Failure to Appear: Rethinking Victim Participation in Court

David Weiss, Chief of the Human Trafficking Unit at the Brooklyn DA’s Office, joins us to discuss how evidence-based strategies can reduce reliance on victim testimony while protecting victim dignity in the courtroom. He also shares that, in doing so, prosecutors can build survivor-centered cases, whether or not survivors are able to participate. Trafficking prosecutions often collapse when survivors can’t participate. We discuss how trauma responses are often misunderstood as resistance, how the misguided concept of “cooperation” can distort justice for trafficking survivors, why non-participation is frequently a predictable trauma reaction, and how prosecutors can reframe those behaviors for juries.