Virginia is being recognized for its efforts in fighting human trafficking.
The Richmond Justice Initiative said the commonwealth is now among the top states when it comes to passing laws and raising awareness about the problem.
The group honored Gov. Bob McDonnell and members of the legislature during a ceremony in Richmond on Thursday.
“I'm really emboldened with what we've been able to do, but I think there's more that we need to do for victim identification to just raising awareness," the governor said. "I mean, everybody from police to educators. And then services to victims - the people that have been victimized and have come out of this have horrific scars and things that need to be done by our department of social services, our health care community to increase services to them."
McDonnell also announced Thursday that he will be holding the first governor's summit on human trafficking in October.
“We’ll have a dialogue with all of the advocates and legislators about what do we do to change the law to continue to raise us, not only in the scores, to make our trafficking enforcement more effective," he said. "Our proximity to international airports and our multi-national population in Virginia and so forth, are some of those factors we have to take into account as we fashion solutions here in Virginia."
