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Two runaway teenage girls told police that a St. Paul family kidnapped them and forced them into prostitution, drugging them and pistol-whipping them when they resisted, according to court documents. Police arrested five people when they raided a home to rescue one of the girls. A mother and her two sons have been charged. Four other children ages 2 to 10 who lived at the home were put in protective custody, said police spokesman Pete Crum. "There are details in this case that are very disturbing," he said. "I think the word torture would be valid." The teenagers told...

Where would sex trafficking and prostitution be without a john willing to purchase another human being for sex? We normally approach the topic of sex trafficking from the victim’s perspective, because the horrors that these tortured women and children endure hour upon hour, day after day, must end. The more we raise awareness about this issue and enact programs to rescue victims, the sooner they have a chance at a renewed life. But in this article, we will look at the problem from a different angle: the demand side. Most people who pay for commercial sex acts are men....

SAN FRANCISCO (AP) - Four Chinese citizens pleaded guilty Wednesday to federal charges related to running an underground network that sold Asian women for sex out of Bay Area brothels. The four entered their pleas in U.S. District Court to charges including conspiracy to harbor aliens, money laundering and tax evasion. Prosecutors said they led a $700,000 enterprise that transported Taiwanese, mainland Chinese and Korean women to the United States to sell them for sex in 10 residential brothels in San Jose, Santa Clara, Sunnyvale and San Mateo. Xiao Feng Shen, 35; Jia Jing Chu, 34; Yan Song, 42; and...

Page 1 EQUALITY NOW New York: 250 West 57 Street, #1527, New York, NY 10107, USA ▪ Tel:+1 212-586-0906 • Fax:+1 212-586-1611 • Email: info@equalitynow.org London: 6 Buckingham Street, London WC2N 6BU, UK • Phone:+44 (0) 20-7839-5456 • Fax:+44 (0) 20-7839-4012 • Email: ukinfo@equalitynow.org Nairobi: PO Box 2018 KNH 00202, Nairobi, Kenya • Tel: +254 20-2719-832 • Fax: +254 20-2719-868 • Email: equalitynow@kenyaweb.com Sex Tourism: Addressing the Demand for Trafficking Testimony by Jessica Neuwirth, President of Equality Now Thank you for this opportunity to testify before you, and thank you for your interest in and support for efforts to...

Feds bust girl-smuggling ring in Jersey By LEO STANDORADAILY NEWS STAFF WRITER An international ring smuggled girls as young as 14 into the U.S. from Honduras and forced them to work as virtual slaves in New Jersey bars - and endure brutal beatings if they protested, authorities said yesterday. Some of the girls were raped by smugglers and those who became pregnant were forced to take abortion drugs so they could stay on the job, prosecutors said. "This was inhumane and sadistic treatment of young women who were kept as virtual slaves," said Newark U.S. Attorney Christopher Christie. "These are...

Warning: This article contains graphic descriptions that may be difficult for some readers. A crowd of people gathered on Capitol Hill last Thursday to hear experts* in obscenity law and sexual crimes speak in recognition of Victims of Pornography Month. What they said in that room should be heard by every American. (It just so happens that you can download and listen to the presentations, including one by CWA’s chief counsel, Jan LaRue, on our Web site by clicking here.) First, if you aren’t convinced yet that we, as a society, should crack down on pornography, consider some of the...

NEWARK, N.J. -- Dozens of Honduran women and girls were smuggled into the United States and forced to work at a bar to earn freedom from the traffickers, federal authorities charged. The women told agents they had expected to work as waitresses in restaurants, but were ordered to drink and dance with men at the El Paisano Bar and Night Club in Union City. One woman told agents her family had paid $5,000 in Honduras to have her smuggled, but "after she got to the United States, she was told that she owed another $15,000 smuggling fee," according to documents...

“For sale or rent: beautiful girls, 7 and 8 years old. Trained to please.” There are no such overt signs in the villages of northern Thailand, but word of mouth advertising brings plenty of ‘customers.’ Selling his young daughter into prostitution can earn a man enough money to build a house and support himself and his family the rest of their lives. To Shelbyville’s Ted and Ann Lewis, parents of two daughters, such actions are incomprehensible. They, the Rev. Bryan Nerren and others from Bedford and nearby counties have stepped up to do something about it. That “something” is helping...

Poipet, Cambodia — After I purchased Srey Mom from her brothel for $203 a year ago and brought her back to her village, the joy was overwhelming. Her parents and siblings had assumed she was dead, and they shrieked and hugged and cried. I had doubts about the other sex slave I had purchased, Srey Neth, whom I wrote about on Wednesday - and who in fact is thriving and is now preparing to become a hairdresser. But I was pretty sure that Srey Mom would make it. So I'm devastated to say that a year later, I found Srey...

BATTAMBANG, Cambodia A year ago, a pimp handed me a quivering teenage girl. Her name was Srey Neth, and she was one of the hundreds of thousands of teenagers who are enslaved by the sex trafficking industry worldwide. Then I did something dreadfully unjournalistic: I bought her. I purchased Srey Neth for $150 and another teenager, Srey Mom, for $203, receiving receipts from the brothel owners. As readers may remember, I then freed the girls and took them back to their villages. Now I've come back to find out how they coped with freedom. At first, it turns out, everything...

