Go Feds!!

Follow this link to an article regarding the strip club "Sugar Shack" in Portland, Oregon as well as other strip clubs that have provided sexual services. The Sugar Shack and others are under criminal investigation by the federal government!!

http://www.portlandtribune.com/news/print_story.php?story_id=131483073665718200

“Every 12 minutes, a Filipino child is sex trafficked”

Group against sex trafficking launched
By Helen Flores (The Philippine Star) Updated May 13, 2011 12:00 AM Comments (0)

Manila, Philippines - Various government and non-government organizations (NGOs) have joined hands in the campaign to fight sex trafficking in the country.

Representatives from government, media, the business sector and NGOs gathered at the Edsa Shangri-La Hotel Wednesday night in support of the Called to Rescue Foundation, a non-profit worldwide organization involved in rescuing minor children from sex trafficking, violence and abuse.

The event also saw the launching of a 24/7 hotline number – 0906 3063889 – that will respond to emergency or crisis calls from victims of trafficking.

“With all of us working together this situation in your country can be taken care of… as we all come together we can make this a sex trafficking-free country,” Dr. Cyndi Romine, president of Called to Rescue said.

Romine noted that one out of 10 trafficked children in the world is Filipino. “Every 12 minutes, a Filipino child is sex trafficked,” she said.

NBN-ZTE deal whistleblower Rodolfo Lozada, The STAR columnists Jarius Bondoc and Cito Beltran, beauty and wellness expert Cory Quirino and singer Kuh Ledesma were among the personalities who joined the stepped-up drive against sex trafficking.

Anthony Pangilinan, one of the foundation’s board members, said about 1.2 million children below 18 years old are victimized by the sex traffic every year. He said about 100,000 of the victims are Filipinos.

“We are disturbed because of the fast increase in the numbers,” Pangilinan said.

Leslie Cordero, assistant secretary for legislative affairs who represented Presidential Communications Operations Office Secretary Herminio Coloma, gave assurance that the issue of human trafficking will be discussed in the next Legislative Executive Development Advisory Council meeting.

http://www.philstar.com/Article.aspx?articleId=685522

Grants are helping agencies fight!

http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/localnews/2016162915_teenprostitution10m.html

Grants to help agencies fight child prostitution

By Christine Clarridge

Seattle Times staff reporter

Law-enforcement agencies in King and Snohomish counties have received nearly three-quarters of a million dollars in federal grant money to help fight teen prostitution and the sexual exploitation of children.

The Seattle Police Department announced this week it had received $292,000 from the federal Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention to fund an effort to identify prostituted youth victims and help them get to safety.

Last month, Snohomish County was awarded a $449,908 grant from the U.S. Department of Justice to build a law-enforcement team dedicated to combating child-sex trafficking.

Seattle police said that last year more than 80 prostituted children were identified and recovered through investigations.

The prostitution of teens and children has become an increasingly scrutinized social issue, with organizations like Seattle's Bridge Program recently opening one of the nation's few homes for former teen prostitutes.

Lawmakers in some states, including Washington, have responded by passing stricter laws and penalties against prosecuted pimps and johns. A new law in Washington makes promoting the commercial sexual abuse of a minor a Class A felony punishable by a prison sentence of seven to 10 years, up from roughly two.

The same legislation also increases penalties for men who pay for sex with underage prostitutes, increasing the maximum 90-day jail terms for first-time offenders to roughly two-year prison sentences, and thousands of dollars in new court fines.

In Seattle, the money will be used to fund training, equipment and one full-time civilian position for a two-year project called Operational Strategies to Protect and Rescue Exploited Children (OSPREY).

According to a Seattle police news release, the grant will be used to:

• Identify victims through a coordinated effort by law-enforcement and probation officers and child-service providers.

• Help victims find safety and give them the support they need to assist in the investigation and prosecution of their exploiters and pimps.

• Connect victims with long-term care services, such as shelter, education and counseling.

• Educate police and other professionals about how to work together to provide victims with a "continuum of care."

In Snohomish County, the money will be used to create a law-enforcement team with a dedicated detective, prosecutor, support staff and expert witnesses to go after the people who target and exploit children, according to the Prosecutor's Office.

The money awarded to Snohomish County was among the $9.3 million delivered to communities nationwide through the Department of Justice's Child Sexual Predator Program.

The Child Sexual Predator Program money is granted to state and local law-enforcement agencies to develop initiatives to locate, arrest and prosecute child sexual predators and to enforce state sex-offender-registration laws.

