Sex Trafficking in the News

Children Kidnapped for Sex Trafficking

RIO GRAND VALLEY - Four young children could
have ended up as sex trafficking victims.
Instead they're now back with their families in Mexico.
They were kidnapped. Suspected smugglers tried to
bring them here.
The children were all under six.

San Juan Police Chief Juan Gonzalez says young human traffickers want children under ten.

“These children have been raped repeatedly more than 30 times a day the more use they
get out of a child, the more profit.”

“They are using these children, the younger the better for the
human trafficker.”

San Juan Police Chief Juan Gonzalez trains
officers around the country to recognize signs of sex trafficking.
Two women from San Juan and Edinburgh tried
to bring four children across the bridge illegally.
A customs officer suspected the women were going
to sell the kids.
The children ranged in age from less than a year to six years old.
The women told officers the kids belonged to them.

They even had fake American birth certificates.
An alert customs officer didn't believe their story.

“Officers are being trained to recognize force, fraud and coercion.”

Chief Gonzalez says if the suspected smugglers got away with their crime --the
children would be living through unimaginable horror.

“They’re utilizing them in bars and nightclubs or even for individuals who are
requesting them to abuse them.”

Or traffickers might sell the children to pornographers.

“Traffickers seek young children because they can
abuse them for a longer period of time.”
“This kind of crime is a money maker.”
“Human trafficking is gone more profitable than
drug smuggling, more profitable than human smuggling, arms trafficking.”

Human trafficking is hard to detect and harder to prosecute.

Chief Gonzalez says children trafficked into this country are often taken to brothels.
He says there are probably brothels around the valley investigators haven't found yet.

He says officers will usually find human trafficking when they respond to a
noise violation or to find a runaway.

A recent nationwide sting by federal, state and
local law enforcement agencies that placed Portland second in the nation
for the number of rescued child prostitutes has local officials
concerned about the ramifications for Jackson County.
"We are seeing more adults traveling to Southern
Oregon to have sex with kids who they've met online," said Sgt. Josh
Moulin, commander of the Southern Oregon High-Tech Crimes Task Force,
adding he's seen ads on Craigslist from teens offering themselves for sale.



Runaways trading sex for survival, parents
trading their children for drugs or money, older adults preying upon
curious kids on the Internet — all these scenarios can end up as a death
sentence for a child, said Marlene Mish, executive director of the Children's Advocacy Center.
"Child sex trafficking is the most hidden form of child abuse in our country
today," Mish said.
According to the Federal Bureau of Investigation, 100,000 to 300,000 children are prostituted
annually. They service between four to 10 customers a day, 1,460 to
3,600 transactions per child per year.
"To call it child prostitution is a very euphemistic way of getting around
the brutality," Mish said. "These children are raped, beaten and enslaved."
The problem of prostituted children
is growing because of funding cuts to mental health services, a lack of
residential care programs for youths and a child welfare system that is
unable to stop runaways, local officials said.
Most of the estimated 1.6 million children
nationwide who flee or are kicked out of their homes each year will
return within a week. But nearly a third of those who remain runaways
will trade sex for food, drugs or a place to stay, according to studies
cited in a story published in the New York Times last fall.
Nicole Clark, 17, of Ashland spoke of her
experiences as a teen runaway in the article. Clark ran away from a
Medford group home at age 14. Living on the street and desperate, she
eventually accepted a young man's offer of a place to stay. He became
her boyfriend, and then her pimp. He threatened to kick her out of the
apartment if she did not have sex with several of his friends in
exchange for money. Clark's downward spiral continued for 14 months
until she escaped from another pimp who kept her locked in his garage
apartment for months, she said.
Mary Ferrell, director of the Maslow Project, a Medford outreach center for homeless
youths, said word on the street is that "survival sex" incidents are on the rise.
"It's just so scary," Ferrell said.
"Their lives are literally at risk. The girls are just convinced they are going to die."
Teens are reluctant to discuss their experiences. "Prostitution is not the kind of thing that
kids are going to willingly self-disclose," she said.
Ferrell is hearing more reports of graffiti on
public buildings signaling sex trafficking and prostitution, she said.
Ferrell said she worries about unaccompanied kids
who are seen at her center once or twice, and then never show up again.
"We don't know what happens to these kids," she said.
The common assumption that children of
inner cities are the ones most often lured into prostitution is a
fallacy. Studies show rural children are most at risk. The No. 1 state
for recruiting children is Minnesota, Mish said.
"This is big money worldwide and it's attracting
people who are making a science out of it," Mish said. "They are going
to smaller towns where kids are less sophisticated and more willing to
buy a line. That's why it's significant to us."
Deputy District Attorney David Hoppe said Jackson
County has had a case "where a mother had her daughter perform sex acts
for money." But getting teen prostitution victims to come forward is
very difficult, he said.
"Trafficking is a horrible problem in our world," he said.
Humantrafficking is a specific charge created in 2006. There have been no
trafficking cases filed in Jackson County. But there have been hundreds
of cases involving sex offenses committed by adults against minors.
These felony charges can carry Measure 11 consequences, said Hoppe.
"Compelling prostitution is a Measure 11 crime and
carries a minimum 70-month sentence," he said.
The Southern Oregon High-Tech Crimes Task Force has seen a 29 percent
increase in cases involving child pornography and child sexual
exploitation over the past year, said Moulin.
In addition to an increase in adult-generated child pornography, children
are self-exploiting by "sexting." Teens and pre-teens are posting
sexually explicit photos of themselves to social networking venues, and
to strangers they have met online, he said.
TheInternet is a highly effective tool for predators seeking to seduce
children, Mish said.
"If a stranger knocked on your door and asked if he could take your daughter into the bedroom
behind closed doors for a few hours, you'd say 'no,'" Mish said. "But we
do that with our children when we allow them unsupervised access to the Internet."
Once teens turn 18, they are
considered legal adults and face criminal charges if arrested for
prostitution. If convicted, the teen gets a sex crimes record and jail
time. The adult "john" often gets only a fine. The pimp usually goes free, she said.
"They are victimized and re-victimized," Mish said. "We must stop children who are engaged in
criminal behavior without criminalizing the child."
The FBI has determined 90 percent of runaways living
on the street were victims of sexual, physical or emotional abuse or neglect, Mish said.
"The solution is very simple. To reduce the number of kids on our streets, we need to stop sex
abuse in the home," Mish said.

