sending out this picture of herself with the vice president and the message, or border state securing. more about border security tomorrow on "newsmakers," when an arizona congressman will be our guest. he talks about laws aimed at stopping human trafficking and weather gang violence is forcing families in central america to send their children to the u.s.. here's some of what he said. >> i think there is truth to that. there are efforts by organized syndicates, like the cartel or gangs -- families.entice we will get0 and your kid to a safer zone. there is a false promise that once they crossed the border, that safety is there. that is not the fact. that is manipulation. the president is correct on

that. what i think we are ignoring is the commission on children and human rights. 60% of these kids who have been interviewed are legitimately fleeing violence. their families have put them at risk summer else in order to get away from a bigger risk. fact, the law requires a process. it is not automatic. that adjudication that happens under the law decides issues like asylum. refugee status. whether they reunite with family members here in this country or reintegrate back into their home country. these are the options before us. asking that you go through the due process. with immigration continuing to be a central issue in this country, this flood of children --

an unaccompanied minors, has become the center of whole debate. i wish i could separate the two, but it is almost impossible right now. theill think that legitimate issue of violence continues to be the center point behind outlaw. and, it is not outdated. it is probably more pertinent now than it was then. >> you can hear more tomorrow at 10:00 and 6:00 eastern time on "newsmakers." a senate subcommittee recently held a hearing on child trafficking in the u.s. with an associate commissioner of the hhs children's bureau. any reporter who wrote about the black market. the hearing is one hour and 30 minutes.

good morning, everyone. the senate subcommittee on children and families will now come to order. today's hearing is titled "falling through the cracks: the challenges of prevention and identification in child trafficking and private rehoming." i want to thank all of our witnesses whom are here today to testify, and i look forward to hearing your testimony. i know many of you have traveled many miles to get here. i do appreciate your attendance. i also want to thank our ranking member, senator insee, for joining me today to address the important issues that we'll be addressing in the hearing today. we are here to discuss the significant challenges that we face in the effort to prevent child trafficking and private

remoment ir rehoming. and to identify and support the children who have been victims of these type of abuse. too many child victims today are going unidentified, misidentified or underreported, and as we will see, one of the reasons for this is the lack of education and training for our educators who many times are on the front line and see these children, health care providers who see these children as they present for a number of reasons, and social workers. however, with appropriate guidance, these dedicated professionals can play a critical role both by helping to prevent these practices and by offering potentially lifesaving assistance to those children who made it it the most. there are thousands -- need it the most. there are thousands of children, some accounts up to 300,000, being trafficked here in the united states. these young victims are often hidden in plain sight. and in many cases, they're

actually still attending school which makes it particularly important that our educators can recognize the signs of a trafficking victim and then respond accordingly. this can be hard to fathom. it was really hard for me personally. but the average age of a child trafficking victim in the united states is between 11-years-old to 1 4 years old. these are very young, vulnerable children. girls at this age are particularly vulnerable. they may face trouble at home and then become susceptible to pressure from their peers or by manipulation by a trafficker. this happened to a young girl from a town in coastal north carolina. she was attending school during the day. but in the evenings, a man whom she believed was her boyfriend was actually selling her to other men for second, often multiple times each night. it was not until she was

actually questioned at school one day that authorities found lingerie in her bookbag, and her story then came to light. that is why it is so critical that our educators understand this horrific problem and recognize the signs in youth that they work with every day. they can help make students aware of the danger and then educate them so they are not so vulnerable. similarly, our health care providers need to have appropriate guidelines and screening practices to recognize trafficking victims in their care. as we're going to hear today, the health care response needs to be further developed to address the shortage of education and training for our providers. even if professionals are aware of the problem, they face additional challenges when working with trafficked patients. these victims are often hesitant to disclose their experiences for fear of repercussions by the individuals who are their

traffickers. this also happened to a 14-year-old girl that has been reported to me. her trafficker had branded this young girl with a tattoo as if she was his possession and then advertised her services on backpage. when authorities found her hiding behind a dumpster, she had been severely raped and traumatized. when she was finally brought in to receive care, she was so afraid of her trafficker that she recanted her story and was referred to law enforcement for prosecution. instead of receiving the health care services that she so desperately needed. unfortunately, these instances are not unique. child trafficking is prevalent in all of our communities. and it will take all of our community stakeholders to come together to address this problem. we need leadership from the federal government to help raise this awareness about the issue and to lead the way in

developing the practices and procedures that will increase the prevention efforts and help improve the identification of our trafficked youth. last december i introduced bipartisan legislation to address this growing problem of child trafficking with senator rubio. that bill is called the strengthening the child welfare response to human trafficking act. this legislation would fill some of the gaps in the current system by providing professionals with the tools they need to identify, document, educate, and counsel child victims of sex and labor trafficking. it would also amend the child abuse protection and treatment act to ensure child welfare agencies properly identify, serve, and report trafficked children and allow law enforcement to be better able to track them. there are many ways in which this problem needs to be addressed. but this hearing will be the first to explore how educators

and health care providers can respond to child trafficking. then the second topic of this hearing is the issue of private rehoming of adopting children. that was a new word for me in the last year or two. i'm pleased to hold this hearing as it is the first hearing in the senate on this topic. the practice of rehoming first came to light last september when megan touhy, who is here with us today, a reporter for reuters, she published her findings with an investigation during which she examined more than 5,000 messages posted over five years on a yahoo! group site that was titled "adopting from disruption." through her research, she identified 261 adopted children who were "advertised on line" by their new families and, in many cases, rehomed into the care of adults who too often had a

history of neglect, abuse, or sexually exploiting other children. the document circumvents the protections of our child welfare system and jeopardizes those children's safety. not surprisingly, many of the children involved in this unregulated transactions suffered from behavioral, emotional, and health issues. these are heartbreaking stories and involve children that too often had come into contact with our school employees or with health care providers when despite their best efforts were unable to offer these children the help that they made in because these individuals had not been trained to recognize these warning signs. and i'm hopeful that our discussion today is going to shine a light on this growing problem so that we can work together to ensure that professional andin education an

health care who are in contact with these children are prepared to offer them the help that they need with. with adequate training these dedicated individuals can help begin to identify the signs and symptoms in children and then to help report them as potential victims. and to make sure that at-risk children do not slip through these cracks and become victims in the future. to help us understand the challenges of prevention and identification of the victims of child trafficking and private rehoming, we're going to hear from a group of distinguished panelists this morning. they're going to share with us their stories and their insights and the work that they've done on these issues to help both prevent the proliferation of these type of abuse and then also obviously to help these children and young people who have been the victims. it our panelists, i ask you to keep your oral statements, opening statements to five minutes. and i thank you for your

