Sick Reality of the Pacific Northwest

Do you live in the Northwest and want an idea of JUST how bad sex trafficking is in this region?

Then click the link and watch the video- it's awful.

http://www.katu.com/news/specialreports/133287013.html?tab=video

'It makes me sick': Children sold for sex on Seattle streets

By Sabra Gertsch Published: Nov 4, 2011 at 10:51 PM PST

SEATTLE - He makes promises he doesn't keep - and what he takes destroys lives and tears families apart.

He's the guy out there right now on the streets of Seattle selling sex with underaged girls - children.

Now, a teenager who escaped from his clutches describes her terrifying ordeal - in her own words - in a letter she wrote and shared with KOMO News, KATU's sister station in Seattle.

"Everything he ever told me was just lies," says "Natalie," who doesn't want her real name used or her photo to be shown. "Pimps know that they have got you all tangled up in their lies."

Her broken-hearted mother, "Lynne," says - no more. It's too late to save her daughter - now she wants to save yours.

"She said she'd been raped," says Lynne.

"It makes me sick to my stomach," says Philip Martin of Compassion2One, which works to end the enslavement of children.

Says Natalie, "You never know how quickly your life can be turned upside down."

Twenty-first century slavery is tightening its sinister grip on Seattle, as Natalie's case proves.

"We have anywhere from 500 to 700 young people under the age of 18 trafficked just within the city of Seattle alone, every week," says Martin.

Sex servants - as young as 11 years old.

Lynne's child Natalie was one of them.

"They picked her up a block from my house," says Lynne.

Natalie wrote these words: "They say anything and everything to convince you to do these things for them."

The experience was so traumatizing that the teenager won't let us use her voice, or reveal the faces or real names of her family - but Lynne desperately wants every mother to hear her story.

Natalie was barely 15 when she ran away from her home in Auburn, lured with fun promises by a girl she met on the street.

"Within 24 hours she was being sold on Backpage.com. Within 36 hours she had a pimp," says Lynne.

Backpage.com is accused of being a lucrative playground for pimps pushing their under-aged product. Village Voice Media owns the site, as well as Seattle Weekly, where similar ads are placed in the back.

"Nearly every one of these ads is for illegal services," says Rob McKenna, the state attorney general.

In a written statement, Backpage.com insists it has made safety changes and is working with law enforcement.

But McKenna demands that Backpage.com prove it polices its ads for minors. He links the site to 50 cases of child exploitation in 22 states in the last three years. Now a total of 51 attorneys general have signed that complaint.

"We haven't sued them. We haven't threatened to go after them for criminal violation. We just said, 'Do the right thing.' But if this persists, we will obviously be looking at legal remedies," McKenna says.

Yet for 108 days there was no remedy for a mother driven crazy with worry.

"I couldn't drive anymore - just hysterical - you just don't know," she says.

Her daughter was driven to buyers in Bellevue, Mercer Island, Tacoma and up to Bellingham.

"Her pimp would wait for her outside," says Lynne.

The pimp parked outside was Baruti Hopson - 16 years older than the girl he raped and sold over and over again.

"He told her she was doing God's will," says Lynne.

"It's usually too late to get out," wrote Natalie.

It took undercover Seattle police officers to get Natalie out.

On August 23, 2010, the vice unit set up a sting through a Backpage.com ad and busted Baruti at the Silver Cloud Hotel in South Seattle.

"We're third-highest in the nation when it comes to harboring and trafficking victims within the state and within our city," says Martin.

Philip Martin is co-founder of Seattle Against Slavery, works for the nonprofit Compassion2One and says young girls who lack self-esteem and come from broken homes are often most vulnerable to predators - who aren't only online.

"Something new that's happening - they are sending in guys who are boys, 15- to 16-year-old boys, into our schools to be spotters and to be recruiters," says Martin.

Movie theaters, bus stops, churches - any public venue is a target.

"The depth of the problem was worse than I had imagined," says Seattle Mayor Mike McGinn.

Last year police recovered 81 children being commercially sexually exploited in Seattle. Mayor McGinn knows statistics suggest the city is hotbed for the crime.

"Our statistics may say that it's more, but that's because we are daylighting the issue," he says - treating the young girls as victims instead of criminal prostitutes.

