Saying Goodbye to Central Illinois

When I moved to Central Illinois in 2016 one of the biggest worries I had about moving there was the lack of human trafficking community. In Atlanta, I left one of the longest serving task forces in the United States with an excellent infrastructure and organization sponsored by the Governor's Office in Georgia. It took me a few years to find those connections in Central Illinois and many of them had to be created from scratch. 

In 2017, I heard about the establishment of a new task force in Central Illinois by State' Attorney Greg Harris at the Department of Justice Office in Springfield and so I wrote asking to be able to contribute. Advocating and using my research with practical applications was something I missed since moving to Illinois and I was really thankful to be on the ground floor with this newly formed task force! The picture above was my first meeting at the DOJ Office in Springfield and this meeting started eight years of collaboration and advocacy in the region.

Having served on the Georgia Statewide Human Trafficking Task Force and observed the Kansas Human Trafficking Advisory Board, I had a significant amount of experience with human trafficking task forces which helped inform our work. The goal of the Central Illinois Human Trafficking Task Force (CIHTTF) was to bridge the gap between Chicago and St. Louis since most of the work in Illinois up to that point and the only task force in the state was in Cook County.

Over the years the task force grew to around 125 members and was awarded an Enhanced Collaborative Model (ECM) Task Force to Combat Human Trafficking grant for three years from the Office for Victims of Crime at the Department of Justice. The Human Trafficking Research Lab was subgrantee of this grant and managed the research for the task force. I brought my student research assistants to the meetings and started an excellent collaboration and networking opportunity for 14 different students over the years. We published three different assessments of human trafficking in Central Illinois, five research briefs, and worked on a long term adjudication project which will hopefully be published soon.

There was a lot of turnover during and after the grant years but I was proud to be one of the original members that remained committed to the task force. When the task force was without coordinator I stepped in to lead the steering committee meetings. Then I helped lead the revamped the task force with Legal Aid Society of Metropolitan Family Services after the grant was not renewed, taking it from near extinction to a viable model with can hopefully continue long after I have moved on from the region. One highlight of my contribution was representing the CIHTTF on the panel "Lunch & Local Task Force Overview" at the Illinois Statewide Human Trafficking Conference in Peoria in May 2026. 

I am thankful for all of the wonderful people and friends who supported the Human Trafficking Research Lab and worked with me and my students over the years. I met and collaborated with so many amazing advocates who helped bring Central Illinois to the forefront of anti-trafficking work in Illinois and I will miss them all dearly. I met the original Decatur anti-trafficking crew for lunch before I left Decatur and it was amazing to reminisce on all of our accomplishments over the years! Onto the next chapter.....