AEquitas - Champions for Justice

3:00pm - 4:00pm ET / 12:00pm - 1:00pm PT

Are you tired of navigating complex human trafficking cases with limited resources? Join us for "The Traffick Report: Conversation with the Field," an online discussion held on the last Wednesday of each month. Professionals from various disciplines, including law enforcement, victim services, and medical professionals, come together to share insight, challenges, and successes in the fight against human trafficking.

2:00pm - 3:30pm ET / 11:00am - 12:30pm PT

This presentation will address wellness as a critical aspect of any response to human trafficking, with a specific focus on prosecutors who lead trauma-informed responses to sex and labor trafficking cases. The presenter will provide strategies to identify early signs of burnout and secondary trauma and will facilitate interactive discussions around healthy coping mechanisms and proactive stress management. Such skills are crucial not only for personal well-being, but also for sustaining prosecutors’ ability to seek justice for trafficking victims and hold offenders accountable.

2:00pm - 3:30pm ET / 11:00am - 12:30pm PT

Being assigned a homicide case is one of the greatest responsibilities given to an individual prosecutor. While these cases invite tremendous scrutiny and demand intense preparation, one aspect that prosecutors rarely receive any formal training in is how to work with the family and friends of the deceased victim. Even though prosecutors are in the business of helping, this gap can sometimes lead to misunderstandings and unnecessary frustrations in an often opaque and stressful process.
This presentation will focus on strategies a prosecutor can use to work with the family and friends of homicide victims by looking for ways to increase education about the system generally as well as explain in a trauma-informed way the strengths and challenges of an individual case. Focus will also be given to exploring the legal obligations and limitations that may arise in working with a homicide victim’s family.

This project was supported by Grant No. 15JOVW-24-GK-03009-MUMU awarded by the Office on Violence Against Women, U.S. Department of Justice. The opinions, findings, conclusions, and recommendations expressed in this publication/program/exhibition are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the views of the Department of Justice, Office on Violence Against Women.