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Child Labor Trafficking in the United States: A Hidden Crime by Katherine Kaufka Walts
Child labor trafficking is one of the least understood forms of human trafficking in the United States. Emerging research shows that survivors of child labor trafficking, similar to sex trafficking, often engage with multiple first responders, including service providers, health care providers, law enforcement, and judges, yet these children (both boys and girls) are often identified as perpetrators of a crime or misidentified as victims of other forms of child maltreatment. This seminar provides an overview of child labor trafficking case examples, current research, and identify policies and practices that can help stakeholders better identify these cases and provide interventions that protect child trafficking victims under federal and state laws.
Katherine Kaufka Walts is currently a Co-PI on a groundbreaking, interdisciplinary national study to identify the nature of child labor trafficking cases in the US, learn more about who perpetrators of labor trafficking care, and how cases of labor trafficking cases involving children are being identified as well as the challenges facing first responders. She is a Clinical Professor of Law and the Director of the Center for the Human Rights of Children at Loyola University School of Law. Ms. Kaufka Walts has over fifteen years of experience working on child trafficking issues, as a service provider, trainer, and scholar, and has authored numerous publications on the subject of child trafficking, the intersection of child trafficking and child migration, and child welfare. Prior to joining Loyola, Ms. Kaufka Walts managed the Counter Human Trafficking Project at the National Immigrant Justice Center, where she represented survivors of both labor and sex trafficking in multiple jurisdictions in both criminal and immigration proceedings under the Trafficking Victims Protection Act (TVPA) and its reauthorizations.