Kansas City Star: Double Victimization of Sex Slaves

Sex slaves often victimized twice in U.S. trafficking war
Laura Bauer Kansas City Star

last updated: December 14, 2009 03:08:01 AM

KANSAS CITY — Sitting in the jail in Boone County, Mo., the Chinese woman didn't look like a criminal to Kelley Lucero. She looked like a middle-aged mom.
Soon, Lucero learned that the woman had indeed come to America to scout out a college for her teenage son. She had come, legally, as part of a cultural exchange program, but her life had taken an unexpected and terrifying turn in Middle America.
Forced to work in a one-room massage parlor, she ended up being arrested for prostitution at a truck stop between Kansas City and St. Louis.
Only an experienced eye like Lucero’s could see something that Boone County deputies appeared to miss. What so many in law enforcement all over the nation still are not trained to see.
“This wasn’t a prostitute,” said Lucero, a sexual abuse program coordinator for a domestic violence shelter in Columbia. “She was a human trafficking victim.”
And yet, the Chinese woman sat in jail for five months.
When the United States took a global stand on human trafficking in 2000, lawmakers wanted to rescue foreign-born women turned into American sex slaves. In too many cases, though, that hasn’t happened.
In its six-month investigation into America's effectiveness in the war on human trafficking, The Kansas City Star found that the system orginally designed with sex trafficking in mind is often unsuccessful in reaching those victims.
Some are mistakenly identified as prostitutes and end up either lost in the criminal justice bureaucracy or back on the streets. Even when victims are identified by law enforcement, some are reluctant to go through the gantlet that accompanies the prosecution of their trafficker, too untrusting or scared to reveal the horrible things that happened to them. Critics complain that the U.S. law is inherently flawed because it connects victims’ aid with their willingness to help make cases.
“No one is seeing the situation for what it is,” said Karen Stauss, an attorney with Polaris Project, an anti-trafficking organization based in Washington, D.C. “It’s like we’re saying, ‘We blame you for what you are suffering.’ ”
The government also has been slow to recognize an emerging class of new victims: young American girls. While millions are spent each year to combat international sex trafficking, lawmakers have yet to approve funding for domestic victims — perhaps the fastest-growing class of those trafficked in the United States.
Anti-trafficking experts say that the current federal and state laws are blunt legal instruments in trying to address the complexity of an ever-evolving global criminal enterprise and do not account for the trauma of women forced into sexual abuse. Of all human trafficking crimes, The Star found, the ones involving sex slavery have proved to be the most difficult when it comes to catching and prosecuting the traffickers.
The Trafficking Victims Protection Act “is not creating the legal environment we worked so hard to create so we can prevent human trafficking,” said Norma Ramos, of the Coalition Against Trafficking in Women. “It’s a federal law that’s really not that useful for what it was supposed to do — end human trafficking.”
When the mother from China was arrested, deputies in Boone County hadn’t been trained to recognize human trafficking. They didn’t know what questions to ask.
Or that the crime requires a victim-centered approach, much different from what officers are traditionally schooled in.
Boone County Assistant Prosecutor Merilee Crockett said she couldn’t discuss specifics of the case, but generally cases that may involve human trafficking are a “conundrum” because if victims are released they could end up back with their traffickers. And sometimes there is no safe place to keep them other than jail.
“Where is the rescue? What do we do for them? How do we protect them?” Crockett said.
Law enforcement authorities also have different priorities, explained Ivy Suriyopas, staff attorney for the Asian American Legal Defense and Education Fund. “They focus on catching perpetrators, making sure the public is safe from additional crimes. That doesn’t necessarily correlate with the needs of the victims.”
Some police officers get it and know how to work human trafficking cases, advocates acknowledged. Yet many don’t. At least not at this point.
But experts say that’s not surprising.
“They are being asked to take off their glasses and put on a slightly different prescription,” said Bill Bernstein of Mosaic Family Services, which works with human trafficking survivors in Dallas. “They’re having to view some people who we think might be victims in a slightly different light. That’s beginning, but it will take time.”
