I. Human Trafficking Evolves Into a Defense and an Offense in Court

With the Office of the Texas Attorney General estimating that 234,000 labor trafficking victims and 79,000 minor sex trafficking victims are suffering in the state at any given moment,(2) the Texas Legislature, like many legislative bodies across the country, is going on the offensive and attempting to tackle traffickers where they are most vulnerable—at hotels and lodging facilities, entertainment venues, restaurants, massage parlors, salons, and other commercial enterprises where businesses willingly or unwittingly become a part of traffickers’ crimes against humanity.

One case out of Wisconsin – The State of Wisconsin v. Chrystul Kizer(3) – illustrates how broadly courts and law enforcement agencies have shifted their perspectives on human trafficking victims. Litigators and law enforcement authorities no longer view trafficked individuals as prostitutes, but rather as individuals who are trapped and in need of aid from society at large. In the Kizer case, the Wisconsin Supreme Court will decide whether Kizer, a victim of sex trafficking as a teen, can use her trafficker’s illicit activities against her as a claim for self-defense after she was charged with the murder of her trafficker.(4)