Almost $1 million in federal grants awarded recently to the Seattle police will help, but the mayor sees huge gaps in prevention, intervention and rehab to keep the rescued girls from going back.

"There's so many of these families that aren't getting their children back," says Lynne.

Natalie has been home for a year now.

"Facing the truth that the 31-year-old man I was with just used me for his own profit," she writes.

She testified against Baruti, who was sentenced to 26 years behind bars - one of the first to face tough penalties for sex trafficking under a state law passed in 2003.

"So if you ever find yourself in a relationship with someone who promises you the world as long as you sell your body for money - think twice about it," she says.

Natalie cried after writing these words. She thought she was in love with the guy - who brainwashed her into bed.

"It's an important story. It needs to be told."

It's hard to know exactly how many children are caught up in the sex trade but some estimates put it at a million kids nationwide.

Oregon received a "D" grade in the Protected Innocence Initiative, which grades each state on efforts to combat child sex trafficking.

Washington received a "C."

Gig Harbor, Washington

Check out this news link for a drawing of a man who tried to lure a 13 year old girl into his van.

http://blog.thenewstribune.com/crime/2011/11/01/sketch-released-of-man-who-tried-to-lure-gig-harbor-girl/

El Paso, Texas to Baltimore, Maryland....

Women from Maryland escape alleged prostitution ring

Federal authorities allege victims were part of human trafficking ring; 10 arrested and house raided in Northeast Baltimore

By Peter Hermann, The Baltimore Sun

6:56 p.m. EDT, November 5, 2011

The woman, barely in her 20s and estranged from her family, worked two jobs as she tried to launch a singing career. When she started chatting online with the head of "424 Records," she thought she had finally gotten her break.

The purported record label had music videos on Facebook and YouTube. The promoters appeared to have the cliched trappings of hip-hop — the cars, the gold chains, the girls, the lingo, the cash. But the group's motto breathed tranquillity: "One Team, One Family."

Most alluring, the group was going on tour. The young woman eagerly joined up, and even became what she thought was the leader's girlfriend. The group left Baltimore in May 2010. They got as far as a motel on a seedy stretch of U.S. 1 in Laurel before she realized something was wrong.

Instead of a singing tour, she was taken back and forth to a nightclub on The Block to strip for money. By then, it was too late.

Federal prosecutors say this woman and others were lured into a sex ring that stretched from Maryland to Texas, from the Depression-era strip clubs along East Baltimore Street to a stucco, frontier-style adult entertainment center on an interstate access road on the dusty outskirts of El Paso.

Authorities said the women were forced to strip and work as prostitutes. They were beaten and robbed of their income, their cellphones and identification cards confiscated in a sophisticated enterprise that took in more than $1 million since 2009, according to documents filed in federal court.

City police and the FBI arrested 10 people last month in a raid at a white clapboard house off Harford Road, down the street from a church and a day care center, where they said women, men and children were packed into rooms devoid of furniture.

The woman described her odyssey with "424 Records" in an interview with The Baltimore Sun. She recounted how she escaped and helped two other women get away, and how she helped the FBI in their pursuit of the suspects, all of whom are facing federal charges in Texas under human trafficking statutes. The details of her story are also included in court documents.

"There is no way to put into words the fear that you feel," said the woman, whose identity is not being divulged because The Sun does not identify victims in sex-crime cases. She was interviewed along with advocates who help battered women and who worked with the federal authorities to aid the victims. Four others identified in court documents were too frightened to talk to a reporter.

To advocates and prosecutors, the case illustrates an inherent danger of the adult entertainment business. Dancers are sometimes victims caught in a sleazy, underground sex trade from which it is hard to escape, they say.

"It's a common theme — they may have initially gotten involved voluntarily, but they didn't realize what they were getting into," said Maryland U.S. Attorney Rod J. Rosenstein. "And once they get involved and want to get out, the pimps don't let them."

The women, Rosenstein said, typically live on society's margins, where family life is more dangerous than the street. Desperate for money or drugs, they are vulnerable to "direct and indirect coercion" and "threatened with retaliation, threatened with guns and threatened with physical violence."

