Free Republic

When Susana Trimarco's daughter Marita Veron was 23, she vanished from their hometown in Argentina, a suspected victim of a human trafficking and prostitution ring with links throughout Latin America and Europe. Marita Veron, who is missing, hugs her daughter Micaela. Police believe Marita was forced into sexual slavery. 1 of 3 Trimarco, 54, has spent the last 6 ½ years searching for her daughter, often putting herself at risk. While chasing down leads on Marita's whereabouts, she's entered into dark and dangerous brothels and confronted pimps and politicians who, she says, are complicit in her daughter's disappearance. She has...

LOS ANGELES - Nine Guatemalans were indicted for their roles in an alleged sex trafficking ring that lured young women to the United States with promises of good jobs and then forced them into prostitution, according to federal court records. ADVERTISEMENT Four of the defendants pleaded not guilty in January to sex trafficking charges in the case. A superseding indictment, unsealed Thursday, includes more serious allegations that five of the 12 victims were minors. According to the new 50-count indictment, the defendants at times sold Guatemalan women and girls to one another like slaves and allegedly brought the victims to...

A Nevada man who'd brought two teenagers across state lines to work as prostitutes in Oakland, San Francisco, Sacramento and Los Angeles has been sentenced to life in federal prison without parole, prosecutors said. Juan Rico Doss, 38, of Reno, Nev., was sentenced Monday by a federal judge in Riverside. A federal jury convicted Doss on June 26, 2006, of two counts of sex trafficking of children, three counts of transporting minors into prostitution, one count of conspiracy, and two counts of witness tampering. Prosecutors said the trial evidence showed that in May 2005, Doss conspired with his wife, Jacquay...

As criminal gangs run amuck in Iraq, hundreds of girls have gone missing. Are they being sold for sex? ___ The man on the phone with the 14-year-old Iraqi girl called himself Sa'ad. He was calling long distance from Dubai and telling her wonderful things about the place. He was also about to buy her. Safah, the teenager, was well aware of the impending transaction. In the weeks after she was kidnapped and imprisoned in a dark house in Baghdad's middle-class Karada district, Safah heard her captors haggling with Sa'ad over her price. It was finally settled at $10,000. Staring...

International Sex Trafficking Is a Well-Known Problem, But It Happens Here as Well Feb. 9, 2006 — - Fifteen-year-old "Debbie" is the middle child in a close-knit Air Force family from suburban Phoenix, and a straight-A student -- the last person most of us would expect to be forced into the seamy world of sex trafficking. But Debbie, which is not her real name, is one of thousands of young American girls who authorities say have been abducted or lured from their normal lives and made into sex slaves. While many Americans have heard of human trafficking in other parts...

WASHINGTON -- Prostitution rings from New York to Hawaii forced more than 30 children as young as 12 to have sex at truck stops, hotels and brothels, Attorney General Alberto Gonzales said Friday, announcing a government crackdown. Nineteen people have been arrested among 31 who have been indicted for sexual trafficking in children, taking minors across state lines for prostitution and other crimes, Gonzales said. The indictments, in Michigan, New Jersey and Pennsylvania, target the purported operators of four child prostitution rings. Some of the children had been reported missing or had run away because they had been abused at...

The new Government of Albania has improved the legal framework necessary to reduce the flow of trafficked children, but it must develop a national child protection system aimed at combating the poverty that drives exploitation, a United Nations human rights expert said after completing his visit to the Balkan country yesterday. Want, lack of opportunities and social services, stigmatized minorities, discrimination against women, and an inadequate educational system are at the root of the scourge, the Special Rapporteur on the sale of children, child prostitution and child pornography of the UN Commission on Human Rights, Juan Miguel Petit said. “This...

“Slave traffickers around the world have rediscovered how profitable it is to buy and sell people. Women are lured into modern-day slavery, hoping for a better life. They could all be your sister, or your best friend, or . . . your daughter. . . . Modern slavery exists only because we choose to ignore it.” Now, that probably sounds to you like a quote from Ambassador Miller, who is the director of the State Department’s Office to Monitor and Combat Trafficking in Persons—but he is not the one who said it. Oscar-winning actress Mira Sorvino did. This isn’t another...

Ministry seeks to rescue potential victims of sex trafficking By Craig Bird Baptist Child & Family Services CHISINAU, Moldova--Homeless teenaged girls vulnerable to victimization by the international sex slave trade are the focus of a new ministry of Children's Emergency Relief International. The Chosen for Life Project in Moldova aims to make a difference in the lives of teenage girls who are too old for the state orphanage system and are left homeless, said Steve Davis, executive director of Children's Emergency Relief International, the overseas arm of Baptist Child & Family Services. These girls are prime targets for intentionally deceptive...