excellent written statements which have been submitted to the record. senator insley, would love it hear your opening comments. >> thank you madam chairman, and thank you for holding this important hearing surrounding identification and prevention of child trafficking and rehoming instances in our country. most of have us to say how can this possibly happen in america. we often talk in congress about policy decisions in terms of wanting something better for future generations for our children and our grandchildren. i believe these sentiments hold true particularly for those of this future generation whose outcomes are in danger. i think we can all agree there's no greater bipartisan issue than the mutual desire to keep children safe and healthy ain protective and loving homes. to that end, committees will take up issues of concern in the child trafficking and rehoming spheres. i'm eager it tackle the issue by discussing issues under the

purview of this subcommittee including discussion of what processes are currently in place in our schools and health care sector to identify children who may be victims of trafficking and start talking about how we can increase the number of children who are preventively identified. one of our witnesses today is from a school in san diego that's practicing a plan that has worked. dating back to my days as mayor of the city of gillette, wyoming, i've learned and always believed that folks at the local level can best solve most of the problems we face. i'm eager to hear how schools and states can better address children in danger of becoming or are already trafficking victims. rehoming is also a relatively new topic of discussion in congress. today the focus will averagely be on education and taking a look at this issue, its prevalence, and engaging in dialogue about what the federal role is in this space. at the end of the day, our goal is to have better outcomes for our nation's children and youth. that's my goal, and i know it's

the goal of many of my colleagues. i'm hopeful that we can use this opportunity to gather and share information, learn from states while encouraging state collaboration and work together on substantive issues. thank you, madam chairman. >> thank you, senator enzi. i am so appreciative of the work that we have done together on these issues. and i thank you for your help and support. now we'd like to hear from our witnesses, our first witness is miss ju yung chang, the associate commissioner of the children's bureau within the united states department of health and human services. and then our next witness is miss abigail english. she is from my home state of north carolina. she's a lawyer, researcher, and advocate, and is currently the director of the center for adolescent health and the law at the university of north carolina at chapel hill. recently miss english was a member of the institute of medicine and the national

research council committee which issued the report titled "confronting commercial sexual exploitation and sex trafficking of minors in the u.s." following miss english is miss jenae lasttrell, assistant principal at the gross mont union high school in san diego county, california. after recognizing that children in her school district were being subject eed to child sex trafficking, approximately four years ago, miss lattrell and her colleagues partnered with local law enforcement, developed training for teachers so that professionals in the classrooms are now able to recognize the warning signs and connect the at-risk students to the critical support services that they need. and then finally we have miss megan touhy. miss touhy is investigative reporter for reuters in new york who i mentioned earlier, actually wrote the investigative series that first highlighted the practice of private

rehoming. so we're going to begin with miss chang for your testimony. and once again, please limit your opening remarks to five minutes. once each of you have concluded, then we'll begin the question-and-answer period of the hearing. miss chang? >> thank you, chairwoman hagan, ranking member enzi. thank you again for inviting me to testify today. i'm the associate commissioner of the children's bureau where i oversee the federal foster care and adoption assistance programs, as well as a range of prevention and post permanency initiatives. i'm pleased to have this opportunity to share with you the department of health and human services' response to two very serious issues confronting the field of child welfare. the practice of adoptive parents rehoming their adopted children and human trafficking. i'll start with my comments on rehoming. many of the stories highlighted in miss touhy's roieuters serie described parents unable to meet the complex emotional and

behavioral needs that emerged from their children post adoption. these parents turned to online forums to advertise and facilitate the placement of their children without the benefit of safety and criminal background checks or a home study to determine the appropriateness of the placement. the reuters article suggests that children advertised on these message boards are often placed in unsafe environments and are highly vulnerable to exploitation. parents have a legal responsibility to protect and care for their children. delegating responsibility for a child to a potentially unfit and unsafe individual through a power of attorney does not insulate parents from state laws regarding imminent risk of serious harm. i want to be clear. the practice of rehoming is unacceptable. it is clearly an act of abuse and neglect, and it should receive the full attention of child welfare agencies. many of the key legal

requirements related to child abuse and neglect, guardianship and power of attorney, as well as adoption, are determined by states. federal law requires states have a process to receive and respond to all allegations of bass and neglect. and although the federal law provides a minimum definition, stated laws determine what constitutes abuse, neglect, abandonment, or exploitation of children. the reuters article brought to our attention the need to provide guidance to states on how to respond when parents place their children in dangerous situations. and it also highlighted the need for enhanced preparation, support, and post-adoption services for all adoptive families. the children's bureau released new guidance to states on may 30th of this year in the form of an information memorandum to help support children and families affected by disrupted adoptions. through the i.m., we encouraged states it to review laws that f

earn these issues to ensure the issues that arise through the practice of rehoming are adequately addressed. we also encouraged states to promote the availability of post adoption services and resources through various means of outreach and information sharing to the adoption community. most importantly, to provide support before families are in a state of crisis. the children's bureau has also issued two funding opportunity announcements this spring related to the enhanced development and availability of post-adoption services that would be available for all adopted children and youth. i'd like to now turn my focus to the issue of child trafficking. hhs is committed to ensuring that victims of all forms of human trafficking have the access to the services and support they made it to foster health and well-being. abused and neglected children are unfortunately vulnerable to trafficking. some trafficked children have had contact with child welfare

in some form, and some are current or previous wards of the state. in order to better understand and serve child victims of human trafficking, child welfare agencies are strongly encouraged to build their capacity to work with victims of human trafficking. capacity building should include such areas as institutional education, staff training, supporting policies and procedures, appropriate screening and assessment tools, resource development and data collection and analysis. with coordinated efforts in these areas, we hope to decrease vulnerability in trafficking among children and youth, and to equip systems and services to identify and intervene early to address the needs of victimized young people. the children's bureau is committed to providing information to states and service programs to build greater awareness and better response to the problem of child trafficking. in september of 2013, we

published a guidance to states. and this year we will award grant that-- grants designed to response of human trafficking through infrastructure building and a multisystem approach with schools, law enforcement, juvenile justice, courts, run away and homeless youth programs and other necessary service providers. the administration looks forward to working with you to address both of these crucial issues and improve services to some of our most vulnerable young people. again, thank you for the opportunity to testify today. i'd be happy to answer any questions. >> missenlish. >> -- miss english? >> good morning and thank you for the opportunity to testify this morning. my name is abigail english, and i'm director of the center for adolescent health and the law in chapel hill, north carolina. the sex trafficking of children and adolescents represents

profound violations of their human rights. the physical, emotional, social, and legal burden on the victims and survivors is severe and can have lifelong, even life-threatening consequences. in 2012 and 2013, i was privileged to serve as a member of an iom institute of medicine and national research council committee which published its comprehensive report in september, 2013, confronting commercial sexual exploitation and sex trafficking of minors in the united states. in 2010 and 2011, i was a fellow at the radcliffe astronaut for advanced study at harborviat ha university on the exploitation and trafficking of adolescents. the committee's deliberations were guided by through fundamental principles. one, commercial sexual exploitation and sex trafficking of minors should be understood as acts of abuse against children and adolescents.