Further complicating anti-trafficking efforts is that Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents are supposed to not only screen victims for possible human trafficking, but also root out illegal immigration — what some see as a conflict of interest.
At the very least, that creates an “inherent challenge,” according to Kristyn Peck Williams, screening and field coordinator of the anti-trafficking services program for the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops.
“ICE would do the raid, but they would also be the ones in the position to identify trafficking victims,” Williams said.
The initial contact with potential victims is crucial, advocates maintain. If agents use the same hard demeanor they use investigating other crimes, it can further traumatize a victim and destroy the case.
In one instance, a federal agent in the southern region of the United States interviewed a foreign-born woman picked up in a brothel raid. “So you were a prostitute?” the agent asked during the investigation.
An immigration attorney in the room said that the woman instantly clammed up. Later, she was deported.
“I’ve seen a lot of women who were helped, but I see a lot of women who slipped through the cracks,” said the attorney, who didn’t want to be identified for fear of retribution by law enforcement.
In routine prostitution cases, officers are usually only interested in the money generated by the ring and the people involved. But human trafficking cases require more sensitivity and different questions.
“We now ask, ‘Where do you live? Who do you live with? Where did you come from? How are you paid?’ ” said Capt. Ken Bergman of the Independence, Mo., Police Department, who works with the local anti-trafficking task force and has six “very trained” detectives who know how to identify victims.
The local task force has trained more than 2,000 officers throughout Missouri and Kansas about trafficking.
Still, that’s only a fraction of the officers in both states.
“You have to know what you are looking for or you will miss it,” Bergman said.
Without the right approach, a sex trafficking victim can be recycled into a lifetime of slavery.
From the outset, the system set up to help trafficking victims had a major flaw, advocates found. Especially when it came to helping sex trafficking victims.
The protection act concentrated on three Ps: preventing trafficking, protecting victims and prosecuting the traffickers. Some critics, however, believe that the United States has put too much emphasis on prosecution.
Victims are required to show reasonable cooperation with law enforcement before they receive all the benefits intended for them, such as food stamps, shelter and the opportunity to stay in America.
In effect, victims are told, they may not get help from the government unless they help the government prosecute the trafficker.
“It is very wrong to have this condition,” said Joy Ngozi Ezeilo, appointed last year as the United Nations’ Special Rapporteur on human trafficking. “Countries must avoid that.”
Victims are not given enough time for reflection or counseling, Ezeilo said, before they have to agree to cooperate. Given time to heal, some victims may be more likely to help prosecute their trafficker.
Kelly Heinrich, who has studied human trafficking and the laws addressing it, said the federal law is more witness-centered.
“It’s the way it was designed to begin with and implementation made it worse,” Heinrich said.
Many victims aren’t stable enough to immediately tolerate having to relive what they went through, said Judy Okawa, a licensed psychologist specializing in the evaluation and treatment of survivors of severe trauma.
One sex trafficking survivor Okawa has worked with said she relives her abuse every time the sun goes down. She told Okawa it’s then — when the quality of light is at a certain level — she’s reminded of the time she was forced to have sex.
Other survivors have different triggers. But the last thing they want to do is speak of the abuse. Or look into the eyes of the perpetrator.
It brings it all back, Okawa said. The fear. And the threats.
“If that trafficker is not in jail or dead, there’s always a chance he or she will hurt them,” Okawa said. “(The trafficker) says, ‘You can run, but you can’t hide from me. I will find you and I will kill your family.’ ”
One trafficking victim reached out to a domestic violence advocacy program in Kansas. Her trafficker was forcing her to work long hours for little pay, stopping her from leaving the country, and frequently sexually assaulting her.
Pregnant with his baby, she wanted help.
But she was afraid to pursue a trafficking visa designed for victims because it would mean having to report her trafficker, which could put her, and her baby, in more danger.
“Although she may have had a remedy available … she didn’t feel like she could do that. She was too afraid,” said Pamela Jacobs, immigration project attorney for the Kansas Coalition Against Sexual and Domestic Violence.
