Sunday, September 30, 2012

Rise in 'slavery' trafficking of homeless by gangs | From the Observer | The Observer

http://www.guardian.co.uk/theobserver/2012/sep/30/slavery-homeless-trafficking-gangs?CMP=twt_gu 

SOURCE: The Observer


Charities report at least 37 incidents so far this year of people forced to work for no pay
Homeless man
The homeless are being targeted by trafficking gangs to work for free in appalling conditions. Photograph: Yannis Behrakis/REUTERS
Reported cases of "modern-day slavery" are becoming increasingly common, according to the police and homeless charities.
Thames Reach, which works with homeless people in London, said that so far this year, it was aware of at least 37 incidents involving vulnerable people who had been forced to work for little or no pay and even made to break the law, compared with 22 last year.
Megan Stewart, reconnections manager with Thames Reach, said the recent court case in which four men from a caravan site in Bedfordshire were convicted of controlling and exploiting homeless people had brought about a shift in how society viewed the problem. "People are getting better at spotting the signs," Stewart said. "Since the Luton story broke, the police are taking it more seriously when our guys report it."
The exploitation involves trafficking people into the UK but also targeting homeless people on the streets.
The Passage Day Centre in London's Victoria, which helps homeless people, said its clients were regularly targeted both at the centre and at soup runs. "A couple of weeks ago, some people approached our clients with the offer of work in Belgium," said Mick Clarke, who runs the centre. "They said they'd provide them with accommodation and money and when we challenged them, they sped off. It struck me how brazen they are in targeting the vulnerable."
Clarke said the gangs were benefiting from a "perfect storm" because the economic downturn meant people were ripe for exploitation. "It's linked to the economy – people are more and more desperate," Clarke said. "And there is real diversity in the backgrounds of people who are doing this – there are builders, people in suits, people from all ethnicities."
In many cases, those who were exploited had been offered alcohol as "a reward" and had been told that they or their families back home would face violence if they reported what had happened to them.
A man from eastern Europe who was referred to Thames Reach by St Thomas's hospital had been trafficked into the country by a gang. When he complained about not being paid, he was beaten up and left on the streets with brain damage.
Other cases include two Hungarian men who were held by travellers in Birmingham and forced to work on driveways, and a Czech man who was beaten by the owners of a car wash in north London before escaping. Another Czech resident did agency work in factories and farms across England, but his wages were paid to the gang who had brought him in. A 29-year-old wheelchair user was forced to beg to raise money for a gang that was exploiting him.
Much of the exploitation appears organised. Thames Reach said it was aware of reports that a criminal gang was trafficking people from the Lithuanian town of Panevezys on a twice-weekly basis.
"There is a wide range of exploitation," said Detective Inspector Kevin Hyland, operational head of the Metropolitan police's anti-trafficking unit, which now operates four joint investigation teams focused on Bulgaria, Romania, the Czech Republic and Poland.
"You get the seven-year-old child who is treated as a slave in Haringey … someone being trafficked through the UK to another country, and then someone else who has been brought over to supply the sex market."
Hyland said his teams had uncovered examples of men who were trafficked into the UK to work in illegal casinos and who were required to give sexual services to gamblers during their breaks. There was also a 51-year-old man who believed he was being brought to the UK to work as an electrician but instead was forced to go out and commit petty crime or be raped if he refused.
The Department for Communities and Local Government has worked with the Passage to fund a campaign in Poland to highlight the issue. Embassies in eastern Europe and the Middle East are also helping to raise awareness of the risk involved in working in the UK.
Hyland said vulnerable people often did not recognise their predicament. "Maybe because of their mental state or because they are dependent on drugs or alcohol, they may not be able to realise they are being exploited," he added.In other cases it could be that people had consented to being trafficked into but had been unaware what would be involved when they arrived. "It could apply to man being brought over for tarmacing or a woman for prostitution," Hyland said. "They might know what they are coming here for but they don't appreciate how much they will have to work."



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Saturday, September 29, 2012

Human Trafficking Devastating The Sinai - Analysis Eurasia Review

http://www.eurasiareview.com/29092012-human-trafficking-devastating-the-sinai-analysis/

Source: Analysis Eurasia Review

By: 

September 29, 2012
By Mirjam van Reisen

A new report titled ‘Human Trafficking in the Sinai. Refugees between Life and Death’ sheds new light on the devastation caused by the trafficking in the Sinai. Hostages are killed unless they collect exorbitant ransoms from relatives, which can go up to USD 35,000 or even more. These ransoms are collected from family members in home countries and from relatives in the diaspora.
A network of financial laundering supports the ransom collection. The report is authored by this writer, Meron Estefanos and Dr Conny Rijken, from Tilburg University and European External Policy Advisors (EEPA).
The victims endure unspeakable torture, and increasingly women and children are included, tortured and raped. Hostages are repeatedly electrocuted, hanged upside down, beaten with iron rods and burnt with dripping plastic. Pregnant women are tortured and the interviews even identify beating of a one year old baby. Family members held in captivity are made to choose who will live, if not sufficient ransom can be collected to release both. Many hostages die in captivity due to the cruelty endured.
Once ransoms have been paid, there is no certainty that victims are released. They are often sold on to other traffickers. If they are released they are often too weak to make it to a safe place, being undernourished and weakened by the torture endured. Once released there is the danger of being shot by Egyptian police.
The places where hostages are held are in walking distance from the Israeli border, which has recently been fenced and the Israeli military have orders to not allow the released hostages through. Without food and water many collapse. NGOs are not permitted to visit.

