This video is disturbing. It is also why I do anti human trafficking work.
from www.johntv.com "Since 1996 Oklahoma’s own Video Vigilante®, Brian Bates, has been using his video camera to document the graphic realities of street prostitution, expose the perpetrators and dispel the myths that further the abuse." 5/21/2010 – Nashville, TN — A Nashville mom pled guilty to her involvement in a sex trafficking ring that recruited local high school teens. Teresa West, 46, was identified as the ring leader and organizer for a prostitution and human sex trafficking business that operated out of Nashville and Pigeon Forge. West and her husband, son and daughter were all arrested last summer after a concerned citizen tipped off local law enforcement that someone was recruiting and pimping out Robertson County High school students. West faced nine federal charges including sex trafficking of children and conspiring to interfere with a police investigation. According to court papers, during the police investigation, West was observed renting a room at a Motel 6 in Murfreesboro. West then left the room key on a wall in the parking lot before leaving the area. A short time later a 16-year old female drove to the motel, retrieved the key and entered the room previously rented by West. Agents confronted the teen who admitted she had been recruited by West and had been prostituted to 20-30 ‘Johns.’ The teen was told to charge $110 for each sex act. West pled guilty to a single count of recruiting a 16-year old girl into prostitution and to interfering with the investigation when she placed calls from jail to family members in an effort to fabricate an alibi. Prosecutors say these charges typically carry a minimum sentence of 10-years in federal prison. West’s husband, Kenneth Dagley, her son Casey, 20, and daughter Diana, 23, have yet to go to trial. According to prosecutors, both Casey and Diana assisted in the prostitution and trafficking ring by driving girls to meet ‘Johns’ and assisting in the criminal operation. Court papers indicate that Diana was also pimped out by her mother. Parents of teenagers, particularly in the Robertson County area, who are/were friends with Casey, Diana and/or Teresa West, are urged to talk with their children and inquire whether they have any knowledge regarding the prostitution business. Anyone with additional information is asked to contact SID Detective Chad Holman at 782-3301. Underage persons involved in this matter are considered to be victims. Taken from Change.org, written by Amanda Kloer When we talk about issues affecting women, like domestic violence, sexual assault, and human trafficking, we often list them as separate issues. In reality, people who experience trafficking are often victimized in other ways as well. In particular, teen dating violence is a doorway to human trafficking. Teen dating violence is the name that has been given to intimate partner violence which takes place between young people who aren't married or living together. Just like in domestic violence, teen dating violence involves one partner using coercive control to make the other partner do what they want. Abusive relationships usually start off great -- the abuser tells his victim how beautiful she is and how much he loves her. He showers her with gifts and attention. To a young person, this love and attention can be intoxicating. Only once there is a strong bond does the abuse start -- whether it's physical, emotional, sexual, financial, or other forms of abuse. An abusive relationship between teens turns into trafficking when labor exploitation comes into play. Usually for teens, this means the abuser forces the victim into commercial sex. Since every child under 18 in the commercial sex industry in the U.S. is a trafficking victim, a boyfriend who pushes his teen girlfriend into prostitution becomes a trafficker, and she a victim. But while the definition of the crime has changed, the dynamics have not. A trafficker uses coercive control to keep his victims enslaved in the same way an abuser uses coercive control to keep his partner from leaving. A victim of human trafficking and teen dating violence who has been forced into the commercial sex industry may also experience sexual assault, rape, battery, torture, and a myriad of other abuses. However, it's important to recognize that all of these issues, while seemingly separate, take place within a framework of coercive control. All of the abuses a teen trafficking victim/teen dating violence victim experiences are a direct result of the coercion from her partner/pimp. By JOSEPH BERGER New York Times December 4, 2009 Despite a highly trumpeted New York State law in 2007 that enacted tough penalties for sex or labor trafficking, very few people have been prosecuted since it went into effect, according to state statistics. In New York State, there have been 18 arrests and one conviction for trafficking since the law was signed by Gov. Eliot Spitzer and took effect in November 2007, according to the New York State Division of Criminal Justice Services. There is one case pending in Manhattan, one in Queens and two in the Bronx. The situation is not all that different in New Jersey or in roughly 30 states that have laws against human trafficking — defined as using fraud or force to exploit a person for sex or labor. A federal law passed in 2000 with lifetime prison penalties has resulted in 196 cases with convictions against 419 people, according to statistics from the United States Department of Justice. The scale of those numbers contrasts starkly with the 14,500 to 17,500 people the State Department estimates are brought into the United States each year for forced labor or sex. Prosecutors like Anne Milgram, the New Jersey attorney general, and Janet DiFiore, the Westchester district attorney, blame a lack of training. Police officers, they said, do not recognize signs of exploitation and do not ask the right questions at an opportune time. Eager to move a