As a high school Criminal Law teacher, I wanted to address some of Peter Hewett's comments about the new Sex Education Bill that was proposed.

A huge part of my curriculum is about human trafficking, as I find myself educating students about the dangers of social media and sexual predators because no one ever has before.

What has Peter so scared about teaching students about how to practice safe sex? It is opinions like his that make it so easy for human traffickers to target our state's children, as our students are taught that sex is a taboo topic and they should never engage in it. Instead, they reach out to the internet to do their own research, and that is where traffickers engage them using Kik, Omegle, Facebook, and a myriad of other social media websites we will never be able to keep tabs on. Then they exploit our student's curiosity, arrange a meet up, and whisk them away to become the newest victims of sexual slavery.

Our best bet is to educate our students about sex, and make sure we are having true and honest and adult conversations with them about the true perils of human trafficking and online sexual abuse. The only people you are helping by preaching abstinence and shaming sex is the human traffickers themselves. We need to do better as a state, and hopefully that backwards way of thinking about sex education dies out soon, and we can finally help our students be healthy and safe.

Joseph Solomon
Metacom Avenue
Warren