violence Against Women Act. I want to reserve time to speak about that very important piece of legislation. For me, to see both of these bills pass and to see it happen today is one of the best days I can have in the Senate. I yield the floor. The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Vermont. Mr. LEAHY. Mr. President, if the Senator from Massachusetts will withhold for a moment, is my understanding correct that the Senator from Vermont has 3 hours? The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator is correct. Mr. LEAHY. Mr. President, for the information of colleagues, I do not intend to use all that time. At some point, I am going to yield back a considerable amount of time. I know there are Senators on both sides of the aisle who have commitments tonight, some connected with the debates of the two parties' Presidential nominees. It is my hope we will be voting fairly early this afternoon--a vote on the Thompson point of order and final passage. I yield such time as the Senator from Massachusetts needs, and I ask unanimous consent that I then be able to yield to the Senator from California. The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered. The Senator from Massachusetts. Mr. KENNEDY. Mr. President, I greatly appreciate the absolutely splendid presentation by my friend and colleague, Senator Wellstone. I agree with him on so many issues. His statement today was one of his very best. We can certainly understand the extraordinary work he has done, along with Senator Brownback and others, to make sure this legislation is considered. All of us will forever be grateful to him for his leadership in this extremely important area. I certainly am. I thank him for an absolutely splendid presentation. Mr. President, I'm pleased that the Senate is finally about to pass the re-authorization of the Violence Against Women Act. The current authorization for the Act expired on September 30, and it has taken far too long to bring this important extension to the Senate floor. A woman is beaten every 15 seconds as a result of domestic violence. Every year, one-third of the women who are murdered are killed by their husbands or partners, and approximately one million women are stalked. Conservative estimates indicate that 60 percent of disabled women, up to 25 percent of pregnant women, and 1 out of 25 elderly people have suffered domestic violence. This isn't a problem that only affects adults. Each year, 3.3 million children are exposed to domestic violence. In homes where abuse of women occurs, children are 1,500 times more likely to be abused as well. Whether they witness the violence or are actually assaulted by the abuser, many children learn shocking behavior from adults. 12 percent of high school dating couples [[Page S10170]] have suffered abuse in their relationships, and often these teenagers are themselves victims of abuse at home. Eighteen year-old Tanyaliz Torres and her mother were stabbed to death by her father in Springfield, Massachusetts. Fifty-eight-year-old Mabel Greineder of Wellesley, Massachusetts was stabbed and bludgeoned to death by her husband. From October 1999 through September 2000, 24 Massachusetts women and children were killed as a result of domestic violence. It is a national epidemic that touches every community in the country. The Violence Against Women Act was enacted in 1994 to address this problem and provide greater safety and peace of mind for millions of women and their families. The act creates a partnership between the public sector and the private sector at every level--Federal, State, and local. Its goal is to establish a safety net of new programs and policies, including community-based services for victims, a National Domestic Violence Hotline, needed technological assistance, and larger numbers of well-trained law enforcement officers and prosecutors. The national Hotline gives women across the country immediate access to the help they need. Since its initiation in 1996, it has received over 500,000 calls. When a Spanish-speaking woman in Arizona needed shelter for herself and her three children, the Hotline called a shelter in Phoenix, found a Spanish-speaking counselor, and gave the caller the counselor's name and directions to the shelter. In the countless cases, the Hotline is an invaluable resource, and we must do all we can to support it. In Massachusetts, $20 million under the Violence Against Women Act has been awarded to advocacy organizations, law enforcement personnel, and State and local governments. The Wampanoag Tribe of Gay Head received funding to develop and strengthen tribal justice strategies to remedy violent crimes against Indian women and to develop and strengthen services for victims. The act also supports HarborCOV--Harbor Communities Overcoming Violence--a Massachusetts program serving Chelsea and Greater Boston. In addition to its core services, HarborCOV has an economic development component which helps survivors move from welfare to work. Employment training and employment referrals are also provided to help domestic violence victims find jobs. The reauthorization will ensure that support for these programs and others will continue. It also includes important new measures, such as transitional housing assistance and a $175 million authorization for shelters, which will be significant additional tools in the battle against domestic violence. One of the most important provisions in the bill is the Battered Immigrant Protection Act. This provision helps battered immigrants by restoring access to a variety of legal protections undermined by the 1996 immigration laws. The Violence Against Women Act passed in 1994 included provisions that allowed battered immigrants to apply for legal status without the cooperation of their abusers, and enabled victims to seek protective orders and cooperate with law enforcement officials to prosecute crimes of domestic violence. Unfortunately, the subsequent changes in immigration laws have reduced access to those protections. Thousands of battered immigrants are again being forced to remain in abusive relationships, out of fear of being deported or losing their children. The pending bill removes obstacles currently hindering the ability of battered immigrants to escape domestic violence safely and prosecute their abusers. It restores and expands vital legal protections like 245(i) relief. This provision will assist battered immigrants, like Donna, who have been in legal limbo since the passage of the 1996 immigration laws. Donna, a national of Ethiopia, fled to the U.S. in 1992 after her father, a member of a prominent political party, was murdered. In 1994, Donna met Saul, a lawful permanent resident and native of Ethiopia. They married and moved to Saul's home in Massachusetts. Two years later, Saul began drinking heavily and gradually became physically and verbally abusive. The abuse escalated and Donna was forced to flee from their home. She moved in with close family friends who helped her seek counseling. She also filed a petition for permanent residence under the provisions of the Violence Against Women Act. Unfortunately, with the elimination of 245(i), the only way for Donna to obtain her green card is to return to Ethiopia, the country where her father was murdered. The possibility of returning there terrifies her. This legislation will enable her to obtain her green card here, where she has the support and protection of family and access to the domestic violence counseling she needs. Under this act, battered immigrants will also have up to one year from the entry of an order of removal to file motions to reopen prior deportation orders. The Attorney General may waive the one year deadline on the basis of extraordinary circumstances or hardship to the battered immigrant's child. This Act will also expand remedies for battered immigrants living abroad with spouses and parents serving in the United States military or other federal positions. Current law only allows battered immigrants residing in the United States to request this relief. This bill will make it easier for these immigrants and their children to escape abusive relationships and obtain the help they deserve. The legislation also grants the Attorney General the discretion to waive certain bars to immigration relief for qualified applicants. For example, battered immigrant women acting in self-defense are often convicted of domestic violence crimes. Under the 1996 immigration law, they became deportable and are denied relief under the Violence Against Women Act. The Attorney General will be able to use the waiver authority to help battered immigrants who otherwise qualify for relief. Also, recently divorced battered immigrants will be able to file self-petitions. Current law allows only battered immigrant women currently married to their abusive spouses to qualify for relief. As a result, many abusers have successfully rushed to the court house to obtain divorces, in order to deny relief to their immigrant spouse. This provision will prevent this unfair result and ensure that victims are not wrongly deprived of the legal protection they need. These and ot

