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FREEDOM 4 ALL!

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By Ian Johnston, msnbc.com

More than 42,000 adults and children kept as slaves, forced into prostitution or otherwise trafficked were discovered by authorities around the world in 2011, according to a new report by the U.S. State Department.

However this figure was a tiny fraction of the estimated number of people held in bondage with the International Labor Organization estimating earlier this month that there are about 20.9 million victims of modern slavery, the State Department Trafficking in Persons Report noted.

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A decade ago, Susana Trimarco’s 23-year-old daughter left her house in Tucuman, Argentina for a doctor’s appointment and said: “I’ll be back soon.” She was never to be seen again. Her daughter, María de los Angeles Verón, is believed to have been kidnapped and forced into prostitution, becoming one of the millions of human trafficking victims in the world. 

That began Trimarco’s remarkable and dangerous mission to find her daughter: Chasing down leads in brothels, confronting pimps and standing up to politicians she says were complicit in her daughter’s disappearance. Following a tip that her daughter was in a brothel in a northwestern province of Argentina called La Rioja, she posed as a prostitute and visited a series of dark and dangerous brothels looking for her daughter. She wanted to see how the networks operate, first hand and up close.

“I have no fear of this mafia, and I hope that Justice will make justice,” she said in court recently.

Her efforts, which have brought her international recognition –and kudos from the U.S. White House to Canada - have uncovered a network of human sex slave traffickers that reached as far away as Spain. A foundation Trimarco created in her daughter’s name has helped to rescue 150 victims of human trafficking around the world.

Read more: http://latino.foxnews.com/latino/news/2012/04/27/mom-crusade-to-rescue-daughter-from-sex-traffickers-forces-trial/#ixzz1tXfk9RoE

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NEW DELHI: Fatima, a victim of human trafficking, was married into a family in Forbesganj in Araria district in Bihar when she was only nine years old. Her mother-in-law allegedly ran a brothel in their house, something that was beyond her comprehension. She managed to run away to Nepal, where her parents lived, thrice, but there was no escaping her predicament. Each time she was sent back. "I cried because I wanted to play like other children. My aunt's advice might have been harsh but it was the stark truth. She told me that either I should fight my fate or simply die. That's when I stopped running away and started confronting reality," said Fatima in the first regional meeting of sex trafficking survivors that took place in Delhi on Tuesday.

Fatima now helps run the Kasturba Gandhi Girls Hostel in Araria funded by the Bihar government as part of their 'Education for all' programme. The hostel provides shelter to about 50 girls — daughters of scheduled caste farmers and human trafficking victims. The girls are vulnerable and run the risk of being forced into flesh trade. They are sent to school till class VIII.

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If you think sex trafficking only happens in faraway places like Nepal or Thailand, then you should listen to an expert on American sex trafficking I interviewed the other day.

But, first, wish her happy birthday. She turns 16 years old on Thursday.

She asked me to call her Brianna in this column because she worries that it could impede her plans to become a lawyer if I use her real name. Brianna, who grew up in New York City, is smart, poised and enjoys writing poetry.

One evening when she was 12 years old she got into a fight with her mom and ran out to join friends. "I didn't want to go home, because I thought I'd get in trouble," she said, and a friend's older brother told her she could stay at his place.

Brianna figured that she would go home in the morning — and that that would teach her mom a lesson. But when morning arrived, her new life began.

"I tried to leave, and he said, 'You can't go; you're mine,' " Brianna recalled. He told her that he was a pimp and that she was now his property.

By Nicholas D. Kristof

Syndicated columnist

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The bill, which passed the House unanimously last month and awaits Senate action, would address surreptitious methods such as schemes and intimidation used by pimps and traffickers to lure women, girls, and boys into prostitution.  Illinois’ current law on involuntary servitude, which was passed in 2005, has only been used against 29 defendants and in two counties, according to End Demand Illinois, a campaign working to help law enforcement arrest, charge and prosecute pimps and customers.  “The Illinois Human Trafficking Act has been more focused on the trafficker engaging in overt physical force. This [bill] gets to some of the much more coercive tactics,” said Daria Mueller, associate director of state affairs for the Chicago Coalition for the Homeless, a partner of End Demand Illinois. 

