Letter to Grassley, Portman, Cornyn, and Cuellar

Jody Williams, Founder & Director ofSex Workers Anonymous

www.sexworkersanonymous.com

(702) 468-4529 Telephone

December 5, 2015

Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Charles Grassley

Senator Rob Portman

Senator John Cornyn

Rep. Henry Cuellar

Re: The Issue of Sex Trafficking

Dear Respected Sirs:

I read about how you stepped in to help some trafficking victims in this article - http://www.latimes.com/nation/la-na-immigrant-whistleblower-20151124-story.html Since the internet was born, I get these news alerts that I use to do our outreach for Sex Workers Anonymous. Our original name was “Prostitutes Anonymous” and we founded this very movement. A movement that even the author of the Trafficking Act of 2000, Michael Horowitz, has agreed has been “hijacked”.

If you're wondering who I am – please check the clips at www.hightechmadam.com They confirm I'm the founder of this modern day sex trafficking movement which was started to not just raise awareness trafficking was real but also to CHANGE the existing system that was allowing it to happen. I'm speaking as someone who witnessed drug/sex trafficking (yes they're intertwined) with respect to Iran Contra – meaning I know well that trafficking doesn't occur without corruption as it's protector. A system for which I'm not seeing anywhere to go with complaints about said corruption currently.

I appreciate you writing the Office of Refugee Resettlement, and your suggestions about an Oversight Committee to address the problems you're finally seeing, that we've been complaining about to these sames offices for a few years now and not seeing any response. I started complaining to the Office of Refugee Resettlement when in each region where I've seen them grant money – I then see all communications with victims cut off from us and further our members who are doing outreach in those areas then start getting threatened so that we can't establish communications. I have yet to see those dollars actually benefits victims and I'd love to show you what I mean by that if you're interested.

I invite you to listen to a tape I have up at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x_TD_X3uOiA I want you to hear how things were for us in Phoenix before these grants started going out vs. now and also I'd like you to hear her talk about the way she was threatened the minute she started trying to reach out to others in the area. She was then further told “she would be no good dead”. I want you to hear how she's having to literally “hide her message” in her art because of her fear there in Phoenix. I'd like to add that this woman was the only one brave enough to speak on tape about these threats. I have others who are still too scared all over the USA. So respectfully I say your suggestions aren't going to change a thing.

The only thing I've seen work in the past has been changed. The only solution I see is to change things back. Because we had things working - that's why things got hijacked to where we're right back where we started. Right now across this country, I've got sex trafficking victims who can't go to the authorities for help because they're being stopped, and our members are being also stopped from helping them. I've been so threatened myself to stop our work that I'm having to now live in a rolling RV because I can't stay in one place anymore. An “oversight” committee isn't going to help when even FBI agents now are being threatened, attorney's are being threatened, and even judges trying to alert us we have a problem aren't being heard like Judge Thomas Goethals and the oversight office which ordered the investigation into the Pasadena Police aren't. I mean Merrill Ladenheim was put at the helm of the Los Angeles Sex Trafficking Task Force after we heard him giving support to Paul Tanaka? Who is running these things?

We need something DIFFERENT. Look, I'm not a fake that people went to another country to entice to speak for us as we saw with Samoly Mam. Nor am I a shill funded by rich white corporations to TRY and put the face on this issue of us all being minorities for some reason who testifies at the Hill and walks the Red Carpet because she says anything but what WE would say. If you look at my clips – you'll see I'm the undisputed founder of not only this movement, but the largest and oldest program of survivors in this country as far as adults go.

So I'm speaking not just as a survivor, but as someone who has been involved in this issue for 30 years now, answered over 500,000 calls on our hotline, with 1000's of stories of survivor and recovery under my belt also so I know what the solutions look like as well as the problem. Frankly, they don't require another grant, another committee, etc. They require COMMUNICATION.

So please if you're interested in doing something about the plight of the fact these victims do not STILL have a safe place to go – please get in touch with me to discuss solutions. Thank you.

Sincerely,

Jody Williams

cc: Health & Human Services Office of Refugee Resettlement