August 3, 2012 CONGRESSIONAL RECORD — Extensions of Remarks E1419 

If the sanctions the U.S. imposed on Iraq 

are any precedent, we know that sanctions 

are not an effective tool in promoting or supporting domestic democracy movements. We 

also know that those sanctions did not prevent 

an unnecessary and wasteful war with Iraq. 

In effect, the expansion of the broad and indiscriminate sanctions included in this legislation hurts our ability to negotiate with Iran and 

imposes long-term detrimental harm on the 

Iranian people. It detracts from the real human 

rights abuses currently occurring in Iran by allowing the regime to deflect blame on the 

United States and its allies. 

SUPPORTING REGIME CHANGE AND TYING THE

PRESIDENT’S HANDS

Section 217 in this bill effectively states that 

sanctions on Iran’s central bank would not be 

lifted unless there is regime change. It does 

this by creating new requirements for the termination of sanctions that are dependent on 

the cessation of the Central Bank’s financing 

of the Revolutionary Guard. Section 205 imposes new restrictions on the President’s ability to waive certain sanctions. Collectively, 

these provisions have moved the goal post 

from negotiations over Iran’s nuclear enrichment program to regime change. The U.S. 

record on successful regime changes is not 

impressive. 

The National Iranian American Council has 

pointed out that this legislation ‘‘imposes collective punishment on the Iranian people by 

seeking to destroy the Iranian economy. The 

goal is to bankrupt Iran, and cause hyperinflation by destroying the value of Iran’s currency, the rial.’’ 

If your goal is to punish the Iranian people, 

undermine their brave efforts to push for democracy, and thwart our sensitive and critical 

negotiations, then support this bill. If not, I 

urge you to join me in opposing this legislation. 

SYRIA SANCTIONS INCLUDED IN THIS LEGISLATION

This legislation also requires the President 

to impose sanctions on actors that are responsible for or complicit in certain human rights 

abuses in Syria. 

This legislation fails to acknowledge that the 

United States and a number of our allies are 

actively participating in stoking the violence on 

the ground, including through the arming and 

support of Syrian rebel groups. Divisions and 

in-fighting within the various militias operating 

on the ground are already occurring. If our 

own intelligence agencies are unable to fully 

grasp what is transpiring on the ground in 

Syria, we can be sure that these targeted 

sanctions will overlook other non-state actors 

that are participating in human rights abuses. 

Recent reports also indicate that the instability and chaos in Syria has opened the door 

for fundamentalist groups to move in, including 

Al Qaeda. This threatens stability in the region 

as a whole and U.S. allies in the region, including Israel. 

We can all agree that the violence in Syria 

must end. But in order to do that, supporters 

on both sides of the conflict must cease providing either side with the tools to continue 

this bloody conflict. 

WELCOMING NAYYAR IMAM 

HON. TIMOTHY H. BISHOP OF NEW YORK

IN THE HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES

Thursday, August 2, 2012 

Mr. BISHOP of New York. Mr. Speaker, today’s opening prayer was delivered by Nayyar 

Imam from Mt. Sinai, New York—in my district 

on Long Island. 

I am honored to welcome Nayyar to the 

House as a distinguished representative of 

Long Island’s Muslim-American community. 

I also welcome his wife of 24 years, 

Rizwana, and their son, Ahmer, who attends 

Baruch College, City University of New York, 

who are joining us from the gallery. 

I am especially pleased that Nayyar was 

able to make the trip during Ramadan, the 

holy month of fasting and spiritual renewal. 

I have known him for ten years—as a trustee of his mosque in Selden, New York and as 

a leading authority of Islamic culture across 

Long Island. He also serves the Islamic Association of Long Island and the Suffolk County 

Commission on Human Rights. 

As the first Muslim-American chaplain of the 

Suffolk County Police Department, Nayyar has 

delivered the benedictions at its memorial 

services. He has also delivered opening prayers of the Suffolk County legislature. 

I commend him for his service to my district 

and Long Island, as well as for the spiritual 

leadership he provides my constituents. 

I thank Nayyar Imam and his family for joining us to open the chamber with today’s prayer. 

f 

HUMAN TRAFFICKING IN THE U.S. 

HON. MARCY KAPTUR OF OHIO

IN THE HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES

Thursday, August 2, 2012 

Ms. KAPTUR. Mr. Speaker, I rise today to 

highlight the problem of human trafficking. 

Every day all over our country, vulnerable 

women, and children and even men are stolen 

away from their communities and forced into 

work to line the pockets of criminals. Their stories and situations are different, but one common denominator remains: they are moved 

away, they are forced to work, their wages are 

stolen, and they are unable to leave. They are 

modern day slaves. 