Federal prosecutors in Baltimore formed the Human Trafficking Task Force in 2007 to combat the growing problem of people transporting women across state lines for prostitution. Since then, more than two dozen cases have been prosecuted, including a case in Annapolis that started with an investigation into a fatal shooting and led to allegations of forced prostitution in brothels in Easton and Annapolis.

Melissa Snow, the director of the anti-trafficking program for TurnAround, a center that helps abused and battered women, said human trafficking cases often have links to adult entertainment, from pornography to prostitution. She said strip clubs are a prime hunting ground for pimps.

"The girls are sold over and over and over every night to strangers," said Snow, whose group is helping some of the women involved in the Texas case. "And every dollar they earn goes into the pockets of the traffickers."

This most recent case is one of the largest in Maryland, authorities said. A 16-page FBI affidavit filed in U.S. District Court in Baltimore details its scope, noting that the suspects bragged on YouTube about leading lavish lifestyles.

They had "models" for videos, who police said were actually the victims. One video showed them shopping for jewelry in an El Paso shopping mall, with one man repeating, "Focus on the money." One video promo on YouTube features a singer calling himself "thug dog" and "g" and flashes images of The Block while the singer praises hollow-point bullets, all while rapping about his control over women.

The victims told agents that they were lured in different ways, according to court documents. An 18-year-old from Baltimore met a woman in a chat room who befriended her, then traveled to Texas to visit her. She planned to stay only two days, but wound up dancing at adult clubs in El Paso.

Another met two of the alleged leaders in the parking lot of a motel in Woodlawn, when they helped jump-start her car and then offered to put her and her child up in a room. Still another was dancing on The Block and met two of the women who police said were among the leaders. The FBI said the women convinced her to join the group.

Once involved, police said, it was hard for the women to get out. Money, ID cards and cellphones were locked in safes. The court documents say that the women had to meet a $200 a shift quota, and if they failed they were forced to work "overtime," which the agents said "meant having sex for money with customers at strip clubs."

It also was hard for the women to get the attention of law enforcement. The FBI said in court documents that El Paso police at least once passed on information to federal authorities after encountering a woman from the group. But the FBI said that the local officers twice simply put women on a bus and sent them back to Baltimore. The documents say the police "took no further action."

The two clubs in Baltimore named in federal court documents in connection with the case are Chez Joey on The Block and the Ritz Cabaret on South Broadway.

Prosecutors have not alleged that their owners, managers or workers knew about the alleged sex ring or were complicit in its operations. The woman interviewed by The Sun, and the federal court documents, say that a doorman and manager at one of the clubs helped one of the dancers escape from the group.

Lawyers or owners reached for Chez Joey and the Ritz declined to comment, saying they know nothing of the allegations. Peter Prevas, a longtime attorney in Baltimore who has represented clubs and workers on The Block for years, said he has not encountered human trafficking.

He said most of the dancers "had or still have a drug problem and are trying to get into that dancing environment. … From eating lunch down there, I see guys dropping women off, but I wouldn't know them to be pimps."

The FBI identified the ringleaders of the alleged Baltimore-El Paso sex ring as 43-year-old Alarcon Allen Wiggins, known as "J-Roc," and Deangelo Smith, who goes by "D-Lo." Their lawyers in Texas did not return calls. Police said both are from the Baltimore area; Wiggins has addresses on Pulaski Highway and in Hampstead. Both men are being detained in a federal detention center in Texas.

Prosecutors said each suspect has been charged with one count of transportation for prostitution and one count of coercion and enticement. They could each receive up to 20 years in prison if convicted.

Five of the 10 suspects pleaded not guilty in federal court in Texas last week and three others are scheduled to be arraigned there on Monday. Two female suspects are still in Baltimore.

Wiggins, at his hearing in El Paso, told the judge, "We are being set up. What if we didn't do it?" according to an Associated Press account of the proceeding. "They drive us from our home, they put chains on us for 30 days and nobody listens to us."

The woman interviewed by The Sun said she was taken in by the music. After initial chats over various social networking sites, she said she began texting one of the ringleaders and eventually decided to date him. She said he promised to put her music on a CD and take her on tour starting in May 2010.

They went to York, Pa., where the woman said she first encountered the other men and women, both suspects and other victims. But she still had her cellphone and access to email, and was regularly checking in with friends. They then started the "tour," which took them to the motel in Laurel.

