The doctor who has been accused of forcing NXIVM members to take part in horrific human experiments is finally facing charges after previous allegations were ignored.
The post Doctor For Billionaire Sex Slave Ring NXIVM, Charged for Conducting Horrific Human Experiments appeared first on The Free Thought Project.
Hundreds of immigrant children are unaccounted for in the U.S. and in some cases, the agency that was supposed to protect them sent them to live with human traffickers.
The post US Admits It ‘Lost’ 1,500 Immigrant Children, Handed Many of Them Directly To Human Traffickers appeared first on The Free Thought Project.
The Rothschild-linked Bronfman sisters donated millions to the cult whose leaders, Allison Mack and Keith Raniere, have been charged with child sex trafficking.
The post Media Silent as Allison Mack’s Arrest Exposes Child Trafficking For Billionaire-Backed Sex Slave Ring appeared first on The Free Thought Project.
There are a number of celebrities who are using their influence to combat slavery and human trafficking through technology and education.
The post As Arrest of Smallville Star Dominates Media, 5 Celebrities are Fighting To Stop Human Trafficking appeared first on The Free Thought Project.
[image: Ira Gelb]
It’s a horrific issue that doesn’t get nearly enough coverage in U.S. mainstream media. Child sex trafficking is a booming black market business.
Most parents can’t imagine it happening in their own backyard.
While we know it’s a global issue, child sex trafficking is finally starting to become a mainstream topic in the U.S.
A film called “I Am Jane Doe,” released in February, highlights young girls between the ages of 13 and 15 years old who were picked up off the street and sold for sex online.
The film takes aim at Backpage.com. But in reality, the issue of child sex trafficking is so much bigger than one website. And the appetite for child sex abuse goes all the way to the top.
This is Reality Check you won’t get anywhere else.
Tim Swarens, a columnist and editor for The Indianapolis Star, recently began publishing a series of articles about the child sex trade, a subject he’s reportedly investigated for more than a year. He explains that the child sex trade is like any other business trade, driven by supply and demand.
According to a study by the Center for Court Innovation from 2016, between 8,900 and 10,500 children ages 13 to 17 are being sold in the U.S. each year. Swarens writes, “The researchers found that the average age of victims is 15 and that each child is purchased on average 5.4 times a day.”
To determine a conservative estimate of the demand, Swarens “multiplied the lower number of victims (8,900) identified in the Center for Court Innovation study by the rate of daily exploitation per child (5.4), and then by an average of only one ‘work’ day per week (52). The result: Adults purchase children for sex at least 2.5 million times a year in the United States.”
Take the recent documentary “I Am Jane Doe,” a film about parents seeking justice for their young teenage girls being picked up and trafficked for sex right in their own communities.
Those parents took aim at the website Backpage.com for profiting off of its adult section, allegedly riddled with young girls being sold for sex. But even if Backpage.com is a platform for advertising and selling, a channel through which these transactions can take place, it’s just one of many online channels being used by pedophiles to buy children to abuse.
But is the problem the channels, or is it something deeper?
Swarens explains, “The critical need to reduce demand has gained far less attention and money. The result: Buyers continue to abuse children with near impunity.”
Now, in the film “I Am Jane Doe,” the people buying children to abuse are described to be white, married men with families who live in suburbia. A former pimp interviewed for the film, Homer King, says on camera that he sold girls to priests, lawyers and even politicians.
Swarens came to the same conclusion in his investigation. He writes: “This project began with a question: Who buys a 15-year-old child for sex? The answer: Many otherwise ordinary men. They could be your co-worker, doctor, pastor or spouse.”
Who are some of these men buying children to abuse?
Remember Jared Fogle from the Subway sandwich commercials? He “admitted to charges of having child pornography and repeatedly having sex with minors,” according to NPR. Court documents show that one of the text messages Fogle sent to a 17-year-old he paid for sex, stated his preferences as quote: “The younger the girl, the better.”
And back in June 2008, billionaire Jeffrey Epstein was prosecuted and sentenced to 18 months in prison for paying for sex with girls as young as 14. He served only 13 of those months.
The longest serving Republican Speaker of the House Dennis Hastert, who was second in line to the presidency from 1999 to 2007, admitted to sexually abusing boys while he was a high school wrestling coach. After making the admission in 2016, the judge who sentenced him 15 months in prison and two years of supervised release, called Hastert a “serial child molester.” He served only 13 months.
Now, let’s be clear: there’s no evidence that Hastert actually paid for sex. But the desire to abuse children is what fuels the global child sex trade, and demand is high.