Deported Back

Those hostages that make it to safety either in Israel or in Cairo are detained in detention centres from where they are deported back to their country of origin. For most hostages this is Eritrea. In this country the hostages are in danger of being imprisoned. Most refugees escape the national service which is in place for adults and therefore cannot safely return.
Speaking against the Eritrean regime is dangerous and even those who are outside of the country endanger family members if they do not speak openly in support of the regime. There are strong indications that officials themselves are involved in selection for trafficking and Eritreans are involved in the organisation of the human trafficking and the collection of the ransoms.
During a hearing in the European Parliament on September 26, 2012 in Brussels activists and humanitarian workers expressed solidarity with the hostages and called on authorities to fulfil obligations to prevent the trafficking and protect the victims. For Eritreans push-back to their country of origin must be stopped given the political repression in this country. This push-back should be stopped from involved countries such as Egypt, Italy, Libya and Israel, they said.
The European Commission was called upon to start infringement procedures against Italy to stop push-back of Eritreans. More humanitarian and medical facilities were urged, especially also urgent access to gynaecological services for the women. Europol was asked to begin a phenomenon report.
The report asks the UN Refugee Agency UNHCR to organise the protection of the refugees it takes responsibility for, so that they are secure in the camps and do not risk kidnapping. The new Government of Egyptian President Mohamed Morsi was called upon to take control over the lawless Sinai and make sure that police are targeting the traffickers instead of shooting the victims from the trafficking.
In a recent documentary CNN suggests that trafficking in the Sinai is decreasing but the new report disputes this. The figures do not show a decrease in numbers. However the number of women and children in captivity seems to be increasing. Also the number of people that have disappeared is increasing.
The report is based on 104 recorded interviews with people in captivity. The hostages have mobile phones with pay and go carts to phone relatives to collect the ransom. Through these direct interviews, the report voices the devastation of the hostages and their plea to make an end the torture houses in the Sinai.
Mirjam van Reisen is professor International Social Responsibility at the Tilburg University, founding director of the Europe External Policy Advisors (EEPA) in Brussels and member of the International Commission on Eritrean Refugees (ICER). IDN Viewpoints reflect opinions of respective writers, which are not necessarily shared by the InDepthNews editorial board.
http://www.eurasiareview.com/author/idn/
IDN-InDepthNews offers news analyses and viewpoints on topics that impact the world and its peoples. IDN-InDepthNews serves as flagship of GlobalNewsHub - the media network of the Globalom Media Group and Global Cooperation Council.
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Traffic signals: Cues and clues indicating human trafficking operations

http://www.policeone.com/investigations/articles/5994425-Traffic-signals-Cues-and-clues-indicating-human-trafficking-operations/


