Beginning in 2015, Tompkins County was awarded funding to become a Safe Harbour County by New York State. This meant that we were provided resources to begin the process of formally developing a coordinated response, raising community awareness, and educating community members around the issue of sex trafficking of youth, referred to as the Commercial…

There are youth in Tompkins County who have been sex trafficked or targeted for sexual exploitation. Does that surprise you? If it does, that is not surprising. Many people have a narrow idea of what sex trafficking “looks like” – based on news articles or tv shows and movies – which can make it hard…