Back in 2015, a special report aired on 60 Minutes Australia revealing that elected officials and elites in the UK were accused of buying and abusing children.
Posing as a buyer, former special agent for the Department of Homeland Security Timothy Ballard has been setting up undercover sting operations through his nonprofit Operation Underground Railroad since 2013.
Working in conjunction with governments all around the world, Operation Underground Railroad has so far busted 443 child sex traffickers and saved more than 1,000 victims. Here are just some of their 2017 operations.
Yet mainstream media does not treat it that way. Networks like CNN will give at least 40 days of daily coverage to stories like the missing Flight 370 in 2014. But in those 40 days, using Swarens’s math, about 250,000 children were bought and abused.
Even if that made the news, we make a mistake when the focus of the efforts to end this trafficking is only focused on how children are sold, instead of also focusing on to whom they are sold.
That discussion is one we need to have because until mainstream media and law enforcement is willing to go down that road… we will likely not see any real changes.
The post Reality Check: How Prevalent is the Global Child Sex Trade in the U.S.? (VIDEO) appeared first on The Sleuth Journal.
The leader of a depraved sex trafficking cult whose executives are "invitation-only" members of the Clinton Global Initiative has been arrested on charges of sex trafficking, conspiracy, and slavery.
The post Clinton-Linked Cult Leader Arrested for Running Sex Slavery Ring that Branded Its Victims appeared first on The Free Thought Project.
It’s another case of politicians with good intentions pushing harmful legislation.
The U.S. House of Representatives just passed a bill aimed to fight sex trafficking online.
Politicians and celebrities are saying the bill will help save victims. Victim advocacy groups argue the bill is actually harmful to sex-trafficking survivors and sex workers. And the DOJ believes the bill is “unconstitutional.”
What is this new bill really about, and what are the repercussions of it?
This is a Reality Check you won’t get anywhere else.
That’s the new public service announcement from Mary Mazzio, director of documentary “I Am Jane Doe.” The film focuses on what some people call a loophole in the law, specifically Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act.
The film highlights stories dating back to 2009 of families of sex trafficking victims who sued Backpage.com and lost. Lost, because reportedly Section 230 protects websites from like Backpage from being held responsible for all things posted to the site.
Soon after the documentary was released, Congress decided to get involved and a few weeks ago passed H.R. 1865, or as the bill is called, the “Allow States and Victims to Fight Online Sex Trafficking Act” or FOSTA. Sounds good right? So what specifically does it do?
And it amends the hotly debated Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act of 1996, which states that quote, “No provider or user of an interactive computer service shall be treated as the publisher or speaker of any information provided by another information content provider.”
So congress fixed a big problem, right? Well, maybe not. The bill is considered government overreach by the Electronic Frontier Foundation and the House Liberty Caucus, and a handful of Republicans and Democrats voted it down.
Why would they do that?
According to Ars Technica, “They argued that the law was unconstitutionally broad and that it conflicted with Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act, which grants website providers broad immunity against liability for hosting material posted by third parties.”
The Electronic Frontier Foundation strongly opposes the new House bill to amend Section 230. “FOSTA would punch a major hole in Section 230, enabling lawsuits and prosecutions against online platforms—including ones that aren’t even aware that sex trafficking is taking place. … If websites can be sued or prosecuted because of user actions, it creates extreme incentives. Some online services might react by prescreening or filtering user posts. Others might get sued out of existence.”
The EFF isn’t alone in its opposition. Victims advocacy groups, sex workers, free speech advocates, tech companies and others are coming forward saying that Section 230 is not broken, and that there is nothing preventing law enforcement right now from going after websites that promote sex trafficking.
Part of the reason for Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act is “to preserve the vibrant and competitive free market that presently exists for the Internet and other interactive computer services, unfettered by Federal or State regulation” and “to ensure vigorous enforcement of Federal criminal laws to deter and punish trafficking of obscenity, stalking, and harassment by means of computer.”
But what H.R. 1865 will do is threefold:
That’s Reality Check. Let’s talk about that right now on Twitter and Facebook.
The post Reality Check: Will ‘Anti Sex Trafficking’ Bill Hurt Victims? (VIDEO) appeared first on The Sleuth Journal.
Las Vegas, NV — Several police officers in Las Vegas have come under fire after more than a dozen witnesses accused them of working with sex traffickers in exchange for money and prostitutes.
Las Vegas Now reported that the FBI began investigating the allegations in 2014 after they raided the Las Vegas home of music producer and escort service kingpin Jamal Rashid, who is known as Mally Mall. A motion filed in court alleged that officers worked with Rashid to target his competitors in the Las Vegas sex industry.