"Sex trafficking of children, kids forced into lives of prostitution and drugs, happens in Washington, as it does everywhere in the country," said Snohomish County Prosecutor Mark Roe in a news release. "This Department of Justice grant gives Snohomish County a way to fight it; a way to hunt down and hold accountable those who hurt kids and profit financially from their sexual abuse."

Christine Clarridge: 206-464-8983 or cclarridge@seattletimes.com

Backpage.com

Website faces accusations of sex trafficking from 45 states, not including Wisconsin

http://www.postcrescent.com/article/20110906/APC0101/109060403/Website-faces-accusations-sex-trafficking-from-45-states-not-including-Wisconsin

Sept 6th, 2011

In July, police in DeKalb County, Ga., found a 15-year-old Wisconsin runaway who was allegedly forced into prostitution and was advertised online as a 25-year-old providing "adult services."

Wisconsin, however, wasn't among the 45 states that on Wednesday accused Backpage.com, the website that published the Wisconsin girl's advertisement, of facilitating child exploitation and sex trafficking across the nation.

The state attorneys general sent a letter to Backpage.com lawyer Samuel Fifer calling the website a "hub" for human trafficking and asking for details about the company's policies aimed at preventing the illegal activity.

More than 50 cases of trafficking or attempted trafficking of minors on Backpage.com have been filed in 22 states in the past three years, the letter says.

Backpage.com vice president Carl Ferrer acknowledged the company identifies more than 400 "adult services" posts that may involve minors, the letter says. Minors are not legally capable of consenting to sex, and law enforcement officials have discovered many of those advertised are coerced, officials said.

When asked why he declined to sign the letter from the attorneys general, Wisconsin Atty. Gen. J.B. Van Hollen, who has focused on fighting Internet crime against children, issued a statement saying he has "a policy of not publicly announcing the details of ongoing investigations or publicly negotiating private sector cooperation."

Illegal activity has occurred on Backpage.com and other websites, Van Hollen said.

"More than 200 cyber tips involving unlawful web activity — including activity on Backpage.com — and numerous child enticement and child pornography cases are investigated by Wisconsin's ICAC (Internet Crimes Against Children) Task Force," the statement said, noting that such investigations have resulted in more than 100 arrests this year.

Van Hollen encouraged all websites to cooperate with law enforcement to prevent their sites from being "conduits for illegal activity."

Backpage.com officials have readily acknowledged prostitution ads appear on the website, but said in a February 2011 statement they have introduced some policies to eradicate illegal activity on the website, including implementing a no-nudity policy.

But Backpage.com hasn't gone far enough for the attorneys general, who said the website makes an estimated $22.7 million per year from ads in the "adult" section.

"We believe Backpage. com sets a minimal bar for content review in an effort to temper public condemnation, while ensuring that the revenue spigot provided by prostitution advertising remains intact," the letter says.

Police in the Madison suburb of Fitchburg police say the runaway teenager, who has an infant son, was forced into prostitution in Milwaukee and Atlanta. Police say a pimp advertised her on Backpage.com as a 25-year-old providing "adult services."

Lt. Steve Elliott of the Appleton Police Department agrees online escort advertisements like those found on Backpage.com often mask what is actually human trafficking in Wisconsin, a crime he says is hidden and pervasive.

Craigslist.com, another classifieds website, shut down its adult services section last September after a similar outcry from anti-trafficking activists and attorneys general. The attorneys general applauded the website's decision in the letter to Backpage.com, saying it's difficult to accurately detect underage human trafficking.

Whoa...

Watch it for yourself:

http://nefariousdocumentary.com/

Petition Signed!

This is great!!

Over 400,000 Pinoys sign petition vs sex trafficking

abs-cbnNEWS.com

Posted at 08/03/2011 6:22 PM | Updated as of 08/04/2011 10:07 AM

MANILA, Philippines - More than 400,000 Filipinos have signed a petition to stop sex trafficking of children and young people, said to be one of the world's largest criminal industries.

The petition, launched by cosmetics store The Body Shop and non-profit organization End Child Prostitution, Pornography and the Trafficking of Children for Sexual Purposes or EPCAT, was received by President Benigno Aquino III on Wednesday.

It contained 473,489 signatures.

President Aquino assured Filipinos of his government's commitment to fight human trafficking, saying that the removal of the Philippines from the Tier 2 Watchlist of the United States' Trafficking in Persons Report is not enough.

