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Child Predators on Facebook! Beware!

FoxNews.com - EXCLUSIVE: Facebook's Filters Fall Short in Blocking Pedophiles

Three Chicago Men Charged in Child Prostitution Probe

Two Chicago men were arrested earlier today while a third man remains at-large, culminating a two-year joint federal/state investigation into a child prostitution ring that was centered on Chicago’s west side. The arrests were announced today by Robert D. Grant, Special Agent-in-Charge of the Chicago office of the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) and Jody P. Weis, Superintendent of the Chicago Police Department (CPD), who were joined in making this announcement by Patrick J. Fitzgerald, United States Attorney for the Northern District of Illinois and Anita Alvarez, Cook County State’s Attorney.

DATQUNN SAWYER, age 31, of Chicago, was arrested early this morning, without incident, by FBI special agents and detectives from the CPD, Vice Control Section and Special Investigations Unit, in the 5300 block of West Potomac. SAWYER was charged in a criminal complaint filed earlier this week in U.S. District Court in Chicago with one count of sexual trafficking of minors and sexual trafficking by force, fraud, and coercion, in interstate commerce, which is a felony offense.

Two other men, WAYMOND ORR, age 30, and KEVIN SHARP, age 51, both of Chicago, were also charged in connection with this investigation. Both men were charged in Cook County Circuit Court with one count each of pandering, which is a class 4 felony. SHARP was arrested this morning, without incident, while ORR remains at-large and is now the subject of a nationwide manhunt.

According to the federal complaint, SAWYER is charged with having operated a child prostitution ring from his residence and his mother’s residence, both of which are located on Chicago’s west side. The complaint alleges that SAWYER ran this operation from at least March of 2009 through August of this year. During that time, he is believed to have recruited as many as nine minor females between the ages of 13 and 17 who, at SAWYER’s behest, engaged in sexual acts for money. The complaint further alleges that SAWYER would “brand” his prostitutes with a tattoo and used violence and threats of violence to enforce his rules and regulations.

SAWYER is believed to have advertised his business through the Internet, making extensive use of Craigslist and similar online media, charging anywhere from $150 to as much as $350 for sexual services. SAWYER is alleged to have kept all of the proceeds from the sexual encounters, providing his prostitutes with only minimal subsistence. SAWYER also served as a driver for his prostitutes, shuttling them from location to location for sexual encounters, which usually took place at Chicago area motels or the customer’s residence.

When not responding to online bookings, SAWYER is also alleged to have forced his prostitutes to “work the track”, a term used to refer to girls walking the streets or standing on street corners to solicit customers for sex acts for money. Numerous locations in Chicago were used for this purpose, as well as locations on or around Cicero Avenue.

According to state prosecutors, SHARP and ORR worked for SAWYER as drivers and enforcers, transporting his girls to locations on the street and monitoring their activity to ensure they were not pocketing money they earned from their sexual encounters. It is also alleged that on occasion, SHARP or ORR would chauffer SAWYER to locations around the city so he could supervise his prostitutes.

In announcing the filing of the charges announced today, States Attorney Alvarez said the arrests signal an ongoing commitment between her office and law enforcement at both the federal and state level to combat the sex trafficking of minors. Said Ms. Alvarez “These defendants are alleged to have maintained control over vulnerable girls through violence and intimidation. Through our efforts, there are at least nine girls who are no longer being forced to engage in the horrific trade of sex trafficking.”

SAWYER appeared before Magistrate Judge Susan E. Cox, earlier yesterday, at which time he was formally charged. SAWYER was ordered held without bond, pending his next scheduled court appearance. If convicted of the charge filed against him, SAWYER faces a possible sentence of up to life in prison. SHARP is scheduled to appear in Central Bond Court tomorrow.

The female victims of this sex trafficking operation have been provided with counseling and related assistance by the FBI, Cook County State’s Attorney’s office and private social services providers.

The public is reminded that a complaint is not evidence of guilt and that all defendants in a criminal case are presumed innocent until proven guilty in a court of law.

EDITOR’S NOTE: Copies of the federal criminal complaint filed in this case are available from the Chicago FBI’s press office at (312) 829-1199. Copies of the state criminal complaint are available from the Cook County State’s Attorney’s Office at (312) 603-3423.