While the officers used their badges and taxpayer funding to go after other pimps in the area, Mally Mall paid them in cash each month and supplied them with prostitutes. The report even alleges that police officers and the department’s lead prosecutor worked with witnesses and coached them in an attempt to pursue even more serious charges against the competitors.
Although the FBI has reportedly been investigating similar allegations for nearly four years, the current information has come to light through a motion filed by defense attorney Janiece Marshall, after she heard the testimony of convicted pimp Ocean Fleming.
Fleming was one of the many competitors who claims he was targeted by police who were working with Mally Mall. He accused star vice detective Chris Baughman of not only targeting other pimps in exchange to cash and prostitutes but of also having an affair with lead prosecutor Deputy DA Liz Mercer, which ensured that he was above the law all around.
“You got a cop involved in a sexual relationship with one of the victims, then he’s involved in sexual relations at the same time with the prosecutor, not to mention he’s married. So, in reality, you got more females in the courtroom than me,” Fleming told Las Vegas Now in a phone call from prison.
Fleming is just one of more than a dozen witnesses who have accused detectives in Las Vegas of setting them up in order to help their competition. An investigation into the department resulted in the discovery that not only were officers helping pimps on the street, but prosecutors were also helping convicted sex traffickers in the courtroom.
In one example, Las Vegas Now reported that Zane Campo received a plea deal in which he pleaded “no contest” to one count of disorderly conduct, even though he had a widespread criminal history and was facing five felony charges that included sex trafficking.
In another case, Shane Valentine, who has a record as a violent felon, was sentenced to a series of lesser charges when he was charged with multiple criminal convictions that included a double murder related to the sex industry.
While the scenario of both police officers and prosecutors working to protect pimps and sex traffickers in exchange for cash and prostitutes may be a serious problem in Las Vegas right now, the practice of officers using their badges to justify stealing, cheating, and sexual assault is nothing new.
In one case, the police department in Lansing, New York, was accused of covering for a sheriff’s deputy for years after he raped a disabled person in 2013. It was not until December 2017 that he was finally charged with first degree rape and sexual assault.
Police sex crimes have not stopped at rape, and in many cases, officers have gone on to create and possess child pornography. In 2017 alone, a police sergeant was found possessing and attempting to receive child pornography; a school resource officer was found possessing a trove of graphic child pornography; and a network of police officers were found raping the cadets in their Police Explorers program and filming it to create child porn.
The post ‘Widespread’ Problem of Police Sex Trafficking Women Exposed in Las Vegas (VIDEO) appeared first on The Sleuth Journal.
Several police officers and a lead prosecutor have been accused of participating in and covering up a sex trafficking ring in exchange for cash and free prostitutes.
The post ‘Widespread’ Problem of Police Sex Trafficking Women Exposed in Las Vegas appeared first on The Free Thought Project.
Former CIA agent/counterintelligence operative turned whistleblower John Kiriakou exposed agency wrongdoing in his book titled “Reluctant Spy: My Secret Life in the CIA’s War on Terror.”
The Obama administration indicted him “for allegedly illegally disclosing national defense information to individuals not authorized to receive it.”
He was the first CIA officer to be imprisoned for revealing classified information, serving from February 28, 2013 – February 3, 2015 for exposing government wrongdoing.
According to TopSecretWriters.com, he accused the CIA of child trafficking, supplying children to wealthy pedophiles globally in exchange for information the agency sought.
Trafficked children were never seen again. In a video clip, Kiriakou explained “(y)our job as a CIA agent is to break the laws of the country you are serving.
“That’s your job: Your job is to commit espionage, which in most countries is a death penalty crime.”
“Your job is to convince people to commit treason for you because they like you so much or they like the money that you’re giving them so much.”
“So, because it’s the nature of your job to break the law, they’re the rules that are written for you to carry out that job.”
Kiriakou’s latest accusation followed earlier ones. He was involved in capturing alleged Al Qaeda operative Abu Zubaydah. He took no part in torture and other abusive interrogation practices.
CIA operations flagrantly violate rule of law principles. It operates like a global Mafia hit squad. Throughout its existence, it’s been involved in drugs trafficking – documented by Alfred McCoy’s book titled “The Politics of Heroin: CIA Complicity in the Global Drug Trade.”
Journalist Gary Webb’s expose of CIA involvement in Nicaraguan drugs trafficking, supporting the contras, dealing with Los Angeles crack dealers, made him a target for vicious vilification – hounding him out of his profession into deep depression, either committing suicide or succumbing to foul play.