Source: PoliceOne.com
September 27, 2012
Moe GreenbergDetective's Notebook
with Moe Greenberg
Human trafficking is fast becoming one of the world’s most lucrative criminal enterprises and as such, both patrol officers and investigators should know some of the indicators.
Human trafficking cases, unless specifically reported, don’t exactly jump out and bite us. These types of cases may be hard to detect unless we’re looking. I have provided four indicators to help officers or investigators determine if they have a suspected trafficking case.
To begin, allow me to provide a little background information on human trafficking.
Human trafficking has two primary prongs: forced labor or servitude and forced prostitution, often referred to as “sex trafficking.”
According to the Trafficking Victims Protection Act (2000):
• Human trafficking is defined as the recruitment, harboring, transportation, provision, or obtaining of a person for labor or other services, through the use of force, fraud, or coercion for the purpose of involuntary servitude, peonage, debt bondage or slavery.
• Sex trafficking includes the recruitment, harboring, transportation, provision, or obtaining of a person for the purpose of a commercial sex act in which a commercial sex act is induced by force, fraud or coercion, or in which the victim is under 18 years of age.
Many victims are immigrants that succumb to fraudulent recruitment practices involving false promises of a “better life” including well-paid employment, desirable housing or more. Human traffickers also prey upon domestic victims as well. Teenage runaways and vulnerable women are prime, easily enticed, targets.
Naturally, these falsehoods come with “a catch.”
Traffickers may charge a victim a sizable fee or provide them a significant loan in order to facilitate the victim “living the dream.” These fees or loans are often structured in a way that makes it nearly impossible to repay.
Once this debt is established the framework for “debt bondage” or involuntary servitude has been set. 
Misled by their recruiters, victims may then find themselves forced to work extremely long hours or prostitute themselves for little or no pay with only meager provisions of food and shelter. Traffickers often assess fees for the victim’s meager accommodations in order to assure continued indebtedness.
Victims of human trafficking are unable to leave these oppressive and often abusive situations for variety of reasons. Traffickers use mental abuse, the threat of or actual physical violence, sexual abuse, drug dependency, the threat of arrest or even deportation as a means to control their victims and establish/maintain a psychological dependency.
Another method used by traffickers to detain their victims is to seize their identification documents, travel papers such as, passports or visas, any credit card or bankcards and their cell phones.
Traffickers, if they don’t do it themselves, will assign someone to watch over the victim. This person, often a more senior or trusted victim, will help to curtail a victim’s freedom of movement or communications outside the inner sanctum of the trafficker until further trust is earned.
Many people assume that human trafficking is an international problem…one that has not yet infiltrated the United States…but it has. The United States government established human trafficking laws nearly twelve years ago and the number of cases investigated has grown significantly each year. It is here and law enforcement should be on the look out for it.
Human trafficking does not appear to favor a particular city, town, or state: it can occur anywhere. Unfortunately, certain websites also exploit victims of human trafficking. So, geographically speaking, human trafficking cases may be found as far as the internet can reach. The job of law enforcement is to find it.
Officers are likely to find human trafficking cases hidden in plain sight. Trafficking cases are often masked by the calls for service officers regularly and routinely respond to.
Officers get accustomed to handling calls like labor disputes, check-on-location calls, check-on-subject calls, domestic calls, prostitution calls and injured subject calls at face value. Yet, these are the very types of calls where indicators of human trafficking can and will be found. 
Here are some indicators to look for.
Security
This is an important is to pay attention to. As officers come upon a variety of businesses, restaurants, or residences, they should be sure to examine the level of security present.
They should ask themselves, “Does this level of security seem appropriate for this type of property or dwelling?”
For instance:
• Are there bars on the doors and windows?
• Is this appropriate considering the level of crime in the neighborhood?
• Is there an unusual amount of surveillance equipment on exterior, interior, or both?
• Is there barbed wire present and does it seem out of place?
• Does it appear that the level of security is intended to keep people out or, of great concern to police, keep people in?
Businesses/Residences
Businesses also serve as fronts for traffickers to exploit their victims. Restaurants, bars and strip clubs, nail salons, kiosks, massage parlors, truck stops, cleaning services, construction businesses, farms and even people’s homes are but a few places officers might encounter human trafficking victims. One important indicator for officers to take note of is a business where the employees both live and work.
Is this a dead give away?
No.
But, the living arrangements may be unusually crowded and the accommodations scant. In some instances only bare mattresses may be present on the floor, in others maybe not even that much may be provided to victims.
One skilled investigator once offered me this tip: “Whenever I enter a home or business suspected of human trafficking, I ask to wash my hands. Once permission is obtained, I look for the farthest bathroom I can find. Along the way, I’m able to see into rooms and make observations.”
Observing what’s there is just as important as observing what’s not. A room with only a stained mattress, condoms and a roll of paper towels might be a clue just as bathrooms with no doors, or little or no clothing, cell phone or other personal effects present in bedrooms where these things would otherwise normally exist, ought to raise officer suspicions.
Victims’ Behaviors
Suspected victims, presuming officers have an opportunity to observe them, also provide officers possible indicators of human trafficking via the means used to detain them. Naturally, visible physical injuries on any victim ought to raise red flags but so should employees who appear overly fatigued, poorly nourished, physically unkempt, or who appear unusually frightened or intimidated by your presence.
Some victims may appear to physically “shrink” or even disappear in the face of police authority. Victims may be reluctant to make eye contact and/or be unwilling to speak with officers.
And, although, there might be rational explanations for some of these behaviors, the totality of the circumstances should be considered, as these might be reasons for further inquiry.
In many cases, visible injuries or victim fatigue may not be apparent. So, when given an opportunity, officers should try to ask some key questions.
I have to emphasize though that victims may not feel at ease to speak in the presence of their traffickers or handlers. Officers should try their best to speak to suspected victims in as private a setting as circumstances allow.
As I mentioned earlier, traffickers will often seize a victim’s personal documents. One thing officers do as a matter of routine, and should do in a suspected trafficking case, is ask a suspected victim for any form of identification they can provide.
If the victim is unable to produce identification officers should inquire why they don’t have it or why they’re unable to easily obtain it. This may provide officers another benchmark while piecing together the framework of a human trafficking case.
Some other helpful questions to ask are:
• Does the victim know where they are, meaning what city or town they’re in?
• Asking the victim to explain how they got there, can they recall the route or provide directions?
• Can they provide the address where they’re staying?
• Even a simple question about the community may be revealing like, “Where’s a good place to eat lunch around here?”
In some cases, traffickers frequently move their victims. Surreptitiously moving a victim from town-to-town, state-to-state or even in and out of the country helps to minimize or complicate the suspicions of law enforcement. It also limits a victim’s ability to establish contacts or build trusting relationships with anyone other than their traffickers or handlers.
Keeping victims in a state of uncertainty also furthers victim dependency upon their traffickers. And, in cases of sex trafficking, regular movement or rotation of victims offers customers a sense of variety, giving them different women to choose from.
Once again, a lack of identification or forgetting directions is not a “smoking gun.” Officers need to thoughtfully examine all the information they are able to observe and gather, but purposeful questions such as these hold relevance because the frequent movement and other limitations experienced by victims may make it difficult for them to find answers.
This void of reasonable explanations or “simple” answers might stir an officer’s interest to dig further.  
Third Party “Helpers”
Another indicator of human trafficking is someone else intervening to answer your questions on behalf of the victim. In some cases, the victim’s trafficker or handler themselves, who could be either male or female, may attempt to interject themselves into your initial investigation, essentially acting as the victim’s “mouthpiece.”
This is done in an effort to keep the victim from revealing too much to the authorities like, where they’re from or how many hours they’re forced to work. Neither would traffickers and handlers want victims describing their working or living conditions to an officer or describing instances of abuse, imprisonment or revealing anything else they deem incriminating.
These third parties may suggest that the victim doesn’t speak English, is afraid of the police, or does not wish to speak with them.
He or she may try to spin a tale of reassurance that everything is fine or take a dismissive stance by suggesting that nothing more than a simple misunderstanding has taken place.
These third-party “helpers” want nothing more than for officers to leave and/or leave them alone. Remember, separating the victim from the watchful eye and discerning ear of their traffickers or handlers is an important first step in trying to elicit information from them.
Officers and investigators need to understand that human trafficking has a growing presence within the United States. It also lurks in the shadows of the crimes routinely handled by the police. Human trafficking has some different indicators than routine crimes like labor disputes or prostitution.
Remember this little tip: “A right to be, is a right to see.”
Being on the lookout for indicators like the ones described above and by comprehensively documenting all the information gathered, Officers and investigators can establish the existence of a human trafficking case.
Due to the complexities of these types of cases, I strongly recommend that officers and investigators seek the counsel and guidance of those who have successfully investigated and prosecuted trafficking cases. Taking the time to contact federal agencies like the FBI or ICE as well as your local Attorney General’s Office will be time well spent.
Stay safe. 