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A Cleveland congregation of Catholic nuns have joined forces with ten congregations in Indianapolis to help stop human trafficking.  Domestic minor sex trafficking is a real concern in the U.S.  With 55% of the girls living on the streets that are engaged in sexual slavery.  The Super Bowl is one of the largest human trafficking events in the world.

The congregations are working with 220 hotels in a 50-mile radius of the Super Bowl stadium to identify and stop trafficking.

Click on the link above to read the full article.

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A pimp can be a boyfriend, father, mother, brother, uncle, a coach, a teacher or anyone exerting control over a minor that benefits from the commercial sexual exploitation of a minor or facilitates the commercial sexual exploitation of a minor.   

According to court papers, the 34-year-old mom confessed to her sister: "I can't believe I did that to my daughter. I am a monster."  "For almost two months on an almost daily basis, the mother forced the 14-year-old child to engage in sex," said Donna Hawkins, Harris County Assistant District Attorney.  The mom is accused of parading her daughter around to different apartment complexes in Pasadena. She allegedly told customers the girl was 17, then collected $20-$50 and left her to have sex with strange men.  Neighbors had a hunch the often distressed looking girl was being abused. 

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How Pimps Use the Web to Sell Girls

By NICHOLAS D. KRISTOF

Published: January 25, 2012

In November, a terrified 13-year-old girl pounded on an apartment door in Brooklyn. When a surprised woman answered, the girl pleaded for a phone. She called her mother, and then dialed 911. 

The girl, whom I’ll call Baby Face because of her looks, frantically told police that a violent pimp was selling her for sex. He had taken her to the building and ordered her to go to an apartment where a customer was waiting, she said, and now he was waiting downstairs to make sure she did not escape. She had followed the pimp’s directions and gone upstairs, but then had pounded randomly on this door in hopes of getting help.

That 911 call set in motion the arrest of Kendale Judge, then 21. Judge has pleaded not guilty to charges of sex trafficking, kidnapping, rape and compelling prostitution. He is in jail, and we haven’t heard his side of the events yet.

The episode also shines a spotlight on how the girl was marketed — in ads on Backpage.com, a major national Web site where people place ads to sell all kinds of things, including sex. It is a godsend to pimps, allowing customers to order a girl online as if she were a pizza.

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If U.S. Attorney Brendan Johnson's deputies are successful in an upcoming appeal to the 8th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, anyone who tries to buy sex from underage girls over the Internet could be punished in the same manner as those who force underage girls into prostitution.

Early last year, Daron Jungers, Ron Bonestroo and Jeffrey Krogman each answered ads posted on a website offering sex with minors for money. They did not know the ads had been placed by undercover detectives. When the men arrived to meet the girls for sex, they met detectives instead and were arrested.

Bonestroo and Jungers were convicted by separate juries of attempted commercial domestic minor sex trafficking of a child, a crime that carries a maximum sentence of life in prison and a mandatory minimum of 15 years. The federal prison system does not allow for parole.

The convictions for Bonestroo and Jungers did not stand. Two U.S. district judges in Sioux Falls, Karen Schreier and Lawrence Piersol, overturned the convictions after defense lawyers for the two men argued that commercial sex trafficking statutes are designed to ensnare those who manipulate and threaten others into selling sex, not to punish those who buy it.

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National Call to Discuss How to Combat #humantrafficking

You’re Invited!

Anti-human Trafficking Call for Faith-based and

NeighborhoodOrganizations

  Please join the White House Office for Faith-based and Neighborhood Partnerships and the DHS Center for Faith-based and Neighborhood Partnerships for a national call to discuss how organizations can recognize and combat human trafficking.

