Daily Herald opinion: Support for Palatine home for victims of human trafficking well deserved

This editorial is a consensus opinion of the Daily Herald Editorial Board.

Human trafficking, as we've written recently, is not only a nationwide problem but a suburban one.

That came to light during the disruption of what Kane County prosectors call a network of people who brought women from South America and sold them for sex in St. Charles and other suburbs.

We wrote about Naomi's House in Wheaton, which provides counseling and instruction for women who fall prey to the sex industry on how to regain control of their lives and their self worth.

This is important work.

Now Palatine likely will become the first community in Illinois to provide temporary housing for homeless girls who have been the victims of human trafficking or sexual exploitation.

The village council this week gave preliminary OK for a 6,400-square-foot building that looks like a house near the Deer Grove East Forest Preserve.

As many as a dozen girls with no place else to go would be housed there until they're able to transition out.

"We can't give these people back what they lost, but we can help restore their dignity," Palatine resident Joyce Slavik told the village council.

It was refreshing not to hear the sort of not-in-my-backyard comments that too often come up in the face of proposed halfway homes, drug treatment facilities and homeless shelters.

In fact, there was a great deal of support from the council and members of the audience.

Perhaps it's the vulnerability of girls; perhaps there is no perceived threat to neighborhood children that neighbors sometimes express in projects related to drug or mental health problems.

Whatever the reason, we're buoyed by the support it's getting.

The Illinois Department of Children and Family Services will refer girls to the facility. But it would be run by Shelter Inc., a marvelous organization started nearly half a century ago by an Arlington Heights cop who wanted to ensure that children are given a chance to lead healthier, safer lives through emotional and physical care and a variety of programs.

Shelter's reach extends throughout the suburban Cook County.

The new project is supported also by philanthropists John and Rita Canning.

Carina Santa Maria, Shelter's executive director, said she's "seeing a pretty significant increase in trafficking victims that we are supporting. And so we knew that this was something that we needed to assist with and get ahead of."

We're thankful for Shelter Inc.'s attention to the plight of these girls, and we're sure the girls will be, too.