(Source: MIRS.news, Published 01/24/2025) (DETROIT) – Attorney General Dana Nessel said at a roundtable on human trafficking Friday that she’s investigated “so many” elected officials who solicited sex workers over the years that she doesn’t see legislation passing that would create escalated penalties for the solicitation of sex work. 

“So to get some of those same people to want to pass laws to create more significant penalties for solicitation is an impossibility, I’ve just come to see,” said Nessel. For that and other reasons, she told Rep. Kelly Breen (D-Novi) that she thinks many of her colleagues would never allow that type of legislation to pass. 

Those were Nessel’s “snarky remarks,” as she called them, without making specific mention of which elected officials are being investigated, or naming the party affiliation of those that she thinks would block that and other legislation regarding human trafficking. 

Nessel and Breen both said, however, that newly-announced House Judiciary Committee Chair Sarah Lightner (R-Springport) is someone about whom they have nothing bad to say, and Nessel said she’s started setting up meetings with Lightner.  

Kalamazoo County Prosecutor Jeffrey Getting, a participant in the roundtable, said his department is catching people who arrange to have sex with an undercover minor, and Getting said the people they catch are not always who they expect. In one case, it was a police officer, Getting said. 

Nessel asked him what the challenges are in prosecuting those perpetrators or solicitors on a local level, and Getting said there are layers to it. First, his team has to look at instances of arrests for drug abuse, theft, driving while intoxicated and more to see if there is an underlying issue of human trafficking, and build trust with the victim so they’ll name who is trafficking them. 

Then, since the process of testifying in court or being involved in that prosecution process as a victim is often re-traumatizing, his team has to allow time for the victim to go through a healing period to make sure it’s not premature for them to speak out. 

“Oftentimes the people we’re relying on to move those cases forward aren’t ready to go, because of substance abuse, because of the violence and intimidation and the threats to their families, and all of those things that go along with becoming stuck in that system as a victim. Getting them to a place where they’re a survivor and can testify takes time,” Getting said.  

Getting added that the necessary time to heal sometimes means that a case isn't viable because memories aren’t reliable and evidence is lost as time goes on. 

“This is one of the hardest crimes to prosecute,” Getting said. In the 1990s, he doesn’t remember the word “human trafficking” being used to describe this crime. 

"Look at what you all have accomplished in such a short period of time, and if we can repeat the same momentum that we have now over another decade, look at where we’ll be,” Getting said to the room of victim’s advocates, health department representatives and more. 

For these reasons, Nessel said the point of a trauma-informed, victim-centered approach is to take care of the victim and their needs and help them become a survivor. The prosecution will come later, if they choose to.