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TRAFFICKING VICTIMS PROTECTION ACT OF 2000--CONFERENCE REPORT
(Senate - October 11, 2000)

Text of this article available as: TXT PDF [Pages S10164-S10188] TRAFFICKING VICTIMS PROTECTION ACT OF 2000--CONFERENCE REPORT The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senate will now proceed to the conference report accompanying H.R. 3244. The clerk will report the conference report. The legislative clerk read as follows: The Committee of Conference on the disagreeing votes of the two Houses on the amendment of the Senate on the bill, H.R. 3244, an act to combat trafficking of persons, especially into the sex trade, slavery, and slavery-like conditions, in the United States and countries around the world through prevention, through prosecution and enforcement against traffickers, and through protection and assistance to victims of trafficking, having met, have agreed that the House recede from its disagreement to the amendment of the Senate, and agree to the same with an amendment, and the Senate agree to the same, signed by a majority of the conferees on the part of both Houses. The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senate will proceed to the consideration of the conference report. (The report was printed in the House proceedings of the Record of October 5, 2000.) The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Kansas is recognized. Mr. BROWNBACK. Mr. President, I believe under the uniform unanimous consent agreement that we have, time has been allocated to several different Members of the Senate to speak on this conference report; is that correct? The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator is correct. Mr. BROWNBACK. Mr. President, let me start this debate and discussion with the story of Irina. Irina's story appeared in the New York Times not that long ago, and it is similar to the story of a number of women with whom I have met and who have been caught in this situation of sex trafficking--young ladies I met with in Nepal, and several testified in committee. I think Irina's story tells in graphic detail why this is a problem and why the Senate needs to act. Irina always assumed that her beauty would somehow rescue her from the poverty and hopelessness of village life. A few months ago, after answering a vague ad in a small Ukrainian newspaper, she slipped off a tour boat when it put in at Haifa, hoping to make a bundle dancing naked on the tops of tables. She was 21, self-assured and glad to be out of Ukraine. Israel offered a new world, and for a week or two everything seemed possible. Then, one morning, she was driven to a brothel, where her boss burned her passport before her eyes. ``I own you,'' she recalled his saying. ``You are my property and you will work until you earn your way out. Don't try to leave. You have no papers and you don't speak Hebrew. You will be arrested and deported. Then we will get you and bring you back.'' That was her master. The article goes on. It happens every single day. Not just in Israel, which has deported nearly 1,500 Russian and Ukrainian women like Irina in the past three years. But throughout the world, where selling naive and desperate young women into sexual bondage has become one of the fastest-growing criminal enterprises in the robust global economy. . . . Many end up like Irina. Stunned and outraged by the sudden order to prostitute herself, she simply refused. She was beaten and raped before she succumbed. Finally she got a break. The brothel was raided and she was brought here [to another place], the only women's prison in Israel. Now, like hundreds of Ukrainian and Russian women with no documents or obvious forgeries, she is waiting to be sent home. This is a quote from Irina: ``I don't think the man who ruined my life will even be fined,'' she said softly, slow tears filling her enormous green eyes. ``You can call me a fool for coming here. That's my crime. I am stupid. A stupid girl from a little village. But can people really buy and sell women and get away with it? Sometimes I sit here and ask myself if that really happened to me, if it can really happen at all.'' Then, waving her arm toward a muddy prison yard, where Russian is spoken more commonly than Hebrew, she whispered one last thought: ``I am not the only one, you know. They have ruined us all.'' I ask unanimous consent to have printed in the Record the full text of this article. There being no objection, the material was ordered to be printed in the Record, as follows: Traffickers' New Cargo: Naive Slavic Women (By Michael Specter) Ramle, Israel.--Irina always assumed that her beauty would somehow rescue her from the poverty and hopelessness of village life. A few months ago, after answering a vague ad in a small Ukrainian newspaper, she slipped off a tour boat when it put in at Haifa, hoping to make a bundle dancing naked on the tops of tables. She was 21, self-assured and glad to be out of Ukraine. Israel offered a new world, and for a week or two everything seemed possible. Then, one morning, she was driven to a brothel, where her boss burned her passport before her eyes. ``I own you,'' she recalled his saying. ``You are my property and you will work until you earn your way out. Don't try to leave. You have no papers and you don't speak Hebrew. You will be arrested and deported. Then we will get you and bring you back.'' It happens every single day. Not just in Israel, which has deported nearly 1,500 Russian and Ukrainian women like Irina in the past three years. But throughout the world, where selling naive and desperate young women into sexual bondage has become one of the fastest-growing criminal enterprises in the robust global economy. The international bazaar for women is hardly new, of course. Asians have been its basic commodity for decades. But economic hopelessness in the Slavic world has opened what experts call the most lucrative market of all to criminal gangs that have flourished since the fall of Communism: white women with little to sustain them but their dreams. Pimps, law enforcement officials and relief groups all agree that Ukrainian and Russian women are now the most valuable in the trade. Because their immigration is often illegal--and because some percentage of the women choose to work as prostitutes-- statistics are difficult to assess. But the United Nations estimates that four million people throughout the world are trafficked each year--forced through lies and coercion to work against their will in many types of servitude. The International Organization for Migration has said that as many as 500,000 women are annually trafficked into Western Europe alone. Many end up like Irina. Stunned and outraged by the sudden order to prostitute herself, she simply refused. She was beaten and raped before she succumbed. Finally she got a break. The brothel was raided and she was brought here to Neve Tirtsa in Ramle, the only women's prison in Israel. Now, like hundreds of Ukrainian and Russian women with no documents or obvious forgeries, she is waiting to be sent home. ``I don't think the man who ruined my life will even be fined,'' she said softly, slow tears filling her enormous green eyes. ``You can call me a fool for coming here. That's my crime. I am stupid. A stupid girl from a little village. But can people really buy and sell women and get away with it? Sometimes I sit here and ask myself if that really happened to me, if it can really happen at all.'' Then, waving her arm toward the muddy prison yard, where Russian is spoken more commonly than Hebrew, she whispered one last thought: ``I'm not the only one, you know. They have ruined us all.'' traffic patterns: russia and ukraine supply the flesh Centered in Moscow and the Ukrainian capital, Kiev, the networks trafficking women run east to Japan and Thailand, where thousands of young Slavic women now work against their will as prostitutes, and west to the Adriatic Coast and beyond. The routes are controlled by Russian crime gangs based in Moscow. Even when they do not specifically move the women overseas, they provide security, logistical support, liaison with brothel owners in many countries and, usually, false documents. Women