President Bush decided Wednesday to waive any financial sanctions on Saudi Arabia, Washington's closest Arab ally in the war on terrorism, for failing to do enough to stop the modern-day slave trade in prostitutes, child sex workers and forced laborers. In June, the State Department listed 14 countries as failing to adequately address trafficking problems, subjecting them all to possible sanctions if they did not crack down. Of those 14, Bush concluded that Bolivia, Jamaica, Qatar, Sudan, Togo and the United Arab Emirates had made enough improvements to avoid any cut in U.S. aid or, in the case of countries...

“Can you set your own work hours? Pick your clients? Keep all the profits?” That job description sounds great, doesn’t it? Except the line of work referred to is prostitution. In an article titled “Prostitution Gives Me Power,” the fashion magazine Marie Claire praised the lives of three “sex workers” in Holland for “using their bodies to foster trust, compassion, and happiness in the world.” One woman said that working for a brothel or escort business allowed for a connection because “you’re there for a couple of hours” and “talk much more.” Of course, any sort of “connection” she may...

The number of foreign women who are being trafficked by criminal gangs to work in the sex industry is increasing rapidly, it was claimed today. The Ruhama Women’s Project said it had encountered 91 women who had been trafficked for this purpose and had managed to help 21 in the last two years. But its spokeswoman, Geraldine Rowley, said this was only the tip of the iceberg. She said the problem was almost invisible because criminals were using the internet and mobile phones to attract customers to non-descript locations around the country. “We need legislation to address the trafficking issue....

US smashes sex trafficking rings Women are forced into prostitution to repay their debts US police have broken up two human trafficking rings which smuggled hundreds of South Korean women into California to work as prostitutes.They arrested about 50 people and are questioning around 150 women after taking them into protective custody. The women were working in dozens of brothels disguised as acupuncture clinics and massage parlours in Los Angeles and San Francisco. This could be one of the largest human trafficking cases prosecuted in the US. About $3m (£1.7m) were recovered in the operation. Police are now questioning...

LIMA, Peru (AP) -- At least 1,700 women from Latin America and the Caribbean are lured each year into sexual slavery in Japan's huge illicit sex industry, according to a new report. A team of researchers hired by the Organization of American States found that most of the women come from Colombia, Bolivia, Brazil, Mexico and Peru. The team of researchers -- led by Phillip Linderman, an expert on loan from the U.S. State Department -- presented the "Rapid Assessment Report" to an international seminar on human trafficking sponsored by Peru's Foreign Ministry on Friday. The OAS analysis was culled...

According to estimates presented by MK Zahava Gal-On to the parliamentary commission of inquiry on the subject of the sex industry in Israel, this industry turns over some $1 billion a year. Raids by the tax authorities on brothels revealed that traffickers in women are in possession of large sums of cash and a great deal of assets. Now, the authorities are sharing the traffickers' profits through the imposition of fines. A ruling handed down recently by the Tel Aviv Magistrate's Court ordered newspapers that have published sex advertisements in recent years to pay the state a fine to the...

They call it modern-day slavery. Young children, teenagers, women and men promised riches and a better life arrive in the United States from overseas -- but instead find themselves working for pitiful wages or are forced into the sex trade. And it's happening more often than people think. Human trafficking is second only to drug dealing as the largest criminal industry in the world, and officials say the business has become so lucrative that it's growing. And although the numbers are hard to nail down because most incidents go unreported, government officials estimate that roughly 600,000 to 800,000 victims are...

Nicholas Kristof’s recent New York Times columns on sex trafficking in Cambodia drew a lot of reader mail. Many asked, “What about the johns?”—the men who buy the services. “Why aren’t the men written about?” one reader asked Kristof, “Embarrass them, expose them, not the women.” Kristof responded, “[F]oreign countries just are not going to arrest a lot of the johns, while they could be persuaded to arrest traffickers of young girls.” Okay, of course, we want traffickers arrested. That was the goal of the Trafficking Victims Protection Act that Bill Bennett, Michael Horowitz, and I along with many others...

