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Excerpted:

HUMAN TRAFFICKING (SLAVERY) - Legislative Update - (up to 900,000 victims each yr; mostly children)

Approximately 800,000 to 900,000 victims are annually trafficked across international borders world wide. Victims include homeless and runaway children, children "sold" to traffickers by their parents, as well as young women who mistakenly believe they are being taken to another country to work at a legitimate job.

Between 18,000 and 20,000 of those victims are trafficked into the United States and half of those are usually children. Victims are subjected to forced prostitution, sexual exploitation and/or forced labor.

from tomflocco.com:

While the tragic death of Natalee Holloway--missing in Aruba since May 30--tops news headlines, congressional response to kidnapped 23 year-old Amy Lynn Bradley’s now seven-year plight since 1998 indicates little is being done to prevent global sex-trafficking of vacationing females--taken from cruise ships, island hotels and bars for sale to South American brothels as sex slaves.

The presence of numerous unregulated and unrestricted "gypsy boats" sailing in and out of Aruba and Curacao’s ports to market produce and "other commodities" from the South American mainland [some 19 miles to Colombia and 35 miles to Venezuela] provides the means to abduct women--even as high-speed Colombian cigarette boat drug-runners also ply Caribbean island waters and seaports heavily frequented by American families.

It used to be different--before the age of international political correctness and off-shore, bank-laundered narcotics currency for congressional campaigns, derived from ill-gotten gains of lawless Caribbean and South American drug factories and bordellos.

In 1821 U.S. Marines went in and cleared out the Caribbean of pirates regardless of which country’s waters and islands were sought as refuge after plundering American shipping. The Marine hymn extols exploits "from the halls of Montezuma to the shores of Tripoli," where campaigns to attack and defeat the Barbary pirates of North Africa proved the United States would go anywhere to protect its citizens.

Aruba’s Carlos and Charlie’s bar linked the two missing American women

Iva Bradley, mother of Chesterfield, Virginia’s Amy Lynn Bradley--missing from the Royal Caribbean Rhapsody of the Seas cruise ship off Aruba since 1998 and last seen in a house of prostitution by a U.S. Navy petty officer on the nearby island of Curacao in 1999--was interviewed Thursday by MSNBC host Dan Abrams.

"We came to find out that the same bar [Aruba’s Carlos and Charlie’s] that they [three men on her ship] wanted to take Amy to was the same bar as Natalee Holloway was in." [MSNBC, 6-9-2005]

Curiously, the Bradley-Holloway link is seldom mentioned, save for the Abrams Report and a CNN report at 5:45 pm Eastern on Friday which quoted the Bradley family as believing their daughter Amy is "being held in servitude" somewhere in the Caribbean.

CNN reporter Brian Todd told host Suzanne Malveaux that the Bradleys said "crew members on the ship [Royal Caribbean’s Rhapsody of the Seas] were hitting on Amy and wanted to take her to a bar on Aruba." [CNN Wolf Blitzer Reports, 6-10-2005]

Mrs. Bradley added, "the Naval person who went to a brothel on Curacao [1999] said that Amy asked him for help, told him her name. She said, ‘my name is Amy Bradley. Please help me.’ He didn’t know she was missing. He told her there was a naval ship five minutes down the dock that she could leave."

"But she said, ‘No, you don’t understand. Please help me. My name is Amy Bradley,’ " said Iva Bradley. At that time, two men in the bar removed her, told her to move and go upstairs, according to the U.S. Naval officer.

Two Canadians also told Bradley they saw her daughter Amy on the beach in 1998, described her tattoos and her demeanor but did not know she was missing.

Ron Bradley told MSNBC, "...we’ve maintained from the beginning that someone saw Amy and took Amy from that ship in some way [when it was docking in Curacao], there are several ways...by boat, through cargo, the cargo doors that open and close."

According to the Bradleys who alleged cruise ship negligence by Royal Caribbean International, the vessel’s personnel opened the gangway, allowed passengers to go ashore despite their pleas to wait, and refused to use the ship’s public address system to aid the frantic family during the critical first minutes of the search for their daughter "because it would disturb the passengers."