often start their hellish journey by choice. Seeking a better life, they are lured by local advertisements for good jobs in foreign countries at wages they could never imagine at home. In Ukraine alone, the number of women who leave is staggering. As many as 400,000 women under 30 have gone in the past decade, according to their country's Interior Ministry. The Thai Embassy in Moscow, which processes visa applications from Russia and Ukraine, says it receives nearly 1,000 visa applications a day, most of these from women. Israel is a fairly typical destination. Prostitution is not illegal here, although brothels are, and with 250,000 foreign male workers--most of whom are single or here without their wives--the demand is great. Police officials estimate that there are 25,000 paid sexual transactions every day. Brothels are ubiquitous. None of the women seem to realize the risks they run until it is too late. Once they cross the border their passports will be confiscated, their freedoms curtailed and what little money they have taken from them at once. ``You want to tell these kids that if something seems too good to be true it usually is,'' said Lyudmilla Biryuk, a Ukrainian psychologist who has counseled women who have escaped or been released from bondage. ``But you can't imagine what fear and real ignorance can do to a person.'' The women are smuggled by car, bus, boat and plane. Handed off in the dead of night, many are told they will pick oranges, work [[Page S10165]] as dancers or as waitresses. Others have decided to try their luck at prostitution, usually for what they assume will be a few lucrative months. They have no idea of the violence that awaits them. The efficient, economically brutal routine--whether here in Israel, or in one of a dozen other countries--rarely varies. Women are held in apartments, bars and makeshift brothels; there they service, by their own count, as many as 15 clients a day. Often they sleep in shifts, four to a bed. The best that most hope for is to be deported after the police finally catch up with their captors. Few ever testify. Those who do risk death. Last year in Istanbul, Turkey, according to Ukrainian police investigators, two women were thrown to their deaths from a balcony while six of their Russian friends watched. In Serbia, also last year, said a young Ukrainian woman who escaped in October, a woman who refused to work as a prostitute was beheaded in public. In Milan a week before Christmas, the police broke up a ring that was holding auctions in which women abducted from the countries of the former Soviet Union were put on blocks, partially naked, and sold at an average price of just under $1,000. ``This is happening wherever you look now,'' said Michael Platzer, the Vienna-based head of operations for the United Nations' Center for International Crime Prevention. ``The mafia is not stupid. There is less law enforcement since the Soviet Union fell apart and more freedom of movement. The earnings are incredible. The overhead is low--you don't have to buy cars and guns. Drugs you sell once and they are gone. Women can earn money for a long time.'' ``Also,'' he added, ``the laws help the gangsters. Prostitution is semilegal in many places and that makes enforcement tricky. In most cases punishment is very light.'' In some countries, Israel among them, there is not even a specific law against the sale of human beings. Mr. Platzer said that although certainly ``tens of thousands'' of women were sold into prostitution each year, he was uncomfortable with statistics since nobody involved has any reason to tell the truth. ``But if you want to use numbers,'' he said, ``think about this. Two hundred million people are victims of contemporary forms of slavery. Most aren't prostitutes, of course, but children in sweatshops, domestic workers, migrants. During four centuries, 12 million people were believed to be involved in the slave trade between Africa and the New World. The 200 million--and many of course are women who are trafficked for sex--is a current figure. It's happening now. Today.'' distress calls: far-flung victims provide few clues The distress call came from Donetsk, the bleak center of coal production in southern Ukraine. A woman was screaming on the telephone line. Her sister and a friend were prisoners in a bar somewhere near Rome. They spoke no Italian and had no way out, but had managed, briefly, to get hold of a man's cell phone. ``Do you have any idea where they are, exactly?'' asked Olga Shved, who runs La Strada in Kiev, Ukraine's new center dedicated to fighting the trafficking of women in Eastern Europe and the countries of the former Soviet Union. The woman's answer was no. Ms. Shved began searching for files and telephone numbers of the local consul, the police, anybody who could help. ``Do they know how far from Rome they are?'' she asked, her voice tightening with each word. ``What about the name of the street or bar? Anything will help,'' she said, jotting notes furiously as she spoke. ``We can get the police on this, but we need something. If they call back, tell them to give us a clue. The street number. The number of a bus that runs past. One thing is all we need.'' Ms. Shved hung up and called officials at Ukraine's Interior Ministry and the Foreign Ministry. Her conversations were short, direct and obviously a routine part of her job. That is because Ukraine--and to a lesser degree its Slavic neighbors Russia and Belarus--has replaced Thailand and the Philippines as the epicenter of the global business in trafficking women. The Ukrainian problem has been worsened by a ravaged economy, an atrophied system of law enforcement, and criminal gangs that grow more brazen each year. Young European women are in demand, and Ukraine, a country of 51 million people, has a seemingly endless supply. It is not that hard to see why. Neither Russia nor Ukraine reports accurate unemployment statistics. But even partial numbers present a clear story of chaos and economic dislocation. Federal employment statistics in Ukraine indicate that more than two-thirds of the unemployed are women. The Government also keeps another statistic: employed but not working. Those are people who technically have jobs, and can use company amenities like day-care centers and hospitals. But they do not work or get paid. Three-quarters are women. And of those who have lost their jobs since the Soviet Union dissolved in 1991, more than 80 percent are women. The average salary in Ukraine today is slightly less than $30 a month, but it is half that in the small towns that criminal gangs favor for recruiting women to work abroad. On average, there are 30 applicants for every job in most Ukrainian cities. There is no real hope; but there is freedom. In that climate, looking for work in foreign countries has increasingly become a matter of survival. ``It's no secret that the highest prices now go for the white women,'' said Marco Buffo, executive director of On the Road, an anti-trafficking organization in northern Italy. ``They are the novelty item now. It used to be Nigerians and Asians at the top of the market. Now it's the Ukrainians.'' Economics is not the only factor causing women to flee their homelands. There is also social reality. For the first time, young women in Ukraine and Russia have the right, the ability and the willpower to walk away from their parents and their hometowns. Village life is disintegrating throughout much of the former Soviet world, and youngsters are grabbing any chance they can find to save themselves. ``After the wall fell down, the Ukrainian people tried to live in the new circumstances,'' said Ms. Shved. ``It was very hard, and it gets no easier. Girls now have few and opportunities yet great freedom. They see `Pretty Woman,' or a thousand movies and ads with the same point, that somebody who is rich can save them. The glory and ease of wealth is almost the basic point of the Western advertising that we see. Here the towns are dying. What jobs there are go to men. So they leave.'' First, however, they answer ads from employment agencies promising to find them work in a foreign country. Here again, Russian crime gangs play a central role. They often recruit people through seemingly innocuous ``mail order bride'' meetings. Even when they do not, few such organizations can operate without paying off one gang or another. Sometimes want ads are almost honest, suggesting that the women earn up to $1,000 a month as ``escorts'' abroad. Often they are vague or blatantly untrue. recruiting methods: ads make offers too good to be true One typical ad used by traffickers in Kiev last year read: ``Girls: Must be single and very