LIHUE — The Kauai County Committee on the Status of Women invites the public to a forum on human trafficking from 5 to 7 p.m. Thursday at the Lihue Civic Center Mo‘ikeha Building first-floor conference room.
“Sex trafficking and your children is a combination no parent wants to imagine on Kauai, but it is a real threat on our island,” said Edith Ignacio-Neumiller, secretary for the committee,
“Recent news have cited about 160 child-sex-trafficking cases were reported to the state of Hawaii’s Department of Human Services over the last two years.”
The forum will feature State Commission on the Status of Women Executive Director Khara Jabola-Carolus and a presentation by Dominique Roe-Sepowitz on sex trafficking in Hawaii, “Stories of Survivors.”
Roe-Sepowitz is an associate professor at the Arizona State University School of Social Work and the founder and director of the Office of Sex Trafficking Intervention Research.
The forum will also include the following panelists:
• Stefani Iwami, clinical director for sexual assault services, YWCA Kauai;
• Justin Kollar, Kauai prosecuting attorney;
• Jessica Munoz, founder and president of Ho‘ola Na Pua;
• Kauai Police Department Chief Todd Raybuck.
“Human trafficking is the business of stealing freedom for profit,” a county press release said.
“Traffickers trick, defraud or physically force victims into providing commercial sex. Victims are lied to, assaulted, branded, threatened or manipulated into working under inhumane, illegal or unacceptable conditions. It is a multi-billion-dollar criminal industry that denies freedom to 25 million people around the world,” the release states.
