Image via WikipediaEnforcement, services slow to assist American victimsJANINE ZEITLIN • jzeitlin@news-press.com • November 23, 2010
1:10 A.M. — Eyes ringed with fatigue, a North Fort Myers father chain-smokes Marlboro in his mechanic’s garage.He’s been trying to quit for a year but worries overpower his will.
He fears his 14-year-old daughter’s life is beyond repair, a casualty of a flawed system.
The girl, a chronic runaway, has been identified as a possible victim of human trafficking and is now in a juvenile residential program.
He and his wife suspect she performed sex for food and money. Officials told the parents their daughter had four pimps; one called their home.
The Department of Children and Families and law enforcers were involved with the girl for months, said Barry, who is 50, and not being fully named because he shares the last name of the girl.
She was reported missing or arrested almost 20 times between April and last month, he said.
“The juvenile system sucks. They let her get deeper and deeper into that life,” he said. “I hope not, but I think it’s too late to help her. She’s been too damaged physically and psychologically.”
Earlier perceived as crimes affecting mostly foreigners, in recent years the portrait of human trafficking victims has broadened to include to a larger extent American adults and children exploited for gain.
The number of people tagged as victims and investigations in Lee County has been growing in the past year. Of 11 arrests linked to trafficking in Lee in roughly that time, the lead investigator said at least seven involved domestic victims.
Trafficking, often called modern-day slavery, doesn’t have to involve transportation of a victim. One case involved a 15-year-old girl who told investigators her mother forced her to prostitute in exchange for food. At one point, she banged on a window seeking her mother’s help when she was left in a room with men, according to sheriff’s reports.
The girl cut and burned herself to deal with the pain.
Fort Myers mother Noemi Ramos was arrested by the Lee sheriff’s office in October. She also was accused of forcing all four of her daughters to buy drugs.
Services for American victims have not caught up. Local advocates and law enforcers fighting human trafficking said foreign victims have easier access to help, such as counseling and more federal dollars for them.
Catholic Charities, which has a $200,000 federal grant to provide services for foreign victims, tries to help Americans through services they offer such as the food pantry or referrals to nonprofits.
“If I have an American citizen, we, as a task force have to beg, borrow and steal in order to get services,” said Mike Zaleski, lead investigator for the sheriff’s trafficking unit. “It’s very difficult, and that doesn’t always happen. That’s a problem.”
As the movement matures, it must be honed to better serve victims, said Amanda Evans and Johnny McGaha, FGCU professors who advise Lee’s trafficking task force and coalition.
Both say stronger collaboration is needed.
Evans said a countywide protocol is crucial to helping victims. The coalition is trying to develop one.
“There’s all these wonderful shining stars in the community,” she said. “They’re all kind of doing their own thing so victims are falling through the gaps.”
DCF tried hard to help Barry’s daughter, said Cookie Coleman, who heads the local office. But the agency can’t lock up a victim to receive services.
“We could never keep the child in one place long enough to help her,” she said. “We need to look at our children who are chronic runaways.
“Yes, the system fails these children.”
Rising numbers
Numbers for human trafficking are on the rise in Lee County. The sheriff’s unit conducted about 160 trafficking investigations from June 2009 to June 2010 and about 30 people were rescued from human trafficking environments.
The unit did not provide firm data from the year before, but officials said numbers were much lower. A victims service provider said there were 20 investigations.
The agency did not provide a requested breakdown of how many of those cases involved Americans.
In the last two years, the sheriff’s office has trained all sworn law enforcers and new recruits in human trafficking, officials said.
“We’ve evolved from an agency that had a human trafficking unit to having an agency with the mindset to consider if they’re in the presence of human trafficking victims,” said Zaleski, who often fields leads from deputies.
The idea that vulnerable Americans such as runaways or drug addicts can be victims, too, has gained traction among enforcers who realize “it’s not just a crack whore. It could be something else,” said Lt. Brad Hamilton, who oversees the intelligence unit.
But it’s also clear that the county task force experienced growing pains until a competent and cooperative trafficking team congealed in the last two years, according to reports from the FGCU professors.
Early on, law enforcement and the former victims service provider were not finding confirmed victims or cases.
“It’s not perfect,” McGaha said. “But they’re communicating and cooperating a lot more and keeping their eye on the victims instead of what’s in it for them.
“Things seem to be happening now.”
Children’s advocates across the country have been training investigators to see these children as victims or prostituted youth rather than delinquents.
The shift largely began after the 2000 Federal Trafficking Victims Protection Act passed reclassifying prostituted children as trafficking victims, said Samantha Vardaman, a senior director at Shared Hope International, a national group dedicated to stopping sex slavery.
“This is a very old federal crime that got a new coat of paint,” she said.
Such abuses occurred in families long before it earned the brand of trafficking, said Laura Streyffeler, clinical director at Abuse Counseling & Treatment in Lee. She’s worked with women who were sold by parents and known of mothers who allowed children to be abused to have their cars fixed.
“People are looking like this isolated case as this horrible woman who sold her kids,” said Streyffeler, of the Ramos case. “What’s horrific is not just what she did but how many other people are doing it.”
Local numbers of prostituted or trafficked children weren’t available, but Shared Hope estimates that about 100,000 youth are prostituted in the United States each year.
When his daughter ran away, Barry said he often couldn’t sleep, thinking the next call would deliver news that his 14-year-old was found dead in a ditch.
But her troubles began early. Her birth mother, who has a criminal history, hasn’t seen her since age 2, he said, and she was raped at age 10 by a teenager.
The family’s history with DCF dates to 1999, said Coleman, who wouldn’t disclose the nature of the investigations.
She’s also been diagnosed with severe bipolar.
This year, her life seemed to spiral, he said.
She’d be gone for weeks or days and would turn up in Miami or Fort Lauderdale, her father said.
When law enforcers returned her, she’d come back with new cell phones, scarf down dinner, shower and leave soon after.
Barry and Jennifer, her stepmother, couldn’t control her. They think people she hung around with pushed her to prostitute.
In April, DCF took her into their care. She ran again. A month later, the agency identified signs of human trafficking and notified law enforcement, Coleman said, declining to elaborate.
Hard to help
Hamilton said he couldn’t comment on the case.
But the girl refused to cooperate with law enforcers and services, records show. DCF returned her to her father. She continued to run.
Teen runaways who are trafficking victims can be hard to help, said McGaha, noting they are often severely traumatized and need counselling.
“They can be helped, but they’re their own worst enemies,” he said. “They don’t see themselves as victims.”
In July, deputies arrested the girl after finding almost 100 pornographic images on her phone. Upon release, she ran again, Barry said, until this fall when a judge sent her to a long-term program.
“Why wasn’t something done after the second time?” asked Barry.
Coleman couldn’t say if her agency did everything right since the family entered the system.
“There have been many attempts to offer services,” she said. “I can’t tell you if we pushed hard enough. There were many roadblocks met.”
'Tough love'
Officials have worked hard to help her in the last months, Coleman said.
“This child has become one that is followed on a daily basis,” she said
The 14-year-old will be in the program for several months, said Barry, who refuses to talk to his daughter when she calls.
He’s tired of the running and thinks that “tough love” may change her.
The girl has written letters apologizing for pain she has caused him, asking for support to change.
“I am sick and tired of living the way that I am living. I am only killing myself,” she wrote in one, noting that she’d like to do things like roller-skate when she comes home.
Jennifer speaks to the 14-year-old when she calls, and finds herself doling out advice she learned from her own mother.
“Her biggest thing,” Jennifer said, “needs to be, ‘Love yourself.’”
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