pretty. Young and tall. We invite you for work as models, secretaries, dancers, choreographers, gymnasts. Housing is supplied. Foreign posts available. Must apply in person.'' One young woman who did, and made it back alive, described a harrowing journey. ``I met these guys and they asked if I would work at a strip bar,'' she said. ``Why not, I thought. They said we would have to leave at once. We went by car to the Slovak Republic where they grabbed my passport. I think they got me new papers there, but threatened me if I spoke out. We made it to Vienna, then to Turkey. I was kept in a bar and I was told I owed $5,000 for my travel. I worked for three days, and on the fourth I was arrested.'' Lately, the ads have started to disappear from the main cities--where the realities of such offers are known now. These days the appeals are made in the provinces, where their success is undiminished. Most of the thousands of Ukrainian women who go abroad each year are illegal immigrants who do not work in the sex business. Often they apply for a legal visa--to dance, or work in a bar--and then stay after it expires. Many go to Turkey and Germany, where Russian crime groups are particularly powerful. Israeli leaders say that Russian women--they tend to refer to all women from the former Soviet Union as Russian--disappear off tour boats every day. Officials in Italy estimate that at least 30,000 Ukrainian women are employed illegally there now. Most are domestic workers, but a growing number are prostitutes, some of them having been promised work as domestics only to find out their jobs were a lie. Part of the problem became clear in a two-year study recently concluded by the Washington-based nonprofit group Global Survival Network: police officials in many countries just don't care. The network, after undercover interviews with gangsters, pimps and corrupt officials, found that local police forces-- often those best able to prevent trafficking--are least interested in helping. Gillian Caldwell of Global Survival Network has been deeply involved in the study. ``In Tokyo,'' she said, ``a sympathetic senator arranged a meeting for us with senior police officials to discuss the growing prevalence of trafficking from Russia into Japan. The police insisted it wasn't a problem, and they didn't even want the concrete information we could have provided. That didn't surprise local relief agencies, who cited instances in which police had actually sold trafficked women back to the criminal networks which had enslaved them.'' official reactions: best-placed to help, but least inclined Complacency among police agencies is not uncommon. ``Women's groups want to blow this all out of proportion,'' said Gennadi V. Lepenko, chief of Kiev's branch of Interpol, the international police agency. ``Perhaps this was a problem a few years ago. But it's under control now.'' That is not the view at Ukraine's Parliament--which is trying to pass new laws to protect young women--or at the Interior Ministry. ``We have a very serious problem here and we are simply not equipped to solve it by ourselves,'' said Mikhail Lebed, chief of criminal investigations for the Ukrainian Interior Ministry. ``It is a human tragedy, but [[Page S10166]] also, frankly, a national crisis. Gangsters make more from these women in a week than we have in our law enforcement budget for the whole year. To be honest, unless we get some help we are not going to stop it.'' But solutions will not be simple. Criminal gangs risk little by ferrying women out of the country; indeed, many of the women go voluntarily. Laws are vague, cooperation between countries rare and punishment of traffickers almost nonexistent. Without work or much hope of a future at home, an eager teenager will find it hard to believe that the promise of a job in Italy, Turkey or Israel is almost certain to be worthless. ``I answered an ad to be a waitress,'' said Tamara, 19, a Ukrainian prostitute in a massage parlor near Tel Aviv's old Central Bus Station, a Russian-language ghetto for the cheapest brothels. ``I'm not sure I would go back now if I could. What would I do there, stand on a bread line or work in a factory for no wages?'' Tamara, like all other such women interviewed for this article, asked that her full name not be published. She has classic Slavic features, with long blond hair and deep green eyes. She turned several potential customers away so she could speak at length with a reporter. She was willing to talk as along as her boss was out. She said she was not watched closely while she remained within the garish confines of the ``health club.'' ``I didn't plan to do this,'' she said, looking sourly at the rich red walls and leopard prints around her. ``They took my passport, so I don't have much choice. But they do give me money. And believe me, it's better than anything I could ever get at home.'' * * * * * Mr. BROWNBACK. Mr. President, Irina's story is told all too often and is reenacted all too often around the world today. Our Government estimates that between 600,000 and 2 million women are trafficked each year beyond international borders. They are trafficked for the purpose of sexual prostitution by organized crime units and groups that are aggressively out making money off the trafficking of human flesh. It is wrong. This bill seeks to deal with that wrong and that tragedy that has occurred and is occurring around the world today. This is significant human rights legislation that this body is going to pass. I hope, predict, and pray that it will pass today. It is significant human rights legislation for those poor young victims who are trafficked and who are caught sometimes with the view that, ``I am just stupid, I got caught in this,'' but who live this horrible, hellish life they have been put into and trafficked into and can't find their way out. The conference report is entitled ``The Victims of Trafficking and Violence Protection Act of 2000.'' As I mentioned previously, it passed the House of Representatives on Friday, October 6, by a vote of 371-1. The Senate will vote on this conference report today, with the lead underlying bill being the Brownback-Wellstone anti-trafficking legislation. Senator Wellstone and I have been working for the last year on this legislation, which is a companion to the Smith-Gejdenson bill in the House known as the Trafficking Victims Protection Act of 2000. I want to thank and recognize my staff, Sharon Payt and Karen Knutson, two people who have worked tirelessly and endlessly to deal with this particular issue. Our anti-trafficking bill is the first complete legislation to address the growing practice of international ``trafficking'' worldwide. This is one of the largest manifestations of modern-day slavery internationally. Notably, this legislation is the most significant human rights bill of the 106th Congress, if passed today, as hoped for. This is also the largest anti-slavery bill that the United States has adopted since 1865 and the demise of slavery at the end of the Civil War. Therefore, I greatly anticipate this vote today in the Senate on this legislation. Senator Wellstone's and my trafficking bill, which passed in the Senate on July 27 of this year, was conferenced to reconcile the differences with the House bill, and the conference report was filed on October 5, Thursday, of last week. The final conference package contains four additional pieces of legislation which are substantially appropriate to our bill. Most significant among those bill amendments is the Violence Against Women Act, known as VAWA, which provides relief and assistance to those who suffer domestic violence in America. Thus, the additional four bills included in this conference report include the Violence Against Women Act. This is a reauthorization of the initial bill which was passed in 1994 as part of the Omnibus Crime Control Act; this legislation renews several grant programs to assist law enforcement officers, social service providers, and others dealing with sexual crime and domestic violence. Also in this package is Aimee's law, which provides for interstate compensation for the costs of incarceration of early-release sex offenders who commit another sex crime in a second State. It is based on the circumstances of what happened in a Pennsylvania case where a murderer was released early out of a Nevada prison, went to Pennsylvania, and kidnapped and brutally raped and murdered a young girl there who was in the very flower of life and coming forth. This law is built upon that terrible crime that took place in Pennsylvania. Also in this package is the 21st Amendment Enforcement Act, which allows for State attorneys general to enforce their State