two, minors who are commercially sexually exploited or trafficked for sexual purposes should not be considered criminals. three, identification of victims and survivors and any interventions should do no further harm to any child or adolescent. the iom committee also concluded that efforts to prevent, identify, and respond require better collaborative approaches and must confront demand and hold accountable the individuals who commit and benefit from these abusive acts and crimes. although accurate nationwide prevalence estimates based on reliable evidence are not available, the iom committee concluded that the available evidence does suggest that commercial exploitation and sex trafficking of minors has been reported in every region and state and that victims come from

diverse backgrounds in terms of geography, income, race, ethnicity, gender, and sexual orientation. nevertheless, some populations of children are likely to be at heightened risk for victimization. these include children who have been sexually abused, youth who lack stable housing, sexual and gender minority youth, youth who have used or abused drugs or alcohol, and youth who have experienced homelessness, foster placement, or juvenile justice involvement. the iom committee found that health care professionals can play an important role in the prevention and identification of children and adolescents who are victims or who may be at risk of commercial sexual exploitation and sex trafficking. however, numerous barriers exist to limit identification. these barriers include a lack of understanding and awareness, the lack of disclosure by victims,

and a lack of established screening practices, policies, and protocols to guide health care professional. such practices, policies, and protocols do exist for child abuse and domestic violence which could provide a basis for developing ones for sexual exploitation and trafficking. health care professionals also have a role to play in treatment in order to provide effective prevention identification and treatment for victims and survivors, health care professionals require specific training and tools. educators and school personnel also can play an important role in the prevention and identification of children and adolescents who are victimized by our at risk for commercial sexual ex-pploitation and sex trafficking similar to the ways in which school-paced health education initiatives have been used, for example, to promote

physical activity, reduce tobacco use, promote healthy sexual behaviors, reduce dating sel violence, and reduce alcohol-impaired driving, schools could develop prevention education initiatives directed to the reduction and remediation of commercial sexual exploitation and sex trafficking. in order to ensure that prevention and identification efforts do no harm, appropriate services must be available to which victims and survivors can be referred if and when they are identified. more thorough evaluation of the use of trauma-informed care is warranted, and emergency shelter and short and long-term housing are particular ly scarce. without appropriate services, victims and survivors are at risk for reexploitation and repeat trafficking. finally, in a majority of states, it is still possible for prostituted, exploited, and

trafficked children to be arrested, prosecuted, detained and incarcerated for sexual offenses such as prostitution or for related offenses such as loitering or drug offenses even if they were being exploited or trafficked. a growing number of states are enacting laws often referred to as safe harbor laws to redirect exploited and trafficked children and adolescents out of the juvenile and criminal justice system and into the child welfare system or to other services. the iom report recommend that's all injures -- recommends that all jurisdictions take part in this process. thank you for this opportunity for testimony, and i look forward to your questions. >> thank you, miss english. miss lattrell? >> thank you, senator hagan, senator enzi, and members of the committee. i'm currently an assistant principal at an alternative school in the gross mont union

high school scad. i've spent my career implementing and developing programs and services to address the social and emotional needs of students, especially most vulnerable, and working to create policies, services, and learning environments that support the physical and emotional safety of all students. for the past six years, much of my focus and attention, both personally and professionally, has been on the issue of child sex trafficking, and it is an honor to be here today to testify about the prevention and early identification work we've done in gross mont union high school district. schools should be safe havens for students, and more so for some whose lives are arkansas triesed by instability and lack of safety and stability. in these cases, school personnel are uniquely well positioned to identify and reported suspected abuse and connect students to services. actions that can prevent trafficking and even save lives. everyone who is part of the school community, administrators, teachers, bus drivers, maintenance personnel, food service workers, resource officers and others, has the potential to be an advocate for

child victims of human trafficking, but first they must learn the indicators of the crime, its warning signs, and how to respond when a student is an apparent victimvictim, we ha developed a program to accomplish the task. includes four components. one, increased staff awareness and the indicators on the nature of the crime. two, increased student awareness of the risks and realities of trafficking. three, clearly articulated district policy and protocol for identifying a suspected victim or responding to a disclosure from a suspected victim. and four, strong working partnerships with law enforcement, child welfare, probation, and social services. in february, 2008, committed to the concept of effective interagency information sharing, our community worked with dr. bernie james, pepperdine law professor and nationally recognized expert, to create an information sharing agreement.

this agreement allowed for sharing of information across our systems and helped us to identify our first student victim of child sex trafficking. since that time, our partnership has identified countless victims and survivors of child sex trafficking. we have educated and protected numerous potential victims. we have learned the magnitude and scope of the problem is greater than any one of our systems realized, and it is definitely more challenging than any one system can address al e alone. we have also learned that schools play a critical role in protecting students and need the proper training and support in order to do so. beginning in the fall of 2010, we developed a comprehensive staff training for all school personnel about the dynamic of child sex trafficking, the scope of the crime, warning signs, campus impact, and a clearly defined course of action on how to respond. along with our partners, we developed a protocol for response when a staff member confirms or suspects a student is a trafficking victim. we have trained our counselors

on how to provide trauma-specific services and when to bring in outside experts to support a student impacted by sex trafficking. we have also partnered with national and local experts to develop a prevention curriculum for students. and most importantly, we developed cross system mechanisms and infrastructure for collaboration among public agencies and other stakeholders, we are building upon the successes and structures, processes already in place. in closesing, i would like to share quotes from sex trafficking survivors when asked their opinion about how schools should address this issue. "i know that my teacher knew that something was wrong with me. on a few occasions, she saw me getting out of my pump's car before school. i would catch her looking at me as if she was trying to figure out what to do with me. i wish she had done something." quote, "watch it and address, it we know you are aware it's happening." quote, "educate all staff about the warning signs. if i knew i had someone to turn to, i would have done so." quote, "don't give up on us when

