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Human Trafficking Institute releases 2020 tally of federal cases in the DC region

By Dick Uliano

The Human Trafficking Institute has released its 2020 state report tallying federal human trafficking cases that are underway in the D.C. region.

As of 2020, among the 33 active cases around the D.C. region, seven sex trafficking cases were in the District of Columbia involving 12 defendants.

Maryland had 16 sex trafficking cases, 21 defendants and one forced labor case with one defendant. Two people were convicted for sex trafficking and one person was convicted for forced labor.

The count in Virginia was eight active cases of sex trafficking, involving 24 defendants and one case of forced labor with three defendants. There were six people convicted of sex trafficking in Virginia in 2020.

The Trafficking Victims Protection Act was enacted in 2000, making human trafficking a federal crime.

The Fairfax, Virginia-based institute reviews federal criminal and civil cases to come up with the number of human trafficking cases, including sex trafficking and forced labor.

Intern at Virginia seminary finds original draft of letter by Martin Luther King Jr.

By Alan Etter
While sifting through material at the Virginia Theological Seminary in Alexandria earlier this year, Nick Gentry made a once-in-a-lifetime discovery. There, among the collection belonging to John Melville Burgess, the first African American to lead an Episcopal diocese, was an original draft of the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.’s seminal “Letter From Birmingham Jail.” Gentry, who served an internship at the seminary, said he thought he’d found a copy of an early draft of the document. But on further examination by seminary staff, it was determined it is an original draft. “I was blown away,” Gentry, now a graduate of the University of Maryland’s Master of Library Sciences program, told WTOP. “I instantly recognized it as the ‘Letter From Birmingham Jail,’ but my first though was, ‘Oh, this must be a copy.'”
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