Protecting Illinois Children: Why Awareness About Trafficking Can't Wait

Last week, Bob Fioretti met with aspiring health professionals at Saint Xavier University to talk about a subject too often hidden in plain sight, child trafficking. For many allied health students, the most eye-opening insight wasn't just how trafficking operates in hospitals, clinics, schools, and online but how quickly a vigilant nurse, doctor, or counselor can spot red flags and change a child's trajectory. Awareness saves lives. Silence enables abuse.

Why health students matter

Traffickers rely on isolation and control. Health settings are among the few places victims may encounter a trained adult who can ask the right questions, notice injuries that don't match the story, recognize indicators of coercion, or see that a "guardian" is speaking for the child. Equipping future clinicians with practical indicators and trauma-informed response protocols is a frontline strategy against trafficking.

Illinois' challenge

Illinois is a major transportation and commerce hub, with busy corridors that can be exploited by traffickers. Cases intersect with online exploitation, runaway and homeless youth, foster-care vulnerabilities, and gang coercion. That complexity demands coordinated enforcement, survivor-centered services, and consistent training, especially for professionals who meet children where they are.

How the Illinois Attorney General can help

Within Illinois, the Attorney General (AG) plays a unique, statewide role that complements local State's Attorneys and federal partners. An AG committed to combating child trafficking can:

• Lead and coordinate task forces that unite local police, prosecutors, DCFS, schools, and service providers to dismantle networks and protect victims.

• Use statewide investigative tools, including subpoenas and specialized cybercrime resources, to pursue traffickers who operate across county lines and online.

• Support prosecutions under Illinois trafficking and exploitation statutes, and convene or assist multi-jurisdictional cases when rings span multiple venues.

• Expand survivor services by championing funding for legal aid, safe housing, mental health care, and rapid-response advocacy, ensuring children are stabilized and not criminalized.

• Train professionals, from clinicians to school staff and hotel workers, on indicators, documentation, and mandated reporting, building a shared early-warning system.

• Drive policy improvements by strengthening penalties for buyers and traffickers, closing loopholes that shield facilitators, and advancing data-driven prevention.

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Bob Fioretti's commitment

Bob's conversation at Saint Xavier underscored his long-standing advocacy for children and families. He supports stronger statewide coordination, better data sharing, and survivor-centered policies that hold traffickers and exploiters, not kids, accountable. He backs practical measures health students can use on day one: screening checklists, discreet questioning techniques, and clear referral pathways to child protection and victim services.

Bottom line: Child trafficking hides in silence. Awareness, paired with the Attorney General's statewide authority to investigate, coordinate, train, and push policy, can turn the tide. Bob Fioretti will keep showing up in classrooms, clinics, and communities to strengthen those safeguards, elevate survivor voices, and press for the tougher, smarter controls Illinois needs to protect every child.