Federal Prosecutor Scheduled to Deliver Baylor University Honors Lecture

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Media contact: Eric M. Eckert, (254) 710-1964
WACO, Texas (Sept. 10, 2014)—U.S. Department of Justice Trial Attorney and Baylor Alumnus, Victor Boutros, has been invited to expand on the subject of poverty and everyday violence as a guest of Baylor University’s Honors College. Boutros will speak at 4 p.m. Sept. 12 in Morrison Hall Room 100.
His lecture, “Poverty’s Terror: Exposing the Hidden Problem that is Destroying the World’s Effort to Help the Global Poor,” will address how illegal acts of violence such as rape, forced labor, sex trafficking, land grabbing and police brutality not only threaten the safety of the general population but also sabotage strategic efforts meant to end poverty.
Dean of the Honors College, Thomas Hibbs, heard Boutros give his dialogue earlier this year at a forum in Washington, D.C. and invited him to return to Baylor University as an opportunity to address students.
“We’re excited to have him speak,” Hibbs said. “He manages to show how that even in some of these horrifying and depressing cases resolution can be reached by thinking concretely and giving strategies. What begins as a bleak topic results in a hope.”
As a federal prosecutor, Boutros investigates and tries cases of police misconduct, hate crimes and human trafficking. In addition, he is a member of the Justice Department’s Human Trafficking Prosecution Unit in order to work with the government to enhance its ability to identify and prosecute major trafficking networks.
Before working within the U.S. Department of Justice, Boutros expressed his passion for justice in developing countries. In Ecuador he assisted the president in improving prison conditions, documented slaves bonded by debt in India and acted as visiting lawyer for the National Prosecuting Authority of South Africa.
Boutros completed his undergraduate at Baylor University in 1998 and went on to attend Harvard University, University of Oxford, and University of Chicago Law School. His book The Locust : Why the End of Poverty Requires the End of Violence, published by Oxford University Press, has been recognized as a Washington Post best-seller and featured in publications such as The New York Times, The Economist and Forbes.
by Sarah Czerwinski, student newswriter, (254) 710-6805
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