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Laura Matthews-Jolly Joins City Bar Justice Center to Help Sex and Labor Trafficking Survivors

by CBJC Staff October 12, 2011

Laura Mathews-Jolly has joined the City Bar Justice Center’s Immigrant Women & Children Project on a two-year Equal Justice Works fellowship, supported by the law firm Greenberg Traurig LLP, to provide legal services to immigrants who were brought to the U.S. as children and are survivors of labor and sex trafficking.

Matthews-Jolly will provide outreach and legal services to trafficking victims in matters related to family, education and employment. She will also provide training to lawyers and service providers to aid in increasing victim identification, and help build bridges to community-based organizations for trafficking victims. The overall goal of the project is to stabilize victims’ immigration status and help prevent their re-victimization.

Lynn M. Kelly, Executive Director of the City Bar Justice Center, said, “The Equal Justice Fellowship will help us expand our pool of pro bono lawyers committed to representing victims trafficked into the United States and forced to work in indentured servitude and prostitution.”

Immigrant Women & Children Program Director Suzanne Tomatore said, “Laura’s project complements our other work through its holistic and human-rights approach to post-trafficking stabilization. Based on our current case load and work with other service providers, there is a dire need to focus on long-term self-sufficiency for young trafficking survivors.”

“Funding EJW fellowships is a great way to make a big impact,” said Bill Silverman, Shareholder, Greenberg Traurig and head of the firm’s pro bono efforts in New York, “but financial support is only part of it. We will work with Laura to help build a coalition of firms to address the legal needs of trafficking victims and raise awareness of a very serious crime that too often is ignored.”

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