"We will continue our fight against human trafficking," the President said in a speech.

"I assure all of you that we will not cease in our efforts -- and that the Philippines will put in extra hours to make certain that we comply with the minimum standards for the elimination of trafficking, so that we may rise to another tier."

The petition called on the Aquino government to "develop community-based prevention programs for the most vulnerable children; raise awareness of trafficking in schools; improve law enforcement systems in order to combat crimes against children; build capacity service providers and the allocation of further resources for those organizations that provide recovery and reintegration services to child victims of tracking for sexual purposes."

As much as 100,000 children are trafficked annually, and most of these are girls that are to be sexually exploited, The Body Shop said in its anti-trafficking web page.

Currently, the website's online petition has gathered 6.69 million signatures. -- Report from Willard Cheng, ABS-CBN News

http://www.abs-cbnnews.com/lifestyle/08/03/11/over-400000-pinoys-sign-petition-vs-sex-trafficking

Update on Human Trafficking Watchlist

I started searching for some articles of recent events within the realm of trafficking and found a 'semi' old article that dated back to June of this year regarding the tier level the Philippines now has in regard to the human trafficking problem.

http://www.philstar.com/Article.aspx?articleId=700858

Check out the full article at the above original source or the copy and pasted version below:

Phl off US human trafficking watch list
By Jose Katigbak Star Washington Bureau (The Philippine Star) Updated June 29, 2011 12:00 AM Comments (0)

WASHINGTON – With notable improvement in its record of combating human trafficking, the Philippines has been removed from a US watch list of problem nations in the State Department’s annual Trafficking in Persons (TIP) report.

The latest report, issued Monday, elevated the Philippines, Singapore and Laos off the Tier 2 watch list to simply Tier 2, which means that the countries do not fully meet standards on human trafficking but are making efforts to do so.

Had the Philippines not been upgraded from the Tier 2 watch list where it had stagnated for two consecutive years, it would have automatically dropped to Tier 3 and be subjected to certain US sanctions including the withdrawal of non-humanitarian, non-trade-related foreign assistance.

Malacañang said the development was proof of inroads in the Aquino administration’s effort to curb human trafficking.

“The Aquino administration expresses its appreciation at these citations and emphasizes our continuing campaign against human trafficking,” presidential spokesperson Edwin Lacierda said.

The 2011 TIP report said that during the period under review, the Philippines convicted 25 trafficking offenders in 19 cases compared with nine convictions in six cases the previous year, a 300 percent increase in both categories.

Included among the 25 offenders was a labor trafficker convicted last February for selling two women into domestic servitude in Malaysia where they were enslaved for nine months without pay.

The labor trafficker was sentenced to 28 years in prison and fined over $28,000 while sentences for the other 24 convicted offenders ranged from six years to life imprisonment, the report said.

The improved performance followed a June 2010 Justice Department order to prosecutors to make trafficking cases a priority and a Supreme Court circular urging courts to expedite the disposition of trafficking cases within 180 days of arraignment.

The TIP report represented a major victory for President Aquino and lifted the sword of Damocles hanging over his head.

Andrelita Austria, head of the embassy’s political section, said the Philippines was grateful its efforts had been recognized but added there was no time for complacency.

A poor grading would imperil US economic aid, particularly the $434-million compact with the Millennium Challenge Corp. to reduce poverty, accelerate growth and create opportunities for Filipinos.

The report said the Aquino government enacted numerous measures and policies to improve institutional responses to human trafficking for this year and in future years, such as increased training of officials and the creation of anti-trafficking task forces in airports, seaports, regions and localities.

Nevertheless, hundreds of victims continue to be trafficked each day and much remains to be done, the report stressed.

Widespread corruption and an inefficient judicial system continue to pose very serious challenges to the successful prosecution of trafficking cases, it said.

The report said the government needed to address significant obstacles to anti-trafficking progress, including the substantial backlog in trafficking cases pending in courts.

Heroes

The TIP report included more than 180 narratives of victims and “heroes” across the globe.

One of the heroes cited was Darlene Pajarito, an assistant prosecutor in Zamboanga City who secured the first sex trafficking conviction in the Philippines in 2005 and the first labor trafficking conviction in 2011. She had prosecuted and secured the conviction of five traffickers in Zamboanga.

It said Pajarito accomplished all this while juggling an average caseload of more than 300 other criminal cases in a country where criminal trials last an average of six years.