Source: Criminal Justice Online

Gawker.com Tries to Increase Sex Trafficking

by Amanda Kloer

When Craigslist voluntarily blocked their adult services section, the pimps, johns, and traffickers who had been using the site to buy and sell children and victims of human trafficking were, for the first time in ages, briefly lost about where to continue advertising for rape. Lucky for them, Gawker.com stepped in with a helpful guide on how to continue profiting from the sexual exploitation of children. And by sharing their guide to buying sex online with their nearly 20 million readers, Gawker is practically guaranteed to be facilitating more child rape.

Like Craigslist, the sex-for-sale websites Gawker is promoting are a mixed bag of men, women, and transgender individuals voluntarily engaged in prostitution; adults who have been forced or coerced into prostitution; and children. The latter two categories are victims of human trafficking, and online classified ads like Craigslist and the websites in Gawker's guide have played an increasingly large role in facilitating their repeated rape for profit. The demand for commercial sex, which when it outstrips willing suppliers causes human trafficking, is a complex and nuanced phenomenon. It's affected by the price and availability of commercial sex, social norms and laws around buying sex, and potential buyers' ethical views. Craigslist's adult services section and similar sites have provided a space where buying sex is easy, normalized, and anonymous, effectively increasing the demand without increasing the supply. Hence, the human trafficking on online classified sites like Craigslist.

If Craigslist (or any other online classifieds site) wasn't a website, but an abandoned warehouse at the edge of town where children as young as 11 were being bought and sold for sex by dozens of men a night, no one would argue that warehouse's closing impinged upon "freedom of speech." No one would claim, as Danah Boyd on the Huffington Post recently did, that the child sex warehouse should continue to operate since "a one-stop-shop is more helpful for law enforcement." And if the pimps and traffickers were locked out of it one night, no one would publish a guide directing them to other abandoned warehouses they can turn into child sex factories. A website and a warehouse may not be exactly the same, but with this guide Gawker is standing on a virtual street corner directing would-be child traffickers and abusers to new meeting points. And the saddest part is that they really don't seem to understand that's what they're doing.

Gawker and many tech blogs are trying to cast Craigslist's voluntary blocking of their adult services section as forced "censorship" of the site. They're trying to make this a conversation about freedom of speech, not sexual exploitation. They're trying to paint Craigslist as a poor scapegoat, whose only sin was to be the largest and most famous of many websites who exploit children (which they were). It's not true. The campaign to ask Craigslist to stop facilitating the exploitation of human trafficking victims on their site was just one small part of a larger plan anti-trafficking groups are implementing to fight the trade in humans. And Change.org has been running a similar campaign against Backpage.com -- prior to Craigslist's voluntary block. Without Craigslist's adult services section operating, there will now be one less website increasing demand for commercial sex and one less place for child rapists to find victims on the Internet.

Unless, of course, Gawker continues to try and fill that void.

Photo credit: katayun

Not Forsaken: Reaching Sex Slaves in Mid-America

By Charlene Israel
CBN News Reporter
 
KANSAS CITY, Mo. -- Kristy Childs of Kansas City, Mo. has painful memories of her childhood.

"I was born in a smaller town in Missouri and left home, started running away. Very abusive stepfather," she told CBN News.

That abuse forced Childs to leave home when she was only 12 years old. She started working on the streets.

"I started hitchhiking and my prostitution started there with the truck drivers," she explained. "I was doing what I had to do to survive."

After 24 years of drugs and the street life, Childs wanted out. But she knew breaking away from pimps and drug pushers would be risky. Her freedom came in an unexpected way.

"I went to abort my son twice and couldn't go through with it," Childs recalled. "I was threatening miscarriage. I was bleeding and I thought 'Thank you, God. This is my answer. I'm not going to have to have an abortion because I had had abortions - many of them - and was made to have several abortions."

"Ended up going to Truman Medical Center at the emergency room where they were going to do a DNC, but before they did that they wanted to see if there was a heart beat," she continued. "The moment I heard my son's heartbeat, God just spoke into my spirit and told me 'I'm going to bring you out. Have your baby and I'm going to bring you out.'"

Raising Awareness

Today, Childs works to rescue other women and girls who are trapped in the commercial sex trade through her organization Veronica's Voice. It is named for a friend of Childs who was killed on the streets.

"A lot of them are scared," she said. "Some come through the support system; some have bad attitudes. I deal with it all across the board. They're dealing with post traumatic stress. They're full of anger because they're full of pain. And we work with that."

