Tennessee’s Department of Children’s Services (DCS) is highlighting a new anti-human trafficking team, which was formed as part of the state’s ongoing effort to combat the practice.
“We’ve had over 500 reports since the beginning of the year,” Kate Greer, the Director of the Human Trafficking Response Team, which is part of DCS, reportedly said.
The unit was created in January to stifle child trafficking, a practice that has increased nearly twofold nationally over the past decade.
“A lot of community members think it’s just a foreign child chained up in a dark room, because that’s what we picture from the movies and that kind of thing; it’s not. It’s your neighbors; it’s your friends, probably, and people don’t understand that; they don’t know that,” Greer said. “It is a population that hasn’t gotten the attention it needs to get, and the Department of Children’s Services did not have a unit. The Department of Children’s Services has worked with young children for a long time, and it’s not that we didn’t have contact with teenagers but I don’t think we looked into their needs quite as much as this particular unit is able to do.”
Eight investigators lead the unit and field tips from community members and sometimes directly from law enforcement.
“Two different times the [Tennessee Highway Patrol], in the last six months, has identified trafficking victims and called us,” said Greer. “Kids were literally found on the side of the road. We got that call in the middle of the night because that was an emergency situation, so we are on call 24/7.”
Tennessee’s Republican legislature has also been focused on combating the practice.
During the August special session of the legislature, an anti-human trafficking bill requiring the Tennessee Bureau of Investigation (TBI) to document its progress on stopping human trafficking via an annual report submitted to state lawmakers and Gov. Bill Lee (R) was passed and signed into law.
The Tennessee Faith and Freedom Coalition (TFFC), which pushed the legislature for the bill, celebrated its passage.
“Today was another victory in the lengthy, ongoing quest to eradicate child and human trafficking, modern-day slavery, in the state of Tennessee,” the TNFFC said at the time. “We are grateful to the Tennessee House of Representatives for their approval of HB7041/SB7088 for Special Session today.”
The special session was initially geared towards gun control, which TNFFC strongly counteracted.
“We started this entire Special Session process vehemently disagreeing with Governor Lee on some issues not related to trafficking,” the group said.
“To his credit, Governor Lee listened to our concerns on those issues, acknowledged and took them to heart, and then showed true leadership on this issue. It is a true credit to a leader when they put aside certain differences and work together with stakeholders for the common good. In our view, there is no other issue more important than saving children, women, and even men from being victimized by modern-day slavery. Thank you, Governor Lee.”
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Pete D’Abrosca is a reporter at The Tennessee Star and The Star News Network. Follow Pete on X / Twitter.
