WHO:        Cook County Sheriff Tom Dart and members of his Human Trafficking Response Team

WHAT:     Dart will discuss what his office has done in recent years to implement End Demand strategies to eliminate human trafficking and exploitation of young women and girls in the sex trade industry.  Dart’s presentation will be followed by a question and answer session. The program, “Dismantling the Exploitative Sex Trade Industry in Cook County: Barriers, Issues and Challenges,” is the Schiller DuCanto & Fleck Family Law Center’s 10th annual Valentine’s Day Lecture. Copies of a new study about Dart’s End Demand work will be distributed at the lecture. The study also is available at: http://bit.ly/XzaWQm.

WHEN:     Feb. 13, 2013 from 2:15 p.m. to 4:15 p.m.  

WHERE:  DePaul Conference Center, 1 E. Jackson Blvd., Room 8005

     In February 2009, Dart’s office launched its Human Trafficking Response Team (HTRT) to respond to the exploitation of women and girls in the sex trade, and reduce the demand for paid sex in Cook County. The HTRT includes five members of a vice unit, and three officers who work in a Child Exploitation Unit.

     Between June 1, 2010 and June 30, 2012, the Sheriff’s office conducted 56 stings in which vice unit personnel, impersonating customers, responded to Backpage.com prostitution advertisements. Girls and women selling sex were found in 41 different area hotels and motels. At the same time customers are being deterred through arrests, the Sheriff's office intervenes with women and girls to determine if they might be victims of sex

trafficking and to offer them services and alternatives to returning to the sex trade.

Note editors:  Reporters wishing to cover the Schiller DuCanto & Fleck Family Law Center’s 10th Annual Valentine’s Day Lecture should contact Valerie Phillips at 312-362-5039 or 312-613-8172 (cell).