Louisiana First Lady Donna Edwards will join legal scholars, government officials, trafficking survivors, and survivor service providers at the “Improving Criminal Justice Responses to Sex Trafficking” symposium at LSU Law on Friday, Oct. 28.
Presented by the George W. and Jean H. Pugh Institute for Justice, the symposium will take place from 1 to 5 p.m. in the McKernan Auditorium at the Paul M. Hebert Law Center. The event is free and open to the public. Parking will be available at the Union Square parking garage adjacent to Barnes & Noble at LSU, just across the street from LSU Law. Light refreshments will be served. RSVP to attend at law.lsu.edu/forms/pugh.
Edwards will deliver her remarks to open the symposium, and will speak about Louisiana’s Human Trafficking Prevention Resource Center and advocacy campaign, which she and Gov. John Bel Edwards—a 1999 graduate of LSU Law—officially launched in January. The campaign, which is the first of its kind in the state, is called “Stop Trafficking LA: Human Trafficking is R.E.A.L.,” with the acronym standing for Recognizing the signs, Educating others, Acting immediately, and Listening to victims and survivors.
“It is alarming to know that the egregious crime of human trafficking happens every day in our communities in plain sight. I’m proud that my husband, Gov. John Bel Edwards, and a bipartisan group of state lawmakers recognize the seriousness of this and together, have created some of the most rigid laws in the country to combat trafficking, prosecute its perpetrators and assist survivors by connecting them to resources they need to heal and recover,” said First Lady Edwards. “Through the hard work and cooperation of our government agencies and nonprofit partners, our state has emerged as a leader in human trafficking prevention and awareness.”
Under the leadership of the Governor and First Lady Edwards, Louisiana has secured nearly $2.7 million in federal dollars to improve outcomes for child and youth victims of human trafficking. In April, she hosted the National Coalition for the Prevention of Human Sex Trafficking National Awareness Summit. The first spouses of all 50 states were invited to participate, and the advisory committee included those from Texas, Kentucky, Delaware, Arkansas, Georgia, Tennessee, and Mississippi.
Along with First Lady Edwards, the lineup of distinguished speakers at the “Improving Criminal Justice Responses to Sex Trafficking” symposium include:
- Gretta Goodwin / Director, Homeland Security and Justice, U.S. Government Accountability Office
- Professor Blanche Cook / Loyola University School of Law, Chicago
- Ana I. Vallejo / Co-director of VIDA Legal Assistance, Inc.
- Beatriz Susana Uitts / Founder and director, Human Trafficking Front
- Katherine Green / Co-founder and Vice President of Eden House
- Amber Cheney / Trafficking survivor
- Christina Young / Trafficking survivor
LSU Law Professors Lisa Avalos and Ray Diamond are the organizers of the “Improving Criminal Justice Responses to Sex Trafficking” symposium.
Professor Avalos’ teaching and research interests are in the areas of criminal law and procedure, with an emphasis on sexual offenses and gender-based violence. She also teaches in the area of legal ethics. Professor Avalos’s publications have appeared or are forthcoming in the University of Illinois Law Review, Case Western Reserve Law Review, Brooklyn Law Review, Nevada Law Journal, Michigan Journal of Gender & Law, Vanderbilt Journal of Transnational Law, the Journal of Gender, Race and Justice, and the Fordham International Law Journal.
Professor Diamond is director of the George W. and Jean H. Pugh Institute for Justice at LSU Law. He taught at LSU Law from 1984 to 1990 and then rejoined the faculty in 2009. In 2012, he was named Vice Chancellor for Faculty Development & Institutional Advancement, and served in the role for five years. Between 1990 and 2009, he taught at Tulane University, where he held the John Koerner Professorship in Law, was previously the C.J. Morrow Research Professor of Law, and was an Adjunct Professor of African Diaspora Studies. Prior to his academic career, Professor Diamond spent three years with the Federal Trade Commission’s Bureau of Competition.
The George W. and Jean H. Pugh Institute for Justice was founded in 1998. It provides support for research and educational activities that promote justice for individuals in the administration of the criminal and civil justice systems in Louisiana and elsewhere. The institute achieves its mission in partnership with Louisiana Law Review, one of three student-edited journals at LSU Law, sponsoring symposia and lectures for the LSU Law community and public that foster publication and electronic distribution of related research.