About the author
Detective Morris Greenberg serves as a proud member of the Baltimore County Police in Baltimore, Maryland. Most of his career has been spent conducting criminal investigation in specialized units including Robbery, Violent Crimes and Homicide. He has also served on the department’s Hostage Negotiation Team. Detective Greenberg possesses a Master’s Degree from the Johns Hopkins University, Division of Public Safety Leadership and teaches within the Criminal Justice Programs at two local colleges.
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Friday, September 28, 2012

Kristof: Voices of the voiceless | The Salt Lake Tribune

http://www.sltrib.com/sltrib/opinion/54979066-82/trafficking-girls-human-obama.html.csp

Source: The Salt Lake Tribune

By NICHOLAS D. KRISTOF
First Published Sep 27 2012 05:11 pm • Last Updated Sep 27 2012 05:12 pm
When President Barack Obama made a landmark speech against modern slavery on Tuesday, many of us in the news media shrugged. It didn’t fit into the political narrative. It wasn’t controversial, so — yawn — it wasn’t really news.
But women like Sina Vann noticed. She’s a friend of mine who was trafficked as a young girl from Vietnam into Cambodian brothels — where she was regularly punished by being locked inside coffins with scorpions and biting ants. Now an anti-trafficking activist with the Somaly Mam Foundation, she sent me an exuberant email (in fractured English, her third language) with a message for Obama: "We are survivors here so proud of you, you are the big president in U.S. and you take action of trafficking. So you give victims from around the world have hope."
Rachel Lloyd, a survivor of human trafficking who was nearly choked to death by her pimp, felt the same way. Lloyd now runs a superb program in New York City, GEMS, to help American girls escape "the life." She told me that watching the speech was "one of the most gratifying moments in my 15 years of work on the issue."
If Rep. Todd Akin’s remarks about "legitimate rape" provoked an uproar, shouldn’t it be incomparably more offensive that millions of human beings are still trafficked in the 21st century? Yet the world often scorns the victims and sees them as criminals: the lepers of the 21st century.
So bravo to the president for giving a major speech on human trafficking and, crucially, for promising greater resources to fight pimps and support those who escape the streets. Until recently, the Obama White House hasn’t shown strong leadership on human trafficking, but this could be a breakthrough. The test will be whether Obama continues to press the issue.
I’ve been passionate about human trafficking ever since I encountered a village in Cambodia 15 year ago where young girls were locked up, terrified, as their virginity was sold to the highest bidder. It felt just like 19th-century slavery, except that these girls would likely be dead of AIDS or something else by their 20s.
Granted, not all prostitution is coerced. Reasonable people can disagree about what to do in the case of adults who sell sex voluntarily. Put aside that disagreement, for we can agree to place priority on the millions of children and adults compelled to provide sex or other labor.
Prostituted kids are among the most voiceless of the voiceless around the world, and it will make a difference if the White House speaks up for them — and fights for them.
On the India/Nepal border, I once chatted with an Indian policeman who was on the lookout for terrorists and smuggled DVDs but was uninterested in the streams of Nepali girls passing through, destined for the brothels in Mumbai and Calcutta. The policeman explained that the U.S. was pressuring India on movie piracy, so let’s show India and the world that we’re also concerned with enslaved children.
If we tell other countries to free their slaves, we also have to clean up our own act. Contrary to public opinion, the worst of America’s human trafficking arguably doesn’t involve women smuggled into the U.S., but homegrown girls.
It’s a disgrace that police officers and prosecutors routinely go after such teenage girls — often runaways fleeing abuse or other impossible situations — and treat them as criminals, while showing less interest in the pimps who exploited them.
Normally, if a man has sex with a young girl, he risks jail and she gets counseling. But, if she has a pimp who earns $50 from the transaction, then everything changes: The man may get a slap on the wrist and the girl may go to jail. Does that make any sense?
So let’s demand that police and prosecutors go after pimps and johns, while treating the teenagers as victims who need comprehensive social services.
Republicans have done superb work on this issue in the past, but now they’re balking at straightforward reauthorization of the Trafficking Victims Protection Act — landmark legislation against human trafficking. What are they thinking?
One person on the front lines here in the U.S. is Alissa, who has a scar on her cheek from where her former pimp mutilated her with a potato peeler as a warning not to escape. She did get away and now works with prostituted girls in Washington whose average age, she says, is 14. Alissa is her street name; she doesn’t want her real name published because pimps still harass her.
Alissa watched Obama’s speech, and then replayed it four times. She has always been treated as a "throwaway," she said, and now she was dazzled that the president was treating the issue as a priority.
Some 150 years after the Emancipation Proclamation, let’s make sure that this isn’t just a speech, but a turning point.
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U.S. cites three more countries for child, forced labor problems | Reuters

