By Joe Werkmeister, Newsday

February 6, 2025

Suffolk County officials on Thursday unveiled a new multiagency, coordinated approach to find missing children and curb what they say is an “epidemic” of human trafficking in the county.

The initiative, dubbed “Operation Safe and Lasting Return,” brings together law enforcement, social services and community organizations to break down what officials described as siloed. The goal is to not only find missing children, but provide additional services faster to help break the cycle of repeated runaways.

At a news conference Thursday, Suffolk County Executive Edward P. Romaine described the problem as “one of the most critical issues that we face in this county today — protecting our children, preventing human trafficking, cutting our criminal elements that sometimes prey on women, children and families.” 

The announcement comes amid the arrest of 11 people in connection with a 14-year-old East Patchogue girl who had been missing for 25 days. Two of the suspects face charges of child sex trafficking, while others face a range of charges from kidnapping, rape and endangering the welfare of a child.

The teen was among the many victims who had been identified as trafficked in Suffolk County. At the news conference, officials displayed a poster board of 21 young people currently missing across the county. One girl from East Setauket, missing since October, will turn 17 on Feb. 10. Another girl from Brentwood, who’s 14, has been missing since December.

Faith Lovell, a county attorney and bureau chief of the family court division, which manages the state and county’s first-ever human trafficking court for juveniles, said the first step is implementing a program modeled after Project Harmony — an initiative in Omaha, Nebraska that supports child abuse victims and human trafficking survivors.

“We are creating a multidisciplinary team so that as soon as a child goes missing, it’s not just the police that are working on it, it’s everybody supporting law enforcement in their efforts to find that child,” Lovell said.

The county executive’s office and Department of Social Services will lead the interagency initiative. 

Cate Carbonaro, executive director of The Retreat, a Suffolk-based nonprofit that supports victims of domestic abuse and sexual assault, said the new initiative brings outside agencies into the fold much sooner.

Under the initiative, when a child is reported missing, the nonprofit’s team can immediately help determine what support the child may need when they’re found and whether the child may need alternative housing.

“All our nonprofits were already doing that in separate ways, but we weren’t always aware of the kids who needed it the most,” she said. “And now we are.”

Carbonaro said certain red flags are common across cases of human trafficking, such as lack of family support, poverty and few avenues for a child to seek guidance.

A Newsday investigation last year found fewer victims of sex trafficking are getting mandated services and more aggressive law enforcement was needed to stop sex trafficking. The county last year opened a human trafficking court specifically focused on children, the first in the state.

Sylvia Diaz, deputy county executive for health, human services and education, said Suffolk is one of two counties in New York participating in a training program funded through a state grant “that provides comprehensive, supportive services” as a key step toward starting the new initiative.

“We have to have families in intensive therapy,” she said. “The children are frequently traumatized with post-traumatic stress and other disorders.”

“We have an obligation to build an infrastructure to support the children and the families impacted by this devastating occurrence,” she said.

Sheriff Errol Toulon Jr. said the Suffolk County Jail has identified 354 victims and 224 traffickers since establishing a human trafficking unit in 2018.

Newly sworn-in Suffolk Police Commissioner Kevin Catalina said this approach allows victims to receive additional support “before they can be dragged into this horrible, horrible world.”