One of the victims cited was “Maria” who came to the US with 50 other Filipinos under the H2B guest worker program after paying substantial recruitment fees with the promise of housing and lucrative jobs at country clubs and hotels.

When she arrived the recruiters seized her passport and prohibited her from leaving their house.

A federal grand jury inducted two defendants for conspiracy to hold Maria and other workers in a condition of forced labor.

The TIP report said Filipino prosecutors have difficulty distinguishing labor trafficking crimes from labor contract violations, which may be one cause for the lack of a greater number of criminal forced labor cases filed.

Of a total of 178 countries rated in the report, 29 were deemed compliant with US efforts to fight trafficking and grouped in Tier 1, including Australia and Taiwan.

The Philippines and 83 other countries adjudged to be making significant efforts to comply with minimum standards to eliminate trafficking were in Tier 2.

A total of 43 countries were in the watch list and 22 were in Tier 3.

Five ASEAN members - the Philippines, Indonesia, Laos, Singapore and Cambodia - are among those in Tier 2. Four others - Malaysia, Thailand, Vietnam and Brunei - are in the watch list and Myanmar is in Tier 3.

“We have done away with the sanctions but there’s still an indication that we still have to make progress toward the total abolition of human trafficking,” Lacierda said at Malacañang. “We’re doing that, we’re trying, doing our best in curbing human trafficking. But the most important thing is that we have done away with sanctions,” he said.

‘Sea change’

US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, meanwhile, praised President Aquino for effecting a “sea change” in the Philippine campaign against human trafficking.

“Look at what the Philippines has done in a change of administration. The Philippines probably export more people of their citizenry than nearly any other country in the world. They go all over the world to work in many different settings. And until the new administration of President Aquino, we didn’t really have the level of commitment we were seeking. We do now, and we see a sea change of difference,” she said in an interview on CNN.

For Foreign Affairs Secretary Albert del Rosario, the Philippine removal from the watch list was a recognition of the Aquino administration’s achievements in fighting human trafficking.

“We are committed to ensuring that our Filipino workers overseas are given full protection and safeguarded from human traffickers. We pledge to further intensify our efforts in addressing this problem,” Del Rosario said.

Justice Undersecretary and Inter-Agency Council Against Trafficking in Persons (IACAT) head Jose Vicente Salazar hailed all the country’s anti-human trafficking champions and advocates for helping the country rise a notch from it’s ‘watch list’ rating.

Salazar credited the confluence of persistent and determined efforts of all the government agencies involved in the battle against human trafficking as well as the dogged commitment and support of the non-government organizations in the initial successes of the campaign as he vowed of an even more serious and intensified campaign that would see the eradication of human trafficking in the country.

“We salute all the nameless warriors against human trafficking and we will celebrate our modest gains, but we have barely scratched the surface of this modern day menace that victimizes our men, women and children into involuntary servitude, sexual abuse and bondage... We will forge forward. And all these efforts are in recognition of our, the government’s, responsibility to protect our people, first and foremost,” Salazar hastened.

IACAT, Salazar said, will further identify the most effective mechanisms to fight trafficking, strengthen the existing network of government and non-government organizations dedicated to suppressing the global evil, ensure effective, fast but judicious prosecution of trafficking suspects, and look after the welfare and counseling needs of rescued victims.

Salazar, likewise, congratulated Pajarito for handling the most number of successful prosecutions of human trafficking cases in the country.

At the House of Representatives, Deputy Speaker Lorenzo Tañada III said the removal of the Philippines from the US human trafficking watch list “is a clear indication that we are on the right track in protecting the welfare of our overseas Filipino workers (OFWs).” But he stressed the development “must not trigger any sort of complacency on the part of the government.”

Tañada, through a privilege speech last year, exposed a case of human trafficking in Biloxi, Mississippi involving 11 OFWs who were allegedly duped by their recruitment agency.

“We shouldn’t be totally pleased with this recent development with the US State Department since it means that we are still in Tier 2,” he said.

“It’s a long and difficult fight since it’s on all fronts - within our shores and in the countries where our fellow Filipinos are sent to by dubious agencies. It’s not just in the US, but everywhere around the globe,” Tañada said.

He said Congress as an institution as well as its individual members should help the government in its crackdown against entities and organizations involved in human trafficking.

“Some of them still get accreditation from the Philippine Overseas Employment Administration. We need to take more measures that shall see to it that these people will no longer get to manipulate their fellow Filipinos for the sake of profit,” he said.

