Sex Slavery Not Foreign to Memphis, Mid-South

Image by M.V. Jantzen via Flickr

By LINDA RAITERI | Special to The Daily News

Among the charges filed against North Carolina mother Antoinette Nicole Davis after her daughter’s body was found in a wooded area Nov. 16 was human trafficking – that she had sold her child into prostitution.

Searchers found Shaniya Davis, 5, alongside a highway outside Sanford, N.C., after she had been kidnapped, taken to a motel and raped by her mother’s boyfriend.

If true, that young girl’s slavery ended with her death, but thanks to Memphis FBI Special Agent Tracey Harris and others, a much brighter future awaits another girl named Soledad, who recently was reunited with family members after a harrowing stint as a child sex slave in Memphis and other Mid-South cities.
Life in captivity

The story of Soledad’s freedom began on Oct. 13, 2006, when local and federal law enforcers shut down six Memphis brothels. The 12-year-old girl no longer would be forced into sex with as many as 60 men a day.

Before becoming a slave, Soledad had lived with her mother, father and sister in a dirt-floored hut several miles outside of Oaxaca, Mexico, when a trusted family friend encouraged the parents to allow their daughter to work in Nashville.

Christina Perfecto had returned to Mexico from her new home in Nashville around 2005, promising Soledad’s parents their child would have a better life if she went to work in the restaurant Perfecto’s boyfriend owned in the States. The parents eventually acquiesced.

During Soledad’s first day in Nashville, she was viciously raped by Perfecto’s boyfriend, Juan Mendez, then told she would be working as a prostitute, Harris said.

The child was placed in the so-called “circuit,” where she would be moved from bordellos from Lexington, Ky., to Gadsden or Birmingham, Ala., to Nashville and Memphis.

On her first day in Lexington, Soledad was forced to have sex with 60 men. Sometimes she worked out of a trailer set up near construction sites.

“The johns range in age from very young to very old, and it is typically $30 for 15 minutes (of sex),” Harris said. “And of all the money (Soledad) made, she was never allowed to keep a dime.”

Soledad depended completely on Perfecto and Mendez for food, shelter and what little clothing she had.

The two threatened to kill her family if she didn’t comply. Her only language was a local Mayan dialect; she could communicate with no one, Harris said. The traffickers did, however, send some money to her family in Mexico. Harris said all Soledad wanted was to go home.
Quiet desperation

Dubbed “white slavery” in the 1880s, human trafficking is a lucrative business.

With global profits of more than $91.2 billion a year, human trafficking is second only to the illicit drug trade, according to “Sex Trafficking: Inside the Business of Modern Slavery ” by Siddharth Kara.

No local estimates were available, but sex traffickers racked up profits of $35.7 billion in 2007 alone, Kara wrote in his book.

“We don’t know how much of this is going on locally,” said Jonathan Skrmetti, trial attorney in the Civil Rights Division of the U.S. Department of Justice’s Memphis office. “We had a domestic servitude case where a Milwaukee couple – two doctors – was convicted of forcing a Philippine woman to work for them. They kept her in the basement for 19 years. The neighbors didn’t even know about her.”

Human trafficking most often takes the form of forced labor. Immigrants are especially vulnerable, but as another recent Memphis case demonstrates – Leonard “Anton” Fox contracted out the pimping of 12- to 17-year-old girls from foster homes and local apartment complexes – exploitation respects no boundaries.

Fox, who pleaded guilty in U.S. District Court in February to finding and recruiting underage girls for his sex trafficking business, faces from 10 years to life in prison when he’s sentenced in May.

“These are things that the FBI was not aware were happening here in Shelby County,” Harris said during a recent meeting of the League of Women Voters.

There are an estimated 18,000 victims of human trafficking in the United States, according to the U.S. State Department, and about 29 million worldwide.

They may be legal or illegal immigrants, or native born. Some work as exotic dancers, street peddlers or domestic staff. Some work in nail salons or child care facilities, in construction, landscaping, restaurants, luxury hotels or factories.

Women and young girls from Central America and Asia comprise the majority of slaves in cases the FBI has cracked.

Although most young men are funneled into migrant farming, restaurant and other service industries, the agency has reported increasing numbers of them in the commercial sex industry. Still, the United Nations Labor Organization estimates 56 percent of forced labor victims are women and girls.
Raising the alarm

It often takes a community to derail even one case of slavery.

In the case of Mendez and Perfecto’s crimes, someone tipped off the Memphis Police Department, which in turn cooperated with its counterpart in Nashville, U.S. Immigrant and Customs Enforcement and the FBI, to bring Mendez, Perfecto and 12 others to trial.

Mendez was sentenced in federal court to 50 years in prison. Perfecto, also a victim of trafficking, has not yet been sentenced.

Three Memphis men were sentenced in February 2008 in connection with the prostitution ring after pleading guilty in January 2007.

One was sentenced to 60 months in prison and 10 years of supervised release, according to information from the Justice Department. The second was sentenced to 41 months in prison with 10 years of supervised release, and the third got 16 months and three years of supervision. Six others pleaded guilty as well.

Associated Catholic Charities, the Salvation Army, YWCA of the Mid-South and the Baltimore-based World Relief organization assisted the victims and witnesses. Catholic Charities even arranged a Mass for the victims.

Meanwhile, Soledad, who recently was reunited with her family when they were brought to the United States on a special visa, is doing well and plans to become an attorney to help other victims of trafficking, Harris said.

Experts agree that economic instability and a lack of support systems are major factors in the worldwide increase in human trafficking.

With growing international awareness of slavery has come an increase in the number of non-governmental agencies working to eliminate it. Among them is Triad Ladder of Hope in Greensboro, N.C.

In response to the recent death of the 5-year-old North Carolina girl, the organization’s executive director, Danielle Mitchell, said, “The reason we have children for sale for sex is because we have people that are willing to buy them.”
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