I 
119TH CONGRESS 
1ST SESSION H. R. 1185 
To amend the Public Health Service Act to provide for the implementation 
of curricula for training students, teachers, and school personnel to 
understand, recognize, prevent, and respond to signs of human trafficking 
and exploitation in children and youth, and for other purposes. 
IN THE HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES 
FEBRUARY 11, 2025 
Mr. BUCHANAN (for himself and Ms. WASSERMAN SCHULTZ) introduced the 
following bill; which was referred to the Committee on Energy and Commerce 
A BILL 
To amend the Public Health Service Act to provide for 
the implementation of curricula for training students, 
teachers, and school personnel to understand, recognize, 
prevent, and respond to signs of human trafficking and 
exploitation in children and youth, and for other pur-
poses. 
Be it enacted by the Senate and House of Representa-
tives of the United States of America in Congress assembled, 
SECTION 1. SHORT TITLE. 
This Act may be cited as the ‘‘Human Trafficking 
and Exploitation Prevention Training Act’’. 
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SEC. 2. FINDINGS. 
Congress finds the following: 
(1) According to the National Human Traf-
ficking Hotline, operated by the National Human 
Trafficking Resource Center, there is no single pro-
file for trafficking survivors—trafficking survivors 
include adults and minors from rural, suburban, and 
urban communities across the country. Survivors of 
human trafficking have diverse socioeconomic back-
grounds, varied levels of education, and may be doc-
umented or undocumented. According to the 2018 
Trafficking In Persons Report produced by the De-
partment of State, the Department of Justice, the 
National Human Trafficking Resource Center, and 
Youth.gov, vulnerable populations and risk factors 
for human trafficking include— 
(A) children in the child welfare and juve-
nile justice systems; 
(B) runaway youth; 
(C) homeless youth; 
(D) youth forced to leave home by parents 
or caregivers with no alternate care arranged; 
(E) unaccompanied children; 
(F) American Indians and Alaska Natives; 
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(G) migrant laborers, including undocu-
mented workers and individuals with temporary 
visas; 
(H) recent migration or relocation; 
(I) persons with disabilities; 
(J) LGBTI individuals; 
(K) people of color; 
(L) those with limited-English proficiency; 
(M) low literacy; 
(N) substance abuse; 
(O) mental health issues; 
(P) past trauma or violence; 
(Q) stigma or discrimination; 
(R) family conflict, disruption, or dysfunc-
tion; 
(S) community-level risk factors such as 
peer pressure, social norms, social isolation, 
gang involvement, and living in an under- 
resourced school, neighborhood, or community; 
and 
(T) society-level risk factors such as lack 
of awareness of commercial exploitation and 
human trafficking, sexualization of children, 
and lack of resources. 
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(2) According to the National Human Traf-
ficking Resource Center, human trafficking survivors 
have been identified in cities, suburbs, and rural 
areas in all 50 States, and in Washington, DC. The 
3 States with the highest incidents of human traf-
ficking cases reported via phone calls, emails, and 
online tips to the National Human Trafficking Hot-
line in 2018 were California, Texas, and Florida, re-
spectively. 
(3) According to the National Human Traf-
ficking Resource Center, the top recruitment meth-
ods used by sex traffickers based on self-reported 
data from survivors involve an intimate partner or 
marriage proposition, family members, individuals 
posing as a benefactor, offers of employment, or in-
dividuals perpetrating fraud or offering false prom-
ises. 
(4) According to the National Center on Safe 
Supportive Learning Environments, traffickers may 
systematically target vulnerable children by fre-
quenting locations where children congregate—malls, 
schools, bus and train stations, and group homes, 
among other locations. Traffickers also use peers or 
classmates who befriend the target and slowly groom 
the child for the trafficker by bringing the child 
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along to parties and other activities. According to 
Common Sense Media, nearly all children age 8 and 
under live in a home with some type of mobile device 
and use it every day. This is especially concerning 
given that traffickers often recruit through social 
media platforms and other websites. 
(5) Those within vulnerable populations are 
often exploited or groomed for entry into human 
trafficking at a very young age. According to a 2005 
clinical report, ‘‘The Evaluation of Sexual Abuse in 
Children’’, published by the American Academy of 
Pediatrics, studies have suggested that each year ap-
proximately 739,000 children experience some form 
of sexual abuse, resulting in the sexual victimization 
of 12 percent to 25 percent of girls and 8 percent 
to 10 percent of boys before the age of 18. 
(6) Sex trafficking and exploitation can take 
many harmful forms, including a lesser-known but 
just as damaging form of uncoerced exploitation re-
ferred to as ‘‘survival sex’’, meaning the exchange of 
sex for basic needs including clothing, food, shelter, 
or other basic necessities. Survival sex does not in-
volve a third-party trafficker or exploiter, and often 
affects youth, including those who are homeless, 
runaways, or housing-insecure, who lack the finan-
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cial resources, job readiness, support system, or op-
portunity to afford or access these basic necessities. 
(7) Training students, teachers, and school per-
sonnel to understand, recognize, and respond to 
signs of human trafficking and exploitation in chil-
dren and youth is invaluable in the effort to identify 
and prevent human trafficking and exploitation be-
fore it occurs. According to the National Human 
Trafficking Resource Center, the widespread lack of 
awareness and understanding of human trafficking 
leads to low levels of survivor identification by the 
people who most often encounter them. Survivors of 
human trafficking are often forced to work or pro-
vide commercial sex against their will in legal and le-
gitimate business settings or underground markets. 
It is often the case that those who are being ex-
ploited or trafficked are in plain view and may inter-
act with community members, underscoring the ur-
gent need for the expansion of training programs to 
increase awareness and prevention activities in com-
munities across the United States. 
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