Corpus Christi TX ---- In the wake of recent allegations about human sex
trafficking in the coastal bend, several women have come together to to
form a group called BLUENATION. Their objective is to raise public
awareness about this type of crime.
The group is working quickly to spread their message, in order to
keep up with the fast moving, and constantly evolving human trade
industry; which has made South Texas, the hub for their ruthless
business.
"If you use drugs, and you sell drugs, and you're trafficking drugs,
it becomes useless to you after the use, it's over, it's done. But, a
person can be used, over and over, and over and over," said Estella
Rocha, Director of Taking Back the Streets in the Name of Jesus Christ.
Rocha said the problem is wide spread but, she said one of the worst
incidents of sex trafficking she has encountered was right here in
Corpus Christi; when a 14-year old girl was found at a local gentleman's
club, allegedly working as a prostitute.
"She was on drugs, a 14-year old child dancing in a men's club. You
know, that's extreme. She is a little girl. You know, a child, and
already in this mess," Rocha said.
As recently as two days ago, 6 News reported on an alleged human
trafficking ring in Beeville. Rocha said cases like this are very
common, and that teenagers, and sometimes girls even younger, are force
fed drugs to the point where they become physically addicted and
chemically dependent on their pimps and dealers, then systematically
gang raped, generating profit for the traffickers.
Rocha said, "It's been around for a long time, we're just now opening
our eyes. Isn't that the saddest?"
Perhaps even sadder, is that the international hub for human
trafficking is located right in our backyard.
"It is centrally located in Houston," Rocha said. "That's the heart
of everything, is Houston."
Sonia Martinez, a pastor and the founder of BLUENATION pointed out,
although many sex workers do pass through South Texas, it's not often
their starting point.
"Internationally, they can be bought from the East Coast, picked up
in Africa, trafficked right through South Texas and Mexico, onto
Colombia because they follow the drug flow, they follow where there
money is, and so many of them are going right in and out of the
Mexico-South Texas border," Martinez said.
Rocha said that when the traffickers feel like their slaves are no
longer profitable, they are often killed, cut open, and their organs
ripped from their bodies, harvested and sold on the black market.
Both Rocha and Martinez have personally been affected by this
heartless industry.
They say there are a few signs to look out for,
if you come across someone you think may be victim in human trafficking.
Most of the victims are female and under the age of 18.
Those captured are paid nothing or next to nothing for their work,
and owe their pimp or "manager" an increasingly large amount of debt.
They often display visible physical markings, unexplained injuries
from sex or abuse, and appear malnourished.
Victims act anxious, avoid eye contact, and appear disconnected.
They often have no possessions, and have been stripped of any
identification documents, like a visa or passport.

Though best known as one of the most attractive celebrity couples in Hollywood, Demi Moore and Ashton Kutcher apparently have more on their minds than the next big movie deal.



Today, at the Clinton Global Initiative (CGI) Annual Meeting in New York City, Moore and Kutcher -- founders of the DNA Foundation -- held a press conference to announce the "Real Men" campaign, which aims to raise awareness about the problem of child sex slavery and to stifle demand for child sexual exploitation and child pornography.

In his introductory remarks, Kutcher noted that yesterday was the 148th anniversary of the day Abraham Lincoln signed the Emancipation Proclamation, ending slavery in the U.S. However, he said the unfortunate truth is that there 27 million slaves in the world today -- more than ever before in human history -- and that the CIA estimates that 1 million of those can be found in the U.S.