Symposium Schedule
1:00 – 1:05 p.m. Welcome: Professor Ray Diamond and LSU Law Interim Dean Lee Ann Wheelis Lockridge
1:05 – 1:10 p.m. Introduction of First Lady Donna Edwards by Interim Dean Lockridge
1:10 – 1:30 p.m. Remarks: First Lady Donna Edwards
1:30 – 2:45 p.m. First Panel: Beatriz Susana Uitts and Ana Isabel Vallejo
2:45 – 2:55 p.m. Refreshment break
2:55 – 4:10 p.m. Second Panel: Dr. Gretta Goodwin and Professor Blanche Cook
4:10 – 5:00 p.m. Eden House Panel: Katherine Green, co-founder, and trafficking survivors Amber Cheney and Christina Young
5:00 p.m. Reception and refreshments
Speaker Biographies
Donna Edwards
Louisiana First Lady Donna Hutto Edwards was born in Meridian, Mississippi, and moved with her family to Amite, Louisiana, where she met her future husband, Governor John Bel Edwards. She earned a bachelor’s degree in business administration from the University of Southern Mississippi. She is committed to raising awareness around sex trafficking.
In January 2022, the First Lady, along with the Governor, established Louisiana’s first Human Trafficking Prevention Resource Center and advocacy campaign. The campaign is titled “Stop Trafficking LA: Human Trafficking is R.E.A.L.” The R.E.A.L stands for: Recognizing the signs, Educating others, Acting immediately, and Listening to victims and survivors. Through these efforts, victims, survivors, service providers, stakeholders and citizens will be able to learn about human trafficking, how to identify when someone needs help, how to report this heinous crime and about more specific services for victims.
First Lady Donna Edwards has also established the National Coalition for the Prevention of Human Sex Trafficking, a coalition that includes six first spouses who have committed to using their platforms to educate the public as well. They are: First Lady Cecilia Abbott of Texas; First Lady Susan Hutchinson of Arkansas; First Lady Marty Kemp of Georgia; First Lady Tracey Quillen-Carney of Delaware; First Lady Elee Reeves of Mississippi; First Lady Britainy Beshear of Kentucky.
In April of this year, the First Lady and her coalition used the NCAA Final Four Collegiate Basketball Championship to kick off an awareness campaign around sex trafficking. They chose this event because large-scale, national sporting events are a draw for traffickers.
Blanche Bong Cook
Professor Blanche Bong Cook is the Curt and Linda Rodin Associate Professor of Law and Social Justice at Loyola University Chicago School of Law.
Before joining the academy, she served as an Assistant United States Attorney with the Department of Justice, where she specialized in large-scale drug and sex-trafficking prosecutions. As a federal prosecutor, she briefed and/or argued more than 44 federal appeals.
Professor Cook clerked for the Honorable Damon J. Keith of the United States Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit. She was also an associate at Miller, Canfield, Paddock and Stone in Detroit and Seyfarth Shaw in Chicago, where she specialized in employment discrimination, labor law, and sexual harassment litigation and prevention training.
Professor Cook has established herself as a leading expert on sex trafficking by problematizing the entire spectrum of sex-trafficking prosecutions and the commercialization and exploitation of women and girls. She is actively involved in shaping the emerging nationwide discourse on sex trafficking and victims’ rights as it relates to evidentiary issues, race-class-gender profiling, victim blaming, and sex-trafficking statutes. She writes in the areas of sex trafficking, victims’ rights, police violence, implicit bias, criminal procedure, critical race theory, human rights, race and gender discrimination, black feminist legal theory, womanist thought, and the normative gaze of identity.
Gretta L. Goodwin
Gretta L. Goodwin is a Director in the U.S. Government Accountability Office’s Homeland Security and Justice team. Her portfolio focuses on justice and law enforcement issues. She has led reviews on human trafficking, law enforcement use of force, federal law enforcement’s response to the crisis of Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women, law enforcement use of facial recognition technology, the care of pregnant women in DHS and DOJ custody, Bureau of Prisons’ response to COVID-19, DNA evidence backlogs, background checks for gun purchases involving domestic violence records, and federal data on sexual violence.
Dr. Goodwin has authored several recent reports for the GAO on human trafficking including Trafficking: Use of Online Marketplaces and Virtual Currencies in Drug and Human Trafficking and Human and Drug Trafficking: Actions Needed to Address Gaps in Federal Data to Counter Illicit Activities.
Dr. Goodwin joined GAO in August 1998 and has worked on a range of issues including Social Security reform, disability, women in the workforce, polling place accessibility during the 2000 election, Davis-Bacon wage setting, the DC school voucher program, 529 college savings plans, and contingent workers in the aftermath of the Great Recession.
Dr. Goodwin earned a Ph.D. and a master’s degree in economics from the University of Nebraska-Lincoln and a bachelor’s degree in economics from the University of Houston. She has also been an instructor at the Trachtenberg School of Public Policy and Public Administration at The George Washington University.
