Civil Litigation in Support of Human Trafficking Survivors
For the past couple years I’ve been looking for some clear guidance on how I can stay involved in the fight against human trafficking. When I retired early from law enforcement to join IJM, I never guessed I’d be back in Michigan a year later later and working as a private investigator.
The relationships and friendships I built at IJM have opened several doors for me to continue anti-trafficking work through several non-profits. Some of these opportunities are investigative in nature and involve providing leads to law enforcement on active cases. But, the thing that’s been holding me back from jumping head-first into these opportunities is that although they are investigative in nature, they are strictly online investigations and lean more into the intelligence support industry then “boots on the ground” investigative work. I’ve grealty increased my skillset in conducting online investigations in the last two years and I’ve had success with the online investigations aspects of my cases. But, I really love working cases that allow me to get out into the field, to talk to people, to verify facts, to look for evidence, and put together a whole case.
That’s what I hadn’t found yet in anti-human trafficking work as a PI. That was the case until I attended the mid-winter NALI conference in Florida earlier this month. NALI is the National Association of Legal Investigators and one of the speakers at this conference showed me what I had been missing. He was an attorney from Georgia and he specializes in representing trafficking survivors in civil lawsuits. These lawsuits are based on 18 USC 1595 and the civil remedy for survivors. This law makes it possible for victims of trafficking to file a law suit for damages against any entity (person or company) that “knowingly benefited from participating in a venture that violated the Trafficking Victims Protection Act and knew or should have known that the venture was in violation.”
The attorney that presented this material wasn’t on stage alone. Next to him was his investigator. After all, this was a conference of the best legal investigtors from across the country. Why an investigator? Because we’re talking about civil litigation. In criminal law the plantiff is the government, and thier investigation is conducted by law enforcement. Law enforcement has no role in investigating civil litigation. The plaintiff needs to prove their claims and they need to show evidence to the court. That’s were the investigator comes in. They are part of the team representing the survivor and thier investigation can make all the difference in getting a settlement or a judgement that awards life changing money to a survivor.
This has me excited. This has me looking for attorneys that take these cases that I can partner with. This has me wondering if these types of cases are one of the reasons that God led me here through the journey of the last few years.