Reception sponsored by the Soroptimist Clubs of Chicago

Registration in Library Lobby

Breakfast & Networking in Ruggles Hall

Welcome & Introduction

Sandra Hunnicutt: Captive Daughters

Prof Morrison Torrey, Esq.: DePaul University

Michelle Dempsey, Esq.: Conference Moderator

Kaethe Morris Hoffer, Esq., Conference Spokesperson

Keynote Address

Ms. Dorchen Leidholdt, Esq.: Director, Center for Battered Women's Legal Services, Sanctuary for Families; Co-Executive Director, Coalition Against Trafficking in Women

Dr. Laura Lederer, Sr. Advisor on Trafficking, Department of State

Mr. Derek Ellerman, Polaris Project

Mr. Jackson Katz, MVP Strategies

Ms. Marisa Ugarte, Bilateral Safety Corridor Coalition

Dr. Melissa Farley, Prostitution Research, San Francisco, CA

Dr. Stephen Grubman-Black, University of Rhode Island

Dr. Mary Anne Layden, University of Pennsylvania Health Systems

Dr. Brenda Myers, Chicago Coalition for the Homeless

Mr. Kenneth Franzblau, Esq., Equality Now, New York

Dr Donna Hughes, University of Rhode Island Ms. Jan Miyasaki, Project RESPECT, Madison, Wisconsin

Film

Towner Lounge, 2nd Floor

Diane Rosenfeld, Women's Studies, Harvard University, will screen Rape Is..., a half-hour documentary exploring the meaning and consequences of rape, and discussing the relationship between rape, sex trafficking and prostitution. Ms. Rosenfeld co-produced the film.

Ms. Margaret Baldwin, Esq., Florida State University

Dr. Mohammed Mattar, The Protection Project, Johns Hopkins University

Ms Pamela Shifman, Esq., UNICEF

Pamela Shifman, UNICEF

Lisa Thompson, The Salvation Army

Margaret Baldwin: Professor Baldwin is an Associate Professor of Law at Florida State University College of Law. Her legal scholarship and advocacy activities have long centered on furthering justice for prostituted women and girls. Professor Baldwin has represented prostituted women in civil rights and clemency cases, authored the first statute in the United States creating compensation claims for women and girls coerced in prostitution, and has written extensivelyon legal strategies benefiting prostituted women and girls.

Michelle Madden Dempsey: Ms. Dempsey is a former criminal prosecutor and civil litigator who is engaged in doctoral research at the University of Oxford regarding the prosecution of violence against women. She has served as a legal and policy consultant to the Crown Prosecution Service of England and Wales, drafted an analysis of the U.S. State Department's Model Trafficking Law on behalf of the Coalition Against Trafficking in Women, and provided legal consultation to the Chicago-based Prostitution Alternatives Roundtable. Ms. Dempsey has lobbied on behalf of Equality Now during the drafting of the U.N. Trafficking Protocol, and served as a member of the Violence Reduction Working Group of the Governor's Commission on the Status of Women in Illinois.

Derek Ellerman: Mr. Ellerman is a co-founder and Co-Executive Director of Polaris Project, a Washington, DC-based nonprofit that combats human trafficking. Programs include the Greater DC Community Task Force, the National Trafficking Alert System (NTAS), and HumanTrafficking.com, the world's largest research and activism website on sex trafficking. Recognized as an expert on sex trafficking in the US, Mr. Ellerman supervises the development and implementation of Polaris Project programs. He specializes in victim outreach, community-based investigation, law enforcement collaboration, and trafficking policy. Mr. Ellerman has conducted workshops for the US State Department to help train anti-trafficking professionals from around the world. He founded and for four years served as Executive Director of the Center for Police and Community (CPAC), a Providence-based nonprofit working on issues of police reform in Rhode Island. He has also served as President of the Rhode Island Committee for Non-Violence Initiatives, one of most respected non-violence agencies in the state. Derek has a Sc.B. in Cognitive Neuroscience from Brown University, and he is the primary website and graphic designer for PolarisProject.org and HumanTrafficking.com

Dr. Melissa Farley: Dr. Farley brings 35 years of practice in clinical psychology to her research on prostitution. She is director of the nonprofit Prostitution, Research & Education (PRE). Dr. Farley has provided consultation to both non-governmental and governmental agencies on prostitution & trafficking. She has published 20 articles in peer-reviewed journals, many on the topic of prostitution. She has just completed editing Prostitution, Trafficking, & Traumatic Stress, which will be available this year. In addition to speaking about prostitution at national and international meetings, she has provided testimony on prostitution in forensic cases. She also works with a health research team at Kaiser Permanente, with whom she has published studies delineating the effects of sexual violence on women's health.

Kenneth Franzblau: Mr. Franzblau has worked for Equality Now, an international human rights organization, since 1996. His current work, which focuses on sex tourism, involves finding sex tour companies and gathering information that can be provided to law enforcement and administrative agencies, NGOs and the media. Mr. Franzblau was previously Equality Now’s liaison to the United Nations Human Rights Committee. He has written several op-ed pieces and articles concerning sex tourism and trafficking. Mr. Franzblau holds a BA and MA from George Washington University and a JD from St. John's University. Before working for Equality Now, he was labor counsel to numerous police unions in New York State for 10 years.