Each year more than 4,000 American children fall victim to commercial sexual exploitation in Missouri. Nearly 1,700 are victimized in the Kansas City metropolitan area.

Carrie Rossetti is with the Kansas City Coalition Against Human Trafficking, a group of organizations, including many faith-based programs. The coalition helps to raise awareness about the sex trafficking issue, provides outreach to rescued victims, and offers prayer support.

"We have learned that, hey, guess what? It's not just here, here, here, there. It's actually right in front of us in our communities, happening right now," Rossetti explained.

Rossetti told CBN News that Kansas City's easy access to highways and the large amount of commercial trade the pass through the state make it a hub for traffickers.

"So Kansas City, Mo., Kansas City, Kan. and Overland Park, Kan. are a great place to do international and national trade and not just in the trade of commercial products, but also in the trade of human beings," she said.

People You'd Least Suspect

Rosetti said most people would be surprised to discover who the sex traffickers really are.

"It is not just the sleezy people we think on the streets that this is happening. Traffickers can be doctors, and have been doctors, lawyers, dentists, social workers, teachers. There's really no end to the person that would be a candidate, so to speak, to be a trafficker."

Like Childs, many of the girls working in the sex trafficking industry come from abusive homes.

"They're coming from the foster care system. They are coming to us as runaways, children with no places to go. Children who have been victimized - sexual molestation, abuse, neglect," Rosetti explained.

Experts say the majority of the girls rescued from the streets will need long term recovery.

Exposing a Toxic Culture

Ministries in the Kansas City area are stepping up to answer the call.

"I got to be part of a two-some who provided chaplaincy services for one victim who wanted somebody to pray with after she got brought in," said Wendy Andrews, who serves on the leadership team for The Kansas City Boiler Room.

"There's a holistic approach that needs to be provided for these clients who come in on these cases," Andrews explained. "And I think that it's absolutely essential that a spiritual component of ministry or healing in the Holy Spirit is going to be necessary for their full recovery and health."

Exodus Cry is an international anti-trafficking organization committed to ending human trafficking and modern day slavery, They are headquartered in Kansas City, Mo., and recently opened a shelter for rescued victims of human trafficking.

The group is also working on a documentary that exposes the undercurrent of injustice beneath the surface of sex tourism. Benjamin Nolot, the group's founder, explained why they made the film.

"The issue of human trafficking is just exploding," he said. "Part of our goal in the documentary is to expose the toxic culture that we live in."

"We don't just want to say, 'Hey, look. Isn't this awful?'" Nolot continued. "We want to ask questions to get people thinking and really bring abut a grassroots movement, a purity revolution where we would literally raise up a 'see-no-evil' generation, a generation that says I don't want to see it."

One of the Lucky Ones

Meanwhile, Childs admits she is one of the lucky ones. She is working hard to help others break free from a life of sex trafficking.

"The girls that are making it out," she says, "They are miracles in every way."

Human traffickers supply nail-salon workers

By Alan Johnson
THE COLUMBUS DISPATCH

What is described as a multimillion-dollar human-trafficking scheme is operating out of nail salons in Ohio, with immigrants from Southeast Asia - many of them illegal - being forced to work as "indentured servants" in exchange for passage to the U.S.

Kevin L. Miller, executive director of the Ohio Board of Cosmetology, said he expects "indictments and arrests" statewide in the next 60 days or so. State and local law-enforcement agencies, the FBI, Homeland Security and U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement are investigating, he said.

The legal problems involve human trafficking, illegal immigration, identify theft, fraudulent license testing and potential national security threats, said Miller, who added that he could not provide specifics because of the ongoing investigation.

The matter came up at yesterday's meeting of the Ohio Trafficking in Persons Study Commission, convened by Attorney General Richard Cordray.

"It's a huge concern in most jurisdictions around the state of Ohio," Cordray said.

The cosmetology board annually licenses 145,000 people who work in nail shops, hair salons and tanning parlors.

"We're talking just in the state of Ohio about thousands of people who have fraudulently got their licenses," Miller said.

He told the commission that immigrants from Vietnam, Laos, Cambodia and other Southeast Asian countries, often brought illegally to the U.S. for a price, are given "laundered" false identities, including fake high-school diplomas, driver's licenses, immigration papers and other documents.