alcohol control laws in Federal court, including laws prohibiting sales to minors, which strengthens the grant of authority to States under the 21st amendment to the Constitution; and the Justice for Victims of Terrorism Act, which authorizes the payment of foreign seized assets to American victims of international terrorism. The last step to adopting this legislative package in Congress rests with the Senate today. Before I continue describing this urgently needed legislation, I would like to take a few moments to thank some key people who have brought us to this point today. Some of them are in the Galleries as I speak. They are people of heart, courage, and intelligence whose advocacy made a way for this bill--whose dedication pried open the doors and let the light shine into this darkness. Among them is Senator Wellstone who started this work long before I came on board. He and his wife, most notably, 3 years ago started advocating on this particular issue. I know he stands firmly and strongly today as one of the principal advocates to set this aside, and he brought this forward and seeks to go forward from here to help those who are victims of these crimes. I also thank Congressmen Chris Smith and Sam Gejdenson. I would also like to thank Gary Haugen of the International Justice Mission and Dr. Laura Lederter of the Protect Project at Johns Hopkins University. Dr. Laura Lederter of the Protect Project at Johns Hopkins University is the foremost authority in the country on tracking from where and to where these victims are trafficked. I have up here one of the maps she introduced of women who have been trafficked out of Russia and Ukraine with the fall of the Soviet Union. With the increased travel out of there to freedom, we have seen a huge amount of trafficking also taking place. These are the routes out of Russia and Ukraine and where they go--to Canada, to the United States, to Mexico, to Europe, to Africa and Asia, to Australia and New Zealand. This is the work of her project. I also want to thank Michael Horowitz of the Hudson Institute, and Gloria Steinem, whom I am not noted to thank, is part of this coalition; Chuck Colson, Jessica Neuworth, William Bennett, the National Association of Evangelicals, the Southern Baptist Convention, among others I'm sure I'm forgetting. I would also like to thank the staff for both the Senate and House, including Joseph Rees, David Abramowitz, Charlotte Oldham-Moore, Jill Hickson, Mark Lagon, and my staff Karen Knutson and Sharon Payt. Thank you all. We are here today at final passage because of all your efforts. This legislation is our best opportunity to challenge the largest manifestation of slavery worldwide, known as ``trafficking.'' This practice of trafficking involves the coercive transportation of persons into slavery-like conditions, primarily involving forced prostitution, among other forms of slavery-like conditions. Trafficking is the new slavery of the world. These victims are routinely forced against their will into the sex trade, transported across international borders, and left defenseless in a foreign country. This bill also addresses the insidious practice known as ``debt bondage,'' wherein a person can be enslaved to the money lender for an entire lifetime because of a $50 debt [[Page S10167]] taken by the family for an emergency. This is a common practice in countries throughout the South Asian region. People of conscience have fought against the different manifestations of slavery for centuries. This anti-slavery legislation is in the tradition of William Wilberforce and Amy Carmichael of England, who were ardent abolitionists against different forms of slavery. Amy Carmichael was a British missionary to India at the turn of last century, in the early 1900's. Upon arrival, she was mortified to discover the routine practice of forced temple prostitution. This was and continues to be a practice wherein young girls, from age six onward, are dedicated to the local temple, and are then forced into prostitution against their will to generate income. Upon this morbid discovery, Amy Carmichael began to physically steal the young girls away from this incredibly degrading form of slavery, hiding the girls to escape the inevitable backlash of violence. Eventually, the government outlawed this practice of forced temple prostitution, as a result of her efforts. However, it bears noting that this terrible practice continues today, in a lesser degree, in rural villages throughout South Asia, including India. This bill challenges the myriad forms of slavery including sex trafficking, temple prostitution, and debt bondage, among other forms. This new phenomenon of sex trafficking is growing exponentially. Some report that it is, at least, $7 billion per year illicit trade, exceeded only by the international drug and arms trade. Its victims are enslaved into a devastating brutality against their will, with no hope for release or justice, while its perpetrators build criminal empires on this suffering with impunity. Our legislation will begin to challenge these injustices. This is the new slavery of the world, Dr. Kevin Bales of the University of Surrey in England recently testified for us before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. He astutely observed that the new slavery has a peculiar quality which does not look like the old forms associated with lifetime bondage as a chattel slave, but it is slavery nonetheless. Sex trafficking is among the most common forms of the new slavery and typically entails shorter periods of bondage, usually asking for 5 to 6 years, or whenever something like AIDS or tuberculosis is contracted, after which the victim is thrown out on the street, broken, without community or resources, left to die. I have met with people caught in that condition. Women and children are routinely forced against their will. Sex traffickers favor girls aging in the range of 10 to 13. I have a number of other things I could say, but my time is limited. I know a number of people want to speak on this bill. I ask to reserve the remainder of my time. I will turn the floor over to Senator Wellstone. I ask unanimous consent on any quorum calls that might be called during the discussion of this conference report, that time be allotted and assessed against all allocated time to speak under the bill, including myself and Senator Wellstone, along with Senator Biden, Senator Hatch, and Senator Leahy, who have all been allocated time. I ask the quorum calls be equally divided between those who have time under the bill. The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered. Mr. BROWNBACK. I finally note to others who seek to speak on this bill, I invite Members to come to the floor to make comments. At the conclusion of our presentation, a vote will occur on this conference report. I yield the floor. The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Minnesota. Mr. WELLSTONE. Mr. President, I thank the Chair. I thank my colleague, Senator Brownback, for his very gracious remarks. It has been an honor to work with him on this legislation. I think a very strong friendship has come out of this effort. There are some times when we can work and reach out and have the most interesting and I hope important coalition. Working with Senator Brownback, Sharon Payt, and Karen Knutson has been the best legislative work. At the end of the day, I believe today we will pass this legislation. Members can feel they have done something really good. They can make a positive difference. I thank Senator Brownback for his great leadership and his great work for each step along the way. In all the negotiations, all the work that has been done, the Senator has been there. I thank the Senator. I want to talk about Charlotte Oldham-Moore and Jill Hickson, who have worked with me and our staff, who have done a great job. There are other people who will be on the floor who put this together--especially the Violence Against Women Act--Senator Leahy, Senator Biden, Senator Hatch, and others, and Sam Gejdenson and Chris Smith have been phenomenal. I thank them for their yeoman work on the House side. I also thank Frank Loy and Harold Koh at the State Department for their work. The trafficking of human beings for forced prostitution and sweatshop labor is a rapidly growing human rights abuse. It is one of the greatest aspects of the globalization of the world economy. The Victims of Trafficking and Violence Protection Act of 2000 is the first piece of legislation to address the widespread practice of the trafficking of men, women, and children into sweatshop labor and sexual bondage. My wife Sheila urged me to do something about this problem