Under the federal Trafficking Victims Protection Act, human trafficking is defined as the recruitment, harboring, transportation, provision, 

or obtaining of a person to perform labor or a 

commercial sex act through force, fraud, or 

coercion. You can find human trafficking victims everywhere. They are working in restaurants; nail salons; as maids and nannies; 

on farms; in factories; in brothels, on the 

street, and as online escorts—they exist in 

any industry where one’s work and freedom 

can be stolen from them. 

The Justice Department supports task 

forces dedicated to investigating human trafficking cases. Between 2008 and 2010, these 

task forces rescued 527 confirmed human trafficking victims. Some of the people rescued 

were sex trafficking victims, others were labor 

trafficking victims. But the statistics are telling. 

The majority of trafficking victims are women: 

women made up 98 percent of sex trafficking 

victims and 68 percent of labor trafficking victims. The traffickers were overwhelmingly (81 

percent) male. Most of the victims were under 

the age of 25. With sex trafficking, most of the 

victims were U.S. citizens, while labor trafficking largely affected undocumented individuals. But this data just scratches the surface 

of the problem that is out there, within our own 

borders. 

Hundreds of thousands of trafficking victims 

are exploited every year in the United States. 

The Polaris Project estimates that there are 

100,000 child sex trafficking victims in the U.S. 

alone each year. This figure came into clear 

focus in my hometown of Toledo, Ohio back in 

2005, when a child prostitution ring in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania was broken up. The sting 

involved 177 girls, 77 of whom were from Toledo. One was a ten year old girl. They had 

all been stolen away from their family, from 

their community, and forced into prostitution in 

a city over 400 miles away. That discovery led 

to the discovery of many other girls from Toledo who had fallen victim to sex trafficking. 

The problem is big, but progress is being 

made. One state representative from Toledo 

has worked tirelessly to address this issue at 

the state level. Representative Teresa Fedor 

recently saw her signature legislation signed 

into law. The legislation, Ohio’s ‘‘Safe Harbor’’ 

law, ensures that children who have been trafficked are treated as victims and not charged 

with violations like solicitation. The law also increases the penalties faced by adult traffickers 

and helps victims access services to help return to society. Prior to the signing of this law, 

Representative Fedor passed a law to create 

a human trafficking charge that could be 

added to related crimes to increase the severity of the sentence. 

The good work that Representative Fedor 

has done will undoubtedly help victims of trafficking in Ohio. I would like to ask unanimous 

consent to include an article from the Toledo 

Blade detailing her work in this area. 

Human trafficking will remain a scourge on 

our society until we can assure that no human 

being is turned into a slave. I applaud the 

steps that have been taken so far, but also 

recognize that much more needs to be done. 

[From the toledoBlade.com, July 31, 2012] 

FEDOR FOUND VOICE IN HUMAN-TRAFFIC

BATTLE

(By Jim Provance) 

COLUMBUS.—‘‘Without her, we wouldn’t 

have a voice,’’ a former human-trafficking 

victim recently said of Rep. Teresa Fedor. 

But one might also say that it was this victim and others like her who gave the Democratic lawmaker from Toledo her voice. 

The former elementary school teacher and 

former Air Force staff sergeant has without 

a doubt experienced political success. She’d 

been in the Ohio House only two years before 

Lucas County voters promoted her to the 

Senate in 2002. In 2010, when term limits 

forced her out of the chamber, they sent her 

back to the House. She faces no Republican 

opposition for re-election this year. 

But making legislative gains proved more 

elusive. 

An unscientific poll in the summer of 2007 

by Columbus Monthly magazine of 100 lawmakers, lobbyists, and players in Gov. Ted 

Strickland’s administration, and other 

Statehouse insiders ranked her among the 

least effective and politically savvy of state 

lawmakers. 

Her colleagues in the Senate Democratic 

Caucus, a very small club, dumped her as 


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E1420 CONGRESSIONAL RECORD — Extensions of Remarks August 3, 2012 

their elected leader in early 2008 after an internal coup. 

But just two weeks ago, many of those 

same Democratic senators and their more 

plentiful Republican counterparts gave Ms. 

Fedor a standing ovation after the chamber 

unanimously passed House Bill 262, the socalled ‘‘Safe Harbor’’ bill. 

Gov. John Kasich is to sign it into law 

Wednesday at Second Chance, a Toledo social service program offering help to trafficking victims and prostitutes. 

