Activist again in league of her own

Miller, at the time a young mother of three small children, heard rumors of a teacher at the local high school behaving inappropriately with some of his female students.

“The (aerobics) teacher asked if I’d be able to take the class over because she had found her husband in bed with one of his high school students,” Miller, now 48, said. “She was leaving him.”

That moment launched Miller’s long fight against sexual abuse by educators, which culminated in new Nevada legislation making it illegal for teachers to have sex with their students.

It also led to multiple appearances on TV talk shows and in magazine and newspaper stories.

Now her life as an activist has taken a different turn.

Miller was recently named director of the Anti-Trafficking League Against Slavery, ATLAS, which opened last year within the Metropolitan Police Department to combat human trafficking in the Las Vegas Valley.

“It’s just like changing my outfit,” Miller said when asked how she handled the demands of the new job while continuing to serve as board president of the national group Stop Educator Sexual Abuse, Misconduct and Exploitation, or SESAME.

Miller said she’s always been passionate about fighting for victims.

“When I am pursuing something as important as keeping people safe, I am a voracious dog,” the soft-spoken Miller said.

Miller’s persistence kept her from giving up, years ago, when she received little help from Pahrump administrators after approaching them with information about teachers having sex with students.

Partly because of her efforts, one Pahrump Valley High School teacher, Joseph Peterson, was sentenced in 1996 to life in prison for raping a student. An investigation found he may have had sex with more than 60 students during a 20-year period. Several other teachers at the school were accused in the 1990s of sexual misconduct with students.

“She never wavered in her beliefs,” said state Sen. Mike McGinness, R-Fallon, who drafted a 1997 bill prohibiting teachers from having sex with students. “She was 10 years ahead of the curve. Whatever she’s working on now, she’ll make a difference.”

Now living in Las Vegas, Miller hopes to use her persistence to help battle human trafficking in the valley.

It may be a daunting task, she said.

Officials estimate that between 14,500 and 17,500 people are trafficked into the United States each year.

Though it is unknown how many of those victims end up in Southern Nevada, federal officials have recognized Las Vegas as one of 17 cities where human trafficking is a concern.

“Because we have an international airport, because of the nature of Nevada — we have legalized prostitution — it sets up a ripe environment for human trafficking,” Miller said.

After drug dealing, human trafficking is tied with the illegal arms industry as the second largest criminal industry in the world today, according to the U.S. Department of State. It is also the fastest growing.

Victims include women, men and children. They are forced to work in the sex industry or as laborers. Officials say victims are found working everywhere from massage parlors to homes and construction sites.

ATLAS, an extension of the Nevada Human Trafficking Task Force set up in 2004, includes federal immigration officials, the FBI, the Salvation Army, Safe House, the Rape Crisis Center, Safe Nest, Nevada Child Seekers, WestCare and the Boyd Law School at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas.

Its goals are to fight human trafficking in Southern Nevada by training law enforcement to better identify it, providing better services to victims and launching a public awareness campaign.

Miller’s job includes educating people valleywide about trafficking.

As a civilian Metropolitan Police Department employee, she talks to officers about looking beneath the surface to spot possible trafficking victims. That involves asking the right questions.

Does the person have little or no control over their personal schedule, money, ID and travel documents?

Does the person live and work in the same place? Show signs of physical abuse? Depression? Fear?

Human trafficking victims may also be afraid to speak on their own behalf, have controlling bosses and owe a debt to an employer.

“We need to dig a little deeper, find out how they came to the U.S., whether they are being paid,” Miller said.

Police have recently established a mandatory course on human trafficking for all commissioned police and corrections personnel under the rank of deputy chief.

Miller said police have changed the way they respond to incidents that could involve human trafficking.

She recounted a situation of a few years ago in which a couple had been keeping a woman as a domestic slave.

“She had been battered and brutalized,” Miller said. “It wasn’t recognized as a trafficking case. It came in as a simple domestic battery. I don’t know where that victim ended up.”

The task force’s first test came with a recent prostitution ring bust, dubbed Operation Doll House, which law enforcement officials believed might involve human trafficking. The April bust netted eight arrests. More than two dozen women found working as prostitutes in several local brothels were caught up in the raid.

Police said most of the women came from Asian countries and speak little or no English.

In that case, ATLAS was launched. Local shelter beds were reserved for the women, and they were interviewed by social services workers to determine what, if any, help they needed.

Police said they are still investigating how many of the women may have been forced into prostitution against their will.

Miller said officials are “just at the beginning” of exploring the local human trafficking problem.

“We don’t really have data that clearly defines previous cases as human trafficking,” she said, adding that until January local police didn’t even have a booking code for alleged human trafficking.

She vowed to bring as much energy to the fight against trafficking as she has to combating sexual abuse of children by educators.

That energy makes up for her lack of a college education, she said. “I don’t have a Ph.D. or letters behind my name. But my heart is full, my faith is strong, and that’s how I’m able to do it.”