In books and articles, Peter Dale Scott explained “(s)ince at least 1950 there has been a global CIA-drug connection operating more or less continuously” to this day.
“The global drug connection is not just a lateral connection between CIA field operatives and their drug-trafficking contacts.”
“It is more significantly a global financial complex of hot money uniting prominent business, financial and government, as well as underworld figures,” a sort of “indirect empire (operating alongside) existing government.”
“(G)overnments themselves, and the links they develop with major traffickers, are the key both to the drug-trafficking problem and to its solution.”
The CIA is a sinister, secretive, unaccountable agency, operating extrajudicially. The late Chalmers Johnson said its existence “shorten(s) the life of the American republic.”
Its operations are incompatible with a free society – child and drugs trafficking, assassinations, and involvement in recruiting, arming, funding, training and directing ISIS and other terrorists are some of its many sinister activities.
Former CIA agent/whistleblower Kevin Shipp calls himself a “recovering CIA officer.”
Involvement with the agency creates awareness of its enormous harm to so many worldwide.
The post CIA Involved in Child Trafficking? appeared first on The Sleuth Journal.
Camps popping up all over North Dakota have been infiltrated by sex traffickers and criminal gangs who are preying on the local native children and adults alike.
Body camera footage was just released showing the moment police caught an Oklahoma senator red-handed trafficking an underage boy in a motel room.
Harvey Weinstein has now been accused of violating sex trafficking laws—similar to what Jeffrey Epstein was convicted of when he spent just 1 year in prison.
The accusation that Kevin Spacey attempted to sexually assault a child raises new questions about his foundation, which specifically targets children.
[image: prisonplanet.com]
Records show that alleged child molester Kevin Spacey flew on the infamous ‘Lolita Express’ – the private jet owned by pedophile Jeffrey Epstein – along with former President Bill Clinton.
The revelation has resurfaced in the aftermath of claims by actor Anthony Rapp that Spacey sexually assaulted him when he was a 14-year-old boy after a party at Spacey’s apartment in 1986 when Spacey, then 24, picked up Rapp, placed him on his bed and climbed on top of him.
Spacey subsequently apologized for the incident, but deflected by making the story about how he was now living as a gay man.
The media dutifully obliged and the gravity of the sexual assault claim has been obfuscated to some extent by the pressfocusing on the House of Cards actor’s sexuality.
In 2008, financier Jeffrey Epstein, whose friends included some of the most powerful people on the planet, was convicted of soliciting an under-age girl for prostitution.
Spacey was on board Epstein’s private jet with Bill Clinton when it flew from JFK Airport into the Azores before the former President and the actor enjoyed a tour of Africa.
According to Fox News, Epstein, “Allegedly had a team of traffickers who procured girls as young as 12 to service his friends on “Orgy Island,” an estate on Epstein’s 72-acre island, called Little St. James, in the U.S. Virgin Islands.”
Bill Clinton took at least 26 trips on the Lolita Express, a luxury jet fitted out with beds where prominent elitists allegedly had sex with young girls, ditching his Secret Service detail for 5 of those trips.
Clinton chose to continue his association with Epstein even after, according to the Alliance to Rescue Victims of Trafficking, “everyone within his inner circles knew was a pedophile.”
Epstein also reportedly had 21 different phone numbers for Bill Clinton.
While there is no evidence to suggest Spacey engaged in criminal activity while on board Epstein’s jet, his admission that he sexually assaulted a 14-year-old boy is sure to provoke further questions.
As we reported last week, actor Corey Feldman has announced a plan to expose top Hollywood pedophiles who he says are being protected by the industry.
The post Kevin Spacey Flew on ‘Lolita Express’ with Bill Clinton appeared first on The Sleuth Journal.
If you support free speech, you support sex trafficking. At least that’s what politicians hope the public will think.
Clever politicians seem to be learning. If they want to censor the web and destroy free speech, they need to pick the right targets for their legislation. Of course, in reality, the legislation will end up affecting all of us.
Their efforts really amount to holding websites accountable for what their users post. They are shining a light on Backpage, a website much like Craigslist where users post ads. The website lets users post based on location for things like buying and selling items, job listings, and community events.
The legal issues come from Backpage failing to stop the use of its website for sex trafficking. Ads appear in adult and dating sections which facilitate prostitution.
But why should a website be held accountable for what users post? Is Facebook held accountable for drug deals arranged through its messenger? Should Twitter be held responsible when a riot is organized with the platform?
