January is National Human Trafficking Prevention Month, but the law school’s Wilbanks Child Endangerment and Sexual Exploitation Clinic is committed year-round to increasing awareness and education on human trafficking, making resources available to assist individuals and communities impacted by human trafficking, and building diverse public-private partnerships to support a more comprehensive response to prevent and respond to human trafficking.
Eight years after opening its doors in 2016, the Wilbanks Child Endangerment and Sexual Exploitation Clinic continues to demonstrate the value of quality and trauma-responsive legal representation for survivors.
In 2023, the clinic was awarded $242,090 by the Georgia Criminal Justice Coordinating Council's TANF Grant Program for Minor Human Trafficking Services and Training to increase community-based services for survivors of child trafficking. The award is a continuation of the grant awarded in 2022, which allowed CEASE to hire a full-time social worker and ensure interdisciplinary and holistic services for survivors.
Survivor-clients also saw the benefits of CEASE’s interdisciplinary quality legal representation, such as securing trauma-responsive mental and behavioral health services that aid in decreasing the risk of future victimization; successfully advocating for the dismissal of criminal charges that were a direct result of victimization, and instead ensuring that survivors received victim-centered services rather than punishment; securing access to educational and disability services and programs as required under federal and state law and removing barriers that survivors too-often face in leaving a trafficker by successfully vacating past criminal convictions directly resulting from victimization, thereby opening up opportunities for post-secondary school enrollment, housing and employment.
Additionally, Clinical Associate Professor and CEASE Clinic Director Emma Hetherington and Staff Attorney Brian Atkinson provided expert testimony on child trafficking victims in foster care before the U.S. Senate Judiciary Subcommittee on Human Rights and the Law. Hetherington also provided expert testimony on how proposed legislation would affect survivors of child trafficking before the Georgia Senate Judiciary Committee, while Atkinson provided similar expertise before the Georgia General Assembly House Judiciary Non-Civil Subcommittee.
The clinic also holds an annual conference and provides training, consultation and policy recommendations for attorneys, advocates, legislators and survivors across the nation. For more information on the Wilbanks CEASE Clinic and its efforts, visit www.cease.law.uga.edu.