Bipartisan bill gets a late one word change and a heated debate in Senate committee

• • By Anna Cecil, TheStatehouseFile.com

A bipartisan bill that passed unanimously in the House received a single word change that may have upended its original intent in Tuesday’s Senate Corrections and Criminal Law Committee meeting.

Before it was amended by committee Chair Sen. Aaron Freeman, R-Indianapolis, House Bill 1416 required gas stations, rest stops and welcome centers to display human trafficking awareness signs in their bathrooms, including law enforcement and hotline phone numbers. It also required human trafficking training courses for employees of food and lodging businesses.

In 2023, the national Human Trafficking Hotline was contacted 30,162 times. Of those pings, 7,380 were from victims or survivors of human trafficking. In 2021, nearly 180 victims were identified in Indiana because of the hotline.

Freeman warned supporters that his amendment would perhaps make them want to kill the bill altogether.

Freeman’s amendment changed HB 1416 from requiring those types of businesses to display the posters to saying that they “may” display them. It still requires state rest stops to have them.

The amendment passed 6-3. Sen. Rodney Pol, D-Chesterton, Sen. Greg Taylor, D-Indianapolis, and Sen. Sue Glick, R-LaGrange, voted no.

“I think one sheet of paper isn’t going to break the bank for gas stations in Indiana,” Glick, the sole Republican critic, said while explaining her vote. “If it saves one human life, I think it’s more than worthy.”

Freeman’s reasoning was that he thinks gas stations and convenience stores already have the information on their premises, so they do not need to be required by the government to post it.

“A lot of businesses and their associations have come to see me and explain to me why this isn’t workable, and I’m trying to find a solution to keep it moving,” he said.

Right after Freeman introduced his amendment, Taylor said he had several issues with it.

“We’re talking about putting up a piece of paper, a notice,” he said. “I actually am sick to my stomach that people would actually say, ‘I don’t want to do this.’”

Sen. Liz Brown, R-Fort Wayne, said she was invited to speak to convenience stores and gas stations and learned that they were already being proactive about putting up human trafficking awareness signs in their restrooms.

“Our communities, our businesses within our communities, they have the eyes on the ground and they see what’s going on, and they will address it,” Brown said. “They don’t need us telling (them) that this is the best way to address it.”

Matt Norris, a spokesman with the Indiana Food and Fuel Association, said his organization supports the amendment because its members participate in the In Our Backyard campaign. The initiative provides stickers with a hotline number that may be posted in a convenience store or gas station.

Norris said Food and Fuel Association members don’t want to be required to add posters with additional information on human trafficking since they are already taking action.

He said the vast majority of members utilize the stickers but not all of them.

“The idea that … not all of your members are participating, that’s what concerns me,” Pol said.

Brown commended Norris and the members of his organization for the work they are doing voluntarily and asked the committee why they think this type of action isn’t sufficient.

“The fact of the matter is, everyone is trying to get the awareness out there, and the fact that they’re doing it in this method, and now we’re going to say they’re not doing enough,” Brown said.

Jess Kern, the founder of Raindrops Rising, a support and advocacy organization for the survivors of human trafficking, told the committee she was trafficked for 14 years. She said the few times she was alone were while she was using the restroom during transport. When Kern was being trafficked in the 1980s, there were no signs on the stalls with help hotlines.

Kern said that victims of trafficking are programmed to memorize things like walls, badges and numbers, so if they saw a hotline number on a bathroom stall, they would memorize it immediately. This would allow them to call for help the next time they could access a phone.

Taylor asked Kern if she thought the state of Indiana was doing enough to help victims of human trafficking.

“Honestly, no,” she said. “I think that we try every day to chip away at the glass ceiling, so there’s a lot of change that needs to be made.”

Kern referenced legislation in Texas, a red state like Indiana, which has caused a significant increase in trafficking-related arrests and convictions.

Evan Weimer, an advocate with Raindrops Rising, said only one out of 100 human trafficking victims survives.

“How many more might make it out if they knew they had a choice, if they saw a flyer in a bathroom stall and memorized the phone number?” she asked the committee. “I know systems are in place, and it’s hard to breaHB k out of what we’ve always done, but we’re talking about life-saving steps toward lowering human trafficking fatalities.”

At the end of the meeting, the bill passed 12-0.

Before he voted, Taylor shared some final concerns.

“All I did is listen to the facts,” he said. “This is not political. This is about children, who are the majority of people trafficked in this situation.”

Anna Cecil is a reporter for TheStatehouseFile.com, a news site powered by Franklin College journalism students.