we get in trouble. work with us to figure out why things are happening." student victims need schools to be trained on identification and response. in many cases the adults on campus are the last responsible adults to touch these young people's lives before they are victimized or left to this crime. thank you for the opportunity to speak today. i look forward to your questions. >> thank you, miss lattrell. miss touhy? >> thank you, chairwoman hagan and ranking member enzi, for inviting me to testify today. starting in 2012, i began examining what are called disrupted adoptions, cases in which parents conclude they cannot successfully raise an adopted child. during my research, i discovered a clandestine online world where some of these parents solicited new families for children they no longer wanted. in internet forums on yahoo! and facebook, the post from these parents were striking. quote, "i'm totally ashamed to say it, but we do truly hate this boy," one woman wrote of

the 11-year-old son she had adopted from guatemala. "i would have given her away to a serial killer, i was so desperate," said another parent of her adopted daughter. these parents weren't simply venting, they were actively offloading children. it's called private rehoming -- a term first used by people seeking new homes for their pets. what we didn't know, what no one knew, was how often this was happening, and what had become of the children who were given away. because parents handled the custody transfers privately, often with strangers they met on line, often through nothing more than a notarized power of attorney, no government agency was involved, and none was investigating the practice. the federal government estimates that overall 10% to 25% of adoptions fail. but no authority systematically tracks what happens to children after they are adopted domestically or internationally. to quantify the frequency of rehoming, we conducted a deep dive on one of the online forums where this activity was taking

place. we meticulously examined more than 5,000 messages posted on the yahoo! bulletin board going back five years, and we built a data base to help us process our findings. we discovered that over that five-year period in this one forum alone, a child was offered to strangers on average once a week. the activities spanned the nation. children in 34 states had been advertised. many were transferred from parents in one state to families in another. and at least 70% were said to have been adopted overseas. and many were said to suffer from physical, emotional, and behavioral problems. it was clear from the online descriptions of these children that they were among society's most vulnerable. child abuse experts pointed out it their backgrounds and the manner in which they were advertised made them ripe for exploitation. beyond the data base, we pieced together more than a dozen cases of rehoming. i traveled around the country gathering records and interviewing parents and

adoptees. these are three examples of what i found -- after determining that the 10-year-old boy she adopted out of the foster care system was too troubled to keep, a wisconsin mother solicited a new family for his on a yahoo! group. "i couldn't stand to look at him anymore," she told me. "i wanted this child gone." within hours of posting the advertisement, the mother handed the boy off in a hotel parking lot to a woman whose biological children had been permanently removed from her care and to a man who is now in prison for child pornography. this couple living in illinois at the time drove the boy home with them with the wisconsin mother having no idea who they really were. she had no idea that the illinois woman's children had been removed after officials determined she suffered severe psychiatric problems, as well as violent tendencies, or that the man had an affinity for young boys that he would later share with an undercover agent in a pedophile chat room. the woman believed their assurances that they were good people with good intentions. in another case, a russian girl named inga thought her adoption

by an american couple would bring a world of happiness. my picture was, i'm going to have family, i'm going to go to school, i'm going to have friends. inga who's new 27 told me, "less than a year after bringing her home, her daptive parents gave up trying to raise her. they turned to the internet and sent inga to three different homes over the course of six months. none wanted to keep her. in one home, inga says she suffered physical abuse. in another she says the father molested her. inga was sent to a michigan psychiatric facility at the age of 13 after her adoptive parents refused to take her back. officials characterize inga's trouble this way -- substance abuse, domestic violence, separation from parents, sexual abuse, physical abuse, emotional abuse, verbal abuse, attachment issues, and mental health issues. to inga, the situation seemed bleak. "my parents didn't want me, russia didn't want me. i didn't want to live," she told me. another girl, nita, was adopted from haiti at 13. she told me she also suffered

suicidal thoughts and was passed among four families in two years. the first family to take her lived in ohio. she says she was one of 33 children and that the environment was chaotic. the third family abruptly sent her away after nita helped bring to light allegations of sexual abuse against other children in the home. now 18, nita says the feelings of abandonment took a toll. in addition to suicidal thoughts, she also developed an eating disorder. many of the young people i interviewed told me that they had felt voiceless and alone. few had found anyone to advocate on their behalf. why does rehoming happen? parents who offer their children told us they had few options as they tried to raise children with many behavioral problems. adoption agencies refused to help. residential treatment centers were expensive. and some parents feared they would be charged with abuse or neglect if they tried to relinquish their child to the state. to be sure, many of the people who take these children in are competent and compassionate caretakers, but as our investigation showed, rehoming

also allowed abusers and others who escape scrutiny to easily obtain children. what are the obligations of these websites on which this rehoming forums have taken place depends on who you ask. what i informed yahoo! of the activity i saw on yahoo! user groups, the company swiftly took down the sites. facebook, by contrast, allowed a similar forum to continue operating after we exposed it. is rehoming legal? the answer is complicated. no state or federal law specifically prohibit rehoming. some states restrict the advertising and custody transfers of children. but those laws are confusing, frequently ignored, and rarely prescribed criminal sanctions. since our investigation, wisconsin, louisiana, colorado, and florida, have enacted new restrictions on child advertising, custody transfers, or both. the sponsor of the wisconsin bill called rehoming "a gaping hole that allows children to be placed in unsafe situations with dangerous and sometimes

life-threatening outcomes." in terms of the federal response, the congressional research service issued a report recommending ways congress could restrict rehoming. and as you know, the government accountability office will begin studying state and federal policies related to rehoming this summer. at the request of senator ron widen, four federal departments have been meeting to address ways to address rehoming. some advertise shock that advertising children on line does not seem to violate any federal laws. some child advocates say a federal law should place uniform restrictions on advertising of children and require that all custody transfers of children to non-relatives be approved by a court. they say differing state responses are inadequate to address what is largely an interstate practice. other advocates are seeking more government support for struggling adoptive families, and more scrutiny of prospective adoptive parents. thank you for the opportunity to talk about this issue. unfortunately, i can only give voice to some of the young people affected by this

practice. there remain many unaccounted rehomed children whose whereabouts are unknown. >> thank you. i thank all of you for your testimony. now we'll begin a series of questions. we'll take eight minutes per senator. and miss chang, from the personal stories that miss twohey shared concerning rehoming, it seems that families feel they have nowhere to turn. whether their adopted child -- when their adopted child requires a different amount of support and services beyond their skill set k. you tell me what hhs can do to share information about trauma informed care with adoptive parents and front line workers including health care provider and educators? >> yes, thank you, senator. i think there's a lot we can do to share information on what is

caregivers, as well as foster parents, loving families who really do provide for their children. >> certainly. and obviously we're talking about those situations where the stories that we've heard this morning and have read are just on the other end of that spectrum. miss english, i wanted to ask you from the reports that you described, one of the challenges is often the lack of data and