"While it's much more comfortable for us to think that this exists in other countries," Moore remarked, "The reality is that we have to wake up to what's happening in our own backyard."

Of those 1 million slaves in the U.S., between 150,000 and 300,000 of those are "children who are being raped for profit," Kutcher said, while Moore emphasized that the average age of entry into the commercial sex trade is 13 years old.
"I don't believe that any 13-year-old chooses to be a prostitute," Moore says, "And what's interesting is that most people believe that a prostitute is choosing to sell herself when, in fact, 75 percent are enslaved by their pimp."

Kutcher said he and Moore learned about this "global epidemic" about a year ago, and came to CGI this year with the goal of learning more about this issue and meeting with the experts of the "modern-day abolitionist movement" to inform and educate themselves so they can take action.

"Truly one of the most heinous forms of slavery is the buying and selling of children for sex," Moore said, "And I'm proud to say that today ... we are making a commitment to launch and execute the 'Real Men' campaign. We are recruiting men who are courageous enough to stand behind the statement that real men don't buy girls," added Moore, "And we hope to use that collective voice to raise widespread awareness and acknowledgment of this issue in hopes of changing the cultural stereotypes that are allowing children to be sold for sex."

Moore recounted the heartbreaking story of a young girl she met that was kidnapped from the streets when she was just 11 years old, promised ice cream, clothes and trinkets as well as love, care and safety, only to end up having to turn over $1,500 a night by being "repeatedly raped for profit," and beaten or tortured if she did not reach that quota. She was lucky enough to escape that life at the age of 17, reported Moore, but many are not.

"Demand is the motor that drives this industry," Moore says, "And as long as people engage in this illegal behavior, pimps will continue to make a profit."

"There is a statistic that says 1 in 5 men have engaged in the commercial sex trade, but real men protect, respect, love and care for girls ... real men don't buy girls," Moore says.

In addition to launching the "Real Men" advocacy campaign, Kutcher and Moore have also formed an anti-trafficking tech task force comprised of a number of the country's elite technology companies, such as Twitter, Microsoft, Google and Facebook, as well as law enforcement and government officials and the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children.

"As soon as we found out that 76 percent of the transactions for sex with underage girls take place on the internet," Kutcher said, "We knew we had to get involved in developing technology solutions to this problem." "The purpose of this tech task force is to create technology solutions to end human trafficking online," he added. "We believe that, together, we can create a trafficking-free internet and that's our mission, that's our goal."

Jack Dorsey, creator, co-founder and chairman of Twitter, and Microsoft spokesperson Pamela Passman joined Moore and Kutcher on stage, each making brief remarks in support of the advocacy campaign and tech initiative.

"We are part of this initiative because we think it can make a real difference," said Dorsey. "Keeping the internet free of child sexual exploitation is very important to our company."

Kutcher said that, ultimately, the "Real Men" advocacy effort is about finding influential men to stand up and say "real men don't buy girls." Whether it's Snoop Dog or the CEO of Google, he explained, young boys look up to influential men in the world and want to be like them when they grow up -- so what their male role models do will be emulated by that young kid.

"This isn't a disease that we don't have a cure for, this is people treating people like people," Kutcher says, "And we can all do something about that. What can be done, is people can get off their ass and they can start acting appropriately, they can start treating each other right, and they can start talking about it."

"People can stand up and be real men and women and admit that what's happening in the world today is not OK," Kutcher concluded.

Mexico offers reward in missing children case


(CNN) -- Mexican authorities are offering a $1.2 million (15 million pesos) reward for information on 14 children who may have been taken from orphanages by child traffickers, according to a release from the attorney general of Mexico. The attorney general also is offering about $400,000 (5 million pesos) in the search for three people in the "Casitas del Sur" case, a statement said Friday.
The children disappeared in February 2009 from the Casitas del Sur orphanage in Mexico City and from homes in Nuevo Laredo and Quintana Roo, the statement said.http://edition.cnn.com/2010/WORLD/americas/10/09/mexico.missing.children/

To 15-year-old Wendy, the two well-dressed men who approached
her and her two friends at their middle school in the small Honduran
village of El Gancho seemed like legitimate businessmen: They appeared
wealthy, drove a nice car, and carried business cards. When the pair
offered to take the three girls to America to work in a textile factory,
“I felt like I had won the lottery,” Wendy says.


Wendy had long dreamed of helping her single mother support the seven
children in their family. When her mother warned against going with the
businessmen, Wendy told her not to worry. “When I come back, I will buy
you a car,” she told her mother, so that she would no longer have to
walk 22 miles to her job in a pineapple field.
In 2002, Wendy and her friends, 15-year-old Sujeli and 14-year-old
Ana, embarked upon a journey that would turn into a nightmare of being
kidnapped, beaten, raped and forced to work in brothels servicing six to
10 men a night. Wendy says she worked alongside girls as young as 12
who were given daily beatings if they did not make enough money for
their captors.

http://today.msnbc.msn.com/id/41409991/ns/today-today_people/