PHNOM PENH, Cambodia Sex trafficking at its worst is the slavery of the 21st century, yet it has become one of the world's growth industries. To understand how brazen it is, step up to the second floor of the Chai Hour II Hotel here in the Cambodian capital. It's like an aquarium: beyond a glass wall are dozens of teenage girls in skimpy white outfits, each with a number. The customer orders a girl by number, and the manager delivers her a moment later to a private room. A Cambodian police report in my hands describes the Chai Hour II...

An Evil We Can't Ignore - Human Trafficking President Bush recently made a speech that didn't receive much attention. It wasn't about one of those issues dear to the media's heart, like the war in Iraq, so it slipped under their radar. Only a handful of articles were written about the speech, and it received very little TV coverage. I think it deserves much more attention than that, because the subject of that speech is one of the biggest moral issues of our time. Addressing the National Training Conference on Human Trafficking in Tampa, Florida, the president talked about steps...

Asian Sex-Slave Ring Busted in Vermont Friday, July 23, 2004 ESSEX JUNCTION, Vt. — The regulars at the Park Place Tavern weren't surprised when police raided what is being described as an Asian brothel in a small house across their shared driveway. But they were surprised when news reports linked the now-closed Tokyo Spa (search) and two other health clubs in the area to what police say is an international prostitution ring that smuggled Asian women into the United States and made them sex slaves. "We joked about it here all the time," said Sandy Maloney, who lives in an...

When Alex Acosta talks about the Justice Department's battle against modern-day slavery, the passion in his voice comes from one stark image in his memory. It's a photograph he saw a few years ago of a tiny room where a 14-year-old Mexican girl was held captive: just three walls, a curtain and a twin bed. The girl slept there, lived there and was forced to have sex there with man after man, up to 30 a day, he said. There was only one personal item in the room: a teddy bear, the last remnant of her lost childhood. ''This is...

May 06, 2004, 8:34 a.m.Not UnfamiliarImages of sexual abuse and humiliation in Abu Ghraib. http://www.nationalreview.com/comment/hughes200405060834.aspBy Donna M. HughesThe photographs of sexual abuse and humiliation of Iraqi prisoners in Abu Ghraib prison are shocking and disgusting. They are also familiar. I have seen images like these before in other places and contexts.The Taguba Report on the abuses at Abu Ghraib prison found that "numerous incidents of sadistic, blatant, and wanton criminal abuses were inflicted on several detainees." Credible evidence was found that Iraqi detainees had been subjected to acts such as: Videotaping and photographing naked male and female detainees; Forcibly arranging...

<p>May 8, 2004 -- WASHINGTON - A senior aide to renegade Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr offered Iraqis a chilling new incentive to wage war yesterday: anyone who captures a female British soldier can keep her as a slave. The shocking offer was made by Sheik Abdul-Sattar al-Bahadi, Sadr's chief representative in southern Iraq, at a fiery sermon at the al-Hawi mosque in relatively tranquil Basra.</p>

Letters The Girls Next Door Peter Landesman's article (Jan. 25) shines a spotlight on the very real practice of human trafficking. While portraying the cruel and dominating world from which so many young women find no escape, the article failed to mention this administration's aggressive three-year initiative that has made substantial progress in combating this scourge. Stamping out this vile trade has ranked among the Bush administration's top priorities since its earliest days. In 2001, the Justice Department announced a new initiative to battle human trafficking, built on the pillars of prosecution, enhanced outreach and law-enforcement cooperation. Three years...

NYT Magazine January 25, 2004 The Girls Next Door By PETER LANDESMAN The house at 1212 1/2 West Front Street in Plainfield, N.J., is a conventional midcentury home with slate-gray siding, white trim and Victorian lines. When I stood in front of it on a breezy day in October, I could hear the cries of children from the playground of an elementary school around the corner. American flags fluttered from porches and windows. The neighborhood is a leafy, middle-class Anytown. The house is set back off the street, near two convenience stores and a gift shop. On the door of...

Judge rejects plea for leniency and calls retired handyman a sick coward who should die in prison for his reign of terror SYRACUSE (New York) - A judge sentenced a retired handyman to 18 years to life in prison on Tuesday, calling the defendant 'a sick coward' and 'an evil man' for keeping five women as sex slaves in a concrete bunker. John Jamelske, 68, pleaded guilty last month to kidnapping five women and girls and holding them from 1988 till he was caught this year at his home in DeWitt, a Syracuse suburb. None of the victims appeared in...

Two flights are due into Montego Bay Airport, one from Toronto, the other from London. Clinton waits on the beach for the new arrivals, hoping that one of them will bring him good fortune. "I look for the milk bottles," he says, explaining how ultra-white skin is a giveaway, "the ones who've just arrived. Milk bottles that need filling ..." Negril, with its 11-kilometre stretch of pristine sand and turquoise sea, attracts the majority of Jamaica's 1.3 million tourists every year, primarily from the United States, Canada and Europe. It is known as a "swinging" resort. Many white Western women...