Quezon City Rep. Winston Castelo said the removal of the Philippines from the watch list was fruit of the “sincere and effective effort of the government, particularly immigration officials, in curbing such practice.”

“This will sit well on the stature of the Philippines on the compliance of accepted international standards of safety and order,” Castelo said.

The development was a vote of confidence for the Aquino administration, according to Ang Kasangga sa Kaunlaran party-list Rep. Teodorico Haresco.

But for Akbayan party-list Rep. Walden Bello, chairman of the House committee on overseas workers affairs, “whatever the US State Department says, human trafficking is getting worse in the Philippines.”

Blas Ople Policy Center president Susan Ople said the removal of the country from the watch list averted a possible loss of $250 million in aid from the US and sent “a strong signal to human traffickers around the world.”

Social Welfare Undersecretary Alicia Bala attributed the favorable rating to tougher rules aimed at curbing human trafficking.

“We have stepped up requirements. The government’s anti-human trafficking campaign has been intensified,” she said.

“The basis of the accomplishment is to prevent more victims of human trafficking. This is what we want to highlight as the accomplishment of the Philippine government,” Bureau of Immigration spokesman Antonette Mangrobang said. With Aurea Calica, Evelyn Macairan, Mayen Jaymalin, Helen Flores, Paolo Romero, Jess Diaz, Pia Lee-Brago

And overseas...

THE PLIGHT OF FEMALE DOMESTIC WORKERS WORLDWIDE

By Dr. Cyndi Romine

It would seem like a good thing, going away from your country to work in a foreign land and make a LOT of money to send back home to your family in a country that is very poor and where you cannot find a job, a very good thing.

You apply with an agency and you pay them a huge fee with the understanding that all the money will be paid back to the agency by using a percentage of the money you are to make.

When you arrive in your new country, you are met by a stranger sent by the company you have signed-up under for your two year contract. They ask you for your passport, cell phone and ID. Where are you going? Where will you live? What will you be doing for them?

Some are taken directly to a night club and will be stripping and having sex nightly starting the night they arrive. No one to call, no money, no passport, no where to run and no one to run to, fear is your only companion.

Some are taken into a home and you sleep on the floor of the kitchen, work 7 days a week, and the boss comes and rapes you. If you get pregnant and have the baby in the employers home, how do you register the child? You now have the choice to re-commit to re-signing with your contract and continue being raped or leave your undocumented child in a foreign land on the streets. A child on the street will likely be swept up into sexual slavery within 48 hours.

Called to Rescue is now working on documenting undocumented children worldwide. These sex trafficked children have no home, no one looking after them, no legal name, no legal age, and no country. They are abused, victimized, violently treated and sex trafficked and sometimes even organ trafficked, labor trafficked, or soldier trafficked.

Let us make a stand for the innocence of children and make a difference in our world.

In our neighborhood...

A message from Dr. Cyndi Romine:

You would think this article should start out…”it was a hot, humid day in the tropics of SE Asia”, but no, it was a normal Tuesday morning in Washington State, USA.

It had been three days and 16 year old “P” had gone missing. Her parents had called the police, but the police tagged her as a run-away and they would not move on her case for 48 hours . Her aunt called me. “What do we do? Just sit and wait? she asked”.

No--I asked her to send me all the information on “P”, photo, what she was wearing, did she take her cell phone, last time she was seen and where. It was high school.

Then the aunt of 16 year old “Y” called me and said she had gone missing…I got the info and she had gone missing from the same high school, the same day. They were together.

We took her family and our Called to Rescue task force downtown Portland to see if we could find them or find someone who had seen them.

Our greatest fear: They were taken and sex trafficked.

Our greatest fear was realized. They had been coerced into a car by two older men—trafficked.

We tracked them to a city in northern California and the police were called to go pick them up. They just missed them.
We tracked them to another Southern California city and the police found them on the streets.

Unfortunately, this is the story of so many in the USA. The Department of Justice estimates that 150,000 children under 18 are trafficked per year. Why so many? Money! Child Trafficking is a 32 Billion Dollar a year business.

Called to Rescue is on the streets around the world, teaching awareness, helping survivors, teaching prevention in schools, task force development and training in different cities and training law enforcement officers.

Child trafficking is a problem that we can stop.

Please go to www.calledtorescue.org and see how you can be a partner in fighting the crimes of child abuse, victimization and sex trafficking.