‘‘There’s no higher calling than fighting 

for those who can’t fight for themselves,’’ 

said Sen. Mark Wagoner (R., Ottawa Hills), 

the Senate Judiciary Committee chairman 

who helped to work through last-minute 

changes to get the bill over the finish line. 

‘‘Teresa is to be commended for taking up 

this issue, for the energy she put behind it, 

and for the commitment to see it through,’’ 

he said. 

The bill seeks to push the reset button for 

government, law enforcement, judges, and 

others to look at those forced or coerced into 

selling themselves, especially minors, as victims rather than as criminals. 

Initially struggling to get bipartisan support, Ms. Fedor reached out to a man who, at 

least through much of 2011, was considered 

by Democrats to be the enemy—Mr. Kasich. 

When the Republican governor signed on, 

Ms. Fedor was in disbelief. 

‘‘This was different for her,’’ Mr. Kasich recalled. ‘‘She asked me, ‘Are you really serious that you’re going to help me?’’’ 

The highly contentious fight over Senate 

Bill 5, which ended last November when voters rejected the Republican-passed restrictions on public employee unions, was still 

fresh in lawmakers’ minds. 

‘‘I know I’m dancing on the edge of a knife 

here, but this issue’s more important than 

the politics of this place,’’ said Ms. Fedor. 

No political backlash came. 

The trafficking issue has brought Mr. Kasich, the father of 12-year-old twin daughters, close to tears multiple times. 

‘‘I knew about human trafficking worldwide, but I was certainly not aware of the 

situation in this state. . . .’’ he said. ‘‘It 

doesn’t just touch me because I have daughters. That’s part of it, but it’s anybody’s 

children.’’ 

In addition to signing the bill into law, Mr. 

Kasich’s own interagency task force on trafficking will release its recommendations on 

how the state can better respond to the problem on Wednesday. 

‘‘Instead of prosecuting these people, we’re 

beginning to recognize these people are victims,’’ Mr. Kasich said. ‘‘Secondly, those 

people who knowingly engage with these 

traffickers and abuse them, the book is going 

to be thrown at them. We had this bust [near 

Bowling Green] that’s had a significant 

amount of attention, so the word is out: 

You’re going to jail and for a long time. 

‘‘And the women who are out there, the 

people who have been trafficked, they can 

come forward, and we will not prosecute 

you,’’ he said. ‘‘We will treat you and help 

you get your life back.’’ 

INCREMENTAL GAINS

The gains have been incremental. In 2008, 

Ms. Fedor persuaded her colleagues to amend 

a separate bill to create a human trafficking 

specification that, when attached to a related crime such as compelling prostitution, 

could increase the severity of the sentence. 

Ms. Fedor said she knew the specification 

would not be used, but saw it as the first step 

to getting human trafficking recognized in 

Ohio law. 

More important, she said, was a provision 

authorizing then Attorney General Richard 

Cordray, a Democrat, to create a commission 

to quantify modern-day slavery in Ohio. 

The statistics that emerged from the commission were a kick in the stomach. 

They suggested that as many as 2,879 

youths born in Ohio are at risk for sex trafficking and that 1,078 have been trafficked 

over the course of a year. 

In terms of raw numbers of arrests, investigations, and rescues of children involved in 

the sex trade, the commission suggested that 

Toledo ranked fourth in the nation behind 

Miami, Portland, Ore., and Las Vegas. When 

adjusted for population, Toledo climbed to 

No. 1. 

‘‘We feel that the models were reasonable 

and conservatively estimated, but I also 

think the estimate woke some people up,’’ 

said Celia Williamson, professor of criminal 

justice and social work at the University of 

Toledo and leader of the commission subcommittee that presented the numbers. 

But even when armed with those numbers, 

she was surprised at the success Ms. Fedor 

had. 

‘‘I was astonished that she was able to pass 

such a comprehensive Safe Harbor law,’’ Ms. 

Williamson said. ‘‘It’s more than we could 

have realistically dreamed.’’ 

The numbers were somewhat skewed by a 

2005 federal child prostitution sting in Harrisburg, Pa., involving 177 females. Seventyseven of them, including a 10-year-old, were 

from the Toledo area. A 2006 series by The 

Blade trained a spotlight on Toledo’s role as 

a major recruiting hub for children in the 

sex trade. 

‘‘It made no sense to me that pimps 

weren’t getting arrested, that johns weren’t 

getting arrested,’’ Ms. Fedor said. ‘‘They 

were all misdemeanors. The whole focus was 

on the prostitutes. In other words, it was always the woman’s fault. . . . And then, when 

I saw that it was reaching down to our children, I thought, ‘Enough is enough.’?’’ 

