{"id":2317,"date":"2019-05-03T06:22:40","date_gmt":"2019-05-03T11:22:40","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/com.bradley.edu\/newslab\/?p=2317"},"modified":"2019-05-03T06:22:40","modified_gmt":"2019-05-03T11:22:40","slug":"combating-human-trafficking-through-the-courts","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/com.bradley.edu\/newslab\/2019\/05\/03\/combating-human-trafficking-through-the-courts\/","title":{"rendered":"Combating Human Trafficking Through The Courts"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
\nhttps:\/\/youtu.be\/Zos9DH_k0M8\n<\/div><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

A Chicago civil rights attorney spoke to a room full of Bradley students about her client\u2019s fight to combat child sex trafficking in the United States.
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Bhavani Raveendran gave her lecture, \u201cCombating Human Trafficking Through the Courts\u201d to a packed GCC 126 Tuesday, April 30th.
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The lecture was sponsored by numerous Bradley organizations and clubs, including Center for Legal Studies and Department of Sociology.
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Raveendran is a civil rights attorney based in Chicago. Her lecture focused on her ongoing case, Ambrose v. Backpage.com.<\/a>
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She began by describing her type of work.
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\u201cThis is kind of a newer area of law,\u201d Raveendran said. She said it\u2019s new because human trafficking is hard to prove, and most survivors of human trafficking are traumatized and wouldn’t want to file a lawsuit.<\/a>
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But as Raveendran describes, lawsuits aren\u2019t the only way to fight human trafficking. Before these cases came along, people were trying to end human trafficking in other ways, like through advocacy or legislative action.<\/a>
<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The lecture centered on Raveendran\u2019s experience with the Ambrose v. Backpage.com case.
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She introduced the case by showing a trailer for the documentary I am Jane Doe. The victims who told their stories had similar experiences of being sold into human trafficking via the domain backpage.com<\/a>.
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As one individual in the trailer says, \u201cBackpage is the walmart of human trafficking.\u201d
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Raveendran fighting on behalf of her client, Desiree Robinson<\/a>, who was killed at the age of 16 after being sold by on Backpage.com. Raveendran said Robinson\u2019s mother, Yvonne Ambrose, is so compelling to listen to because she wants sex trafficking to end for others. She testified to the U.S. Senate about her daughter\u2019s case to help promote the signing of the Stop Enabling Sex Traffickers Act.
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Alex Fossburgh is a freshman political science major. She attended the lecture because she has been following the Backpage case.
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\u201cIt was powerful because you could tell [Ambrose] was so passionate about making sure another child would never be trafficked so easily,\u201d Fossburgh said.
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Other students who attended the lecture also appreciated Raveendran\u2019s compelling story of advocacy.
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\u201cI thought it was really helpful seeing how you can turn advocacy into a career path\u201d Jacob Sanders, a junior organizational communications major said.
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\u201cI\u2019ve also seen the documentary a couple times,\u201d Fossburgh said,  \u201cSo it was good to know that Backpage and its founders will be held responsible for profiting off of child sex slavery.\u201d
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After her lecture, Raveendran paused for questions.
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A student raised her hand, asking, \u201cWhat can we do? How can we help survivors of sex trafficking?\u201d
<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Raveendran smiled. \u201cThere\u2019s so much you can do as an individual,\u201d she said. She began a list of options: volunteering for advocacy groups, lobbying for laws you believe in, reaching out to organizations, and donating clothing or other materials to shelters and safe houses for victims.
<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Her hopeful tone brought a sense of lightness to the room, lifting the weight of uncomfortable stillness the room had after discussing such a dark matter as child sex trafficking. In fact, throughout the lecture, Raveendran would make a quick joke or a sly remark to brighten the otherwise dark tone of the room.
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Raveendran recognized the heavy nature of her work, and therefore understood its importance that much more.
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Sanders says, \u201cI think she’s doing work that other people are too intimidated to do.\u201d
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\u201cThese are hard cases,\u201d Raveendran said, \u201cbut they are very much worth the work.\u201d
<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A Chicago civil rights attorney spoke to a room full of Bradley students about her client\u2019s fight to combat child sex trafficking in the United States. Bhavani Raveendran gave her lecture, \u201cCombating Human Trafficking Through the Courts\u201d to a packed GCC 126 Tuesday, April 30th. The lecture was sponsored by numerous Bradley organizations and clubs, including Center for Legal Studies and Department of Sociology. Raveendran is a civil rights attorney based in Chicago. Her lecture focused on her ongoing case, Ambrose v. Backpage.com. She began by describing her type of work. \u201cThis is kind of a newer area of law,\u201d Raveendran said. She said it\u2019s new because human trafficking is hard to prove, and most survivors of human trafficking are traumatized and wouldn’t want to file a lawsuit. But as Raveendran describes, lawsuits aren\u2019t the only way to fight human trafficking. Before these cases came along, people were trying to end human trafficking in other ways, like through advocacy or legislative action. The lecture centered on Raveendran\u2019s experience with the Ambrose v. Backpage.com case. She introduced the case by showing a trailer for the documentary I am Jane Doe. The victims who told their stories had similar experiences of being […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":229,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2317","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/com.bradley.edu\/newslab\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2317","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/com.bradley.edu\/newslab\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/com.bradley.edu\/newslab\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/com.bradley.edu\/newslab\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/229"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/com.bradley.edu\/newslab\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2317"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/com.bradley.edu\/newslab\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2317\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2321,"href":"https:\/\/com.bradley.edu\/newslab\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2317\/revisions\/2321"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/com.bradley.edu\/newslab\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2317"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/com.bradley.edu\/newslab\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2317"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/com.bradley.edu\/newslab\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2317"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}