But politicians aren’t talking about the potential for their legislation to affect sectors other than sex trafficking. They use emotional pleas. And this could mean more Americans are willing to stomach legislation that would seriously threaten any website that allows users to post. Hosts would be liable for user content.
That means anyone who has a website would be at serious risk of legal trouble if any piece of their business lets users post. Websites like Facebook who can hire countless employees to police the content might not care. But what about small websites? What about message boards, and comments sections?
Trade groups representing Google, Facebook and other Internet giants warn of a “devastating impact” on the tech industry if the 1996 Communications Decency Act is tinkered with in the way lawmakers envision to hold Backpage and others liable for criminal material on their pages.
They project “mass removals of legitimate content” by social media and other firms scrambling to shield themselves from a deluge of lawsuits from trial lawyers and prosecutors. The ACLU joined the Electronic Frontier Foundation and other groups in warning lawmakers that if they pass the law, every one of the millions of social media postings placed online daily becomes a potential liability for the company hosting it.
But in true politician fashion, the response highlights only the “good” the legislation will do, ignoring the potential to curb free speech online.
“The Communications Decency Act is a well-intentioned law, but it was never intended to protect sex traffickers,” said Sen. Rob Portman (R-Ohio)…
California Atty. Gen. Xavier Becerra said the site would have been shut down long ago if not for the immunity. “We would have been able to stop the abuse and in some cases the death of some of these young people who got caught up in these sex trafficking rings,” Becerra said.
Prostitution might be the world’s oldest profession. But politicians think they can finally stamp it out if only they had the power to censor shut down websites!
A quarter of the members of Congress have signed on as co-sponsors of the bill. Maybe they have the best intentions.
Or maybe they simply want more power to censor websites and the free speech of their users.
User created content will suffer if this bill passes. That puts things like communication, organization, and protest at risk.
Free speech is becoming a problem for the government, and they are taking the incremental approach to limiting it. That is why they talk so much about curbing hate speech and fake news. They want Americans to be onboard to limit neo-Nazis and ads for prostitution. But like most laws, it will only limit freedom.
Los Angeles, CA – A report of a missing teenager in Tulare County, California, in late 2016 culminated into the uncovering of one of the largest sex trafficking rings in the Western United States, according to an announcement by the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department on Thursday. Thirteen young women and girls, including the missing teen, were freed from captivity as a result of the extensive investigation.
The missing teenager’s disappearance, and subsequent discovery in a West Hollywood apartment in January, led investigators in the LA Sheriff’s Department to discover an extensive human sex trafficking network that extended from Nevada to California. During the course of the investigation, detectives discovered the ring used apartments in dozens of communities, including Burbank, West Hollywood, and Las Vegas, as brothels.
“Years ago, a human trafficking case of this magnitude was not likely,” Los Angeles County Sheriff Jim McDonnell said in a news conference in downtown. “We knew the more we looked, the more we would find.”
According to a report by the Los Angeles Daily News:
Advertisment
The six-month investigation by the Tulare County Sheriff’s Department, Los Angeles Sheriff’s Department, Los Angeles Regional Human Trafficking Task Force, and the California Department of Justice, has led to two arrests so far. Quinton Brown, 30, of Highland, and Gerald Turner, 32, of Fresno, were arrested on suspicion of 54 charges relating to sex trafficking, pimping, pandering, grand theft and identity theft.
The complaint, filed Wednesday by the California Attorney General’s office, alleges that Brown lured victims from the Central Valley as far back as in October and trafficked them throughout the state. Investigators also said:
• The 13 victims include eight minors who were sold for commercial sex.
• A 2017 Maserati Ghibli, a 2017 Maserati Levante, and a 2016 Porsche Panamera, all confiscated by investigators, were used in the ring and obtained through fraudulent means.
• Eight people were victims of identity theft.
• 16 sites across California and in Nevada were used as brothels as part of the ring.
Mia McNeil, 32, who police believe rented the apartments/brothels remains at large, according to McDonnell. Additionally, law enforcement believes she also leased high-end luxury vehicles to transport the ring’s sex slaves without raising suspicion.
READ MORE: California Bill Bans Companies that Boycott Israel
McDonnell said that detectives uncovered that Brown and Turner “would traffic the victims in plain sight,” using the Internet to advertise the women they were attempting to sell.
Surprisingly, most of the victims of sex trafficking are born and raised in the U.S. At the news conference, California Attorney General Xavier Becerra said 72 percent of the victims found in California say they are American.
“Human trafficking, which includes sex and labor trafficking, is one of the fasting growing crimes in the world. Its reach is not limited to foreign countries,” Becerra said. “In California, human trafficking is reported here in our state more than in any other.”