RUGGED DETERMINATION

Judge Tim Grendell of Geauga County 

Common Pleas Court was a Republican state 

senator in 2010 when he teamed with then 

Sen. Fedor for the next step, creation of 

Ohio’s first stand-alone, second-degree felony of ‘‘trafficking in persons.’’ Mr. 

Grendell’s northeast Ohio district was dealing with its own problem of Asian massage 

parlors investigated for trafficking. 

‘‘She brought a rugged determination and 

dedication to the issue that, I think, was 

critical in passage of that legislation a year 

and a half ago and this legislation,’’ he said. 

‘‘In my personal opinion, [the latest bill] certainly would not have passed in this advanced state without her efforts.’’ 

But he also said that without Mr. Kasich’s 

intervention, a bill as strong as the one that 

ultimately just passed probably still would 

have been several years off. 

‘‘She’s been a huge force,’’ said Attorney 

General Mike DeWine, a Republican who resurrected the trafficking commission begun 

under his predecessor. 

‘‘She has a real passion for this and persistence,’’ he said. ‘‘I’ve found in government 

that you have to have those two, and she has 

them on this issue.’’ 

Theresa Flores, of Columbus, a former trafficking victim and now a member of Mr. 

DeWine’s commission, detailed her story in 

the 2007 book The Sacred Bath: An American 

Teen’s Story of Modern Day Slavery: As a 

teenager in an affluent Detroit suburb, she 

was blackmailed and trafficked at night, 

even if she did return to her own bed under 

her unsuspecting parents’ roof before the sun 

rose. 

‘‘[Ms. Fedor] really is empowering victims 

and survivors to find their voices,’’ she said. 

‘‘She’s helping them to realize that what 

happened to them wasn’t necessarily their 

fault. Somebody did this to us, and we need 

to go after them.’’ 

Although happy with the bill that reached 

Mr. Kasich’s desk, Ms. Fedor is already plotting her next move, battling what she perceives to be a misunderstanding among her 

colleagues over whether a trafficking victim 

can consent to prostitution—even if she is 

over 16, the legal age of consent. 

‘‘Age of consent should never apply,’’ she 

said. ‘‘These victims are not consenting. 

They’re enslaved. They can’t get out. 

They’re being forced to have sex with 20 or 30 

men a night—beaten, drugged, raped, kidnapped. They go from city to city. There’s no 

consent involved at all.’’ 

f 

IN RECOGNITION OF THE MASSACHUSETTS BREAST CANCER COALITION 

HON. WILLIAM R. KEATING OF MASSACHUSETTS

IN THE HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES

Thursday, August 2, 2012 

Mr. KEATING. Mr. Speaker, I rise today to 

recognize Against the Tide, a competitive race 

benefitting the Massachusetts Breast Cancer 

Coalition, MBCC, an organization dedicated to 

ending breast cancer. 

Breast cancer is the most common cancer 

and second leading cause of death for 

women. Studies estimate that in 2012, breast 

cancer will claim the lives of over 39,000 

women in the United States. Statistics also 

show that approximately 1 in 8 women born 

today will be diagnosed with breast cancer at 

some point in their lifetime. 

The citizens of my home state of Massachusetts have been severely impacted by breast 

cancer. Our state has the highest incident rate 

of breast cancer in the United States, affecting 

139.5 per 100,000 women in Massachusetts, 

as compared to a national average of 121.9 

per 100,000 women. Additionally, the highest 

incident rates of breast cancer are within the 

counties of Dukes, Nantucket and Barnstable, 

which are all located in my district. 

The Massachusetts Breast Cancer Coalition, 

the MBCC, was founded in 1991 to combat 

breast cancer. The organization challenges 

the commercialization and exploitation of 

breast cancer by corporations which stand to 

profit from the disease and those companies 

whose products contain carcinogens linked to 

breast cancer. Its mission to combat cancer 

through prevention has led the MBCC to advocate the investigation of environmental links to 

breast cancer, to dispel misconceptions about 

the realities of breast cancer, and to reject the 

concept of breast cancer as a chronic disease. 

Through the funds raised by the Against the 

Tide race, the MBCC has been able to continue its cause to combat breast cancer. 2012 

is the twentieth consecutive year the MBCC 

will hold this popular race, which unites people 

of all ages and backgrounds in a common 

fight against breast cancer. 

Mr. Speaker, please join me in applauding 

the efforts of the Massachusetts Breast Cancer Coalition to fight this devastating epidemic 

and wish them the best of luck for a successful race. 


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