National Judicial Institute on Domestic Child Sex Trafficking

Succeeding Through Achievement and Resilience (STAR) Court, Los Angeles Superior Court

Judge Pratt has been an integral faculty member of the National Judicial Institute on Domestic Child Sex Trafficking since its inception in 2014. Judge Pratt brings a high level of expertise to the Institute rooted in her experience in the STAR Court, a collaborative, victim-centered court that provides services to juveniles who have been commercially sexually exploited and are on probation for prostitution or related charges.

Judge Pratt was appointed as a commissioner in the Los Angeles Superior Court in 2006 and became a judge in 2016. She has been assigned to the juvenile delinquency court since July 2007 and in January 2012 began supervising the STAR Court.

Judge Pratt received a B.S. from the University of California at Berkeley and a J.D. from the University of Southern California. She practiced law in the private sector, representing Wall Street firms, for ten years both in Los Angeles and San Francisco. She then worked in the Los Angeles dependency court, representing the Department of Children and Family Services. While at the County Counsel’s Office she also handled several class actions involving the adequacy and delivery of services by DCFS.

Click here to see Judge Pratt’s court featured in a video by the Compton Business Journal.

Click here to read a Los Angeles Times article on the STAR Court.

Children’s Court Division of the Second Judicial District Court of New Mexico and the Program for the Empowerment of Girls (PEG)

Judge John Romero, Jr. has also been a valued faculty member of the Institute since 2014. Judge Romero offers his extensive knowledge on the role of the judiciary in responding to child trafficking along with his excellent facilitator skills to both educate and engage Institute participants on this important issue.

Judge Romero is the Presiding Judge of the Children’s Court Division of the Second Judicial District Court in Albuquerque, New Mexico. Judge Romero also serves as a Therapeutic Court Judge for the Program for the Empowerment of Girls (PEG), an intensive multi-agency juvenile probation program for girls who have some type of violence in their history. Judge Romero began his tenure on the bench in 2003 as a District Court Judge. He is Co-Chair Emeritus of the Children’s Court Improvement Commission, a past member of the New Mexico Tribal-State Judicial Consortium, serves on the Board of Directors of the National Council of Juvenile and Family Court Judges, and served on the Resource Guidelines: Improving Court Practice in Child Abuse and Neglect Cases Revision Committee. He is a frequent trainer on issues related to juvenile justice and child welfare. He is a graduate of the University of New Mexico School of Law.

Executive Director of Rights4Girls

Yasmin Vafa has been a key faculty member and partner of the Institute from the very beginning. At each Institute, Yasmin shares her in-depth understanding of the issue of domestic child sex trafficking in the U.S., with a particular focus on the legal landscape.

Yasmin is the co-founder and Executive Director of Rights4Girls, a human rights organization working to end gender-based violence against young women and girls in the U.S. Her work and advocacy focus on the intersections between race, gender, violence, and the law. She speaks widely on these issues and educates the public and policymakers on how they affect the lives of marginalized women and girls. Yasmin has achieved several policies wins at the federal level, co-authored a seminal report mapping girls’ unique pathways into the juvenile justice system, and was the 2016 recipient of the Lois Haight Award of Excellence and Innovation from the Congressional Victims’ Rights Caucus. Prior to her work at Rights4Girls, Yasmin served as Acting Refugee Coordinator for Amnesty International Australia where she led the organization’s refugee advocacy and shifted national policy on the mandatory and indefinite detention of asylum seekers in the region. She received her B.A. from Boston University and earned her J.D. from the University of Florida, Levin College of Law.

Read Yasmin’s Huffington Post blog.

Learn about Rights4Girls’ No Such Thing as a Child Prostitute campaign.