http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/09/26/us-usa-labor-children-idUSBRE88P1K920120926

Source:  Reuters
WASHINGTON | Wed Sep 26, 2012 3:41pm EDT

(Reuters) - The U.S. government on Wednesday added South Sudan, Suriname and Vietnam to its list of 74 countries where adults and children as young as 5 are subjected to serious labor and human trafficking abuses in prostitution, mining and other dangerous work.

The U.S. Labor Department's annual assessment of global human trafficking also raised concerns that the international economic crisis is slowing efforts to eradicate such child abuses by 2016.

"Just a few years from the deadline much remains to be done," the department said in a video accompanying its findings. "Great progress has been made, but with the global economic crisis those efforts have been scaled back, and that progress is now under threat."

Overall, the U.S. report cites 134 products from 74 countries tainted by child and other abusive labor. It said Asian countries, especially China and Burma, have relatively high numbers of goods made by forced labor.

Although it is difficult to track just how many children are exploited for work worldwide, the International Labour Organization put the figure between 980,000 and about 1.2 million in a 2005 estimate.

Overall, nearly 21 million people of all ages are victims, according to the Geneva-based organization, which is part of the United Nations.

The U.S. report follows new steps announced by President Barack Obama on Tuesday to fight human trafficking.

For the three newest countries, U.S. officials found labor problems over cattle in South Sudan as well as bricks and garments in Vietnam. In Suriname, gold mining and other work raised major concerns.

"Children in Suriname are engaged in the worst forms of child labor," one of the reports said. Those caught in mines face dangerous conditions such as mercury exposure, extreme heat and the risk of being crushed, it added, and child prostitution at mining camps is also a worry.

Products tainted by child and other abusive labor include shrimp, garlic, bricks and tobacco, among many others. This year, U.S. officials also added beef, fish and thread or yarn products.


Labor abuses have long been a concern in certain industries such as farming and textiles, and 80 countries in 2010 pledged to fight for an end to the most egregious forms of child labor by 2016.

The number of children in the worst forms of labor has fallen worldwide, the Labor Department said in the video.

"But since 2005 the rate of progress has slowed considerably," it said.

Gayle Smith, a senior director at the National Security Council and a special assistant at the White House, said lower incomes and food insecurity are just part of the problem.

"Child labor .... has as much to do with tackling poverty from all angles," she said, adding countries need to work on policies to ensure families can earn a living wage so that children can go to school rather than work.

On Tuesday, U.S. President Barack Obama ordered stronger protections against human trafficking by prohibiting outside firms that work with the federal government from confiscating or destroying workers' documents and other similar actions.

The White House also required contractors to have plans in place to comply with such rules.

Such labor abuses "ought to concern every person, because it is a debasement of our common humanity," Obama told the Clinton Global Initiative in New York on Tuesday, citing the impact on society, financial markets, public health, violence and crime.

"It is barbaric, and it is evil, and it has no place in a civilized world," Obama said, adding that human trafficking "must be called by its true name -- modern slavery."

Some Republican lawmakers welcomed the administration's initiative but said the regulations did not go far enough and should criminalize labor abuses for work performed outside the United States by U.S. contractors and crack down on groups that receive U.S. grants.