several years ago. Consequently, she and I spent time with women trafficked from the Ukraine to work in brothels in Western Europe and the United States. They told us after the breakup of the Soviet Union and the ascendancy of the mob, trafficking in women and girls became a booming industry that destroyed the lives of the youngest and most vulnerable in their home countries. We began work on the bill then, and 3 years later, after extraordinary bipartisan effort, tremendous leadership from Senators Brownback and Leahy, and Sam Gejdenson and Chris Smith, and others, it passed the House with a vote of 371-1. Now it is poised to pass the Senate. Our Government estimates that 2 million people are trafficked each year. Of those, 700,000 women and children, primarily young girls, are trafficked from poor countries to rich countries and sold into slavery, raped, locked up, physically and psychologically abused, with food and health care withheld. Of those, as many as 50,000 immigrants are brought into the United States each year, and they wind up trapped in brothels, sweatshops, and other types of forced labor, abused and too fearful to seek help. Traffickers exploit the unequal status of women and girls, including harmful stereotypes of women as property and sexual objects to be bought and sold. Traffickers have also taken advantage of the demand in our country and others for cheap, unprotected labor. For the traffickers, the sale of human beings is a highly profitable, low-risk enterprise as these women are viewed as expendable and reusable commodities. Overall, profit in the trade can be staggering. It is estimated that the size of this business is $7 billion annually, only surpassed by that of the illegal arms trade. Trafficking has become a major source of new income for criminal rings. It is coldly observed that drugs are sold once while a woman or a child can be sold 10 or 20 times a day. In the United States, Thai traffickers who incarcerated Thai women and men in sweatshops in El Monte, CA, are estimated to have made $8 million in 6 years. Further, Thai traffickers who enslaved Thai women in a New York brothel made about $1.5 million over 1 year and 3 months. Last year, Albanian women were kidnapped from Kosovo refugee camps and trafficked to work in brothels in Turkey and Europe. Closer to home, organized crime has trafficked Russian and Ukranian women into sexually exploitive work in dozens of cities in the United States of America. Just next door, law enforcement authorities suspected mafia involvement in the gruesome murder of a Russian woman trafficked to Maryland. All of these cases reflect a new condition: Women whose lives have been disrupted by civil wars or fundamental changes in political geography, such as the disintegration of the Soviet Union or the violence in the Balkans, have fallen prey to traffickers. Seeking financial security, many innocent persons are lured by traffickers' [[Page S10168]] false promises of a better life and lucrative jobs abroad. Seeking this better life, they are lured by local advertisements for good jobs in foreign countries at wages they could never imagine at home. However, when they arrive, these victims are often stripped of their passports, held against their will, some in slave-like conditions, in the year 2000. Rape, intimidation, and violence are commonly employed by traffickers to control their victims and to prevent them from seeking help. Through physical isolation and psychological trauma, traffickers and brothel owners imprison women in a world of economic and sexual exploitation that imposes a constant threat of arrest and deportation, as well as violent reprisals by the traffickers themselves to whom the women must pay off ever-growing debts. That is the way this works. Many brothel owners actually prefer foreign women, women who are far from help and from home, who do not speak the language, precisely because of the ease of controlling them. Most of these women never imagined they would enter such a hellish world, having traveled abroad to find better jobs or to see the world. Many in their naivete believe nothing bad can happen to them in the rich and comfortable countries such as Switzerland or Germany or the United States. Others are less naive, but they are desperate for money and opportunity. But they are no less hurt by the trafficker's brutal grip. Trafficking rings are often run by criminals operating through nominally reputable agencies. In some cases overseas, police and immigration officials of other nations participate and benefit from the trafficking. Lack of awareness or complacency among government officials such as border control and consular offices contributes to the problem. Furthermore, traffickers are rarely punished, as official policies often inhibit victims from testifying against their traffickers, making trafficking a highly profitable, low-risk business venture for some. Trafficking abuses are occurring not just in far-off lands but here at home in America as well. The INS has discovered 250 brothels in 26 different cities which involve trafficking victims. This is from a CIA report. This is the whole problem of no punishment--being able to do this with virtual impunity. In a 1996 trafficking case involving Russian and Ukrainian women who answered ads to be au pairs, sales clerks and waitresses, and were forced to provide sexual services and live in a massage parlor in Bethesda, MD, the Russian-American massage parlor owner was fined. He entered a plea bargain and charges were dropped with the restriction that he would not operate a business again in Montgomery County. The women, who had not been paid any salary and were charged $150 for their housing, were deported or left the United States voluntarily. There was no charge at all. Teenage Mexican girls were held in slavery in Florida and the Carolinas, and they were forced to submit to prostitution. Russian and Latvian women were forced to work in nightclubs in the Midwest. According to charges filed against the traffickers, the traffickers picked the women up upon their arrival at the airport, seized their documents and return tickets, locked them in hotels and beat them. This is in our country. The women were told that if they refused to work in sexually exploitive conditions, the Russian Mafia would kill their families. Furthermore, over a 3-year period, hundreds of women from the Czech Republic who answered advertisements in Czech newspapers for modeling were ensnared in an illegal prostitution ring. Trafficking in persons for labor is an enormous problem as well. The INS has also worked on cases involving South Asian children smuggled into the United States to work in slavery-like conditions. In one case, about 100 Indian children, some of them as young as 9 or 10, were brought into New York and shuffled around the country to work in construction and restaurants--ages 9 and 10, in the United States; today, in the United States--2000. Some of the children appear to have been sold by their parents to the traffickers. In Woodbine, MD, a pastor bought Estonian children, ages 14 to 17, promising them they would attend Calvery Chapel Christian Academy, but then forcing them to clean roach-invested apartments and to do construction. The children worked 15 hours a day. The children were threatened and punishments included denial of food and being forced to stand in one spot for prolonged periods. The bitter irony is that quite often victims are punished more harshly than the traffickers because of their illegal immigration status, their serving as prostitutes, or their lack of documents, which the traffickers have confiscated in order to control the victims. A review of the trafficking cases showed that the penalties were light and did not reflect the multitude of human rights abuses perpetrated against these women. In a Los Angeles case, traffickers kidnapped a Chinese woman, raped her, forced her into prostitution, posted guards to control her movements, and burned her with cigarettes. Nevertheless, the lead defendants received 4 years and the other defendants received 2 and 3 years. That is what they received. In a tragic case involving over 70 Thai laborers who had been held against their will, systematically abused, and made to work 20-hour shifts in a sweatshop, the seven defendants received sentences ranging from 4 to 7 years with one defendant receiving 7 months. In another case where Asian women were kept physically confined for years with metal bars on the windows, guards, and an electronic monitoring system, and were forced to submit to sex with as many as 400 customers to repay their smuggling debt, the traffickers received 4 years