Law enforcement said the investigation is ongoing, as they attempt to uncover and arrest the individuals who solicited the young women and teenage sex slaves.
“The predators online that are looking for an 11 year old … these people are not the traditional johns that most people think of,” McDonnell said. “These are predators. These are child molesters that are out there taking advantage of some of the most vulnerable in society.”
The Los Angeles Daily News reports that:
Since the Los Angeles Regional Human Trafficking Task Force was established in 2015, there have been 697 arrests, and of those, about 30 percent were male buyers. In addition, there have been 185 victims rescued, a majority of them youths who were sex trafficked.
Tulare County Sheriff Mike Boudreaux said he has since met with one of the victims rescued, and she has received help and is back in school. But he implored parents to watch their children carefully, especially while they are on their mobile phones.
“To the parents, be vigilant,” Boudreaux said during the press conference. “Pay attention to what your children are doing online. Social networking is an environment for predators to prey on and exploit the innocence of our children.”
Of course, when even those tasked with protecting children — such as Raymond Liddy, 53, a California deputy attorney general — are arrested on charges of possessing child pornography; who is left to actually look out for the welfare and safety of the children?
READ MORE: Cops Exposed for Ignoring Sex Trafficking and Slavery to Raid Pot Farms for Profit Instead
In addition to being a California state prosecutor, Liddy is the son of a prominent Watergate figure—G. Gordon Liddy—who was an operative in President Richard Nixon‘s campaign attempt to burglarize the Democratic National Committee.
Raymond Liddy was arrested at his home and was charged in federal court with possessing images of minors engaged in sexually explicit conduct, according to federal court documents obtained by Heavy. He was subsequently released from custody and placed on home detention with GPS monitoring after posting a $100,000 bond during his arraignment.
Even after taking down “one of the largest human trafficking rings on the West Coast,” there is a virtual certainty that this bust only barely scratches the surface. When high-level officials, tasked with prosecuting those that break the law, are accused of being the ones preying upon the innocent and weakest in society it makes one seriously question who is actually looking out for the victims.
Please share this story in an effort to raise awareness about the extreme scope of this constant and pervasive societal problem of the sexual trafficking of children!
A recent report on the number of sexually exploited children in Florida gives insight into a horrific world that is often ignored by the media, and that rarely holds millionaires, politicians and even local officials accountable for their involvement.
A report from the Florida legislature’s Office of Program Policy Analysis & Government Accountability concluded that the state’s Department of Children and Family (DCF) and its lead agencies “have not resolved issues related to serving commercially sexually exploited children.”
The report found that in 2016, 356 verified commercially sexually exploited child victims were identified, as opposed to 264 identified in 2015. It noted that many of the victims who were identified earlier were, “both children in child welfare dependency and those living in the community with family—have since been re-victimized, involved with the criminal justice system, or only attended school intermittently.”
Advertisment
“During 2016, DCF’s Florida Abuse Hotline received 2,013 reports alleging the CSE of children, which is a 57% increase over the 2015 reports. Child protective investigators investigated 1,386 (or 69%) of those reports. Counties with the highest number of CSE reports include Miami-Dade (248), Broward (232), Orange (150), and Hillsborough (144). DCF hotline staff did not refer cases for investigation if the allegation did not rise to the level of reasonable (74%), there were no means to locate the victim (11%), or the alleged perpetrator was not the child’s caregiver (8%). Of the reports that were referred for investigation, most came from DJJ, the Department of Corrections, or criminal justice personnel (20%) and law enforcement (15%).”
In 2016, the National Human Trafficking Hotline received reports of 7,572 human trafficking cases, which was a substantial increase from 5,544 cases in 2015 and 5,042 cases in 2014. Florida ranked third on the list with 550 cases, behind Texas with 670 cases and California with 1,323 cases.
READ MORE: Good Cops Turn In Their Own Officer After He"s Caught on Dashcam Beating Handcuffed Man
Out of the 7,572 human trafficking cases reported in the United States in 2016, the majority or 5,551 were “sex trafficking” cases, and 2,387 of the reported victims were minors.
The report on child sex trafficking in Florida suggested that the increase in victims was due to the process DCF and the Department of Juvenile Justice (DJJ) use to “select children to screen as well as the screening tool itself may limit accurate identification of CSE child victims.”
The report also noted that 62 percent of the children who were labeled as commercially sexually exported remained “in the community and are referred to voluntary, local services.” As a result, “no data is readily available on whether the children use these services.”
