we are pleased to be joined by yiota souras. she is senior vice president of the center for exploited children. for over 30 years she has provided valuable services to law enforcement and the criminal justice community with the limit of limiting child exploitation and reuniting families. they have recovered over 200,000 missing children including assisting with the rescue of a missing child in cleveland, ohio, just earlier this month. we appreciate what you do. i'm also honored to have with us today the founder, john walsh, who is with us in the room this morning. who has been a good at visor to me and to the subcommittee. we're also pleased to be joined by darwin roberts. darwin is a deputy attorney general with the washington state attorney general's office where he supervises the criminal justice division among other units. and he also is the lead office for the human trafficking issues. he is trying to combat child trafficking. the polaris project gave washington the highest ranking for its anti-trafficking efforts last year

souras. mr. roberts. >> good morning chairman berman ranking member mccaskill and members of the subcommittee thank you for the opportunity to appear today. i'm appearing on behalf of attorney general bob ferguson and i appreciate the invitation he regrets he wasn't able to come your person. i'm proud to be representing washington state which has been wrecked nice as a leader among in fighting human trafficking at the state level. we were the first state to make it a crime to commit human trafficking at the state level and of course our definition of human trafficking matches the federal and that the use of force, fraud or coercion for forced labor and voluntary servitude or sex acts is classified as human trafficking in the sexual abuse of a minor is any use of a minor and a commercial sex act because minors are recognized as not being able to consent legally to engage in any sort of sex act with an adult much less a commercial one. .. >> >> before it could be implemented the attorney general's

s souras, your issues of asking backpage to do, prevention, law enforcement, prosecutions, there areso other things that can and should be do -- done with regard to sex trafficking. we did pass legislation as you know here in congress that was signed into law earlier this year. you were very involved with that and worked with us on some of the missing children issues, who are the most vulnerable to trafficking, but also the demand side issue. we were able to make some progress at the federal level for the first time in 15 years. and then finally, able to change some of the federal -- the bias in the legislation to say that these young women and men, girls, boys who are involved in this are indeed victims and should not be treated as criminals but rather as victims so we can deal with their trauma, which as you said earlier, is long-term, sometimes life long. and so this is an opportunity for us not to just talk about backpage, obvious disappointment all of us have but their inability to be here today but also their unwillingness to cooperate more generally with this issue but also a