Transitioning Times

My name is Jamie G. and I am blessed to be Transitions new Legal Advocate for all of Northumberland County.   As a veteran of the United States Air Force , I was able to earn my first of three college degrees from the Community College of the Air Force.  I continued my education by earning an Associate degree in Criminal Justice from Luzerne County Community College and a Bachelor degree in Administration of Justice from Penn State University.   Finally, I capped off my educational pursuit by attending Widener University School of Law just before returning back to my hometown of Lewisburg.  I’m truly excited to be part of the Transitions team and can’t wait to utilize my training to help others. 

“But it’s their choice,” you might say. Well, I’d like to tell you why buying sex from a person is degrading and criminal even if the person is “choosing” to sell sex. First off, I do not like the terms “choose” or “choice” when it comes to prostitution. More often than you might think, prostitutes are actually forced to sell sex – otherwise known as sex trafficking.  According to rapeis.org the average age of entry into “sex work” is around 13-14 for girls (Farley, n.d.).  Other sources are estimating this number even lower. Because they are under 18, not able to consent to sex, they are actually victims of sex trafficking. As a result, a lot of women, so called, “choosing to sell sex” started off in sex trafficking and this is the only life they know. In my opinion, for the others who this might not be the case, there is almost always a reason or circumstance that leads to a person choosing to sell sex for a living. I do not believe that anyone truly wants to sell hi...

January is the National Human Trafficking Awareness Month and Sunday, January 11, is the National Human Trafficking Awareness Day. What is human trafficking? It is the modern day slave trade, which is worse than it ever has been in history. According to the National Human Trafficking Resource Center (n.d.), the Trafficking Victims Protections Act, defines human trafficking and sex trafficking in the following ways: “Sex trafficking is the recruitment, harboring, transportation, provision, or obtaining of a person for the purposes of a commercial sex act, in which the commercial sex act is induced by force, fraud, or coercion, or in which the person induced to perform such an act has not attained 18 years of age, (22 USC § 7102). “Labor trafficking is the recruitment, harboring, transportation, provision, or obtaining of a person for labor or services, through the use of force, fraud, or coercion for the purposes of subjection to involuntary servitude, peonage, debt bon...

This powerful video portrays how entry into sex trafficking can feel, as told by a survivor, GEMS founder Rachel Lloyd.