“Being asked to testify against a person you’ve been afraid of for a long time, and someone who could still hurt you, and your child, is very difficult. Just having a visa does not guarantee a victim’s safety.”
The woman did not see a way to escape, and advocates do not know what happened to her.
In the late spring of 2007, Johnson County authorities undertook the first major human trafficking investigation in the Kansas City area. Law enforcement at the time said they “rescued” 15 women from strip-mall Asian massage parlors — one called China Rose — and there could be many more victims.
Originally from China and Korea, the women worked 14 hours a day, seven days a week, performing sex acts. Sometimes they slept on the same bed where they serviced customers.
For investigators, on paper they looked like human trafficking victims.
But as time went on, and the case wound through criminal court, more information surfaced. Some women came to Kansas City knowing they would work as prostitutes. One woman, according to statements made by one of the defendants, made about $15,000 in a month.
Others said they had no idea they would be prostituted when they got here.
Ultimately, prosecutors didn’t charge the four main defendants with human trafficking. Instead, they were charged with and pleaded guilty to coercing females to travel for prostitution.
Court testimony and other information prompted the federal judge hearing the case to dismiss the notion that there were “vulnerable victims.”
“The victims were more participants than victims,” said Chief U.S. District Judge Fernando Gaitan in sentencing the lead defendant, Ling Xu. “They appeared to be professionals.”
Defense attorney Melanie Morgan, who represented Ling, said she believes prosecutors tried too hard to make the case into something it wasn’t.
“This wasn’t human trafficking,” Morgan said. “This was a very consensual arrangement.”
The case provided a small window into the complexity of sex trafficking investigations. Prosecutors across the country are filtering through scenarios where the water is muddy regarding what is coercion and what is consensual.
In the China Rose case, federal prosecutors said evidence supported the charges filed, and the government still contends that some of the women met the definition of a human trafficking victim.
Those women were offered trafficking visas, said Assistant U.S. Attorney Cynthia Cordes, who specializes in trafficking cases.
“But they wanted to return home to their families,” Cordes explained.
Our own backyard
Ever since passage of the Trafficking Victims Protection Act nearly a decade ago, foreign-born victims have been the law’s focus. They get extensive counseling, visa assistance and help with food and housing costs as they rebuild their lives.
For victims born in the United States, however, state governments were expected to take care of children prostituted by pimps or family members.
But that rarely happens.
“You talk about frustration,” said Thomas Egan of Catholic Charities in Phoenix. “We found hundreds of prostituted kids and no funding available to help them.”
Kristy Childs sees it every day.
As founder and director of the nonprofit Veronica’s Voice, Childs works to help Kansas City area women and girls escape the commercial sex industry.
That’s what Childs did this summer when she and her staff searched the streets for a 12-year-old girl. Day after day, they heard from sources on the street, the junior-high-school girl was forced to prostitute herself.
“Every day she’s out there, she’s in more danger,” Childs said one day as they went out to search again. “…We’re trying to save the world and we can’t. We can’t even save the victims in our own backyard.”
With American-born victims, it becomes a maddening game of catch and release.
Most welfare programs require recipients to be at least 18 to receive benefits. Since many young domestic trafficking victims are considered unaccompanied minors, they don’t qualify.
Critics said this is another area where the law is deeply flawed.
“They (lawmakers) messed up,” said Theresa Flores, who was sex trafficked as a teenager growing up in Michigan and now works as a victim advocate. “They didn’t include Americans, and they should have.”
Four years ago, Childs and other advocates lobbied U.S. legislators to make it clear that domestic victims should be protected under the act. They specifically wanted American-born girls under the age of 18 who are sex trafficked to be considered victims entitled to services and benefits.
Lawmakers included that provision in the 2005 reauthorization of the protection act.
But they didn’t fund services for domestic victims, leaving thousands of young girls vulnerable to further abuse.