The employee then becomes an "indentured servant," working for the employer for two years for little or sometimes no money to pay off their debt. Often, the employees are required to live on the premises. The agency documented one case where 16 licensees lived at the same address.

Neither Miller nor Cordray commented specifically about homeland security issues. However, in his report to the commission, Miller referred by means of background to Najibullah Zazi, an al-Qaida operative who plotted to blow up New York subway stations using chemicals found in nail polish remover and hair dye.

The problem of illegal immigrants working in nail salons has cropped up in the past in Ohio and nationwide, but little has been done.

"It's easy to hide in plain sight," Miller said. "If they can get a driver's license, an address, a place where they went to school, they're all set."

The human-trafficking commission also discussed the need for more training for Ohio law-enforcement agencies. A majority of agencies which responded to a 2009 survey doubted their ability to recognize signs of human and labor trafficking; all wanted more training.

Lt. Matt Warren, head of the State Highway Patrol's criminal intelligence unit and a member of the human-trafficking panel, cited two cases in 2009 when training paid off in rescuing underage girls who were likely to become trafficking victims.

He said a trooper stopped an Idaho trucker for speeding near Athens last year and was suspicious about the 17-year-old girl in the passenger seat. Trained to recognize the signs of human trafficking, the trooper began asking questions and found the trucker was a sex offender who met the mentally challenged teenager online, picked her up in Marion and was transporting her when he was stopped for the traffic violation.

Similarly, a seemingly routine stop rescued a 17-year-old Detroit girl who was being trafficked at truck stops in the Lima and Dayton areas.

Source

15 Men Arrested in Undercover Child Sex Sting in Florida

By Diane Macedo
Published August 16, 2010| FoxNews.com

Fifteen men allegedly looking to have sex with underage girls were arrested in an undercover sting in Florida over the weekend, law enforcement authorities said.

The suspects were arrested between Thursday and Sunday and charged with traveling to meet a minor for sex or related crimes, during an extensive undercover operation conducted by the Polk County Sheriff’s Office, along with state and federal officials.

Police said 12 of the 15 suspects responded to ads authorities posted on Craigslist that shared the common theme “mom or dad seeking guidance for my daughter” for girls between 10 and 14 years old. The other three used chat rooms.

After the suspects answered the ads, they engaged undercover detectives in emails, instant messages and telephone calls, during which time the detectives told the suspects to come to an undercover location in Polk County, the Polk County Sheriff’s Office said.

“These men expressed specific desires to prey upon who they believed were innocent children,” Polk County Sheriff Grady Judd said in a press conference Monday.

One of the suspects, Brandon Cashen, 31, asked a detective if she had a daughter younger than the one advertised, and when she said she had an 8-year-old, expressed a desire to have sex with the younger daughter, the sheriff's office said.

“Some of the men even sent pornographic images of themselves to the detectives and made very specific requests about what they wanted these children to do to them,” Judd said.

When the suspects arrived at the undercover location, they were met not by children wearing lingerie, but by undercover agents in vests, who placed the men under arrest.

"It's still a shock to me …when we have a predator show up with condoms in one hand and candy bars in the other hand," Judd said at a press conference Monday afternoon.

Judd said one of the agents was shocked to discover that a suspect, 33-year-old Tommy Dupre, had been his son's former baseball coach.

"This gentleman coached youth sports baseball in Lakeland. Our undercover sergeant recognized him because he coached his son 8-10 years of age," Judd said.

The suspects range in age from 18 to 67. Six of the suspects, including Cashen, are married, and one has six children of his own and one on the way, Judd said.

Cashen’s wife was shocked to hear the news of her husband’s arrest, Judd said, and told police, “He can rot in hell before I bond him out of jail.”

The wife of Kevin Scott, 35, had similar sentiments, telling police, “I never want to see him again, I don’t want my children see him again, I hope he rots in jail for life.”

Judd said the oldest suspect, Donald Knuckles, said he'd waited his entire life for the opportunity to have sex with a 14-year-old girl and her mother.

Another, Gregory Alan Archambault II, 32, "bragged that when he was 16 he had sex with an 8-year-old girl, and when he was 21 he had sex with a 12-year-old girl," Judd said.

Authorities are now investigating "to see if we can determine when they may have victimized other children along the way … to make sure we charge them with everything we can charge them with," Judd said.