case along, the police may arrest someone for promoting prostitution rather than bringing stiffer trafficking charges. With evidence growing stale, it can be hard to upgrade charges later on, the prosecutors said. “It’s very reminiscent where we were 30 years ago on the domestic violence stuff,” Ms. DiFiore said. “People just don’t get it yet.” One typical recent case involved a 22-year-old woman from Mexico who said she was lured to New York by her boyfriend with a promise of a waitress’s job. She said she wound up working for his uncle in Queens as a roving prostitute, servicing 10 men a night across the five boroughs for $35 to $45 a trick. Friendless, stranded on alien streets, frightened that the police would discover she was here illegally, she felt she had no choice, said the woman, who is pregnant and asked not to be named for fear of retribution. “I felt so bad, so bad,” she said, drying tears as she spoke softly with the help of a translator. “I didn’t know what I could do. I was alone.” In July, the boyfriend was arrested after, she said, he beat her so brutally that she finally fled and sought out a stranger, who led her to the police. But he was charged only with a misdemeanor assault for domestic violence. The Mexican woman said that had she been asked, she would have told the full story of how she had been intimidated into prostitution, but the police did not press her, and she did not volunteer anything because she was afraid the boyfriend might seek revenge against her family in Mexico. Her lawyers say they are now trying to get Queens prosecutors to upgrade the charges, something prosecutors say they will consider. The police, experts say, should be asking an immigrant prostitute whether she was forced to work the streets, whether her passport was taken away, whether she was held somewhere against her will. Training sessions to focus on such questions have been held, including one Nov. 12 in Mount Kisco for 100 law enforcement officers and social service providers. “If you’re looking at a frightened immigrant woman in a brothel, it doesn’t take a Ph.D. in political science to know what you’re dealing with,” said Dorchen Leidholdt, legal director for Sanctuary for Families, a Manhattan battered-women’s agency that is helping the Mexican woman. She runs across many police officers who do not know that a trafficking law exists, she said. But the police often are not helped by victims, who are “taught, trained and manipulated by their exploiters not to cooperate with nor trust law enforcement,” Richard A. Brown, the district attorney of Queens, said in an e-mail message. In the case of the Mexican woman, his office said that the only information she provided was that her boyfriend had punched her; she never mentioned his forcing her into prostitution. If the right questions are asked, trafficking charges do result. In Westchester County, a 21-year-old Hungarian immigrant told prosecutors she was deceived by her employer, Joseph Yannai, 65, author of a book profiling the world’s top chefs, into thinking she would be coming to suburban Pound Ridge to work as his personal assistant. But according to a criminal complaint, the job required her to perform sexual favors. The woman, whose name has not been released, escaped and her testimony resulted in charges against Mr. Yannai for sexual abuse and two counts of labor trafficking — one involving the Hungarian and another a Brazilian woman at the Yannai home. Under the new law, each labor trafficking count carries a sentence of three to seven years in prison. In their questioning, prosecutors learned, according to the complaint, that Mr. Yannai had deceived the Hungarian woman about the nature of the job, had limited her phone calls and offered her no spending money — acts that undergirded the trafficking charge. Mr. Yannai, who is awaiting trial, said the women “were free to come and go as they wished,” according to his lawyer, John D. Pappalardo. On Tuesday, a Queens jury convicted David Brown, 32, of St. Albans, of sex trafficking and kidnapping. The Queens district attorney said it was the first conviction for sex trafficking since the 2007 law was passed. Prosecutors said the defendant forced the woman to work for him as a prostitute for 12 days in August 2008 by threatening to beat her and cut up her body if she left his apartment. Witnesses testified that the woman was “sold” to the defendant for $2,000 by an ex-girlfriend. Amy Siniscalchi, program director for My Sister’s Place in Westchester, a service agency working with seven trafficking victims, said, “Everybody in the field thinks that the crime of human trafficking is increasing.” Jennifer Dreher, senior director of the anti-trafficking program at Safe Horizon, a domestic violence agency, said the world economic crisis had made desperate people more willing to believe deceptive employment schemes and had provided workers for massage parlors and brothels. Those trafficking cases that have been brought illustrate how trafficking is different from run-of-the-mill crimes like promoting prostitution. Last month, two Mexican immigrants — a husband and wife — were charged by federal authorities in Brooklyn with using physical violence — including cutting the victim with a knife, beating her with a brick, punching her and breaking her finger and nose — to force a young woman to work as a prostitute starting in April 2007. The husband fathered a baby with the young woman; the baby died for reasons still unknown, and his body was discovered encased in concrete. Benton J. Campbell, the United States attorney in Brooklyn, described the case as “sex slavery.” In August, the F.B.I. arrested the brother-and-sister owners of two bars in Lake Ronkonkoma and Farmingville on Long Island that were popular with Latino immigrants, and charged the two and a manager with sex trafficking and forced labor. The complaint said women as young as 17 were lured from Central America to work as waitresses and, if they