Dr. Stephen Grubman-Black: Dr. Grubman-Black, of the University at Buffalo’s Department of Speech Communication, holds a Joint Appointment as Professor of Communicative Disorders and Women's Studies at the University of Rhode Island. Currently Coordinator of the Bachelor of General Studies Degree Program and the Academic Advising Program at URI's Alan Shawn Feinstein College of Continuing Education, Dr. Grubman-Black divides his work among administration, teaching, and scholarship. He developed a section of WMS350 (Enforced Silences and Natural Recovery from Childhood Sexual Victimization), which challenges the heterosexist and patriarchal institutions that continue to damage and kill women, girls and boys. He is the author of Broken Boys/Mending Men, and offers trainings for professional helpers as well as workshops for male survivors. His current research focus is investigating and challenging the lack of care and regard for disenfranchised and poor victims of male violence.  

Kaethe Morris Hoffer: Ms. Morris Hoffer recently co-authored the Gender Violence Act, a groundbreaking civil rights law for survivors of rape and sex-based violence that has been enacted in Illinois and California. She has served on the Governors Commission on the Status of Women in Illinois, worked as a policy advisor to the Mayor of Chicago, lobbied the United Nations on sex trafficking for Equality Now, directed federal policy for the AIDS Foundation of Chicago, and worked as an attorney for low-income women in Chicago.

Norma Hotaling: Ms. Hotaling is Executive Director and founder of SAGE (Standing Against Global Exploitation). A former prostitute and heroin addict who spent time in jail, Ms. Hotaling recognizes the underlying connection between trauma, addiction and prostitution and is committed to the creation of alternatives to homelessness and the incarceration of women and girls. SAGE offers counseling, peer support, drug treatment options, medical treatment and job training to help women forge a new life. She has designed and implemented model programs that have been adopted internationally, such as the First Offenders Prostitution Program (FOPP), which is for customers of prostitutes and in alliance with the San Francisco District Attorney's Office. Ms. Hotaling, a strong advocate for women and children's rights, has presented internationally and before the United Nations on issues of violence, prostitution and the sexual exploitation of children. She is the recipient of numerous awards, including Oprah's Angel Award (2001); The Peter F. Drucker Award for Nonprofit (2000) and the prestigious Innovations in American Government Award (1998). Norma's work has been featured on over 50 television, radio and print media stories, including “Oprah Winfrey”, “48 Hours”, Life and The New York Times.

Dr. Donna Hughes: Dr. Hughes is a Professor and holds the Eleanor M. and Oscar M. Carlson Endowed Chair in Women’s Studies at the University of Rhode Island. She has been involved in community work, education and research on violence against women and sexual exploitation for fifteen years. She is an internationally known scholar, researcher and activist on trafficking of women and girls for prostitution. She has completed research on trafficking for prostitution in the United States, Russia, and Ukraine. Dr. Hughes was a research consultant to the Council of Europe on the use of new information technologies in the trafficking of women and children for sexual exploitation. She has testified for several congressional hearings and published numerous papers and reports on trafficking and prostitution that are used by researchers and NGO personnel worldwide.

Sandra Hunnicutt: Ms. Hunnicutt is the founding Director of Captive Daughters, the oldest anti-trafficking group in California. Ms. Hunnicutt has 17 years of nonprofit experience, both salaried and as a volunteer. Sandra's interest in sex trafficking came about when she accompanied her husband on a 94-95 Fulbright teaching grant to Kathmandu, Nepal. Through this visit, Sandra became aware of the entrenched practice of sex trafficking in Nepal. On returning to the U.S in 1995, she began researching trafficking and found that there was a fragile network of groups educating the public on trafficking both here and abroad. She established Captive Daughters in Los Angeles in 1997. Prior to founding Captive Daughters, Sandra was President of Los Angeles Friends of Tibet from 1995-1997 and served six years as Executive Assistant to the late Dr. Lawrence Towner, President of the Newberry Library in Chicago. Sandra holds a B.A. in History from the University of Maryland, an M.A.L.S. from Dominican University in Illinois, and an AA in merchandising from the Fashion Institute of Design and Merchandising in Los Angeles.

Jackson Katz: Mr. Katz has long been recognized as one of America's leading anti-sexist male activists. In 1993, he founded the Mentors in Violence Prevention (MVP) Program at Northeastern University's Center for the Study of Sport in Society. The multiracial, mixed-gender MVP Program is the first large-scale attempt to enlist high school, collegiate and professional athletes in the fight against rape and all forms of men's violence against women, and it is the most widely utilized gender violence prevention program in college athletics. In 1996, Katz founded MVP Strategies, which provides gender violence prevention education and training for men and boys in schools, colleges, the US military, and small and large corporations. Since 1996, Mr. Katz has directed the first worldwide gender violence prevention program in the history of the US Marine Corps – the first such program in the United States military. From 2000-2003 he served as a member of the US Secretary of Defense's Task Force on Domestic Violence in the military. Mr. Katz is the creator of award-winning educational videos for college and high school students, including "Tough Guise: Violence, Media, and the Crisis in Masculinity", which was named one of the Top Ten Young Adult Videos for 2000 by the American Library Association.

