In 2007, New York legislators approved one of the nation's more expansive sex trafficking laws, but the law has rarely been used outside of New York City, reports the Rochester Democrat & Chronicle. Through late March there had been 145 sex trafficking arrests in the state under the law, all but 13 in New York City. Experts say there are multiple reasons why the law has so rarely been used: It is still relatively new; many cases end up in federal court; and trafficking investigations can be difficult to build, especially because of reluctant victims.
Some say the biggest impediment to toughened anti-trafficking law enforcement may be the long-held belief that a prostitute is, first and foremost, a criminal. “We’re still struggling to change the public perception,” said Lauren Hersh, a Brooklyn prosecutor who handles trafficking cases. The law gives local police the opportunity to be on the front line of the war against sex trafficking and also tries to ensure that trafficking victims get help. Each year the number of arrests statewide has grown, from 16 in 2008 to 69 last year. This year there have been 14 through late March — only three of which were outside of New York City.
Read full entry »Authorities fear that an Indiana man arrested on a single count of sexual exploitation of children might figure in a nationwide case of Internet sex crime with perhaps hundreds of young victims. If true, says the Indianapolis Star, it would rank as one of the broadest cases of "sextortion" on record, federal officials say. The FBI and U.S. attorney's office released a police booking mug shot of Richard Leon Finkbiner, hoping his photo can generate leads that will allow them to identify children pictured in thousands of sexually explicit videos that authorities say they found on Finkbiner's computer.
Finkbiner, 39, was arrested at his Brazil, In., home. Federal officials were led to Finkbiner through complaints from two 14-year-old boys, who went to police in their home states of Michigan and Maryland saying they were victims of what authorities call "sextortion." Sextortion is the blackmailing of people by threatening to publicly disclose sexually explicit photos of them. Finkbiner was arrested Friday. After being shown a photo of one of the boys by police, Finkbiner told authorities "he had induced or coerced the production of videos and images of so many people engaged in sexually explicit conduct that he could not readily recognize every individual." The FBI says he confessed to the Internet sexual exploitation of "at least 100 individuals."
Read full entry »On the day of last year's Super Bowl in Dallas, a human trafficking suspect told police, “There was big money to be made during the Super Bowl,” said a Dallas Morning News report quoted by Stateline.org. For Super Bowl XLVI this Sunday in Indianapolis, state officials are going out of their way to show that human trafficking won’t be tolerated. Indiana Gov. Mitch Daniels called on lawmakers to tighten the state’s law on human trafficking before the Super Bowl. An anti-trafficking law was quickly passed and signed.
Lawmakers in 20 states are debating human trafficking bills. West Virginia is working on creating its first anti-trafficking statute, while the other states are refining existing laws surrounding prostitution, in many cases moving the criminal burden away from those forced into the commercial sex trade and placing it with the traffickers. Legislators are also working to provide resources to fight trafficking by appropriating more funding for victim’s services, increasing criminal penalties for traffickers, and giving police authority to use wiretaps or to subpoena internet service providers to investigate potential child sexual exploitation.
The Denver crime ring had all the makings of a traditional street gang: A clear hierarchy, members who tattooed the group's name on their bodies, girlfriends at the ready to help cover their tracks, says the Denver Post. Rather than drugs and guns, the organization whose indictment was announced this week allegedly trafficked primarily in young girls. It's a trend that, according to experts, is growing, not just overseas or in big port cities but in towns across the United States.
While commodities such as guns and drugs are gone once you sell them, a human-trafficking victim — isolated, afraid, potentially addicted or dependent in other ways — provides an ongoing profit stream. "For people who are ruthless and don't care what they do to other human beings, it is a very attractive business proposition," said Denver lawyer T. Markus Funk, a former federal prosecutor and co-author of the recent book "Child Exploitation and Trafficking. "They're like omnivores. They're not selective." Colorado enacted an anti-human-trafficking law in 2006, but the first successful prosecution wasn't completed until last summer.
Authorities say human trafficking has become the second-biggest and second-fastest-growing criminal industry in the world, behind drug trafficking, says the Detroit Free Press. In recent years, the number of cases has skyrocketed -- from 300 in 2008 to 2,515 in 2010. Those are only the ones known. Too often, officials say, victims stay silent out of fear.