The White House effort is "a half-measure policy," U.S. House Oversight and Government Reform Committee Chairman Darrell Issa said in a statement on Tuesday.

(Reporting By Susan Heavey; Editing by Cynthia Osterman)

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Sex trafficking in the USA: ‘That’s slavery’ - News from USA TODAY

http://tucsoncitizen.com/usa-today-news/2012/09/27/sex-trafficking-in-the-usa-thats-slavery/

Source: USA TODAY

WASHINGTON — Asia Graves looks straight ahead as she calmly recalls the night a man paid $200 on a Boston street to have sex with her.
She was 16, homeless, and desperate for food, shelter and stability. He was the first of dozens of men who would buy her thin cashew-colored body from a human trafficker who exploited her vulnerabilities and made her a prisoner for years.
“If we didn’t call him daddy, he would slap us, beat us, choke us,” said Graves, 24, of the man who organized the deals. “It’s about love and thinking you’re part of a family and a team. I couldn’t leave because I thought he would kill me.”
By day, she was a school girl who saw her family occasionally. At night, she became a slave to men who said they loved her and convinced her to trade her beauty for quick cash that they pocketed. Sold from Boston to Miami and back, Graves was one of thousands of young girls sexually exploited across the United States, often in plain sight.
A plague more commonly associated with other countries has been taking young victims in the United States, one by one. Though the scope of the problem remains uncertain — no national statistics for the number of U.S. victims exist — the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children says at least 100,000 children across the country are trafficked each year.
On Tuesday, President Obama announced several new initiatives aimed at ending trafficking nationwide, including the first-ever assessment of the problem in this country and a $6 million grant to build solutions.
“When a little girl is sold by her impoverished family, or girls my daughters’ ages run away from home and are lured — that’s slavery,” Obama said in an address to the Clinton Global Initiative. “It’s barbaric, it’s evil, and it has no place in a civilized world.”
Schools in at least six states and the District of Columbia have turned their focus to human trafficking, launching all-day workshops for staff members, classroom lessons for students and outreach campaigns to speak with parents about the dangers American children face.
The efforts by high school and middle-school officials in Washington, D.C., Virginia, Connecticut, Oregon, Wisconsin, California and Florida come as experts say criminals have turned to classrooms and social media sites to recruit students into forced domestic sex and labor rings.
“They are as horrific and brutal and vile as any criminal cases we see,” said Neil MacBride, the U.S. Attorney for the Eastern District of Virginia. “If it can happen in affluent Fairfax County, it can happen anywhere.”
Across the nation, the stories arrive with varying imprints of the callousness and depravity of the sex traffickers. One girl was sold during a sleepover, handed over by her classmate’s father. Another slept with clients during her school lunch breaks. A third was choked by her “boyfriend,” then forced to have sex with 14 men in one night.
Young people at the fringes of school, runaways looking for someone to care and previously abused victims fall into the traps of traffickers who often pretend to love them.
The perpetrators — increasingly younger — can be other students or gang members who manipulate victims’ weaknesses during recess or after school, law enforcement officials say. They often bait victims by telling them they will be beautiful strippers or escorts but later ply them with drugs — ecstasy pills, cocaine, marijuana and the like — and force them into sex schemes.
‘Too pretty to stay outside’
For Graves, who grew up in inner city Boston, her troubles began early in life. Her mother was addicted to drugs, and a dealer molested Graves as a little girl. She bounced between living with an aunt, grandparents, an alcoholic father and a sometimes-recovering mother.
At 16, Graves was homeless and had been wearing the same clothes for months when a group of girls who had dropped out of school took her in and cleaned her up. “They said they were escorts and that they made $2,000 a night,” she recalled. “I figured if I go out one night, I’ll never have to do it again.”
She followed the girls to the “track,” a term used for streets where prostitutes gather. When a terrified Graves only brought back $40 from begging, the girls abandoned her. The next night, she says she was alone on a corner in Boston during a snowstorm when her first trafficker picked her up.
“He said I was too pretty to stay outside, so I ended up going home with him because he offered me a place to sleep and clothes to put on,” she said.
The man said he wanted to take care of her but that she would have to earn her keep. “He showed me the ropes,” she said. “How much to charge for sex” and other sex acts.
Then came the violence. Her attempts to leave were met with brute force. “He punched me,” she said. “He stripped me down naked and beat me.”
In one incident, her captor took a potato peeler to her face then raped her as she bled. Years later, the light scar remains just below her left eye. Other violent episodes left her with eight broken teeth, two broken ankles and a V-shaped stab wound just below her belly button.
She stayed, however, and found comfort in other girls — called “wife in-laws” — who went to area schools, got their hair and nails done together and then worked the streets for the same man. “You think what you’re doing is right when you’re in that lifestyle,” Graves said. “You drink alcohol to ease the stress. Red Bulls kept you awake, and cigarettes kept you from being hungry.”
For two years, she was sold from tormentor to tormentor, forced to sleep with men in cities like New York, Atlanta; Philadelphia; Atlantic City; Miami. She posed for Craigslist and Backpage.com ads and set up “dates” six days a week for up to $2,500 a night.
A captive Graves did what experts say others have done: she recruited others. “We’d go to malls, schools, group homes, bus stations and look for girls who were by themselves or looked very vulnerable,” she said.
For some of the time, Graves herself remained in high school, attending classes sporadically in boy shorts, small tank tops and worn heels.
“In the schools, they thought I just dressed provocatively,” Graves said of the teachers and staff who missed chances to help her. “Now, people are actually understanding that these girls are victims.”