Dr. Laura Lederer: Dr. Lederer currently serves as the Senior Advisor on Trafficking in the Office of Global Affairs at the Department of State. She founded the Protection Project at Harvard University in Washington, DC (the project moved to The Johns Hopkins University, School of Advanced International Studies in 2000.) Dr. Lederer served 10 years in philanthropy as Director of Community and Social Concerns at a private foundation before continuing her education in the law. In 1997, she received the Gustavas Meyers Center for Study of Human Rights Annual Award for Outstanding Work on Human Rights for her work on harmful speech issues. She is the editor of The Price We Pay: The Case against Racist Speech, Hate Propaganda, and Pornography, published in 1995, and the author of numerous articles on trafficking, commercial sexual exploitation of women and children, and child pornography.

Dorchen Leidholdt, Esq.: Ms. Leidholdt is the Director of the Center for Battered Women's Legal Services at Sanctuary for Families in New York City, an agency that provides legal representation to battered women in family law, criminal, civil rights, and immigration cases and advocates for policy and legislative changes that further the rights of abused women. An activist and leader in the feminist movement against violence against women since the mid-1970's, Ms. Leidholdt also serves as Co-Executive Director of the Coalition Against Trafficking in Women, an umbrella of grassroots organizations around the world which she helped found in 1988. Ms. Leidholdt teaches Domestic Violence and the Law at Columbia University School of Law, and holds a masters degree from the University of Virginia and a law degree from New York University School of Law. Ms. Leidholdt’s writings on sex trafficking include CATW position papers to the UN Special Seminar on Trafficking, “Prostitution and the Global Sex Industry”, 1999 and “Prostitution: A Contemporary Form of Slavery”, a CATW Presentation to the UN Working Group on Contemporary Forms of Slavery.

Dr. Mohammed Mattar: Dr. Mattar is an adjunct professor of law and the Co-Director of the Protection Project at the Johns Hopkins University School of Advanced International Studies in Washington, DC. He is also an adjunct professor of law at Georgetown University Law Center, American University and Washington College of Law. Dr. Mattar's extensive experience and knowledge in the field of international law makes him an authority on the legal and legislative aspects associated with trafficking in women and children. He has written at length on the Trafficking Victims Protection Act of 2000 and the 2000 United Nations Protocol to Prevent, Suppress, and Punish Trafficking in Persons, especially Women and Children. In June of 2002, Dr. Mattar submitted written testimony to the congressional record to the House Committee on International Relations on the 2002 Department of State Trafficking in Persons Report. Dr. Mattar has lectured and participated in numerous panels and conferences related to trafficking in persons. Dr. Mattar received his Doctor of Juridical Sciences in 1986 and Master of Law with Distinction in 1983 from Tulane University School of Law.

Dr. Vidyamali Samarasinghe: Dr. Samarasinghe is Associate Professor at American University's School of International Service and lectures on demand. She teaches and researches gender and development, population and migration issues in developing countries, social science methodology, and field survey methodology. Her regional focus of research is Southeast Asia. She.She is the co-editor of Women at the Crossroads: A Sri Lankan Perspective and Women at the Center: Gender and Development Issues for the 1990's.

Pamela Shifman: Ms. Shifman has been researching, writing and speaking about the relationship among gender, sexuality and terrorism for over a decade. An attorney and expert on international women’s rights issues, she currently works at UNICEF on a project on sexual exploitation and abuse during humanitarian crises. Ms. Shifman is a former Co-Executive Director of Equality Now, a NY-based international human rights organization for women, and a board member of Apne Aap, a grassroots group for women’s rights and the eradication of trafficking in women, and Feminist.com, a grassroots, interactive community by, for and about women. Ms. Shifman holds a law degree from the University of Michigan.

Marisa Ugarte: Ms. Ugarte, the Executive Director of the Bilateral Safety Corridor Coalition of San Diego, California, has more than 20 years of experience in advocacy for exploited children and in assisting children and high-risk youth. She spent the past three years creating organizational programs for Tijuana, Mexico. She created the Binational Crisis Line in Tijuana, as well as the Domestic Violence Crisis Center for DIF. Ms. Ugarte is an advisor to DIF and to the Civil Protection in Disaster Crisis Prevention Program. In the US, Ms. Ugarte has convened three anti-trafficking conferences, and is an active speaker at similar conferences in the US and Central America. Ms. Ugarte taught a masters degree-level module of Crisis Intervention at the University of Xochicalco, Mexico. An alumnus of San Francisco College for Women/USD and Dunbarton University, Washington, DC, she holds an MA in social work and psychology.

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