The motion prevailed.
Senator Damoose’s statement is as follows:
I just want to say I’m so grateful that we’re voting on this today, and I really hope and pray that we can pass this one all the way through. I know it’s been tough getting things done around here for a variety of reasons, but if we can’t come together as both chambers, as both parties, and with the Governor to really crack down on human trafficking, I’m not sure what we can do.
I just want to point out that it is unbelievable what’s happening right beneath our very noses. I began this pursuit, and many of you have been working on this issue for longer than I have, because I was challenged by something the Attorney General said, where she said that she never thought there would actually be meaningful legislation on human trafficking because she didn’t think any of us really had the will to do what was necessary. When I approached her on this, I said, Listen, I have the will and I know a bunch of my colleagues do too, but I don’t necessarily know what needs to be done. They were so helpful in walking us through this process and what’s actually happening here. I had to confess, and I think a lot of us here, if we’re being honest, we’re sort of where I was a year ago right now, which was that I had an intellectual knowledge that something really bad was happening in terms of human trafficking, but I don’t really—I couldn’t really tell you what was actually going on because you don’t often see the signs of this. You know, you see when a store’s been broken into, you see the broken window, you see cars abandoned on the road, you see drug deals going on, but maybe it was just me and being naïve, I didn’t know what was actually happening.
So I’m especially thankful for Melissa Palepu, who is the Assistant Attorney General, the chair of the Human Trafficking Commission, who spent several hours with me telling me exactly what’s going on, and for those of us who don’t know, it is shocking. She was the one who pointed out this is not the proverbial white truck pulling up at a big box store and kidnapping somebody—even though that does happen—but she described a 13-year-old girl, sitting at home, flirting with some boy on the internet, and he convinced her, Send me a picture of this, send me a picture of this. In a moment of weakness, she said, OK, I know I shouldn’t do this, but I’m going to do it anyways. And boom, she’s sent it to a 40-year-old man. Now the man says, I own you, and he says, If you don’t do exactly what I’m going to say, I’m going to show everybody in your school, I’m going to show your parents, exactly what happened. Before you know it, he has her hooked on drugs and she’s a prostitute. The bottom line is that I know all of us work really hard with our kids to be good parents. I have had to stay on top of my kids all the time and hopefully they wouldn’t do something like that, but kids do dumb things. And every now—it could happen literally to anybody, and this is what’s happening right beneath our noses.
These bills are pretty straightforward. My benchmark was simple. Look, you can’t make this stuff go away just by legislation—it’s already illegal to traffic people—but I said, Whatever you come up with, and whatever we come up with through the Human Trafficking Commission and those who were involved in this, I want to pass some bills that we know two years from now, there will be a significant number of women and children and even men who wake up that day and aren’t trafficked who otherwise would have been were it not for these bills, and I think that’s what we’ve got here.
I just want to close by saying there’s been a lot of hands on this. I’m thankful for the Attorney General and for Melissa Palepu. I’m certainly thankful to the Senator from the 13th District who’s been carrying this water for a long time, to the Senator from the 3rd District who jumped right on this with me, to the Senator from the 14th District who now has one of these bills, and I also want to thank the Senator from the 9th District who had one of these bills and stood shoulder to shoulder with us to get this done. Let’s pass this today and let’s put the press on and really ask our colleagues in the House to do the same. I think this is something we can all be proud of at the end of the year.
The following bill was read a third time:
Senate Bill No. 521, entitled
A bill to amend 1927 PA 175, entitled “The code of criminal procedure,” by amending section 16w of chapter XVII (MCL 777.16w), as amended by 2016 PA 486.
The question being on the passage of the bill,
The bill was passed, a majority of the members serving voting therefor, as follows: