Posts

Largest Sex Trafficking Ring in Western US Busted — Children Openly Sold ‘in Plain Sight”

/0 Comments/in , , /by

A report of a missing teenager in Tulare County, California, in late 2016 culminated into the uncovering of one of the largest sex trafficking rings in the Western United States, according to an announcement by the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department on Thursday. Thirteen young women and girls, including the missing teen, were freed from captivity as a result of the extensive investigation.

The missing teenager’s disappearance, and subsequent discovery in a West Hollywood apartment in January, led investigators in the LA Sheriff’s Department to discover an extensive human sex trafficking network that extended from Nevada to California. During the course of the investigation, detectives discovered that the ring used apartments as brothels in dozens of communities, including Burbank, West Hollywood, and Las Vegas.

“Years ago, a human trafficking case of this magnitude was not likely,” Los Angeles County Sheriff Jim McDonnell said in a news conference in downtown. “We knew the more we looked, the more we would find.”

According to a report by the Los Angeles Daily News:

The six-month investigation by the Tulare County Sheriff’s Department, Los Angeles Sheriff’s Department, Los Angeles Regional Human Trafficking Task Force, and the California Department of Justice, has led to two arrests so far. Quinton Brown, 30, of Highland, and Gerald Turner, 32, of Fresno, were arrested on suspicion of 54 charges relating to sex trafficking, pimping, pandering, grand theft and identity theft.

The complaint, filed Wednesday by the California Attorney General’s office, alleges that Brown lured victims from the Central Valley as far back as in October and trafficked them throughout the state. Investigators also said:

• The 13 victims include eight minors who were sold for commercial sex.

• A 2017 Maserati Ghibli, a 2017 Maserati Levante, and a 2016 Porsche Panamera, all confiscated by investigators, were used in the ring and obtained through fraudulent means.

• Eight people were victims of identity theft.

• 16 sites across California and in Nevada were used as brothels as part of the ring.

Mia McNeil, 32, who police believe rented the apartments/brothels remains at large, according to McDonnell. Additionally, law enforcement believes she also leased high-end luxury vehicles to transport the ring’s sex slaves without raising suspicion.

McDonnell said that detectives uncovered that Brown and Turner “would traffic the victims in plain sight,” using the Internet to advertise the women they were attempting to sell.

“They are as young as 15 years old, bought and sold for commercial sex,” according to McDonnell.

Surprisingly, most of the victims of sex trafficking are born and raised in the U.S. At the news conference, California Attorney General Xavier Becerra said 72 percent of the victims found in California say they are American.

“Human trafficking, which includes sex and labor trafficking, is one of the fasting growing crimes in the world. Its reach is not limited to foreign countries,” Becerra said. “In California, human trafficking is reported here in our state more than in any other.”

Law enforcement said the investigation is ongoing, as they attempt to uncover and arrest the individuals who solicited the young women and teenage sex slaves.

“The predators online that are looking for an 11 year old … these people are not the traditional johns that most people think of,” McDonnell said. “These are predators. These are child molesters that are out there taking advantage of some of the most vulnerable in society.”

The Los Angeles Daily News reports that:

Since the Los Angeles Regional Human Trafficking Task Force was established in 2015, there have been 697 arrests, and of those, about 30 percent were male buyers. In addition, there have been 185 victims rescued, a majority of them youths who were sex trafficked.

Tulare County Sheriff Mike Boudreaux said he has since met with one of the victims rescued, and she has received help and is back in school. But he implored parents to watch their children carefully, especially while they are on their mobile phones.

“To the parents, be vigilant,” Boudreaux said during the press conference. “Pay attention to what your children are doing online. Social networking is an environment for predators to prey on and exploit the innocence of our children.”

Of course, when even those tasked with protecting children — such as Raymond Liddy, 53, a California deputy attorney general — are arrested on charges of possessing child pornography; who is left to actually look out for the welfare and safety of the children?

In addition to being a California state prosecutor, Liddy is the son of a prominent Watergate figure—G. Gordon Liddy—who was an operative in President Richard Nixon‘s campaign attempt to burglarize the Democratic National Committee.

Raymond Liddy was arrested at his home and was charged in federal court with possessing images of minors engaged in sexually explicit conduct, according to federal court documents obtained by Heavy. He was subsequently released from custody and placed on home detention with GPS monitoring after posting a $100,000 bond during his arraignment.

Even after taking down “one of the largest human trafficking rings on the West Coast,” there is a virtual certainty that this bust only barely scratches the surface. When high-level officials, tasked with prosecuting those that break the law, are accused of being the ones preying upon the innocent and weakest in society it makes one seriously question who is actually looking out for the victims.

Please share this story in an effort to raise awareness about the extreme scope of this constant and pervasive societal problem of the sexual trafficking of children! (For more from the author of “Largest Sex Trafficking Ring in Western US Busted — Children Openly Sold in ‘Plain Sight'” please click HERE)

Follow Joe Miller on Twitter HERE and Facebook HERE.

Child Sex Trafficking in the US Is Exploding, Govt Admits They Aren’t Stopping It

/0 Comments/in , , /by

A recent report on the number of sexually exploited children in Florida gives insight into a horrific world that is often ignored by the media, and that rarely holds millionaires, politicians and even local officials accountable for their involvement.

A report from the Florida legislature’s Office of Program Policy Analysis & Government Accountability concluded that the state’s Department of Children and Family (DCF) and its lead agencies “have not resolved issues related to serving commercially sexually exploited children.”

The report found that in 2016, 356 verified commercially sexually exploited child victims were identified, as opposed to 264 identified in 2015. It noted that many of the victims who were identified earlier were, “both children in child welfare dependency and those living in the community with family—have since been re-victimized, involved with the criminal justice system, or only attended school intermittently.”

During 2016, DCF’s Florida Abuse Hotline received 2,013 reports alleging the CSE of children, which is a 57% increase over the 2015 reports. Child protective investigators investigated 1,386 (or 69%) of those reports. Counties with the highest number of CSE reports include Miami-Dade (248), Broward (232), Orange (150), and Hillsborough (144). DCF hotline staff did not refer cases for investigation if the allegation did not rise to the level of reasonable (74%), there were no means to locate the victim (11%), or the alleged perpetrator was not the child’s caregiver (8%). Of the reports that were referred for investigation, most came from DJJ, the Department of Corrections, or criminal justice personnel (20%) and law enforcement (15%).

In 2016, the National Human Trafficking Hotline received reports of 7,572 human trafficking cases, which was a substantial increase from 5,544 cases in 2015 and 5,042 cases in 2014. Florida ranked third on the list with 550 cases, behind Texas with 670 cases and California with 1,323 cases.

Out of the 7,572 human trafficking cases reported in the United States in 2016, the majority or 5,551 were “sex trafficking” cases, and 2,387 of the reported victims were minors.

The report on child sex trafficking in Florida suggested that the increase in victims was due to the process DCF and the Department of Juvenile Justice (DJJ) use to “select children to screen as well as the screening tool itself may limit accurate identification of CSE child victims.”

The report also noted that 62 percent of the children who were labeled as commercially sexually exported remained “in the community and are referred to voluntary, local services.” As a result, “no data is readily available on whether the children use these services.”

The Free Thought Project has provided extensive coverage of the sex trafficking epidemic in the U.S., especially in relation to minors who become victims after they are kidnapped from their homes and placed in foster care.

In April, two pastors who were foster care advocates were arrested for running a child sex ring in Ohio. The pastors, who had influence on their county’s Child Service’s Board of Trustees, were charged with “recruiting, enticing and transporting people the men knew were under 18 to engage in sex acts for pay.” The trafficking was ongoing for at least three years, and initially began with a 14-year-old girl.

In June, a lawsuit was filed in the case of a 5-year-old girl who was given to the leader of a child sex ring in Arizona. She was taken from her mother who was battling an addiction with substance abuse, and she was put in the custody of a pedophile who sexually abused her, tortured her, and ultimately left her fighting for her life.