the lack of evidence that would inform the work of the federal, state, and elderly governments trying to address child trafficking. what can be done to improve the evidence gathering, the data collection so that the federal, state, and local policyholders can better address this problem? and then also i'm concerned about what can the health care providers and school personnel help overcome the challenges of the victims being afraid to disclose their stories? >> thank you, senator. the iom committee identified a number of different ways in which data gathering can be improved, and i'll say at the outset that there are several different kinds of data that need to be gathered and evidence that needs to be built. first of all, we do made it more data it who the -- data about who the children are who are being exploited and trafficked

so that we can tailor identification tools and prevention strategies specifically to those who are at greatest risk -- >> can you give an example? >> and so the committee, while it said that trying to refine a national prevalence estimate was probably not the most appropriate strategy, conducting research on specific subpopulations of youth is something that could be supported by the federal government and would enhance the development of appropriate prevention tools and identification tools. in addition, we do not have evidence-based tools for identification and training. and there are a few examples of training efforts and tools for identification that have promising -- are promising, but

weigh need much more evaluation of those and other tools. for example, in houston, there are efforts, training efforts underway. in atlanta, there are specific child-oriented training efforts that have been implemented by a nonprofit coalition and the governor's oeffice. and the polaris project, a nationally funded project, has an online training initiative. but all of those efforts could benefit from further evaluation, and similarly some of the tools that have been developed by places like asian health services in oakland and other health care organizations and sites would benefit from evaluationings so that -- evaluations so that they could be taken to scale and used in

other settings. >> thank you. miss lattrell, you tall set up a program. you said shortly after you set it up with card nation between different groups you actually helped identify your first victim. can you talk about how successful this program has been at your school. and what recommendations would you make to other school districts, what advice would you give them? and then sort of to wrap it up, how can the federal government help support the programs, the program that you put in place at your school? >> sure. thank you for the opportunity to clarify. actually, we developed an information-sharing agreement which was with our school district, six other school districts, child welfare, probation, and three law enforcement agencies -- >> six other school districts? >> correct. >> okay. >> once we developed that information-sharing agreement, that's when we immediately identified our first survivor of sex trafficking because now all of the partners were at the same table. all of the stakeholders, all of

the agencies that were working with the same families, were now able to talk openly and collaborate and understand what part we were seeing in relation to the whole. >> one other point -- obviously these are children. so this is all private information that is not public. >> correct. >> right. >> so it's -- what we're seeing in schools as well as what the probation officer might be seeing as well as child welfare. we're all touching that young person's life, but we weren't discussing openly and collaborating in a way that helped us understand what it was we were seeing. once we developed that information-sharing grammy, that's when we were first able to identify what was happening systematically, at least in our community, in what i've discovered across the nation was child sex trafficking. once law enforcement really alerted us to the prevalence, the scope, and how -- the age that you discussed earlier that this was happening, we started moving to action. we as a school district did not want to wait until it was

happening in our schools. we wanted to be at the front line and to keep this off of our campus. we know schools are where -- we just represent and reflect what's happening in the community. unfortunately, with this happening in the community, it's also happening to our students. so because of that, we worked with our partners, the experts, to create a systemic, comprehensive training for all of our administrator, our campus supervisors, nurses. what we discovered through research and as well as our own experience was disproportion idealy this was happening to children in the foster care system. children with disabilities. so we made sure those relevant staff were trained not only on warning signs but what to do. we know that our staff and schools are -- >> why don't you walk me through a situation of what to do. >> okay. so if we suspect, if a teacher suspects that they have a student that might be trafficked, they understand some of the warning signs. they then bring that concern to

a staff member, typically a counselor who has received more in-depth training on how to engage a potential victim, how to actually have discussions to hopefully have that victim feel comfortable in disclosing what's happening. we've trained our administrators so when they are in the situation you shared earlier, when they're engaged with a student and in the case you shared they were in a backpack and discovered lingerie, when we're doing some of the standard businesses on campuses, we discovered different warning signs and flags. so if we suspect we have a victim, we work with that student as best as we can, we determine if we actually have a larger campus issue. if this student's being trafficked, if there's other students, if maybe the exploiter is approaching that student to and from school, we then, depending on the situation, work with communicateding that to the parent or guardian. we work with law enforcement, hopefully that that student will feel comfortable to share the information regarding the exploiter with law enforcement. we make sure that that student and family are getting the

appropriate services in the community and oftentimes on campus. that way we can keep disproportionately the female students i'm talking about, we can keep her connected to a campus. >> thank you. my time is up. ms. twohey, i'll get you on the next round. senator enzi? >> thank you, madam chairman. this has been fascinating re. reading the testimony was interesting and in a lot more detail. but miss chang, in your testimony you mentioned adoption disruptions and adoption dissolutions. can you explain the difference between those terms for me? >> sure, senator. so typically when we talk about adoption disruptions, we think about what happens during the process leading up to an adoption. so we think about children in foster care, the process to be adopted can take, you know, up to two years in some instances.

so sometimes during that process of moving toward adoption finalization there may be a disruption that prevents that adoption from being finalized. it may be due to the child's behavior, needs that a parent decides they aren't equipped to handle. other times, adoption disolution refers to after an adoption has taken place. that may be a foster adoption, an overseas adoption, a domestic adoption, for whatever reason a parent decides that they are no longer able to care for that child. so we talk about that as an adoption dissolution. >> thank you. miss english, you mentioned the health providers have some protections on abuse. but the protections were the same protections were not available for trafficking. could you elaborate on that a little bit more?

>> thank you, senator enzi. what i was intending to clarify was that health care professionals are accustomed to identifying children who have been victims of child abuse and also victims of domestic violen violence. that those protocols and identification tools could be useful in developing similar tools for the identification of victims of trafficking. you have, however, raised an issue which i think is of great significance, and that is that health care professionals are currently mandated to report instances of child abuse to child welfare and/or law enforcement authorities. and there is some lack of clarity in the laws around

whether child sex trafficking is or is not included within that mandated reporting. in some states, mandated reporting extends only to abuse that takes place by a family member or a caretaker and not by a third party. in some states, however, it does extend to third third parties. and a small number of states have begun to enact specific provisions to include child sex trafficking within their child abuse reporting laws. there's also some concern on the part of health care professionals that if they report young people who have been victims of sexual exploitation and trafficking, that may contribute to the distrust and reluctance those young people have to disclose their victimization to the health care professionals that