Members of the Tenth Judicial Circuit State Attorney’s Office, State Attorney Jerry Hill, Attorney General Bill McCollum’s Office, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement and the Florida Department of Law Enforcement, the Citrus County Sheriff’s Office, the Lakeland Police Department and the Plant City Police Department also contributed to the operation.

Source

A story of modern slavery in Utah

By Lee Davidson
Deseret News

SALT LAKE CITY — Chan, a short man but strong from a lifetime of labor in rice fields, tells how he blundered into a trap when he left Thailand to work abroad. In fact, the U.S. government officially calls him, in diplomatic parlance, a victim of "human trafficking."

Chan is more blunt. "We were slaves," he says about himself and scores of fellow Thai workers.

He says their employer controlled their movement. If they failed to work long and hard, the employer could ensure that their families back home would lose everything. Housing lacked enough heat in freezing winters and air conditioning in scorching summers. They repeatedly went hungry and even trapped wild birds to subsist.

That did not occur in Sudan, Burma or some other infamous Third World slavery abyss.

It happened in Utah — from 2005 to 2007 for a group of workers from Thailand who eventually managed to get help, freedom and a new life in America.

With their experiences as a starting base, the U.S. Department of Justice is investigating what could become the largest human trafficking case in U.S. history.

At the center of scrutiny is Global Horizons, a Los Angeles-based company that recruited people in Thailand for farm work in the United States. It eventually placed some of them with two Utah companies: Circle Four pig farms in Milford and at Delta Eggs chicken farms in Delta.

Chan, Bon, Tin and Rong — all pseudonyms because they and their lawyer fear extended families in Thailand could be targeted because they are talking to the press — look like Americans now.

The skinny men wear polo shirts or T-shirts, blue jeans and sneakers. Their haircuts are American-style. They grin as they talk about America and its opportunities, sounding like politicians on the Fourth of July. One of their T-shirts even says "American Tradition" and has an eagle on it. Tin just came from a job interview in the land of opportunity.

They share their stories while seated around a polished conference table at Utah Legal Services, a nonprofit that gives legal aid to the poor. They say that agency and attorney Alex McBean rescued them and won them "T visas" from the Department of Homeland Security as victims of human trafficking. Those visas allow them to stay in America and seek permanent residency.

The four tell how they were conned into what sounded like a good deal to work in America, only to land in modern slavery in Utah. They became victims of human trafficking even though each had worked abroad previously without problems on farms and in factories in such countries as Korea, Taiwan, Japan, Singapore and Israel.

(parts removed)

The workers say they arrived legally in America at different times in 2004 and 2005 with H-2A visas for agricultural work. Such visas are good only as long as workers remain with the employer that obtained them, which in this case was Global Horizons. If workers tried to leave Global, they would lose their legal status.

Workers were sent to farms nationwide and at first were not in Utah (where their slavery story later would worsen and then end).

(parts removed)

Chan added, "They did not allow us to go outside and get to know anyone. And they did not allow outsiders to come into the premises. It made it hard for us to live in that confinement." They didn't have a lot of time to socialize anyway, working 10 hours a day, six days a week — not counting long commute times.

While no guards kept them in their trailers, workers say that Global Horizons supervisors constantly warned that if they broke the rules, they would be sent home — and their families would be ruined.

(parts removed)

The Thais in Utah may be just the tip of the iceberg of human trafficking. Between 2001 and 2008, the Justice Department convicted 515 people on human trafficking charges. Last year, it convicted another 47.

The federal government last year issued 313 "T visas" to foreigners considered victims of human trafficking in America and another 273 visas to members of their families. Also, 299 potential victim-witnesses were granted continued presence in the country while awaiting final visa decisions.

A report this summer by the State Department acknowledged to the world that America has a problem with human trafficking, "specifically forced labor, debt bondage and forced prostitution."

It describes some problems much the same way as do the Thai workers in Utah.

"In some human trafficking cases, workers are victims of fraudulent recruitment practices and have incurred large debts for promised employment in the United States, which makes them susceptible to debt bondage and involuntary servitude," the report said.

It adds, "Trafficking cases also involve passport confiscation, nonpayment or limited payment of wages, restriction of movement, isolation from the community, and physical and sexual abuse as a means of keeping victims in compelled service."

See the entire article here.