The recent report from Florida is another reminder that child sex trafficking is a horrific element of the human trafficking epidemic that has been ongoing and increasing in the United States. While government involvement has always been an element, it has yet to put a stop to the increasing number of children who are subjected to life-altering abuse on a daily basis. (For more from the author of “Child Sex Trafficking in the US Is Exploding, Govt Admits They Aren’t Stopping It” please click HERE)

Follow Joe Miller on Twitter HERE and Facebook HERE.

Netflix Series Exposes Govt-Connected Child Sex Ring in Baltimore, Police Forced to Respond

/0 Comments/in , , /by

Baltimore police have found themselves in an awkward position as of late after a horrifying documentary from Netflix exposed a dark underground child sex ring involving the church, politicians, and cops. The series, titled, The Keepers, has forced the Baltimore police to set up an online submission form as people began to come forward after watching it.

While the series is on Netflix for the world’s entertainment, the harsh truth is that it really happened. After the church attempted to keep it quiet by paying off the victims under the table, the documentary has exposed these monsters to the world.

The seven-part documentary series, which premiered on Friday, also covers the unsolved murder of one of the teachers, Sister Catherine Ann Cesnik. On Tuesday, enough former victims had seen the documentary that they began calling the Baltimore police department to report their abuse.

Baltimore Police have since made an online submission form available for those who would want to report any instances of sexual abuse related to the series.

“We have been contacted by victims from the past who want to report the sex offenses that occurred to them. The murder investigation related to this Netflix series was handled by the Baltimore County Police Department,” the website reads.

Dozens of victims had been suppressing the memories of their abuses and when this documentary came out, it brought the nightmares right back. Originally, many people thought the first woman to come forward was ‘faking’ it, until dozens more followed suit.

Baltimore police spokesman T.J. Smith said to the Washington Post after the series was released,

We’ve heard from people who previously hadn’t reported their offense. We just wanted to streamline the process. This is a crime that occurred to them, they don’t need to constantly relive the nightmare, telling the story over and over again.

As the Post reports, Smith said he did not know how many calls his department had received but noted that victims in the case were probably teenagers at the time, and “this is bringing back memories for them. We just wanted to cut out the middleman and want to route them directly where they need to go.” He said sex crimes detectives will receive the online submissions and reach out to anyone who believes they were victimized.

Conveniently absent from the coverage of this Netflix series on the Washington Post and other mainstream outlets, however, is the fact that the victims in this documentary have implicated politicians as well as the police in these most unspeakable crimes.

“We never set out to solve the murder,” director Ryan White says of his new Netflix docuseries, to Vanity Fair. The seven-episode show explores the 1969 disappearance and murder of Sister Cathy Cesnik, a 26-year-old nun and beloved English teacher at Baltimore’s all-girls Archbishop Keough High School. Still, White knew this was no ordinary crime: “The truth had been deliberately buried from the beginning,” he says. Indeed, what begins as an investigation into a cold case soon becomes the story of a concerted effort to conceal widespread rape and sexual abuse committed by Keough school chaplain and counselor Father Joseph Maskell, as well as other clergy, police, and a local gynecologist.

Because, Maskell, the monster behind this widespread rape and abuse, was well-connected int the political realm, he brought others into his sick ring to prey on these young girls.

Maskell’s brother was a high-ranking city cop. This connection had two facets. First, it allowed him to cover up their crimes using these police connections. Second, it allowed for these depraved police officers to enter into this dark child sex ring.

According to Jean Wehner, the woman at the center of the abuse, Maskell operated this sex abuse ring, bringing in outside men — many of them police officers and local politicians — to take part in the abuse.

When Wehner confessed the abuse to Sister Cathy Cesnik, Cesnik became determined to put a stop to it. However, that is exactly what got her murdered.

As the Free Thought Project has previously pointed out, pedophilia among the elite is rampant. In instance after horrifying instance, the Free Thought Project continues to push these issues to the forefront — in spite of mainstream media claiming that talk of elite pedophilia is akin to tin foil hat wearing conspiracy theory.

The good news is that this paradigm seems to be shifting. As we reported in March, even some brave folks within the mainstream media have begun to report on this nightmarish reality.

In an exclusive interview seen by millions across the United States, Dr. Phil exposed the deadly secretive, and the highly organized world of elite pedophilia — with a former child sex slave going by the name of “Kendall” describing being literally born into, and growing up in, the world of elite sexual slavery.