are treating them. >> thank you. miss latrell, in your plan, your point number two was educating parents and students on risks and realities. how do you go about doing that? is there reaction from the community against that kind of discussion? >> there's obviously a concern from the community when you are talking about their children and the potential harm of their children being sex trafficked. that's where our partnerships are really important. we in the schools work with law enforcement, as i shared earlier. law enforcements are really the experts in what is happening in our local community. what is the recruitmentment look like? what gangs are involved in this? how is the exploited youth being victimized? is it online, is it in certain pockets of the community? we as the schools partner with law enforcement in hosting public awareness events, hosting some educational opportunities

to alert what are the warning signs, what are the risks, how to best protect their children. we in schools are ready to take in reports if they have concerns and if they are worried about their child or even one of their child's friends or other classmates. so we felt really, really strongly that the best thing for us to do in schools is to be alerted and educated, so wherever we receive a referral, whether it's law enforcement or a family coming forward or student disclosure, we are ready to move to action and able to help that young person immediately. >> thank you. this rehoming a new thing to a lot of people. it's something pretty new to me. is rehoming limited to adoptive families or did you find people rehoming their own kids? >> that is a great question. what i can tell you is the

manner by which people rehome children is not something that would be limited to adopted children. anybody can turn over a child to a stranger met on the internet with nothing more than a not yarized power of attorney saying the child is now in this stranger's custody, whether it's for months or until the child turns 18. people can do that with an adopted child, people can do that with a biological child. we examined, investigated it for 18 months and basically combed these internet forums were children were being advertised. i didn't find a single offer of a child, of a parent offering biological child. it was primarily people who had adopted children from foreign countries, and also people who had adopted children from the foster care system. >> do you have any suggestions for people adopting kids from

foreign countries as a result of your effort? >> my job is to collect the facts and report them. so what other people in the course of doing my reporting -- certain things came out with regards to international adoption. this is something, this is an area that had been largely unregulated until 2008 when there were the first federal regulations of some international adoptions that took effect. those regulations said in order to adopt you had to undergo ten hours of training if you wanted to adopt a kid from certain foreign countries. for many of the other international adoptions there was no training requirement. so i talked to people who had adopted children from foreign countries and hadn't really undergone any real preparation. so contrast that with the training that's required if you want to adopt a child out of foster care system. that can be dozens of hours of

training. as i understand it, sometimes people undergo that training and say, you know what? i've got a good hard look at what's in store and i'm not going to, i can't move forward. i think one of the things that has come up is the training requirements. in terms of the quality and quantity of training that's required. also, the support that's available for struggling adoptive families when their adoptions go south, both internationally and domestically. >> thank you. my time has expired. i'll cover more on the training and resources next round. >> senator murphy. >> thank you very much, madam chair. miss twohey, you talked about the fact states are starting to amend their laws to provide greater protection. can you talk about what you have found in your research to be the beginnings of best practices at the state level when it comes to

protecting these children? one of the easy things that would seem to be a common sense requirement would be that the family has to go to court in order to get authorization to move a child that they had to go through the custody process in the first place to get. so what have you found to be the best ways that states can start to amend their laws to deal with this issue? >> so you are correct. the child welfare system has been largely regulated by individual state laws. in the course of my reporting, i discovered that in some states there are restrictions on who can go on the internet and advertise a child for adoption or another type of custody transfer. some states say this is, you know, you have to have a licensed agency has to do that advertising of the child to

ensure there is oversight of those involved. other states there are no restrictions on the advertising of children. i would also point out that a lot of these state laws on the advertising of children, i believe, have assumed that the children being advertised are newborns. young moms who don't want to keep their child and want to put the child up for adoption right after it's born. i don't think those laws basically were crafted with the understanding that in 2014, you'd have people advertising children who are 12 years old, who are 14 years old. the states vary when it comes to the advertising of children and also the custody transfers of children. there are now states that have, since our series came out in september, enacted new restrictions on the custody transfer of children saying if you are going to transfer -- this is another situation where you had, i think, that the laws,

state laws were such that they assume if you were going to transfer custody of a child through a notarized power of attorney going off to military service or going to the hospital, you would be doing that to a trusted relative or close friend of the family. i don't think that those state laws basically took into account that in 2014 you would have people transferring custody of their child to a stranger they met on the internet. now you've got some states saying if you are going to tr transfer custody of a child through a nonrelative longer than a year, go through the court and make sure there is oversight of that. those are two things springing up at the state level as a way to address this. as i said, there are other people, child advocates pointed out this patchwork will not work and you need uniform standards and regulations of custody

transfers. >> let me ask that question of you. your testimony references the fact most all this law is at the state level. that certainly makes sense that, to the extent rehoming is happening over the internet, that it's crossing state borders. that that necessitates, be even requires federal response what do you think about that suggestion? >> i certainly agree with ms. twohey. the situation of rehome buying adoptive parents is something that most law makers never anticipated. if we think about the rights of parents to care for their children and make decisions about where they will live, where they will be placed, i don't think anyone anticipated this. i certainly thing there is a lot of confusion about what legal custody or power of attorney documents even mean. what responsibility that infers and what responsibilities parents need to maintain. guidance from the federal level

about this new type of situation is certainly important. >> is there -- we talked about the fact that there are plenty of situations in which biological parents end up transferring custody of their children for a variety of reasons. there is no oversight at the federal or state level. is there a reason to treat adoptive children differently than biological children when it comes to the transfer of custody? >> i don't think so. it's really important for all of us to remember that a child who has been adopted is a part of that family now. they should be treated by the family and by law in the same way. i think children -- the question is how do we best protect children from parents who may place them in a dangerous situation? i think that's the question we have to think about. i don't think we want this situation to lead us to treat adoptive families, including parents and children differently. >> but what do you make of ms.

twohey's investigation which suggests there is a differential in terms of how they are treated. in all the cases she found about the online advertising of children for rehoming, not a single one was a biological child. i certainly understand your argument, which suggests begin the expectations we have of adoptive families, we certainly have an interest in avoiding a double standard, but it suggested for a subset, and probably a very small subset of adoptive parents, there may be a different standard. what do you think about the evidence that she is uncovered as to the rate of adoptive versus biological parents that are advertising on the internet? >> you know, it's hard for me to say because i don't know what the mindset was of these folks making these poor decisions. i do think that obviously when they adopted a child, they did not take that responsibility of becoming a parent in the way i

think it was intended. certainly, i think it's important for laws to be clear how children, when they are placed outside a parent's home, what types of laws and regulations should guide that. that should be equally true. because it didn't happen in this instance, in this investigation, doesn't mean it's not possible. i think the fact that parents, whether adopted or not, aren't clear that this is not appropriate behavior. we need to talk about this as a society. the creation of tools like the internet that allow people to share information in this way, that promotes that this may be acceptable means we need as a society to respond to that and be very clear that this, in fact, is not appropriate behavior. >> you mentioned in your testimony that you are encouraging states to review their laws. are you providing them with recommendations as to how to change their laws?