and 9 years--in the United States of America, in the year 2000. I thank Senator Brownback for his work. It is important. A review of the trafficking cases showed that the penalties were light and they did not reflect the multitude of the human rights abuses perpetrated against these women. The statutory minimum for sale into involuntary servitude is only 10 years, whereas the maximum for dealing in small quantities of certain drugs is life. Let me repeat that. The statutory minimum for sale into involuntary servitude is only 10 years, whereas the maximum for dealing in small quantities of certain drugs is life. Few State and Federal laws are aimed directly at people who deliver or control women for the purpose of involuntary servitude or slavery in sweatshops or brothels. Consequently, prosecutors are forced to assemble cases using a hodgepodge of laws, such as document fraud and interstate commerce, and accept penalties that they believe are too light for the offense. Up until this legislation, there was no way for the prosecutors to go after these traffickers. The Victims of Violence and Trafficking Protection Act of 2000 establishes, for the first time, a bright line between the victim and the perpetrator. It punishes the perpetrator and provides a comprehensive approach to solving the root problems that create millions of trafficking victims each year. This legislation aims to prevent trafficking in persons, provide protection and assistance to those who have been trafficked, and strengthen prosecution and punishment for those who are responsible for the trafficking. It is designed to help Federal law enforcement officials expand antitrafficking efforts here and abroad, to expand domestic antitrafficking and victim assistance efforts, and to assist nongovernment organizations, governments and others worldwide, who are providing critical assistance to victims of trafficking. It addresses the underlying problems which fuel the trafficking industry by promoting public antitrafficking awareness campaigns and initiatives in other countries to enhance economic opportunity, such as microcredit lending programs and skills training, for those who are most susceptible to trafficking, and have an outreach so women and girls as young as 10 and 11 know what they might be getting into. It also increases protections and services for trafficking victims by establishing programs designed to assist in the safe reintegration of victims into their communities and ensure that such programs address both the physical and mental health needs of trafficking victims. [[Page S10169]] Imagine what it would be like to be age 12 or 13, a young girl, to go through this. We have, in Minnesota, the Center for the Treatment of Torture Victims. It is a holy place. I have had an opportunity to meet with staff and meet with many men and women who have been helped by this center. These girls, these women, have gone through the same living hell. This legislation also increases protections and services for trafficking victims by providing community support. Furthermore, the bill seeks to stop the practice--and this is so important. I am sitting next to Senator Kennedy who has done so much with the immigration work. This bill seeks to stop the practice of immediately deporting the victims back to potentially dangerous situations by providing them with some interim immigration relief. Victims of ``severe forms of trafficking,'' defined as people who were held against their will-- ``for labor or services through the use of force, fraud, or coercion for the purpose of subjection to involuntary servitude, peonage, debt bondage or slavery''--would be eligible for a special visa letting them stay in the country at least through the duration of their captors' prosecution, and perhaps permanently.*****-*****- -Name: -Payroll No. - Folios: -Date: -Subformat: Right now, if you are a Ukrainian girl or woman in a massage parlor in Bethesda, and you step forward to get some help, you are deported. The trafficker is hardly prosecuted. The victim is automatically deported. This provides temporary visa protection. I will give an example. In a 1996 trafficking case involving Russian and Ukrainian women who had answered ads to be au pairs, sales clerks, and waitresses but were forced to provide sexual services and live in a massage parlor in Bethesda, MD, 2 miles from here, the Russian American massage parlor owner was fined. He entered a plea bargain and charges were dropped with the restriction that he would not operate his business again in Montgomery County. The women, who had not been paid any salary, were forced into prostitution, and were charged for their housing, were deported. This legislation toughens current Federal trafficking penalties, criminalizing all forms of trafficking in persons and establishing punishment commensurate with the heinous nature of this crime. The bill establishes specific laws against trafficking. Violators can be sentenced to prison for 20 years to life, depending on the severity of the crime. Yes, if you are trafficking a young girl and forcing her into prostitution, you can face a life sentence. They can also be forced to make full restitution to their victims, paying them the salary that would have been due for their months or years of involuntary service. This bill requires expanded reporting on trafficking, including a separate list of countries which are not meeting minimum standards for the elimination of trafficking. It requires the President to suspend ``nonhumanitarian and nontrade'' assistance to only the worst violators on the list of countries which do not meet these minimum standards and who actively condone this human rights abuse. This is a major piece of human rights legislation. This is a major human rights bill. These are the rare governments which are openly complicit in trafficking people across their borders. It allows the Congress to monitor closely the progress of countries in their fight against trafficking, and it gives the administration flexibility to couple its diplomatic efforts to combat trafficking with targeted enforcement action. Finally, the bill provides three generous waivers. By passing the Victims of Violence and Trafficking Act today, this Chamber will take a historic step toward the elimination of trafficking in persons. Thanks to the partnership of Jewish and Evangelical groups, women and human rights organizations, and others, we will take a historic and effective step against organized crime rings and corrupt public officials who each year traffic more than 2 million people into desperate, broken lives of bondage and servitude. Something important is in the air when such a broad coalition of people, including Bill Bennett, Gloria Steinem, Rabbi David Sapperstein, Ann Jordan, and Chuck Colson work together for the passage of this legislation. I am thankful for their support, I am thankful for the support of the administration, and I am thankful for your support today in seeking to end this horrible, widespread, and growing human rights abuse. By way of conclusion, I say to my colleagues, starting with Senator Brownback, I believe with passage of this legislation--I believe it will pass today and the President will sign it--we are lighting a candle. We are lighting a candle for these women and girls and sometime men forced into forced labor. I also think because of the work of so many in the House and the Senate, this can be a piece of legislation that other governments in other parts of the world can pass as well. This is the beginning of an international effort to go after this trafficking, to go after this major, god-awful human rights abuse, this horrible exploitation of women, sometimes men, and of girls. I am very proud of this legislation. I thank my colleague from Kansas. I thank other colleagues as well. Mr. President, how much time do I have remaining? The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mr. Hagel). The Senator has 36 minutes remaining. Mr. WELLSTONE. Mr. President, I reserve the remainder of my time. The other part of this legislation that is so significant, and I know colleagues are here to speak about it, is the reauthorization of the Violence Against Women Act. I want to reserve time to speak about that very important piece of legislation. For me, to see both of these bills pass and to see it happen today is one of the best days I can have in the Senate. I yield the floor. The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Vermont. Mr. LEAHY. Mr. President, if the Senator from Massachusetts will withhold for a moment, is my understanding correct that the Senator from Vermont has 3 hours? The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator