San Marcos, TX, October 22, 2024—The Rotary Club of San Marcos and the Texas State University Rotaract Club have partnered to sponsor a free workshop to help area residents recognize and curtail human trafficking activities. The event will be hosted by San Marcos CISD on Monday, November 11 from 7 to 8:30 p.m. at Owen Goodnight Middle School Auditorium, 1301 State Highway 123, San Marcos.
The event should help parents, scout leaders, sports coaches, parent-teacher groups, teachers, and other concerned residents and officials to recognize child sex trafficking and know the communication steps for professional investigation. The focus is on practical and actionable information that will help those working directly with youth on a regular basis. Institutions in San Marcos and Hays County have been invited and indicate they plan to send staff and volunteers, but anyone interested in reducing the growth of this problem is welcome to attend. There is no cost and no pre-registration is necessary.
The trainer for the event will be Kirsta Leeburg Melton, founder of the Institute to Combat Trafficking. She has trained more than 20,000 people in-person about human trafficking. As a criminal prosecutor, she put human traffickers in prison for a decade, most recently as the Deputy Criminal Chief of the Human Trafficking and Transnational/Organized Crime Section of the Office of the Attorney General of Texas. From 2011 through the 2019 legislative session, Melton played a critical role in the restructuring of Texas trafficking law and procedure and was called regularly to consult with and testify before the Texas Legislature on trafficking-related issues.
Melton has a bachelor’s degree from Cornell University and master’s and law degrees from U.T. Austin. She has spoken in San Marcos about human trafficking at earlier events organized by the Rotary Club of San Marcos. Rotary District 5840, which serves South Central Texas, has made combatting human trafficking a major service priority in recent years.