“We’re going to point the finger at other countries for how they deal with their domestic trafficking, but then we’re not doing enough for our own citizens?” asked Colette Bercu of Tennessee’s Free for Life International, a nonprofit organization that supports trafficking survivors. “We’ve got a problem.”
At a national symposium in July, social workers and health care experts pointed out that resources available to help domestic victims don’t come close to what’s available for foreign-born victims.
Near the top of the list is housing. Police and community organizations are having a tough time finding somewhere to take domestic victims lucky enough to have escaped their pimps.
“As a result, many domestic minor victims are housed in juvenile detention centers, which often do not recognize or treat these youth as victims of a crime, but rather as perpetrators,” a symposium report said.
Cordes said she prosecutes domestic sex trafficking cases with the same fervor as cases with international victims but it can be challenging.
“We have a duty to protect our own citizens and children,” she said. “Because the domestic victims are ineligible for funding under the (protection act) each case demands extra effort and creativity to obtain services.”
More than 1,800 Las Vegas youths under the age of 18 were in juvenile lockup on prostitution-related charges between 1996 and 2007, according to a study released this year by Shared Hope International, which rescues victims of sex trafficking. In Dallas, 165 youths were in police custody on prostitution-related charges in 2007 alone. Shared Hope officials believe all of these kids were victims and should not have been thrown in jail.
“We have to stop criminalizing, arresting the kids,” said Shared Hope founder Linda Smith.
For the 12-year-old in Kansas City, police were more understanding. Especially after Childs called them when her search came up empty.
Within a day, law enforcement had found her. But only after two officers spent a night doing nothing but looking for her. She was taken to a local hospital and examined.
Authorities tried to connect her with Veronica’s Voice and Childs, to get her the counseling she needed. But somehow she slipped away.
Now, Childs worries she’s back on the streets.
A long way home
With foreign-born human trafficking victims, the line between victim and criminal isn’t always clear, either.
Consider the Chinese woman Lucero met in jail.
The woman paid $13,000 — her family’s life savings — to enroll in what she thought was a cultural exchange program that would bring her to the United States. Her teenage son planned to go to college in America, and someone in their family had to come in advance to get a job and earn money.
She made the trip on a six-month visa, Lucero said. But when she got off the plane in Los Angeles, she was taken to a Chinese restaurant where she went to work washing dishes.
Next, she thought she’d get a job as a nanny for a wealthy family. But then she met a man who said he was from her province in China. He told her about the massage business, how she could get a license and make good money.
She believed him. With what the woman thought was a legitimate license in hand, she traveled with several other women to the Midwest.
Twelve of them worked 12 hours a day inside cramped parlors set up inside truck stops across Middle America.
“They gave her half of what she was making,” Lucero said, noting that she still knows very little about the traffickers.
The woman ended up with a couple of hundred dollars a week. Most she’d send to family back in China.
Then police got a tip about a one-room massage parlor operated out of a Boone County truck stop along Interstate 70. The night she was arrested, police didn’t have a translator and she couldn’t tell her story.
The Chinese woman never told Lucero all she was forced to do. She even denied having sex.
“It would be too humiliating,” Lucero explained.
The woman spent Christmas 2007 behind bars.
“My parents are old and sick,” she later wrote Lucero. “My mother knows I’m in jail and she’s had a heart attack and is in the hospital. My husband (still in China) … can’t work because of my situation.”
Eventually, charges were dismissed. The woman went to California and got her temporary visa extended. Then she headed east to work, she said, in a market.
But before she left the Midwest, she wrote Lucero about missing her homeland.
“The only thing I wish for is to leave America and go to my loved ones,” she said. “I feel like America is a place where they talk a lot about human rights, and I know I have the right to go back to China. Can you please help me?”
For almost a year, Lucero didn’t hear from her and wasn’t sure where she ended up.
Then last week, Lucero received an e-mail. The woman is on the East Coast waiting for her green card.
“She just wanted to say merry Christmas to me and tell me that she loves me,” Lucero said. “And that we have a special connection.”

