This month, take action to stop sex trafficking | Miami Herald

I applaud the Miami Herald for its lead editorial focusing on sex trafficking of children in Miami and highlighting the significant efforts of Miami-Dade State Attorney Katherine Fernandez Rundle to fight this scourge. January is Human Trafficking Awareness Month,

And yet, this horrific form of child abuse remains grossly under-addressed and misunderstood and hidden.

The Herald correctly calls on Florida lawmakers to acknowledge the magnitude of this problem. On Friday, Florida Attorney General Pam Bondi issued a statement saying she is “committed to making Florida a zero-tolerance state for human trafficking.”

We all need to acknowledge the magnitude of and our responsibility to address this problem. The community needs to learn about the explosion of sex trafficking of children in our own backyard, how to spot and respond to the signs of trafficking and how to act to end it. We need to know enough, to care enough, to end this horror.

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Public awareness and education is key to fighting and preventing sex trafficking of our children. We need sustained and unified efforts to move this issue from the darkened, unseen corners of our community and backpage.com (where many of these children are sold) to the front pages of our papers and our lives. That’s my resolution for 2015.