President Obama declared January National Slavery and Human Trafficking Prevention Month. Of the 2,515 cases in 2010, more than 1,000 involved children. The United Nations estimates it's a $32-billion industry, with half of the money coming from industrialized countries. Michigan cases have included children sold for sex at truck stops; servants held in captivity and forced to clean for free, and women forced into the sex industry, forfeiting their earnings. Many victims are afraid to speak out and stay in hiding. "The victims usually fear that they have nowhere to turn to, so it's a largely underreported crime," said U.S. Attorney Barbara McQuade.
Read full entry »A new report by Shared Hope International evaluates state-based efforts to eliminate the trafficking of minors in the U.S.
Read full entry »Too many states still inadvertently provide safe havens when it comes to sex trafficking — even when children on the streets bear the consequences...
Read full entry »Human trafficking is a problem but not the mammoth problem described in news reports, says sociologist Ronald Weitzer of George Washington University...
Read full entry »Memphis is considered a model nationally for its initiative to maximize prison stints for sex traffickers, U.S. Attorney Ed Stanton tells the Memphis Commercial Appeal. Stanton created a three-prosecutor Civil Rights Unit, to handle the crimes. "Human trafficking is nothing more than modern-day slavery. The victims often are some of our most vulnerable," he says.
Traffickers frequently target girls and women from poor families or those who were sexually abused, runaways, and minors in the state foster-care system. They advertise on the Internet and take the women and girls to truck stops and major sporting events. "It's a high-priority issue right now with the FBI and Department of Justice overall," said FBI agent Jeremy Baker, who oversees the public corruption/civil rights squad. "And that involves investigating and trying to make the public more aware to develop leads and better assist victims."
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For the first time in 15 years, in 2009 fear of crime overtook unemployment as the most significant problem for citizens in Latin and South America, according to a new policy brief.
Read full entry »Phone calls between inmates and attorneys at Nashville's jail are protected by the attorney-client privilege, the jail’s recording of such calls is a “serious threat” to constitutional rights, and federal prosecutors erred when they dumped hundreds of the recorded calls on 30 defense attorneys in a sex-trafficking case, says a federal judge's ruling reported by The Tennessean.
The ruling by U.S. District Judge William J. Haynes Jr. follows a controversy that erupted when the U.S. Attorney’s office turned over 142 CDs containing evidence of an alleged prostitution ring operated by the Somali Outlaws suspected of trafficking minor females between Minnesota and Nashville for sex. Haynes froze lawyers’ access to the materials when one of the defense attorneys in the case, Patrick Frogge, discovered about 300 jail calls to his law firm were included on the CDs.
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Federally funded task forces investigated 2,515 incidents of suspected human trafficking between Jan. 2008 and June 2010, says a new U.S. Bureau of Justice Statistics report.
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By Stephen Handelman
California investigative journalist and film-maker Mimi Chakarova’s chilling documentary on the seamy networks that traffic young girls from eastern Europe to the West premiered April 17.
Read full entry »“When you’re looking for poor, broken women who’ve been abused, these are fertile grounds,” said Mark Elam of the Tulsa-based Oklahomans Against Trafficking of Humans. Human trafficking victims are forced or coerced into sexual or labor exploitation. Often they or their loved ones are threatened. Some are kidnapped, beaten or tricked into situations where they’re made to do things against their will. Many of the exploited are undocumented workers. Elam said from 200,000 to 300,000 minor girls from the U.S. are drawn into the sex industry each year. Joseph Otrhalek of the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency said human trafficking is one of the fastest growing crimes in the country. “You can keep using human beings over and over repeatedly, so it’s a lucrative and nasty business,” he said.
News media reports last September reported data from a group called the Women's Funding Network asserting that the number of underage girls trafficked online "has risen exponentially in three diverse states"--Michigan, by 39.2 percent, New York, by 20.7 percent, and Minnesota, by 64.7 percent. The report is "junk science," says the Village Voice.
The numbers are guesses. The data are based merely on looking at photos on the Internet. Eric Grodsky, a sociologist at the University of Minnesota who teaches about proper research construction, says that the study is fundamentally flawed. "The method's not clean," Grodsky says. "You couldn't get this kind of thing into a peer-reviewed journal. There are just too many unanswered questions about their methodology." Ric Curtis, chairman of the anthropology department at John Jay College of Criminal Justice, who led a Justice Department-funded study on juvenile prostitution in New York City, is skeptical of the claims in the Women's Funding Network's study. "I wouldn't trust those numbers," he says. "This new study seems pretty bogus."
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