  Thursday, January 19, 2012

4 p.m. EST

Call in Number:   [phone]

Access Code:   233688

  Agenda and speaker list

4 p.m.:    Leadership Introductions

·          Introductory remarks on behalf of the DHS Center

o      Rev. David L. Myers, Director, DHS Center for Faith-based & Neighborhood Partnerships

·          Introductory remarks on behalf of White House

o      Joshua DuBois, Special Assistant to the President and Executive Director of the White House Office of Faith-based and Neighborhood Partnerships

o      Quintan Wiktorowicz, Senior Director for Community Partnerships, National Security Staff 

·          Introductory remarks on behalf of the Department of State

o      Ambassador Luis CdeBaca

·          Introductory remarks on behalf of the Blue Campaign

o      Alice Hill, Senior Counselor to the Secretary of DHS

  4:10 p.m.:    Human Trafficking 101

o      Angie Salazar, Special Agent, Section Chief, DHS ICE, Human Smuggling & Trafficking Unit

  4:20 p.m.:    What Can Be Done?  

·          Report Suspicious Activity

o      Angie Salazar, Special Agent, Section Chief, DHS ICE, Human Smuggling & Trafficking Unit

·          Train Members of Worshipping Communities

o      Ashley Garrett, Human Trafficking Program Manager, DHS ICE, Victim Assistance Program

·          Promote Awareness

o      John Wood, Director of Security, Northland, A Church Distributed, Longwood, FL

·          Partner with Direct Service Providers

o      Sarah Jakiel, National Human Trafficking Resource Center/ Associate Director, Polaris Project

o      Mary Francis Bowley, President, Wellspring Living, Inc.

  4:45 p.m.:    Q & A

5 p.m.:    Conclusion

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Visit Original Link

"They're just like the perfect target for these predators who are out there to force them out here on the street," said Detective Taylor, who is also a part of the FBI's Innocence Lost Task Force which works to combat underage prostitution. "I don't think people realize how close to home it's actually happening."

But according to Taylor, at least 80 percent of the girls who work the streets of South King County are doing so against their will. Deputy Conner, Banks and Taylor knew they had to change the way they dealt with prostitutes.

"Before, we'd arrest them for prostitution and throw them in jail. They would do a day or so in there and they'd be back out here," Taylor said. "We weren't really dealing with the core of the issues of why they were out here. Were they being forced out here?"

It was that realization that led to The Genesis Project, an operation to identify and rescue victims of sex trafficking, rather than arrest them. Spearheaded by Deputy Conner, the project allows the girls to be taken to a 24-hour drop-in center instead of to jail. There, they are provided access to food, showers, laundry, a place to sleep and counseling services. From there, non-profit partners extend services such as education and job training.

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A gang of Nigerian human traffickers has been busted and the three suspects are under lock and key, the Ghana police has announced.  They were arrested for allegedly trafficking six girls from Nigeria for prostitution at Prampram in the Greater Accra region.  The suspects are Esther Frances, 33, Janette Ayedidi, 48 and a Ghanaian male accomplice Victor Tetteh Kodey. 

 Below - Supt. Patience Quaye, head of Human Trafficking Unit at the Police CID

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In court, 30-year-old Jerald Bland admitted he transported a woman to Louisiana so she could engage in prostitution.

Bland, aka “Moe Betta”, was arrested following an undercover Houston Police investigation in March 2010.

Officers discovered a camera containing pictures of women in sexually provocative poses and Bland flashing money.

The US Attorney’s Office says Bland transported his victim around the state, including Baton Rouge and New Orleans.

Bland posted online advertisements for sexual services and reportedly kept all the profits his victims made.

Sentencing is scheduled for March 20, 2012.

If convicted, Bland faces up to 10 years in prison and a maximum $250,000 fine. Upon release, he also faces a lifetime sentence of supervised release

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DAVAO CITY—More and more people, particularly women, are falling prey to human trafficking syndicates in Northern Mindanao out of sheer poverty, groups keeping watch on trafficking cases said.