>> in the information referendum we don't have specifics in that, but we are providing technical assistance and guidance to states. i'm having conversations with them. it's still early in the process of seeing what states are doing. there are four states that have changed their laws. we are also in the process of learning what might be best in how to respond to this. >> i hope that you'll keep open the possibility of having a specific standard for the transfer of custody of adoptive children. i think you're right. we should approach this carefully and we certainly want to be careful not to adopt differing standards. but if the evidence suggests the problem is specific to adoptive children, then it may be that we need to tailor our response to that group of children, as well. thank you. >> thank you, senator murphy. >> madam chair, thank you for

this hearing. we are grateful for this opportunity to talk about a whole range of issues. i know that i wasn't here for the testimony, but i've become familiar with some of the work in the testimony that our witnesses have provided today. i wanted to focus in a broadway, i've worked very hard in this area to bring more attention to these issues. the gaps in our child welfare systems, problems we have. i have legislation entitled to speak up to protect every abuse kid act. it's really to focus on this problem that we have where we have varying degrees of what mandated reporters must do. in some ways, a multiplicity of standards instead of having one federal floor on what should constitute a mandate to report

or protect, to report instances of child abuse or suspected instances. so all of this comes under a broad umbrella. i was particularly disturbed as we all are by some issues raised in your testimony. i wanted to start with associate commissioner chang on the question of -- and get your perspective when you have a delegation of authority in these instances, and you have that delegation of authority, do you have the possibility or have you seen in your work that the child will have legal problems down the road. is that something you've spoken to already today or is that something you haven't been asked about? >> thank you, senator. it isn't something i've spoken to. certainly in our look into this process of delegating authority,

that question does come up. i think that's one of the things that's troubling is that there is such variation among states about what that delegation of authority actually means what responsibilities carry. we know that when we have legal guardianship that that does come with certain delegations of authority that comes with responsibilities, as well. a lot of what we, i think, are talking about is often done kind of outside the scope of legal scrutiny and authority. so there is a question that rises. if you don't go through the court process to get a legal guardianship of a child, what responsibilities do you then have for that child? so i think it is something that states really need to think very carefully about. >> just on the subject of states, in your experience, have you seen whether or not many states have acted to expand

access to post adoption services following these reports of private rehoming? >> that's a great question. so we know that before the story came out approximately half of all states have reported to us that they do regularly offer post adoption services, not only to children adopted out of the foster care system but also those adopted through private adoptions or internationally. the challenge remains that there are very limited dollars available to states to use to support post adoption services. another way to think about post-adoption is really prevention. these are services designed to help parents struggling with their children whether adopted or biological. the reality is in our child welfare system, we do not invest as much in preventive services as we do after the crisis occurs. this is a real challenge across all states.

>> i was going to get in a moment to some of your suggestions you may have already outlined. some of them bear repeating at a hearing like this. any cases that you're aware of where parents rehoming their children who are then criminally prosecuted, what's the basic metrics on that in terms of criminal prosecution? >> sure. it's a great question. it's one of the questions i asked miss twohey after i read her article. it's one of the reasons we issued our informatimemorandum. when we looked at the minimum federal definition of abuse and neglect it seemed clear this activity fell within that scope.

that is how we saw these acts, they need to take careful look at state laws to ensure they were responding adequately. this is particularly important because if a parent is deemed to have abuse or neglected their child because they engaged in rehoming, that means they are going to be in the abuse and neglect registry. if they try to go out and adopt again that, will be a notice to any private adoptive agency as well as public child welfare agencies about the behavior of this parent. we think that's critical. >> i have one question of miss twohey, but i wanted the panel to go one by one, if you choose to. in terms of the recommendations you have for next steps. often we have hearings and we explore an issue at great length and sometimes forget to come back and say what are the two or three steps you hope we would take. sometimes the recommendations do something here but don't push on

this end. anything the panel would want to offer in terms of steps you hope would result from this hearing? either especially, obviously, federal legislation or action. >> thank you, senator casey. i would like to see coming out of a hearing like this guidance from the federal government to states but also to other entities at the state, local and in the private and commercial sector about the kinds of evaluation that needs to take place of existing training and tools for the health care and educational systems, but also the development of further

models and looking towards the child abuse and the domestic violence arenas for a basis for developing those models. so to the extent that the federal government can provide standards and guidance and ultimately funding for evaluation and development of models that would be a great step forward. >> guidance rather than unfunded mandates, huh? thank you. >> i would like to make two suggestions. there's 15,000 school districts in our nation. while education is a state responsibility, the federal government has done a lot of leadership in the area of human trafficking, whether the blue campaign, the department of education to write an educator's guide distributed to schools across the fall across the nation. anything we can do to make this

a requirement as has been discussed by our other panel members, it's very confusing for mandated reporters. all educators are mandated reporters, of what to do when they suspect a child is being a traffic victim. what actions should be taken after that? so that goes to my next point. anything we can do in the area of grant funds or supports so communities can rally together cross-jurisdictionally, cross-disciplines to figure out what's happening in their community. for us it would be these student grants that allow this initiative to begin. we completely sustained it when we lost the funds five years ago when they sun set it. anything to encourage this and provide financial support. >> thank you. miss twohey? >> once again as a journalist, i can't share my opinion, i can only share the facts as i've gathered them. i think that in terms of what can be done to address rehoming,

specifically you are looking at sort of two things. one, what can be done to prevent it? on that front you are looking at scrutiny, perhaps more scrutiny of perspective adoptive parents, the quantity and quality of training requirements for families who want to adopt. that's one of the things that experts and other child advocates have brought up, as well as the support services for struggling adoptive families. that those two things could really help prevent rehoming. then you move on to the question of what happens when families decide that they are going to privately rehome. there you're looking at this what right now is a patchwork of state laws with regard to the advertising of children and custody transfers of children. there aren't any uniform regulations, aren't any uniform

standards on how children can and should be advertised in print or specifically online. and there aren't any uniform standards here in this country on what should happen when somebody decides they want to transfer custody of a child to a stranger they meet on the internet. i think the congressional research report, congressional research services report pointed out congress does have an opportunity to act. that the interstate aspect of rehoming and the fact the internet is involved presents congress and the federal government with an opportunity to step in. and that's something child advocates have called for. >> thanks very much. thank you, madam chair. >> thank you for your questions and your bill you are also working on similar to this issue. miss twohey, did you actually have any of the parents that you