Ohio Man Pleads Guilty to sex and Drug Trafficking

Ohio Man Pleads Guilty
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.

Global Trafficking Highlights from the Balitmore Examiner

NORTH AMERICA
New Jersey: The new legislation will protect foreign born women from human trafficking. An assembly man, in an effort of protecting these women, pushes for tougher requirements for the owners of agencies for maid-order-bride. The owners are required to undergo criminal background checks.

Canada: Police arrested individuals during the human trafficking investigation in Calgary. Police also rescued many young women from foreign countries who are sexually exploited by the traffickers during the investigation.

California: A man claims that the Church of Scientology exploited his labor for 16 years.

Kansas: A man was sentenced for 15 years in prison for attempting to sex trafficking a child.

Alabama: A man was accused of trafficking an underage girl from Mexico for sexual exploitation. He was indicted for trafficking a minor from Mexico, coercing a minor to engage in prostitution


LATIN AMERICA
Peru: The police discovered that the case of human fat trafficking to European cosmetic market was nothing more than a lie. The police found no evidence of human fat sales to European cosmetic market.


EUROPE
Croatia: Two Slovaks were arrested in Croatia for trafficking seven Afghans and one Pakistani from Serbia. The police arrested them when they discover the victims in the age between 13-17 hidden in the roof space designed for storing luggage.

Romania: Three men have been jailed for trafficking Romanians to Ireland. They were charged with trafficking victims for labor exploitation in Ireland.

England: Five Chinese nationals were arrested during the brothel raids by the UK border agency. A Chinese woman was arrested for entering the country illegally, possession of substance with an intent to supply. Another Chinese national was also arrested under suspicion of managing the brothels.


ASIA
Iraq: Women are forced into sex slavery due to the economic downturn and other reasons. Since 2003 U.S. invasion, many women and children became widows and orphans. They, therefore, turn to prostitution to support themselves.


AFRICA
Nigeria: The National Agency for the Prohibition of Traffic in Person (NAPTP) has convicted 65 traffickers and rescued 6000 victims since 2003.

http://www.examiner.com/x-24740-Norfolk-Human-Rights-Examiner~y2009m12d2-Global-human-trafficking-highlights-Dec-2-2009

FBI Saves Child from being Sexually Exploited - Dundalk Woman Pleads Guilty

Quick Work by FBI Saved a Child from Being Sexually Exploited

Baltimore, Maryland - Michelle Lynn Smith, age 32, of Dundalk, Maryland, pleaded guilty today to distribution of child pornography, announced United States Attorney for the District of Maryland Rod J. Rosenstein.

“The FBI worked quickly in response to a tip from a cooperating witness and was able to put a stop to Michelle Smith’s sexual exploitation of a child,” said U.S. Attorney Rod J. Rosenstein.

According to Smith’s plea agreement, while text messaging with a cooperating witness in April 2009, Smith offered a minor child to the individual for sex. The cooperating witness contacted the FBI, and agents reviewed the messages and saw photographs that Smith had sent to the cooperating witness on April 29, 2009, of sexually explicit conduct. The cooperating witness agreed to have an FBI agent pose as the cooperating witness in order to continue the conversations with Smith. Special agents assumed the cooperating witness’s identity and Smith continued to talk about the minor in sexually explicit terms. In addition to the text messages, on May 5, 2009, Smith sent the undercover agent photographs of the minor engaged in sexually explicit conduct. Smith also admitted that she sent these same photographs to an adult male in Tennessee using her cellular phone.

Smith faces a minimum sentence of five years and a maximum sentence of 20 years in prison for distribution of child pornography, followed by supervised release up to life. Smith is detained and U.S. District Judge William M. Nickerson has scheduled sentencing for February 11, 2009, at 10:00 a.m.

This case was brought as part of Project Safe Childhood, a nationwide initiative to combat the growing epidemic of child sexual exploitation and abuse launched in May 2006 by the Department of Justice. Led by United States Attorneys’ Offices and the Criminal Division's Child Exploitation and Obscenity Section (CEOS), Project Safe Childhood marshals federal, state and local resources to better locate, apprehend and prosecute individuals who exploit children via the internet, as well as to identify and rescue victims. For more information about Project Safe Childhood, please visit www.projectsafechildhood.gov. Details about Maryland’s program are available at http://www.usdoj.gov/usao/md/Safe-Childhood/index.html.
United States Attorney Rod J. Rosenstein praised the Federal Bureau of Investigation for its investigation. Mr. Rosenstein thanked Assistant U.S. Attorneys Solette Magnelli and Paul E. Budlow, who are prosecuting the case.