Originally, Debra Opri [Michael Jackson family lawyer] told CNN attorney-host Nancy Grace on Wednesday, "My gut is telling me this [Holloway case] is part of a transport, a prostitution business with the country of Columbia. I hear too many stories. I know too many people who have gone down to Aruba." [CNN-Headline News, 6-8-2005]

"There are many instances where women will go down there, that age, that type, blonde-haired, and they are drugged and transported to Colombia, period, bottom line," she said.

Opri continued, "...it may lead to, in fact, Aruba being a way station for some sort of activity in drugs or prostitution movement to 17 miles away to a country call Colombia," such was the thinking by informed attorneys who are aware of sex-trafficking in the Caribbean.

Regarding Amy Bradley’s case, the petty officer was not supposed to be in the restricted brothel area, so he did not report the incident, waiting some time until contacting Ron and Iva Bradley to apologize after seeing Amy’s photo and story in a major magazine.

"I have seen your daughter. I have seen her. I have talked to her. And she was in trouble, and I apologize for not doing anything about that," the retired officer said.

The FBI has not called Bradleys since the initial search for their daughter, offering an ominous warning to American taxpayers expecting assistance from federal officials.

Iva Bradley told Abrams that "Venezuela, on a good day from Curacao or Aruba, is in sight. We have been told by investigators, there are boats incoming. They come and go freely...there is a tremendous drug trade...so we’re putting our families and our children in danger, and because they [United States government] say they have no jurisdiction, it hurt us terribly, and it hurt Amy. And we’re not gotten the help that we need."

Night-time beacon for drug and sex-trafficking boats?

According to Fox News reporter Rick Leventhal, three young men recently arrested by Aruba authorities on suspicion of kidnapping and/or the murder of Natalee Holloway said they drove the Alabama high school teen on a 15 minute ride to Aruba’s well-known Arashi Beach next to the California lighthouse at the north-end of the 19.6 mile island. While the Holloway death confession has not yet been released, this beach is likely the site of the crime.

Worldwide news reports say bartenders from Cancun to Aruba to Jamaica regularly spike the drinks of unsuspecting women with drugs such as Rohypnol (roofies) and GHB (Liquid Extacy) for the purpose of "date-rape," but reports also indicate the increasing use of narcotics to place women in a submissive state to move them into position for transportation to Caribbean island and South American brothels for indefinite periods for use as drugged prostitutes in known white slavery rings.

Leventhal said last night that the hotel manager of Aruba’s Holiday Inn-Sunspree Resort and Casino where Holloway stayed reported that all hotel security cameras were working properly.

But they do not verify the claims of the three men who said they returned Holloway to the Holiday Inn after driving her to the California lighthouse where one of the three said he "made out" and "was intimate" with Holloway while she was "intoxicated," according to Leventhal.

The evidence indicates Holloway never made it back to the Holiday Inn before failing to show up for her morning flight; moreover, the Alabama teen was unable to refute testimony destroying her moral reputation as a victim.

Other news reports also said Holloway was intoxicated; however, date-rape drugs are known to exhibit symptoms where individuals seem extremely intoxicated after consuming only a small amount of alcohol--more than the amount would warrant.

American FBI agents watched as Aruba authorities allowed the three men from wealthy and influential families to go free for 10 days without impounding their car and knowing that they were the last individuals to see Natalee Holloway alive.

Late at night, Aruba’s California lighthouse could easily serve as a beacon to guide boats to the deserted beach to quickly drop off and pick up narcotics--but news show guests intimated that submissive females, possibly drugged by bartenders or other patrons at a popular club like Carlos and Charlie’s could be victims of sexual transport.

"Spotters," paid to watch for attractive women on vacation as potential sex slaves could guide them into a bar to be drugged and then out into a waiting car and boat for transportation to mainland or island bordellos.

It is likely that Aruba authorities and FBI agents have also inspected phone records, bank accounts, evidence of narcotics residue on cash, wire-taps and area tourism crime records involving the owners and employees of Carlos and Charlie’s or the incarcerated men.

Natalee Holloway’s tragic and untimely death will undoubtedly serve as a warning to parents who allow their inexperienced young people to travel outside the country; however, evidence indicates that Amy Bradley is a victim of sex slavery in the Caribbean--perhaps as tragic as that which befell Natalee Holloway, but Ron and Iva Bradley's daughter can still come home if they can only find her.

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It is truly a jungle out there.

6 posted on 06/11/2005 8:05:43 PM MDT by lodwick

http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1421182/posts