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Report: NC Improving In Fight Against Forced Sex Labor

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A new report finds that North Carolina's efforts to fight human trafficking improved over the last decade. 

When Shared Hope International started grading states on their anti-trafficking efforts in 2011, North Carolina didn't do too well, earning a D.

The latest report now gives the state an A, and its overall score of 94 was eighth-best in the nation, according to a release from the North Carolina Judicial Branch.

Shared Hope cited across-the-board improvements in North Carolina's anti-trafficking measures, seeing improvements on such things as whether the state has adequate child sex trafficking laws and whether police and prosecutors are given enough resources for enforcement.

Among the steps the state legislature took in the last decade was the establishment of the North Carolina Human Trafficking Commission.

No states made an F in the latest tabulation, and only two — Maine and South Dakota — earned D's.

The report's authors say problems still remain in how states respond to trafficking. They say too many child victims still face potential criminal charges and lack access to services.

A national hotline is available for victims and survivors of human trafficking. The number is (888) 373-7888.

 

Paul Garber is a Winston-Salem native and an award-winning reporter who began his journalism career with an internship at The High Point Enterprise in 1993. He has previously worked at The Augusta (Ga.) Chronicle, The St. Louis Post-Dispatch, The News and Record of Greensboro and the Winston-Salem Journal, where he was the newspaper's first full-time multimedia reporter. He won the statewide Media and the Law award in 2000 and has also been recognized for his business, investigative and multimedia reporting. Paul earned a BA from Wake Forest University and has a Master's of Liberal Arts degree from Johns Hopkins University and a Master's of Journalism and Mass Communication from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. He lives in Lewisville.

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