SPOKANE, Wash. – In April 2023, the Washington State Legislature passed a bill mandating that all students ages 12 to 18 receive mandatory instruction on sex trafficking prevention and recognition.
Priscilla Hernandez from the Fulcrum Institute told NonStop Local that Washington State has the 6th largest concentration of past and current sex trafficking victims in the United States. This is why Hernandez believes the Fulcrum Institute’s program on preventing and identifying the signs of sex trafficking is more critical than ever.
The program has already been implemented in four school districts in Washington. Hernandez says the program has four modules that cover the following topics: sexual exploitation, grooming, child sex trafficking, and child safety.
Hernandez told NonStop Local that in the districts where their program was taught, students had already experienced some of the signs of sex trafficking.
“The amount of kids that had experienced grooming, online grooming, and in-person grooming, their friends had been talking to, you know, these adults that shouldn’t have been talking to them a certain way. So they were aware, they knew that something was going on, they just didn’t have a name to put it to.”
Hernandez added that children today have increased access and exposure to the internet, which makes them uniquely vulnerable in comparison to children in the past than in the past, which is why Hernandez believes having the tools to recognize the signs early is essential.