refused to perform sex acts, were beaten, raped or threatened with deportation. In the Queens case involving the Mexican woman, she said the police asked her only about visible bruises. Vivian Huelgo, another lawyer for Sanctuary for Families, faults them for not digging harder. “A couple of different questions — is someone forcing you to have sex and is that sex for money — would take you down the road to a more serious crime,” she said. From the Department of Justice: Ohio man used Craigslist, MySpace, YouTube and Other Social Networking Sites to Recruit Prostitutes and Sell Sexual Services Baltimore, Maryland - Richard Johnson, age 22, of Chillicothe, Ohio, pleaded guilty today to charges related to running a sex and drug trafficking business from an apartment in Millersville, announced United States Attorney for the District of Maryland Rod J. Rosenstein. According to Johnson’s plea, from January to April, 2009, he participated in a conspiracy to conduct a prostitution business from an apartment in Millersville, Maryland. Specifically, Johnson admits that he and his co-conspirators transported, and enticed to travel, at least 12 individuals from two different states to Maryland, in order to engage in prostitution. Johnson directly and successfully recruited two of those individuals, and attempted to recruit additional females. Johnson and his co-conspirators shared in the prostitution earnings of girls who worked for them. Johnson spent his earnings on illegal narcotics, jewelry and expensive watches. Johnson and his co-conspirators often boasted of the money they were earning in Maryland by filming videos displaying their items of wealth and posting them on the internet. Johnson and his co-conspirators used Craigslist, MySpace, YouTube, and other web-based social networking and classified advertising services, as well as cellular telephones, to recruit females to serve as prostitutes, to promote their prostitution business, and to advertise sexual services. Johnson and his co-conspirators used prepaid debit cards and aliases when posting Craigslist ads for sexual services in order to conceal their unlawful activities. Johnson also assisted in photographing females in various states of undress to accompany advertisements of sexual services on Craigslist. Johnson and some co-conspirators also provided protection for the prostitutes working at the apartment in Millersville, even brandishing a gun during a dispute. Johnson also handled numerous firearms during the conspiracy and discharged a weapon in the apartment. Also according to the plea agreement, from at least January 2009 through September 2009, Johnson and his conspirators distributed illegal narcotics to associates, prostitutes, sex and drug customers and others, both inside and outside of Maryland. Johnson admits that he is responsible for between 50 and 200 grams of MDMA, also known as Ecstasy, and N-Benzylpiperazine, also known as BZP. Johnson often came to Maryland to utilize the Millersville apartment to establish a drug business in Baltimore. On at least three occasions, Johnson went to Detroit, Michigan with a co-conspirator to purchase illegal narcotics, later distributing these drugs in Ohio and Maryland. Upon his release from Maryland state custody in August 2009, Johnson returned to Ohio and continued to negotiate drug sales with a co-conspirator located in Maryland. Until his federal arrest in September 2009, Johnson also contacted a number of potential witnesses in this matter to provide warnings that law enforcement was still investigating. Johnson faces a maximum sentence of: life in prison for sex trafficking by force; five years in prison for the prostitution conspiracy; 10 years in prison for transportation for prostitution; 20 years in prison for enticement; and 20 years in prison for conspiracy to distribute Ecstasy and BZP. U.S. District Judge J. Frederick Motz scheduled his sentencing for February 12, 2010 at 10:00 a.m. The case was investigated by the Maryland Human Trafficking Task Force formed in 2007 to discover and rescue victims of human trafficking while identifying and prosecuting offenders. Members include federal, state and local law enforcement, as well as victim service providers and local community members. For more information about the Maryland Human Trafficking Task Force, please visit http://www.usdoj.gov/usao/md/Human-Trafficking/index.html. United States Attorney Rod J. Rosenstein praised U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, Anne Arundel County Police Department, Anne Arundel County State’s Attorney’s Office, U.S. Army Criminal Investigation Command and the Chillicothe, Ohio Police Department for their assistance and investigation. Mr. Rosenstein thanked Assistant U.S. Attorney Solette A. Magnelli, who is prosecuting the case.  Join hands with The Body Shop and ECPAT and support our campaign to stop sex trafficking of children and young people. The proceeds from every Soft Hands Kind Heart Hand Cream sold are donated to our campaign partner ECPAT*, a global network of charities who are working to stop the trafficking and sexual exploitation of children and young people around the world. The campaign aims to raise awareness of the scale of the issue, raise funding for vulnerable children and young people, and inspire those with decision-making power to effect change. Soft Hands Kind Heart Hand Cream is available now at The Body Shop, in-store and online. Lend a hand, or two - ways you can make a difference 1. Tell your friends and family about our campaign. Help us to spread the word about the horrors of this global sex trade. 2. Buy our Soft Hands Kind Heart Hand Cream, or make a donation to ECPAT 3. Report a suspected incidence of child trafficking by writing to protect@ecpat.net 4. Learn more about the issue by reading our full report on Global Child Trafficking for sexual purposes or the summary report. | ArchivesMarch 2012 CategoriesAll |
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