"Something just didn't seem right," the woman said.

The men, women and some children — who belonged to the suspects or other victims — were packed into two adjoining rooms. The man she believed she was dating told her they needed money to continue the music tour, she said, and sent her to The Block.

Beds were moved to block the doors of the motel rooms; the only way out was to go through the adjoining men's room. The woman said the men drove them to the club and waited outside in case the women tried to walk away. When on the street, she said, they were forced to keep their heads down, eyes to the ground, and were never allowed to talk to anyone.

It was in the motel in Laurel that the woman said she first saw a friend get beaten for suggesting she might leave. The men gradually took away her possessions.

The group soon left for New Orleans, where she said the women danced at a club near Bourbon Street. They worked in shifts and on alternate days; those who weren't dancing stayed in the room to take care of the children, clean and spend time with the men.

It was here that the woman said she got her first chance to sing. It wasn't in a concert hall, or in a recording studio. She said the closest she got to performing was on a street corner.

At the club one night, the woman said she took a rare moment alone to try to get away. With other women in a private lap dance area, she raced out the front door, in high-heels "and my stripper clothes," and borrowed a cellphone from a stranger to call her ex-boyfriend in Maryland.

It was 3 in the morning.

"I was too scared to call the police," she said. She returned to the club.

On that same trip, the woman said she was twice forced to have sex with some men in a room down the hall from theirs, for $40 each time. She also said she had to convince other, new women who'd joined the group, to also engage in prostitution.

After a night that netted more money than usual, the woman said, the group packed up and drove to Texas. The leaders had a house there, the FBI said in court documents, but the woman said they first stayed in a Motel 6. She said she constantly had to tell her "boyfriend" that she loved him, to lure him into a false sense of complacency. That might win her more freedom, and a chance to get away, she thought.

There was a new woman there, and during a moment alone, they started talking.

"Do you want to leave?" the new woman asked.

"Every day since I got here," the woman answered.

They told the men they needed to get ice, and even invited one of the ringleaders along to avoid raising suspicion. The man declined, and the two went out alone. They stood at the ice machine, counted to three, and ran to a motel across the street.

There, the clerk hid them in a back office as one of the men came searching. Police took them to a bus station and in June this year they made a four-day Greyhound journey back to Maryland, using money wired by the other woman's parents. The had no identification and no change of clothes. The other woman's father called the FBI.

The next day, the woman got an email from the man she said had promised her a concert tour. It called her a "throw away hoe" and added, "You will never make it in music u to stupid."

Back in Baltimore, the woman interviewed by The Sun said she stayed briefly with the friend with whom she had escaped, and then with other friends in Prince George's County. But she needed money, and the surest money was back on The Block.

On the night of Sept. 1, at a club identified by police as Chez Joey, the woman said she noticed another young dancer talking with people associated with "424 Records," who had returned to Maryland, to a house they rented off Harford Road.

The dancer had been warned not to talk to the woman because she had left the group. But the dancer wanted to escape, and thought the woman could help her. The dancer got a chance to talk to the woman privately and told her of her plans.

But there was a problem. Her child was back at the house in Northeast Baltimore. The woman, who knew the doorman and manager, said she convinced them to call the suspects and get them to either return the child or face the police.

The dancer had her child back by 3 a.m. The two women hid in the club, around the corner from City Hall and police headquarters, and then made it to the house of the woman who had escaped from El Paso. They called TurnAround and the FBI, who by then were investigating the group.

Federal agents raided the house on Harford Road on Oct. 12.


http://www.baltimoresun.com/news/maryland/crime/bs-md-ci-prostitution-ring-20111103,0,2521504,full.story

Educating Authorities

Summit looks to stop sex trafficking on I5

November 09, 2011 6:23 PM

Caitlin Conrad/KTVL.com

TALENT, Ore -- Mayors and Law Enforcement met in Portland on Tuesday for the I5 Summit.

The goal of the meeting was to help local police and leaders figure out way to stop trafficking along Interstate 5. The illegal trafficking of drugs, weapons, and humans is a lucrative business for criminals.

Portland Mayor Sam Adams hosted the summit and he focused the discussion on sex trafficking. Present at the meeting were police chiefs and mayors from Seattle and British Columbia. The only representative from southern Oregon was Police Chief Mike Moran.