Raising ‘the compassion bar’
Graves’ journey eventually led her to work for Fair Girls, a non-profit based in Washington, D.C. One of several organizations working to educate schools and students about the issue, Fair Girls has designed a four-hour lesson plan called “Tell Your Friends” for high school and middle-school students.
“I want to raise the compassion bar so that any girl who becomes a victim is never seen as a girl who asked for it,” said Andrea Powell, executive director of Fair Girls, which launched the curriculum in 2008.
The model reaches more than a 1,000 students a year at a dozen schools in Washington, as well as young people in homeless shelters and foster homes.
Polaris Project, a non-profit that runs the national human trafficking hotline, has received 58,911 calls since December 2007. At least 2,081 callers have identified themselves as a student and 341 callers identified as school staff members.
Globally, the International Labor Organization estimates that about 20.9 million people are trafficked and that 22% of them are victims of forced sexual exploitation.
The growing number of human trafficking cases handled by U.S. Attorney MacBride’s office — 14 in the last 18 months — reflects the domestic trend, experts say.
In one case this year, Justin Strom, 26, a gang member in Fairfax County, Va., was sentenced to 40 years in prison for forcing girls from local high schools and a juvenile detention center to work as prostitutes.
The familiar echo of these crimes reaches the other side of the country, too, says Alessandra Serano, an Assistant United States Attorney for the Southern District of California.
“You can sell drugs once,” she said. “You can sell a girl thousands of times.”
A search of Backpage.com’s adult section reveals thousands of ads for young women claiming to be escorts, strippers and massage therapists. The women in suggestive poses and little clothing offer good times for a price. “Multiple Females Multiple Hours.” “Sexy White Chocolate.” “Delicious Petite Blonde Barbie.”
Advocates such as Powell say such websites depict modern-day slavery. She scrolls through them often looking for new girls to help. Fair Girls works directly with victims to find them jobs, housing, lawyers and medical resources. They’ve gone from serving 20 girls in 2011 to 50 this year — all with a limited budget.
“We just don’t have the resources for all these girls,” Powell said. “But we can’t turn them away.”
In classroom lessons, staffers define trafficking, show a video about experiences and ask students to react. As 50 Cent’s “P-I-M-P” song thumps in the background, students are asked what they think traffickers and victims look like. They then talk about abusive relationships and how to avoid them, and they are presented with resources they can use if they are being exploited.
A few weeks ago, at Bell Multicultural High School in Washington, nine girls sat around a long wooden table talking about trafficking with Graves, who teaches at 12 public high schools in the District of Columbia.
“If you want attention and you see that you’re getting it, you just follow your feelings,” senior Araceli Figueroa, 17, said. “It’s sad.”
Graves knows. She can still see the face of a fellow victim whose body she identified. The girl’s body had been discarded in an Atlantic City drain pipe.
In Connecticut, Love146, another non-profit focused on trafficking, teaches Fair Girls’ “Tell Your Friends” curriculum in 11 schools, said Nicole von Oy, the group’s training and outreach coordinator. They’ve talked to more than 4,000 students in schools, shelters and other places using that curriculum and other initiatives.
Others hope to spread the message to more students.
Since 2006, the U.S. Department of Education has focused on the problem and worked on training with several schools, said Eve Birge, who works for the agency’s Office of Safe and Healthy Students.
In doing so, they collaborate with the White House, the FBI, the Departments of State and Justice as well as other agencies.
“For a lot of these kids, school can be the only safe place they have,” Birge said.
With their help, schools tell teachers, social workers, counselors and others to look for the signs of a possible victim:
– Multiple unexplained absences from school.
– A repeated tendency to run away from home.
– Frequent travel to other cities.
– Older boyfriends or girlfriends.
– A sudden ability to have expensive items.
– Appearing depressed or suffering physical injuries.
Escaping the ‘invisible chains’
For Katariina Rosenblatt, who spoke at a recent training session for Miami-Dade County Public Schools, the issue is personal.
Twenty-seven years ago, traffickers in Miami tried to sell her virginity for $505. She was only 13. She ran from them then but fell victim six months later when a classmate’s father sold her during a sleepover.
From ages 14 to 17, she says she was drugged, abused, raped and trafficked by several people including that father’s friends, a neighbor who ran a trafficking house, and man who offered her a role in a movie.
Rosenblatt, now an adjunct professor at Trinity International University, runs a non-profit called There Is H.O.P.E. For Me.
“They give you money, drugs and a fun time, but in the end they want your dignity and your self-respect,” she said. “It’s invisible chains that these kids are tied with.”
Graves understands. At Fair Girls, she works directly with victims and unwinds her long, painful story with the hope that it will lift these tortured souls.
After she suffered a miscarriage during a beating in July 2005, Graves finally went to police and worked with the FBI and state attorneys to get six men charged with human trafficking. All pleaded guilty or were convicted of conspiracy or sex trafficking. They were sentenced to four to 25 years in prison.
The agencies helped her get housing, and officers even today check on the now poised young professional. She’s earning a political science degree and says she wants to start a non-profit much like Fair Girls.
One recent afternoon, her low hazel eyes pierced through a busy Washington street and focused on a young woman’s face she recognized from Backpage.com. She paused.
Graves sees trafficking when no one else can.
“My main priority is making sure no child has to go through what I went through,” she said. “If I can save one girl from not going into it or one girl who has already been in from going back, then I’m already doing more than enough.”
(Polaris Project’s national trafficking hotline number: 1-888-373-7888)
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Thursday, September 27, 2012