POIPET, Cambodia—When I describe sex trafficking as, at its worst, a 21st-century version of slavery, I’m sure plenty of readers roll their eyes and assume that’s hyperbole. It’s true that many of the girls who are trafficked around the world go voluntarily or under coercion too modest to be fairly called slavery. But then there are girls like Srey Rath. A couple of years ago, at age 15 or 16 (she’s unsure of her birth date), Srey Rath decided to go to work in Thailand for two months, so that she could give her mother a present for the Cambodian...

"...President Bush has done more than his predecessors in making sex trafficking an issue, and his State Department has done a first-rate job exerting pressure - but there's so much more that we could do. The Bush administration could put a real dent in sex trafficking if we were to treat it as firmly as we do, say, pirated movies, and this brazen incident in Cambodia would be a fine place to start...."

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...

This is the moment when we list our priorities for the new year, counting off the most important social challenges the country faces and the remedies we'd like to see our elected officials adopt. Normally, we urge that all this be accomplished in a spirit of bipartisanship. All that requires a leap of faith that's beyond us this season. Instead, we'd like to pick out a few areas that may be a little lower on the agenda, but where the need is aching and the potential bridges between the parties are already clear and sturdy. All it takes is a...

Some 850 foreign nationals who worked as prostitutes or in escort services were deported from Israel in the past year and sent to their native countries, Superintendent Ra'anan Caspi, an officer in the Police Investigations Unit, said at a parliamentary panel meeting on women trafficking. Caspi said that the women working in escort services were returned to their native countries, among them Ukraine, Uzbekistan, Moldova, Belarus, and Russia. According to Caspi, the figures indicate a decline in the number of foreign prostitutes working in Israel, and at present there are some 1000 foreign prostitutes in the country. Caspi added that...

THE string of flickering lightbulbs above my head is swaying gently in the evening breeze, struggling to illuminate the neat row of giggling Cambodian schoolgirls lined up in front of me like fragile porcelain dolls. Behind my table, somewhere in the darkened recesses of the ramshackle brothel, a home-made generator wheezes like a bronchial geriatric as it repeatedly cuts out, leaving only the distant sound of barking dogs and my own heartbeat as I prepare to be relieved of my wallet. Sipping a local Angkor beer to fight off the intolerable humidity, I peer through the sodium gloom at one...

In places like Congo and Kosovo, peacekeepers have been accused of abusing the people they're protecting. PRISTINA, KOSOVO - It's nighttime in this trendy neighborhood, and the three-story villa sits serenely behind an iron gate and tall bushes. Half a block away, almost undetected, a man in a parked car keeps watch. As this reporter approaches, the man radios ahead. Quickly emerging from the doorway is the middle-aged boss, dressed in a Miami Vice get-up, with stringy, combed-over hair and capped teeth. He and a young lieutenant hustle up to the gate, confronting the reporter: "Do you have visitor card...

A SENIOR United Nations official is demanding that her colleagues involved in the sex trade in Bosnia should be stripped of their immunity and prosecuted. Madeleine Rees, the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights in Bosnia, has broken ranks to demand that UN officials, international peacekeepers and police who are involved in sex crimes be brought to justice in their home countries.

In the sex trafficking world, the victims are called "Natashas," a generic label for women and girls transported across borders and forced into prostitution. This despicable business is part of a growing international trade in humans, including for labor, which the US State Department estimates at 800,000 to 900,000 people a year. But sex traffickers may have met their match in Southeastern Europe, which, in the wake of the Balkans chaos and communist meltdown, is a trafficking hot spot. With US assistance, a unique program based in Bucharest is making excellent headway against the traffickers. The name of the program...

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...

Four years after it was "liberated" by a NATO bombing campaign, Kosovo has deteriorated into a hotbed of organized crime, anti-Serb violence and al-Qaeda sympathizers, say security officials and Balkan experts. Though nominally still under UN control, the southern province of Serbia is today dominated by a triumvirate of Albanian paramilitaries, mafiosi and terrorists. They control a host of smuggling operations and are implementing what many observers call their own brutal ethnic cleansing of minority groups, such as Serbs, Roma and Jews. In recent weeks, UN officials ordered the construction of a fortified concrete barrier around the UN compound on...

On September 23, President Bush "implored the international community to stand for something other than self-interest and moral relativism," observed former NEW YORK TIMES correspondent Clifford May. Standing before the United Nations General Assembly, Bush called for unity in fighting terrorism and establishing freedom in the Middle East. He talked about the need to rebuild Afghanistan and Iraq, while confronting the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction. Bush also called on the UN Security Council to adopt an anti-proliferation resolution. These remarks, of course, were expected. What was not expected, but came as a great surprise, was the third part...