Kendall explains that she was born to be a sex slave, as her parents intentionally had her for the trafficker she calls her “owner.” Kendall says that her parents sold her at birth to an elite pedophile ring that serviced some of the world’s power elite, describing her first memories as being passed around groups of rich and prominent men and women for them to “take turns” with her for sadistic sexual pleasure.

While Netflix and Dr. Phil have done a huge service to society by exposing this reality, we have a long way to go to end it. Pedophilia and child trafficking is a very real issue and those who attempt to discredit it and sweep it under the rug are either horribly incompetent or complicit.

This problem will not go away through ridicule and name calling. We must shine light into the darkness through refusing to be silenced. We must stand for those who are too scared to come forward and we must be the voice for the voiceless. Please share this story with your friends and family so that they may see the real horror of what goes on behind the well-connected political scenes in this country. Until enough people become aware, none of this will end. (For more from the author of “Netflix Series Exposes Govt-Connected Child Sex Ring in Baltimore, Police Forced to Respond” please click HERE)

Follow Joe Miller on Twitter HERE and Facebook HERE.

Army General and Former VP of Company at the Heart of Child Sex Trafficking Scandal Arrested for Child Rape

/0 Comments/in , , /by

A retired Army general, who after leaving the military, worked as VP for embattled DynaCorp International for three years – the private military contractor at the heart of numerous international child sex scandals – has been charged with multiple counts of rape for the alleged assault of at least one minor three decades ago.

Maj. Gen. James Grazioplene faces six charges for alleged rapes that happened in 1983 and 1989, according to an announcement made by the Army last Friday. He faces life and prison and the loss of his pension if convicted of the charges. As a retired officer, Grazioplene is subject to military law under the Uniform Code of Military Justice (UCMJ) and will face an Article 32 hearing to determine if he will face a court martial.

Details surrounding the case remain scarce, as the Army released no other information as to what precipitated Grazioplene being charged three decades after the alleged sexual assault . . .

While potentially just a coincidence, Grazioplene’s connections with DynCorp immediately raise a red flag, as the company has been embroiled in numerous high-level scandals involving the exploitation and trafficking of children for sex — dating as far back as the Bosnia conflict during Bill Clinton’s tenure as US President.

Revealing the extreme level of complicity, by DynCorp, in the illegal exploitation of children, former employee, Ben Johnston filed a RICO lawsuit against Dyncorp after he was allegedly fired for reporting human rights abuses by other employees during the Bosnian conflict. (Read more from “Army General and Former vp of Company at the Heart of Child Sex Trafficking Scandal Arrested for Child Rape” HERE)

Follow Joe Miller on Twitter HERE and Facebook HERE.

Ex-Navy SEAL Creates Veterans Organization to Expose Pedophiles and Rescue Trafficked Children

/0 Comments/in , /by

To those paying attention, they are able to see the world has a horrifying problem with pedophilia and child trafficking. They are also able to see that the corporate media and the ruling class do very little to expose it — and, in fact, are often exposed for participating in it. However, an ex-Navy SEAL and several other veterans are attempting to stop this.

Veterans For Child Rescue (V4CR), as they note on their new website, “was formed specifically to EXPOSE that which has been covered up and suppressed – the dark and disgusting world of pedophile trafficking rings. These rings include members from every level of our society and involve unthinkable trauma inflicted upon innocent babies and children – the soul of our nation.”

The group, which is in the process of forming a 501c3 non-profit, was started by Former Navy SEAL Craig Sawyer and their aim is simple — expose child trafficking across the nation and save children from torture.

“Until now, pedophiles have enjoyed a counter-productive level of privacy from the media. That puts more children at risk,” a crowd-funding page for the organization states.

Together, we can work with federal and local law enforcement to help arrest these predators and liberate the child victims.

According to Veterans for Child Rescue, the members of the group make ups a VIPR Team (Veterans Investigating Pedophile Rings), and come from the highest levels of Military Special Operations, Federal Law Enforcement, International Counter-Poaching Operations, The Intelligence Community, The Diplomatic Community and Film & Television.