Human trafficking along the I5 corridor is a huge problem that is hard to stop. Sgt. Mike Geiger is the head of Portland's Sexual Assault Detail and works to stop human trafficking across the pacific northwest.

He says the sex trade industry it is not only a problem, it's one that needs attention from law enforcement all around the country.

Geiger explained that what many might see as willful prostitution is really young females being forced into the sex trade. In 2008, the FBI found sex trafficking to be a $9.5 billion industry.

Moran said people can be sold over and over again for sex, where as objects like drugs and weapons can only be sold once. This makes human trafficking tempting to gangs and criminals.

Geiger says predators often prey on runaway youth. Criminals will hang out at bus stops and train depots waiting for children to arrive with what he described as a lost look. The predator than lures the runaway in with offers of food and shelter. Once the child is in their possession they can hold them captive and sell them for sex.

Victims of human trafficking are often advertised as escorts on websites like backpage.com. The postings claim the girls are 18 but that is not always the case. Medford and Klamath Falls both have adult escort pages on backpage.com.

Victims are often moved from urban center to urban center along the I5 corridor making it harder for police to track criminals, Geiger said.

Moran says participating in Summits like the one on Tuesday can help educate law enforcement officials about what to look for. He plans to take what he learned and share it with other local agencies in the Rogue Valley at an upcoming meeting this month.

http://www.ktvl.com/articles/trafficking-1202508-police-summit.html

Scandal at Penn State

Those who witnessed it, didn't say anything....

Read about the Penn State Scandal:

http://msn.foxsports.com/collegefootball/story/Penn-St-ex-coach-Jerry-Sandusky-others-charged-in-child-sex-case-110511/

Yep, it's in the Yellow Pages....

Check out how one state has discovered it's own sex trafficking problem and how they are fighting back.

http://www.kvnonews.com/2011/10/lawmakers-look-for-solutions-to-human-trafficking-in-nebraska/

Scary Statistics

"..... every second $3,075.64 is being spent on pornography....."

Does this disgust you?

"Every second 28,258 internet users are viewing pornography.
In that same second 372 internet users are typing adult search terms into search engines.
Every 39 minutes a new pornographic video is being created in the U.S..."

"It’s big business. The pornography industry has larger revenues than Microsoft, Google, Amazon, eBay, Yahoo, Apple and Netflix combined. 2006 Worldwide Pornography Revenues ballooned to $97.06 billion. 2006 & 2005 U.S. Pornography Industry Revenue Statistics, 2006 Top Adult Search Requests, 2006 Search Engine Request Trends are some of the other statistics revealed here."

There are statistics from Jerry Ropelato and the entire article can be found at the web address listed below.

Pornography. Porn. What do you think when you first hear that word?

Do you think of those actors and actresses as possible sex trafficking victims?

Do you think of the objectification of women?

Do you think of how much porn twists once healthy mental ideas about sexual relationships into negative, unrealistic ideas about sexual relationships?

Do you think of the damage it does to both the male and female self esteem and sense of value?

Do you think of the broken families that pornography can create?

Do you think of the lasting images that will have damaging effects on current and future relationships?

Probably not.

Many of you who are reading this, don't think that way. Well, here at Called to Rescue, we take the issue of pornography very seriously because it has a major impact on the work that we do.

I, Amanda, attended a seminar this past week that focused on pornography and sexual violence and if I didn't think it was terrible before, it became pure evil.

Check this link out and wander around their site, a lot of statistics within this seminar were pulled from this site. Become informed and help stop the deterioration of healthy sexual relationships within our culture.

http://internet-filter-review.toptenreviews.com/internet-pornography-statistics.html

Want to help?

Do you want to help in the fight against trafficking but don't have the time? Could you sacrifice a couple cups of your favorite coffee for the cause? If you'd like to monetarily help Called to Rescue's effort in their fight against trafficking please do so at:

www.calledtorescue.org

The funds you donate help keep us going whether it's our offices in the Philippines or here at home, our hotlines, safe houses or many other efforts in between. Please, will you join us?

Dr. Cyndi

Called to Rescue continues to pave the way for children to be rescued and made aware of the problem of trafficking and exploitation.