The Free Thought Project has provided extensive coverage of the sex trafficking epidemic in the U.S., especially in relation to minors who become victims after they are kidnapped from their homes and placed in foster care.
In April, two pastors who were foster care advocates were arrested for running a child sex ring in Ohio. The pastors, who had influence on their county’s Child Service’s Board of Trustees, were charged with “recruiting, enticing and transporting people the men knew were under 18 to engage in sex acts for pay.” The trafficking was ongoing for at least three years, and initially began with a 14-year-old girl.
In June, a lawsuit was filed in the case of a 5-year-old girl who was given to the leader of a child sex ring in Arizona. She was taken from her mother who was battling an addiction with substance abuse, and she was put in the custody of a pedophile who sexually abused her, tortured her, and ultimately left her fighting for her life.
READ MORE: Horrifying Video Shows Cops Do Nothing As Man They Shot Dies an Agonizing Death
The recent report from Florida is another reminder that child sex trafficking is a horrific element of the human trafficking epidemic that has been ongoing and increasing in the United States. While government involvement has always been an element, it has yet to put a stop to the increasing number of children who are subjected to life-altering abuse on a daily basis.
Orange County, FL — The Florida Highway Patrol is reviewing its presence at the Girls State Program after troopers conducted a kidnapping/human trafficking drill which went “horribly wrong” according to WFTV News Channel 9.
The girl’s program is attended by some of best and brightest high-schoolers Florida has to offer. “Everyone who’s going is at the top of their class,” Cameron Carlyle said describing the high-quality candidates who attend the elite leadership camp. But no amount of education could have prepared the girls for what happened on the last night of their training.
The Girls State director along with six Florida State Troopers, all female, pulled an attendee aside and told her she would be participating in a kidnapping drill, one which highlighted the real-world problem of sex trafficking. Under the cover of secrecy, the volunteer named “Katrina” was taken to a safe place. Thereafter, roll call was taken with the remaining girls.
Carlyle, who volunteered this year to be a camp counselor, said when the count-off got to number 8, “We realized Katrina was missing.” Soon the State Troopers began screaming, she’d been kidnapped, and blamed several girls for her abduction.
The troopers told the attendees the girl had been kidnapped and was probably sold as a sex slave to human traffickers who would use her for prostitution purposes.
They began blaming the other girls in the room, as well. “I’ll never forget that feeling of just that ‘it’s totally my fault and now I’ll have to tell her parents she’d been taken,’” Carlyle said speaking of the experience.
READ MORE: Over 100 Children Accuse UN Peacekeepers of Rape — Not a Single Soldier Charged
It wasn’t until about a half-hour later, amid tears and paralyzing fears from attendees, that the girls learned their fellow camper was unharmed.
Carlyle said she had 17 girls who simply did not sleep that night, traumatized by the training experience gone horribly wrong. One girl in the program had been involved in a real human sex trafficking incident when she was younger and was emotionally shaken.
While the subject of sex trafficking is a very serious one which should not be taken lightly, it’s safe to say the FL State Troopers may not have put enough forethought and planning into the exercise. The fact that one attendee had been sex trafficked is proof enough the troopers had not potentially considered all the scenarios.
Any serious attempt to help teens prepare for the potential of being exploited sexually, must include how pedophiles seek to become authority figures, so they can use those positions to take advantage of children. Merely tormenting girls by hosting a fake kidnapping does absolutely nothing to prepare them later in life for any real scenarios.
Terri Miller of Stop Educator Sexual Abuse Misconduct & Exploitation is considered a leading expert on educator sex predation. In a recent interview, Miller described how authority figures are often teachers. “Perpetrators often wear a mask of deception,” Miller said. “It’s very common for these perpetrators to be teachers of the year and award-winning coaches.” She added the victim is, “the only one who knows the monster.”
But as The Free Thought Project has all too frequently reported, pedophiles are often police officers as well. In North Carolina, a police officer was recently convicted with seducing and impregnating a 14-year-old after obtaining permission from the teen’s mother to serve as her “mentor.”
READ MORE: Pastors Advocating for Foster Kids Caught Running Child Sex Trafficking Ring
Just this month, a police chief was arrested on felony charges of attempting to engage in sex with a minor. As Antimedia’s Carey Wedler reported, “Michael Zeug, 45, was arrested in Redwood Falls after soliciting sex with an undercover Department of Homeland Security agent via text message. Zeug contacted the ‘girl’ after seeing an online ad. The officer pretended to be a seventeen-year-old girl who wanted to make extra money, local CBS Minnesota outlet WCCO reported. Zeug appeared to acknowledge the risk, saying, ‘you’re only 17.’ He also said he had done this type of thing before and lied about his profession (as Chief of Police); he claimed to be a farmer.”