“This abuse must first be brought to light before it can be cleaned up. V4CR was created to shine that light! We will expose this crisis through joint operations with law enforcement and sharing the truth in an unflinching television documentary-series for the world to see. Through this, we hope to force stronger punitive legislation and create a non-permissive public environment to help reverse this life-shattering trend of abuse,” a statement on the group’s website reads.

As the Free Thought Project has consistently reported, these sickos dominate positions of authority and high-level government roles — worldwide. And when people come forward to expose them, they are met by the Praetorian guard who quickly labels such talk as conspiracy theory and pushes it to the fringe.

The YouCaring page that was set up to raise money for V4CR was pulled without notice on Friday and they were not given a reason, except that it was in “violation of our terms of service.”

While there is definitely no shortage of conspiracy theories on the matter, the facts we do know are horrific enough to cause grave concern.

As the Free Thought Project has pointed out, pedophilia among the elite is rampant. The problem has gotten so bad in England that officials issued an order last month to stop naming streets and landmarks after local heroes and politicians because they could later be exposed as pedophiles.

In February, the Free Thought Project reported on the fact that the police chief recently came forward and confirmed that the former Prime Minister of England, Sir Edward Heath, had raped dozens of children. The department also noted how those within the government helped cover up these crimes.

In December, we reported on the massive child sex ring that was blown apart in Norway. That investigation quickly led to arrests of “51 people, all men, (who) are so far involved in the case. 24 of them come from Hordaland and Sogn og Fjordane. 26 come from other areas of Norway, from Southeast to Finnmark in the north. Among the accused offenders, there is also one Swedish national. Two politicians, one Labor politician from Oslo and a former national Progress Party (FrP) politician from Eastern Norway are involved in the case.” One is also a kindergarten teacher, and four of the 51 arrested were perpetrators in the video evidence collected.

Domestically, however, these higher level arrests are few and far between as anytime ‘the elite’ are mentioned alongside the term ‘pedophile,’ the corporate media, shout down all those who dare pose any questions.

Case in point, former speaker of the house, Dennis Hastert.

In January, admitted child rapist and former speaker of the house who is currently in jail, Dennis Hastert came across our radar after he demanded one of the children he raped pay back the hush money given to him by Hastert — because he broke his silence about the rape.

Hastert admitted to raping little boys, yet he’s in jail for fraud, not pedophilia.

The good news is that because people are refusing to be silenced, the coverage of human trafficking even hit the mainstream last month in a horrifying episode of Dr. Phil. A former victim, who was born into the sex trafficking trade, came forward to implicate high-level government officials as well as police and civilians in their role in the trade.

According to the anti-Human Trafficking group, Polaris, located in D.C., the number of trafficked humans in the US is startling.

Since 2007, the National Human Trafficking Hotline, operated by Polaris, has received reports of 22,191 sex trafficking cases inside the United States.

In 2016, the National Center for Missing & Exploited Children estimated that 1 in 6 endangered runaways reported to them were likely sex trafficking victims.

The International Labor Organization estimates that there are 4.5 million people trapped in forced sexual exploitation globally.

In a 2014 report, the Urban Institute estimated that the underground sex economy ranged from $39.9 million in Denver, Colorado, to $290 million in Atlanta, Georgia.

It is time to do something about this madness — and V4CR is doing just that. In spite of YouCaring pulling down their fundraiser, the group has started another at GoFundMe. As of Monday, they’ve already raised close to ten percent of their $500,000 goal.

(For more from the author of “Ex-Navy SEAL Creates Veterans Organization to Expose Pedophiles and Rescue Trafficked Children” please click HERE)

Follow Joe Miller on Twitter HERE and Facebook HERE.

They Thought She Was Crazy: Doctor Extracts RFID Chip From Sex Trafficking Victim

/0 Comments/in , , /by

If someone walks into a hospital and claims that they’re being tracked, and that they need to have a tracking device removed, there’s a pretty good chance that they’re going to be sent to a mental institution instead. However, according to a doctor who wished to remain anonymous to protect his patient, that very situation occurred last October and it didn’t end how you might expect.

