FAYETTEVILLE, Ga. — Amber Bryant says her best and brightest can move mountains.
“We don’t need adults to step in the way. Let them handle it,” Bryant, the assistant head of school at The Forest School in Fayetteville, told Channel 2’s Berndt Petersen.
Her students recently schooled the movers and shakers in the Georgia Legislature.
For the last six months, a team from Forest lobbied state lawmakers and helped draft a bill to make the sex trafficking crimes of pimping and pandering felonies.
“These are peoples’ lives. The fact that it was only a misdemeanor was completely unacceptable,” a Forest High School senior said Monday.
Channel 2 Action News protected the identity of the students given the serious nature of what they are working on.
Survivor advocate Trisha Lee helped guide the student-led effort in Senate Bill 547.
“Exploitation continues because someone is willing to buy and someone is willing to profit,” Lee testified at a state senate hearing.
“It is absolutely mind-boggling that I’ve been allowed to participate in something so life changing,” a Forest sophomore who worked on the bill said.
Students Channel 2 interviewed say it’s the lives of the victims that matter most.
“I hope this gives them the ability to step forward without fear,” another student said.
The bill passed both houses of the General Assembly almost unanimously.
“These kids are capable. If we give them the tools to go out there and do it, they are responsible enough to get it done,” Bryant said.
The bill is now on Gov. Brian Kemp’s desk.
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