It’s unclear if lawsuits will result from the FL Highway Patrol’s missteps. However, make no mistake about it, leaders at Florida’s celebrated Girls State Program and the FHP owe each girl an appropriate apology, which should also include counseling paid for by the FL Highway Patrol. After all, whether they want to admit it or not, they’re now guilty of abusing children in their care, precisely what pedophiles do when given positions of authorities.
In what is begin hailed as one of the largest prosecutions of its kind in US history, dozens of high-level modern-day slave traders were indicted this week in the US for enslaving hundreds of young women. Spreading from coast to coast, authorities are calling it a sophisticated sex trafficking ring that forced hundreds of women to be “modern day sex slaves.”
Naturally, the root cause of the state finding the organization wasn’t the sex slaves — it was was the concealment of millions of dollars. This latest indictment goes after the money as outside of the conspiracy to commit sex trafficking charges, are the charges of conspiracy to engage in money laundering and operating an unlicensed money transmitting business.
“From coast to coast, IRS Criminal Investigation is determined to team with our law enforcement partners to track down the individuals who facilitate and launder the proceeds of sex trafficking crimes,” said Special Agent in Shea Charge Jones, during the original indictment in October. “Those who seek to enrich themselves by exploiting the desperate circumstances of their victims will not be tolerated in our cities.”
The women were taken from Thailand and brought to the United States. They were forced to work as sex slaves and told they could buy their freedom if they paid off their nearly insurmountable bondage debts.
Acting U.S. Attorney Gregory Brooker explained the women were rotated through trafficking centers across the United States and “forced to have sex with strangers, even if the men were abusive.”
Sadly, this underground trafficking industry is allowed to thrive due to the United States’ prohibition on prostitution. Because those who want to voluntarily sell sex face the constant threat of being kidnapped and caged by the state, the world’s oldest profession gets pushed into depraved black markets rife with abuse and, as this case illustrates, slavery.
READ MORE: Michigan Cops Can Legally Have Sex with Human Trafficking Victims During Investigations
Alex Khu, special agent in charge of Homeland Security Investigations in Minneapolis, according to the AP, said his agency discovered the international ring after it began looking into a sex-trafficking case in the Twin Cities in 2014. Former Minnesota U.S. Attorney Andy Luger had made sex trafficking a priority and traveled to Thailand as part of the investigation. Luger was among the U.S. attorneys forced to resign in March, but prosecutors in the office have continued working this case, approaching it as they would an organized crime network.
As the AP reports, the conspiracy began in 2009, according to the indictment, with organizers bringing poor women who spoke little English from Bangkok to several U.S. cities, including Los Angeles, Chicago, Las Vegas, Phoenix, Minneapolis, Washington, Houston, and Dallas. The organization threatened to harm the women’s families in Thailand if they escaped.
“The victims were isolated. They typically did not have the ability to choose who they have sex with, what sex transactions they would engage in, or when they would have sex,” the indictment said.
The women were forced to have breast implants and the cost of the surgery would be added to their bondage.
Many of the arrests were the “house bosses” who ran the day to day operations of the modern day slave quarters scattered throughout the US. The money launderers were also arrested.
While many high-level arrests were made, the indictment noted that those at the top of the trafficking ring remain at large. Although, one of the bosses of the organization was arrested in the first phase of the investigation and is in custody in Belgium. Authorities are working to extradite her to the U.S., Khu said, according to the AP.
READ MORE: Europe"s Forgotten "Hitler" Killed Over 10 Million Africans -- But the West Erased it From History
While the indictment notes that this ring forced hundreds of women into the US to be sex slaves, it mentions very few who were actually rescued.
Human trafficking in the United States is a very real and horrifying problem. As the Free Thought Project has pointed out, the monsters behind this darkness are often upstanding members of society. Through their connections within the state, they are allowed to operate these modern day slave trades with impunity. Just as this case illustrated, the state didn’t go after them until they suspected they weren’t getting their cut.
To see the true scope of this trafficking epidemic, take a scroll through our archives, at this link.
In the meantime, if you suspect someone in your town may be a victim of this human trafficking, you can get free materials at Blue Campaign site.
This site offers discrete tear cards that are easily hidden and have numbers for victims to call for later reference to be rescued. These materials are free and can be ordered at any time at this link.
Only until enough light is shined into the darkness will the cockroaches have nowhere to go. It is up to us to shine this light.