The patient in question was a 28-year-old woman who claimed that she had a GPS tracking device planted in her body. Normally a patient like that would be regarded as crazy, but this woman appeared totally sane, and she had an incision mark on her side. So the doctor decided to check her out anyway. The medical staff at the hospital were stunned when they finally gave her an X-ray.

Embedded in the right side of her flank is a small metallic object only a little bit larger than a grain of rice. But it’s there. It’s unequivocally there. She has a tracker in her. And no one was speaking for like five seconds — and in a busy ER that’s saying something.

It turns out that it wasn’t a GPS device, but an RFID chip. “It’s used to tag cats and dogs. And someone had tagged her like an animal, like she was somebody’s pet that they owned.”

In a way, that makes it even creepier than a GPS device. RFID chips have a very short range. To be useful for tracking someone’s position, they would have to be kept confined in an area where the right equipment is in place to send or receive signals from the chip. The doctor would later discover that this woman was a victim of sex trafficking.

Science fiction has been warning about the potential of tracking devices for years, but usually in reference to how the government might use this technology. It just goes to show that the way humans use technology in the real world is often stranger (and creepier) than fiction. (For more from the author of “They Thought She Was Crazy: Doctor Extracts RFID Chip From Sex Trafficking Victim” please click HERE)

Follow Joe Miller on Twitter HERE and Facebook HERE.

Over 80 Rescued, 239 Arrested in Nationwide Sex Trafficking Stings

/0 Comments/in , /by

The FBI and local law enforcement agencies across the country have rescued 82 girls and arrested 239 alleged pimps and traffickers as part a cross-agency effort to crack down on sex traffickers. An international effort rescued 41 children in Canada, Thailand, Cambodia and the Philippines.

It is the 10th annual operation by Operation Cross Country, which began expanding internationally this past year with the launch of a Canadian branch, Northern Spotlight.

“Operation Cross Country aims to shine a spotlight into the darkest corners of our society that seek to prey on the most vulnerable of our population,” said FBI Director James Comey in a press release issued by the FBI. “As part of this effort, we are not only looking to root out those who engage in the trafficking of minors, but through our Office for Victim Assistance, we offer a lifeline to minors to help them escape from a virtual prison no person ever deserves.”

The release outlines the scope of the operation, which the FBI says “has yielded more than 6,000 child identifications and locations,”

Operation Cross Country X is the largest ever in the history of the initiative, with 55 FBI field offices and 74 Child Exploitation Task Forces representing more than 400 law enforcement organizations taking part in the operation. In addition, several dozen operations across Canada, and approximately 10 operations took place in six cities across Cambodia, Thailand, and the Philippines.

A FBI spokesperson told The Stream that because Operation Cross Country is focused on rescuing children from trafficking, the agency did not have a readily available number as to how many adults were rescued during the stings.

State By State

Here is a non-exhaustive list of how many people were rescued and/or arrested in several states and cities:

According to The Spokesman-Review, Operation Cross Country saved 67 women and five girls from sex trafficking in Washington State. Fourteen people were arrested.

In Kansas, 26 people were arrested and five minors were rescued. The Atlanta, Georgia area saw “nearly 70 people” arrested on trafficking-related charges, and 15 were arrested in the Philadelphia, Pennsylvania area.

Nine children were rescued in Colorado and Wyoming. Nine pimps and 32 “customers” were arrested, according to The Denver Post. Dozens of people were arrested and several minors rescued in Florida, and in Mississippi, almost 30 people were arrested.

The Houston, Texas, area saw three minors rescued and “three traffickers and their associates” arrested, according to Fox4 in Beaumont, Texas. The outlet reported that one teenager “was … reunited with her family.”

Complexity in Helping Rescued Girls and Women

Shared Hope International seeks to end sex trafficking. Senior Director Samantha Vardaman told The Stream that “In the U.S., girls who are recovered from a sex trafficking situation might receive services depending on which state they are in, how they are recovered (e.g., through [law enforcement] arrest vs. child protective services), and whether they cooperate in some cases.”

“Shared Hope is working to correct the inconsistencies and develop more integrated systems of services across the nation through our JuST Response project,” said Vardaman.