is correct. Mr. LEAHY. Mr. President, for the information of colleagues, I do not intend to use all that time. At some point, I am going to yield back a considerable amount of time. I know there are Senators on both sides of the aisle who have commitments tonight, some connected with the debates of the two parties' Presidential nominees. It is my hope we will be voting fairly early this afternoon--a vote on the Thompson point of order and final passage. I yield such time as the Senator from Massachusetts needs, and I ask unanimous consent that I then be able to yield to the Senator from California. The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered. The Senator from Massachusetts. Mr. KENNEDY. Mr. President, I greatly appreciate the absolutely splendid presentation by my friend and colleague, Senator Wellstone. I agree with him on so many issues. His statement today was one of his very best. We can certainly understand the extraordinary work he has done, along with Senator Brownback and others, to make sure this legislation is considered. All of us will forever be grateful to him for his leadership in this extremely important area. I certainly am. I thank him for an absolutely splendid presentation. Mr. President, I'm pleased that the Senate is finally about to pass the re-authorization of the Violence Against Women Act. The current authorization for the Act expired on September 30, and it has taken far too long to bring this important extension to the Senate floor. A woman is beaten every 15 seconds as a result of domestic violence. Every year, one-third of the women who are murdered are killed by their husbands or partners, and approximately one million women are stalked. Conservative estimates indicate that 60 percent of disabled women, up to 25 percent of pregnant women, and 1 out of 25 elderly people have suffered domestic violence. This isn't a problem that only affects adults. Each year, 3.3 million children are exposed to domestic violence. In homes where abuse of women occurs, children are 1,500 times more likely to be abused as well. Whether they witness the violence or are actually assaulted by the abuser, many children learn shocking behavior from adults. 12 percent of high school dating couples [[Page S10170]] have suffered abuse in their relationships, and often these teenagers are themselves victims of abuse at home. Eighteen year-old Tanyaliz Torres and her mother were stabbed to death by her father in Springfield, Massachusetts. Fifty-eight-year-old Mabel Greineder of Wellesley, Massachusetts was stabbed and bludgeoned to death by her husband. From October 1999 through September 2000, 24 Massachusetts women and children were killed as a result of domestic violence. It is a national epidemic that touches every community in the country. The Violence Against Women Act was enacted in 1994 to address this problem and provide greater safety and peace of mind for millions of women and their families. The act creates a partnership between the public sector and the private sector at every level--Federal, State, and local. Its goal is to establish a safety net of new programs and policies, including community-based services for victims, a National Domestic Violence Hotline, needed technological assistance, and larger numbers of well-trained law enforcement officers and prosecutors. The national Hotline gives women across the country immediate access to the help they need. Since its initiation in 1996, it has received over 500,000 calls. When a Spanish-speaking woman in Arizona needed shelter for herself and her three children, the Hotline called a shelter in Phoenix, found a Spanish-speaking counselor, and gave the caller the counselor's name and directions to the shelter. In the countless cases, the Hotline is an invaluable resource, and we must do all we can to support it. In Massachusetts, $20 million under the Violence Against Women Act has been awarded to advocacy organizations, law enforcement personnel, and State and local governments. The Wampanoag Tribe of Gay Head received funding to develop and strengthen tribal justice strategies to remedy violent crimes against Indian women and to develop and strengthen services for victims. The act also supports HarborCOV--Harbor Communities Overcoming Violence--a Massachusetts program serving Chelsea and Greater Boston. In addition to its core services, HarborCOV has an economic development component which helps survivors move from welfare to work. Employment training and employment referrals are also provided to help domestic violence victims find jobs. The reauthorization will ensure that support for these programs and others will continue. It also includes important new measures, such as transitional housing assistance and a $175 million authorization for shelters, which will be significant additional tools in the battle against domestic violence. One of the most important provisions in the bill is the Battered Immigrant Protection Act. This provision helps battered immigrants by restoring access to a variety of legal protections undermined by the 1996 immigration laws. The Violence Against Women Act passed in 1994 included provisions that allowed battered immigrants to apply for legal status without the cooperation of their abusers, and enabled victims to seek protective orders and cooperate with law enforcement officials to prosecute crimes of domestic violence. Unfortunately, the subsequent changes in immigration laws have reduced access to those protections. Thousands of battered immigrants are again being forced to remain in abusive relationships, out of fear of being deported or losing their children. The pending bill removes obstacles currently hindering the ability of battered immigrants to escape domestic violence safely and prosecute their abusers. It restores and expands vital legal protections like 245(i) relief. This provision will assist battered immigrants, like Donna, who have been in legal limbo since the passage of the 1996 immigration laws. Donna, a national of Ethiopia, fled to the U.S. in 1992 after her father, a member of a prominent political party, was murdered. In 1994, Donna met Saul, a lawful permanent resident and native of Ethiopia. They married and moved to Saul's home in Massachusetts. Two years later, Saul began drinking heavily and gradually became physically and verbally abusive. The abuse escalated and Donna was forced to flee from their home. She moved in with close family friends who helped her seek counseling. She also filed a petition for permanent residence under the provisions of the Violence Against Women Act. Unfortunately, with the elimination of 245(i), the only way for Donna to obtain her green card is to return to Ethiopia, the country where her father was murdered. The possibility of returning there terrifies her. This legislation will enable her to obtain her green card here, where she has the support and protection of family and access to the domestic violence counseling she needs. Under this act, battered immigrants will also have up to one year from the entry of an order of removal to file motions to reopen prior deportation orders. The Attorney General may waive the one year deadline on the basis of extraordinary circumstances or hardship to the battered immigrant's child. This Act will also expand remedies for battered immigrants living abroad with spouses and parents serving in the United States military or other federal positions. Current law only allows battered immigrants residing in the United States to request this relief. This bill will make it easier for these immigrants and their children to escape abusive relationships and obtain the help they deserve. The legislation also grants the Attorney General the discretion to waive certain bars to immigration relief for qualified applicants. For example, battered immigrant women acting in self-defense are often convicted of domestic violence crimes. Under the 1996 immigration law, they became deportable and are denied relief under the Violence Against Women Act. The Attorney General will be able to use the waiver authority to help battered immigrants who otherwise qualify for relief. Also, recently divorced battered immigrants will be able to file self-petitions. Current law allows only battered immigrant women currently married to their abusive spouses to qualify for relief. As a result, many abusers have successfully rushed to the court house to obtain divorces, in order to deny relief to their immigrant spouse. This provision will prevent this unfair result and ensure that victims are not wrongly deprived of the legal protection they need. These and other important measures will do a