might have spoken with in your research, did any of them receive charges of neglect or abuse in their advertising? >> yeah. that is a great question. i've been looking at this issue for now more than two years. have covered a variety of cases in which adoptive parents rehomed their child. cases that were either prior to my reporting brought to the attention of authorities, certainly came to the attention of authorities after my stories, and not in one single case has an adoptive parent been charged with abuse or neglect or any criminal charge as a result of their rehoming activity. in some states where there are restrictions, and this includes states where there are laws that do restrict advertising of children and the custody transfers of children. lots of times local law enforcement has said they didn't

know those laws existed. if they did exist they didn't have criminal sanctions attached to them so they didn't feel like they could take action. >> thank you. >> ms. littrell, in your school systems, have you had cases of the rehoming that you are aware of? >> not that i'm aware of, no. >> i know in many instances grandmothers end up taking over custody, not custody, but raising their grandchildren because the daughters have drug abuse or whatever situation might occur. in that case, it's my understanding that the school systems need to have power of attorney in that case. i was curious, in your situation, i would think you would have grandmothers responsible for their grandchildren. can you elaborate on that? do you know what the school

requires of a grand parent. >> sure. we have a variety of different family members raising family members for the whole range of reasons. what we require is proof that that parent or guardian has the legal right to register that student. >> which is what piece of paper? >> any kind of court order, it can be as simple as a caregiver affidavit, in this case a grand parent, aunt or whomever has to sign and let us know that parent has an affidavit saying they are the legal guardian for the student in order to be able to register them. >> that affidavit is not court sanctioned? >> correct. >> in many cases, some people are concerned that if we go through the process of requiring court approval on any case where they are raising the children, that if it's not an immediate family, that it has to be court

approved, that there are so many situations where that would prevent family members or friends from stepping in and helping, but at the same time, i think we've seen unbelievable examples of what you all have described today of what happens when there's advertisement or whomever might be the responsible person in this situation who really cannot help that young child, and obviously many numerous things happen. miss chang, do you have any suggestions on what states or school systems need to require in this situation or miss littrell, you also. >> we feel very strongly state laws need to be clear about what the parents' responsibility is, even if they do transfer legal custody. that is the care and custody, the care and protection of their child. 17 states have defined

abandonment within their definition of neglect. 17 other states defined it separately from neglect. thinking about a parent might temporarily place a child with a friend because they are going overseas to serve in the u.s. military, but you would still expect that that parent has a relationship with that child, they stay in touch with that child. they regularly communicate. and they are ultimately responsible for having placed that child in a safe, appropriate placement. i think that's one of the immediate things that we want to make sure states are thinking about. are they clear in their law about what a parent's responsibility is to make sure that initial placement is safe and that they are maintaining regular contact. >> under mckinnie-vinto, we removed some of the barriers historically there. if an unacopped youth walks in our doors we'll work with him or

her to get them registered immediately. if a family is homeless and don't have documentation or that's the story they are telling us, we will immediately get that student registered. >> were there any cases where you had spoken to parents and they had gone through training through their adoption agency on what they could do to improve the situation or do you know if they sought help before they began advertising? >> sure. that's a great question. some of the parents felt like -- some of the parents had undergone training. others had undergone very little training. sometimes they didn't feel -- in all these cases, the parents felt like they weren't prepared for the emotional behavioral problems that these children brought with them. >> did they get training once these emotional behaviorals came forward, did they then seek training and help in the system? >> in some cases they sought

therapy. in other cases, they did have interface with the child welfare system. they often felt like they got no help, and if they wanted to relinquish their child to the state, that they were going to face, that they would potentially face charges of abuse or neglect. one family didn't want to pay the child support that would be required to relinquish their adoptive daughter to the government child welfare system. they were told if you do this you have to pay child support until the child turns 18. the adoptive family didn't want to do that. >> thank you. >> thank you, madame chairman,ing this has been very enlightening. there is good suggestions we can do at the federal level. one thing i've worried about, if

it's worth reacting to, it's worth overreacting to. miss littrell, how important is it for the local systems to develop and implementing these plans that you have? >> i think there is definitely best practices that should be followed across the nation. however, how a school district works with their local law enforcement, their local stake holders will really depend on what is present in their community. rural communities may not have the same level of resources or same number of resources as urban communities. how recruitment and trafficking happens in one community also varies a little bit, but as i worked with the department of ed to write the guide for the nation on addressing sex trafficking in schools, what i found was actually there is a lot of commonalities. it's much more similar than

dissimilar. the recruitment, the grooming and what needs to happen in a community. so having said that, best practices i think should be offered to communities and some kind of guidance for who should be at the table and what steps can be taken can definitely assist those communities from having to reinvent the wheel or start at ground zero. >> very good. i look forward to seeing that report, too. miss english, in your testimony, you cited the oakland unified school district as a good example. can you give us a little more detail on what that school district is doing? >> yes. thank you, senator enzi. the oakland unified school district partnered with the school-based health center that is operated by the alameda county health department to provide both training to

individuals in the school setting to begin identifying young people who are victims of sexual exploitation and trafficking. and also to provide services including referrals for any students who are identified as being either at risk or victimized by sexual exploitation and trafficking. alameda county is one place in the nation that has developed some really fairly advanced services for the victims of sexual exploitation and trafficking, and the unified school district partnered with local community resources to learn from those practices and to share them within the school district and also to make sure that their students get referred to appropriate services when identified. >> thank you. i'm the accountant in the

senate, and i have a tendency to ask some detailed number questions, but i've learned not to do that in hearings. so i hope that we'll have an opportunity to submit some questions in writing so we can get some of the numbers that might help with the testimony that we've had. >> certainly. >> thank you. >> thank you, senator enzi. >> ms. littrell, in your experience with the situations of child trafficking, has law enforcement actually indicted a trafficker in one of your situations? >> multiple times. >> good. very good. i just want to thank all our witnesses for being here today, for traveling here, for your testimony, for your involvement in both the child trafficking issue and then the rehoming issue that has been brought to light. thank you to you, miss twohey. we heard from all of you. we heard these issues. these exploitative issues

specifically concerning our children and the private rehoming. they are such serious problems. they are taking place right now, right here in our communities and in our country all across every state, and obviously to our children. so i want to also thank the many groups and the many individuals who contributed their experience and their expertise to this hearing. in particular, i want to thank the north carolina coalition against sexual assault, the on eagles wings ministry in charlotte, salvation army in raleigh, st. joseph's school in brooklyn, new york, and the alliance to end slavery and trafficking. and the victims, obviously, the victims of both trafficking and rehoming that have been interviewed by my staff. this is, these are serious issues. i do think there are, that numerous examples of what our states are doing to combat these issues and to work best