Two sentenced to 10 years each in Sex Trafficking Conspiracy involving Minors

Maryland Task Force to Show “Zero Tolerance for Child Prostitution”

Baltimore, Maryland - U.S. District Judge Richard D. Bennett sentenced Byron Thompson, a/k/a “B,” age 25, and Lea Bell, a/k/a “Eboni,” a/k/a “Ebony,” age 29, both of Reisterstown, Maryland, today to 10 years in prison each, followed by 25 years of supervised release, for conspiracy to commit sex trafficking of a minor and three counts of sex trafficking of a minor, announced United States Attorney for the District of Maryland Rod J. Rosenstein. Judge Bennett also ordered that upon their release from prison both defendants must register as sex offenders in any place they reside, work or go to school.

“Maryland’s human trafficking task force is committed to a policy of zero tolerance for child prostitution,” said U.S. Attorney Rod J. Rosenstein. “Anyone who pays for or profits from sex with children should be on notice that law enforcement agents and prosecutors are standing by to send them to federal prison.”

“Protecting our communities from the threats posed by those engaged in human trafficking is a top priority for U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE),” said William Winter, Special Agent in Charge for ICE in Baltimore. “As a member of the Maryland Human Trafficking Task Force, ICE will continue to work with our law enforcement partners to investigate and prosecute human trafficking as well as rescue and protect the victims of trafficking, so we can put an end to this reprehensible form of modern day slavery.”

According to their guilty pleas and court documents, from January through April, 2009, Byron Thompson, a “pimp,” and Bell jointly ran a prostitution business, recruiting minors to engage in commercial sex acts. Thompson controlled the business and Bell, a “bottom,” assisted by collecting proceeds directly from sex customers, training the sex workers that Thompson recruited and exerting control over the sex workers in Thompson’s absence. Thompson and Bell rented over 100 combined hotel rooms in Maryland, New York and Washington, D.C. and recruited sex workers through friends, clubs, bars and the internet. They posted more than 100 erotic and personal ads on the internet in order to draw sex customers.

Thompson and Bell obtained “Jane Doe 1” and “Jane Doe 2,” each 15 years old, and “Jane Doe 3,” 17 years old (“the minors”) for commercial sex acts, knowing that they were not 18 years old. From January to February 2009, Thompson and Bell prostituted Jane Doe 3, providing and advertising Jane Doe 3 dozens of times for sexual services in Maryland. Thompson and Bell transported Jane Doe 3 to hotels, private residences, and required Jane Doe 3 to ‘walk’ truck stops and Baltimore City streets known for prostitution. In that time, Thompson and Bell directed dozens of customers to Jane Doe 3.

Thompson and Bell kept all of the money paid by the sex customers.

In the early morning hours of March 6, 2009, Thompson and Bell drove the minors to a Maryland truck stop and directed them to walk the area for additional sex customers. The minors were almost immediately retrieved by law enforcement, but Thompson and Bell continued to attempt to contact Jane Doe 3 through April 2009.

On April 20, 2009, Thompson and Bell created a Craigslist posting advertising sexual services and containing a photograph of Jane Doe 3. On May 17, 2009, Thompson and Bell created a Backpage posting advertising a “2-girl special” and containing photographs of Jane Doe 3 and a photograph of Jane Doe 1. Thompson and Bell were subsequently located and arrested.

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 and the Baltimore County Police Department for their investigative work. Mr. Rosenstein thanked Assistant U.S. Attorneys Solette A. Magnelli and Judson T. Mihok, who prosecuted the case.

New Documentary: Playground

Wet but Good Rally Aganst Modern-day Slavery

well, we got two interpretive dance performances and two opening remarks and ambassador lagon's speech before having to dive in-doors because of the downpour of rain.

it was a good turn-out for the rally - thanks to the more than 100 people who turned out in the rain!

we were packed inside, which is a good sign that more-and-more people are understanding the problem and wickedness of modern-day slavery...

here's to a little hope on a rainy day, where the hearts of those gathered shone brightly in the cloud-cover!