Beatriz Susana Uitts
Dr. Beatriz Susana Uitts is a human rights specialist, Internet child safety advocate, and founder of Human Trafficking Front, a research and advocacy organization dedicated to the prevention of human trafficking. Dr. Uitts holds a J.S.D. and an LL.M. in Intercultural Human Rights from St. Thomas University College of Law in Miami Gardens, FL, and is the author of the book “Sex Trafficking of Children Online: Modern Slavery in Cyberspace,” published under the Applied Criminology Across the Globe series (Rowman & Littlefield, 2022). The book addresses the growing problem of online child sexual exploitation and proposes solutions to prevent its spread and promote a safer Internet for children and adolescents worldwide. Human Trafficking Front offers courses and workshops on human trafficking, with an emphasis on child sex trafficking, for varied audiences including law enforcement, technology and cyber professionals, and parents & guardians. Human Trafficking Front offers courses and workshops on human trafficking, with an emphasis on child sex trafficking, for varied audiences including law enforcement, technology and cyber professionals, and parents & guardians.
Ana Isabel Vallejo
Ana Isabel Vallejo is a co-director of VIDA Legal Assistance, Inc., a non-profit organization dedicated to advancing the rights of immigrant survivors of domestic violence, sexual violence, trafficking in persons and other violent crimes. From 2011 to 2013, she was the Project Coordinator for the Human Trafficking Academy of the Graduate Program in Intercultural Human Rights at St. Thomas University School of Law. Prior to her joining St. Thomas University and VIDA, she supervised a team of four attorneys and three paralegals, while representing low-income immigrant women and children survivors of domestic violence, sexual assault, rape, incest, and other gender related violent crimes. For more than ten years, Ms. Vallejo has dedicated her practice to representing survivors of human trafficking.
Ms. Vallejo received a B.A. in Political Science and a B.A. in International Affairs from Marquette University in Milwaukee, Wisconsin; and a law degree and a Master of Laws degree in Intercultural Human Rights Law from St. Thomas University School of Law, Miami, Florida, where she graduated cum laude.
Katherine Green
Katherine Green is an Assistant U.S. Attorney in Louisiana and also the co-founder of Eden House, a non-profit organization that provides comprehensive recovery and reentry services to victims of human trafficking and commercial sexual exploitation. Eden House is the only residential recovery facility for victims of human trafficking and commercial sexual exploitation in the greater New Orleans area. Ms. Green received her J.D. from Louisiana State University Law Center and Bachelors’ degrees in Psychology and Criminal Justice from the University of Arkansas.
Amber Cheney
Cheney is a survivor leader at Eden House New Orleans. She started her recovery journey over two years ago. During her time at Eden House, she has obtained a certification as a Peer Support Specialist. She is a peer leader with H&I that brings the message of recovery to hospitals and institutions. She also recently accepted a part-time job and looks forward to opportunities that may come her way to share the message of hope to others.
Christina Young
Young is a certified Peer Support Specialist and a member of the Human Trafficking Task Force in the Greater New Orleans area, where she advocates for at-risk women and children in her community and victims worldwide. She was the first graduate of Eden House in 2015 and she is thrilled to be giving back by way of serving and mentoring Eden House residents as Eden House’s Night Manager. In her spare time, Young likes reading, traveling, and spending time with her family and friends.
Symposium Organizers
Professor Lisa Avalos
Lisa Avalos is an associate professor of Law at LSU, having joined the Law Center in 2018. Her teaching and research interests are in the areas of criminal law and procedure, with an emphasis on sexual offenses and gender-based violence. She also teaches in the area of legal ethics. Professor Avalos’s publications have appeared or are forthcoming in the University of Illinois Law Review, Case Western Reserve Law Review, Brooklyn Law Review, Nevada Law Journal, Michigan Journal of Gender & Law, Vanderbilt Journal of Transnational Law, the Journal of Gender, Race and Justice, and the Fordham International Law Journal.
Professor Avalos previously taught at the University of Arkansas School of Law and was a visiting assistant professor at Georgetown University Law Center. Prior to entering academia, she worked as an associate at McDermott Will & Emery in New York City and at Neal, Gerber & Eisenberg in Chicago. She earned her J.D. from New York University School of Law. She also holds a Ph.D. and M.A. in sociology Northwestern University, and a B.A. in psychology from Northwestern University. Prior to attending law school, she taught sociology at Grinnell College in Grinnell, Iowa.
Professor Ray Diamond
Professor Diamond is director of the George W. and Jean H. Pugh Institute for Justice at LSU Law.
He taught at LSU Law from 1984 to 1990 and then rejoined the faculty in 2009. In 2012, he was named Vice Chancellor for Faculty Development & Institutional Advancement, and served in the role for five years. Between 1990 and 2009, he taught at Tulane University, where he held the John Koerner Professorship in Law, was previously the C.J. Morrow Research Professor of Law, and was an Adjunct Professor of African Diaspora Studies. Prior to his academic career, Professor Diamond spent three years with the Federal Trade Commission’s Bureau of Competition, where he litigated a landmark price signaling case, worked for a year on Capitol Hill as a legislative assistant to Rep. Bob Livingston in the 95th Congress, and practiced law privately in New Orleans. He earned his J.D. and B.A. from Yale University.