Living Safe: Human smuggling, trafficking are criminal enterprises, not border issues

http://www.yourhoustonnews.com/bellaire/living/living-safe-human-smuggling-trafficking-are-criminal-enterprises-not-border/article_ce978852-0783-11e2-a9fa-001a4bcf887a.html

Souce: Your Houston News

'Thursday, September 27, 2012 4:00 am | Updated: 9:42 pm, Tue Sep 25, 2012.



This week, more than 80 human smuggling victims were rescued in a raid by law enforcement officials.

Unfortunately, those rescued represent only a tiny fraction of the modern day slaves who remain in captivity.

Houston is a hub for human smuggling and trafficking, yet our knowledge of this issue is only recently beginning to scratch the surface. Public awareness of the existence of human trafficking, and the magnitude of this scourge, has only just begun to materialize.
Recent cases
Last Tuesday, police received a call from a mother who was frantic that her daughter was being held against her will. Smugglers — “coyotes” — were holding her 16-year-old daughter in lieu of a ransom payment of thousands of dollars. Law enforcement investigated.
Their investigation ultimately resulted in a raid that discovered 83 persons being held against their will. Inside the home, captives were clothed only in underwear; they had no shoes nor food.
This rescue illustrates some common characteristics of human trafficking, including the difficulty in locating and rescuing these victims, and the victimization experienced by the persons who are trafficked.
Smuggling vs. Trafficking
Persons who are engaged in illegal human smuggling are generally paid a fee to facilitate the clandestine transfer of a person across our border. Conversely, human traffickers lure their victims into forced labor or prostitution through threats, fraud, or coercion. Often, victims of human smuggling and trafficking have similar characteristics. They find themselves in captivity in a foreign country with no resources, support or means of escape.
The case highlight this week illustrates a different outcome for these victims only because law enforcement received a report. In the case of the 16-year-old victim who was being held for ransom, her mother called the police. Because her mother had the courage to call police and report the extortion by the smugglers, more than 80 victims were ultimately rescued.
Unfortunately, this outcome is rare. Usually those who have engaged in illegal border crossing refuse to contact police, even in the face of their own victimization. In the mother’s case, she likely struggled with admitting to the police that she paid a smuggler to bring her daughter into our country illegally. However, when faced with her daughters’ continuing captivity and the ransom demands, she reached out.
Her courage is admirable, though unfortunately atypical. More often, these captives live in fear of their captors. They refuse to contact law enforcement for fear of their own prosecution for wrongdoing.
As a result, the traffickers force them to work off their “debt” through labor or prostitution. As time passes, their “debt” only grows. Smugglers and traffickers demand payments for transportation, food, housing, and other expenses. Captives remain at the mercy of their captors, forced into situations that they never intended nor expected.
Rescues
Most often, trafficking victims are discovered during law enforcement’s investigation of some other type of criminal activity. Raids of prostitution rings are the most common example; bars and massage parlors that are fronts for prostitution often result in the discovery of women and children who are forced into this criminal activity.
Rather than a rescue situation, however, these trafficking victims are often treated as criminals. They may be arrested for the prostitution or another criminal offense.
Our traditional methods of law enforcement have not kept up with the changes in criminal activity in our community. Our new understanding of trafficking recognizes that these women are victims, not perpetrators.
Based on the new understanding of modern day slavery, we must focus our efforts to fight crime on the traffickers. Traffickers must be prosecuted, and victims must be rescued.
Human smuggling and trafficking are not issues of illegal immigration or even border security. They are criminal enterprises, second in the world in profit only to the drug trade. Fighting illegal immigration and securing our borders are wholly different issues from recognizing and rescuing victims of human trafficking.
As public awareness increases, so also will the safety of our community. Those who are victimized and held in captivity will find rescue and resources to facilitate their recovery. As victims emerge, public awareness comes to light. Modern day slavery will be eradicated in our jurisdiction. Lives will be saved.
Katherine Cabaniss is a former prosecutor in the Harris County District Attorney’s Office, and currently the Executive Director of Crime Stoppers, a nonprofit organization. She can be contacted at cabanissk@yahoo.com.
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