Vardaman also addressed a common problem in sex trafficking, where girls and women manipulated or forced into becoming part of a trafficker’s recruitment team. This can end with a trafficked woman being listed as a sex offender or some other type of law violator.

“In the U.S., the largest problem for survivors is the criminal record many of them have after having been trafficked. Nearly all adult women are arrested at some point, and far too many minors still are arrested. In fact, it is still legal in 31 states in the nation to arrest a minor for prostitution,” she explained.

“This is in direct contradiction to the federal law and often in contradiction with their own state laws! Any child used in a commercial sex act is a victim of sex trafficking,” she explained. “Advocates have pressed FBI to institute a meaningful screening mechanism when encountering adult women to determine if they are, in fact, sex trafficking victims or were minors when they first were exploited in prostitution.” (For more from the author of “Over 80 Rescued, 239 Arrested in Nationwide Sex Trafficking Stings” please click HERE)

Follow Joe Miller on Twitter HERE and Facebook HERE.

Sex Trafficking Sting Recovers 20 Children in These States

/3 Comments/in , /by

The Federal Bureau of Investigation’s Denver Field Office, which includes Wyoming, recently recovered more children in a nationwide trafficking sting than any other area in the U.S.

Officials from the FBI and 500 law enforcement partners announced today that 149 underage trafficking victims were recovered and 153 pimps were arrested in a nationwide human trafficking operation conducted throughout the United States last week.

The initiative, dubbed Operation Cross Country IX, is a national effort spearheaded by the FBI and the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children, along with state and local law enforcement partners across the country . . .

20 child victims were recovered by the Denver Field Office and seven pimps were arrested . . .

“Human trafficking is a monstrous and devastating crime that steals lives and degrades our nation,” said Attorney General Loretta Lynch. “As a result of the FBI’s outstanding coordination and exemplary efforts alongside state and local partners during Operation Cross Country, more children will sleep safely tonight, and more wrongdoers will face the judgment of our criminal justice system. (Read more from “Sex Trafficking Sting Recovers 20 Children in These States” HERE)

Follow Joe Miller on Twitter HERE and Facebook HERE.

FBI Says 168 Children Rescued in Crackdown on Sex Trafficking

/1 Comment/in , /by

Photo Credit: Getty ImagesNearly 170 victims of child sex trafficking, many of whom had never been reported missing, were rescued in the last week as part of an annual nationwide crackdown, the FBI said Monday.

Besides the 168 children rescued from the sex trade, 281 pimps were arrested during the same period on state and federal charges.

“These are not faraway kids in faraway lands,” FBI Director James Comey said in announcing the annual enforcement push known as Operation Cross Country. Instead, he added, “These are America’s children.”

This is the eighth such week-long operation, which this year unfolded in 106 cities. The FBI says nearly 3,600 children have so far been recovered from the street.

“I hate that we have to do this work — hate it,” Comey said. “I love the people who’ve devoted their lives to doing this work. There is no more meaningful work that the FBI participates in than rescuing children.”

Read more from this story HERE.

Sex trafficking now an ‘epidemic’ in US

/0 Comments/in , /by

Six months ago, Barbara Amaya said she was watching a story on television about teenage girls being trafficked for sex in her Northern Virginia neighborhood when she realized that she, too, had been the victim of sex trafficking — four decades earlier.

“I didn’t know I had been trafficked,” she told an audience during a panel discussion on human trafficking sponsored by the Universal Peace Federation and the Women’s Federation for World Peace at The Washington Times. “I viewed myself as a prostitute.”

Ms. Amaya, now 56, said she was a 13-year-old runaway from Fairfax when she was sold into sex trafficking at 14th and Eye Streets in the District and later was taken to New York City where she was trafficked for eight years. Like a lot of girls forced into sex trafficking, she said she had been abused as a child and at 12, began running away from home.

“I was a walking target,” she said. “I didn’t have low self-esteem, I had no self- esteem.

“I was raped so many times, I can’t remember. I became addicted to heroin and numb to what happened to me,” she said, adding that her trafficker dumped her when she was “no longer valuable to him.”

Read more from this story HERE.