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Reading Eagle
Show Amy O'Neill Richard an economic crisis or a regional conflict and she'll show you a situation ripe for trafficking in humans and child sex tourism.
Richard is senior adviser to the U.S. State Department Office on Illegal Human Trafficking.
Her talk Tuesday at the Greater Reading World Affairs Council luncheon in the Crowne Plaza Reading, Wyomissing, was timely on a number of levels.
Three years ago Tuesday, Gov. Ed Rendell signed the state's first law combating human trafficking, Richard said.
In September, Berks County detectives and local police raided a massage parlor in Amity Township where they said South Korean women were working as prostitutes. The raid followed a series of raids on similar establishments in the city in the past year.
Federal investigators have said that virtually all Asian massage parlors like the ones in Amity and Reading are fronts for prostitution and are controlled by South Korean organized crime.
Investigators said the women often are smuggled into the country illegally and forced to work as sex slaves.
Richard said modern day slave traders rely on political instability and economic hardship to ply their trade.
"Slave traders are similar to terrorists and drug traffickers: They operate boldly across sovereign borders," Richard said. "Traffickers have taken advantage of the unequal status of women and girls in many of the source countries. "
And human trafficking and child sex traders rely on their victims' fear of being deported from a country they entered illegally to keep them from contacting authorities.
"What is stunning is that human trafficking is occurring right in our proverbial backyards," Richard said. "I was shocked to learn that several people were charged last year for transporting 100 women from New York and New Jersey to my home state of Maryland and my hometown of Bethesda to work in a massage parlor."
Richard said India is the largest source of human trafficking in sex slavery and forced labor. The State Department has developed a plan that emphasizes prevention through education, prosecution (77 of 82 defendants charged with sex trafficking last year were convicted), protection of victims and partnership.
"Government can't do it alone," Richard said. "We need everyone from private citizens to local businesses to big corporations to be vigilant."
The state department issues an annual report, the TIP report for Trafficking In Persons, that lists nations that are fighting modern slavery and those that condone or ignore it. The report is www.state.gov/g/tip/rls/tiprpt/2009/.
Contact Dan Kelly: 610-371-5040 or dkelly@readingeagle.com.
http://www.readingeagle.com/article.aspx?id=165840
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