Bernardo Mondragon, head of the group Child Alert, said most cases of human trafficking in the region involved minors who are lured into the growing but clandestine world of “sex entertainment” because of poverty.

Jeanette Ampog, head of the group Talikala, said the increase in the number of human-trafficking victims is directly proportional to an increase in levels of poverty where human trafficking thrives.

Ampog said her group had documented 35 cases of human trafficking in this city alone. Of these, 33 cases involved minors, aged 17 and below, as victims.

She said this was alarming as it indicated that the city has become both a destination and jump-off point for trafficked minors and women.

Child Alert and Talikala estimate that at least 6,000 women and children had been lured to prostitution in the city.

To learn what you can do to help survivors of sex trafficking visit www.fashion4.org

& www.f-4-c.org

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NARATHIWAT, December 14, 2011 (AFP) - Police in Thailand said they had rescued 41 women from Laos on Wednesday who had been forced to work as prostitutes in a southern border town.

The 45-year-old owner of a karaoke parlour was arrested on charges of human trafficking and detention of persons under the age of 18, following a tip-off from a relative of one of the victims.

"She called her parents and asked for help. After investigation, we obtained a search warrant and raided the place. We found and rescued 41 women," said police lieutenant Komvich Padhanarath.

The women, who were working in the tourist town of Sungai Golok near the border with Malaysia, were aged between 16 and 23 years.

"They said they were told by the broker that they would come to work as waitresses with a high salary but they ended up being forced into prostitution. Their passports were seized by the owner," Komvich said.

Learn more about human trafficking at www.f-4-c.org & www.fashion4.org.

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The felon accused of running an Oakland Park brothel known as the Boom Boom Room went on trial Tuesday on child sex-trafficking charges.

James "Red" Mozie, 34, recruited eight teenage girls — some as young as 14 — to have sex with customers at the bordello he set up in an isolated house in an industrial area of town, federal prosecutors told a Fort Lauderdale jury.

"He was using children as prostitutes," said Thomas Franzinger, a trial attorney with the U.S. Department of Justice, in his opening statement.

www.f-4-c.org

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The same factors that make Texas a corridor for international trade — proximity to Mexico, ports and transportation hubs that link the Lone Star State with the rest of the nation — also make it a corridor for international crime. Chief among those crimes is human trafficking.

A study from the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services concluded that 25 percent of the nation's human trafficking victims are in Texas. Another report from Texas Attorney General Greg Abbott found that 20 percent of the 800,000 trafficking victims in the United States pass through Texas.

Between January 2008 and June 2010, the U.S. Justice Department reported more than 2,000 incidents of sex trafficking — the trafficking of people involving the use of force, fraud or coercion to participate in the sex trade. About 1,200 of those incidents involved adults, while 1,000 involved minors.

Those numbers alone should be shocking. But experts believe reported incidents of this modern form of slavery constitute only a small percentage of the actual cases of human trafficking.

Human trafficking is a big criminal enterprise, with Texas playing an outsized role. But Texas leaders — including Abbott and state Sen. Leticia Van de Putte of San Antonio — have raised awareness and strengthened state laws against human trafficking.

That's a major reason why Texas earned a B — the highest grade given — for its efforts to combat human trafficking by Shared Hope International, a nonprofit dedicated to the eradica-tion of sex trafficking and slavery. Texas was one of only four states to earn the high mark.

Tough laws can only have an impact, however, if resources are dedicated to enforce them. The Express-News reported that the Bexar County Sheriff's Office handles about 50 human trafficking cases annually. But on Sept. 1, a $1 million federal grant that funded a human trafficking task force came to an end.

Van de Putte and Abbott fought to obtain a $200,000 state grant that will extend the human trafficking task force for another year. Given San Antonio's location at the nexus of the I-10 and I-35 corridors — two major routes for human trafficking — the loss of federal funding is troubling.

Human trafficking is an international assault on human dignity, with San Antonio and Bexar County on the front lines. If Washington takes the scourge of human trafficking seriously, then it should help fund the efforts of Texas law enforcement to end it.