Girls on Our Streets

NEW YORK TIMES: 6 May 2009: Jasmine Caldwell was 14 and selling sex on the streets when an opportunity arose to escape her pimp: an undercover policeman picked her up.

The cop could have rescued her from the pimp, who ran a string of 13 girls and took every cent they earned. If the cop had taken Jasmine to a shelter, she could have resumed her education and tried to put her life back in order.

Instead, the policeman showed her his handcuffs and threatened to send her to prison. Terrified, she cried and pleaded not to be jailed. Then, she said, he offered to release her in exchange for sex.

Afterward, the policeman returned her to the street. Then her pimp beat her up for failing to collect any money.

“That happens a lot,” said Jasmine, who is now 21. “The cops sometimes just want to blackmail you into having sex.”

I’ve often reported on sex trafficking in other countries, and that has made me curious about the situation here in the United States. Prostitution in America isn’t as brutal as it is in, say, India, Nepal, Pakistan, Cambodia and Malaysia (where young girls are routinely kidnapped, imprisoned and tortured by brothel owners, occasionally even killed). But the scene on American streets is still appalling — and it continues largely because neither the authorities nor society as a whole show much interest in 14-year-old girls pimped on the streets.

Americans tend to think of forced prostitution as the plight of Mexican or Asian women trafficked into the United States and locked up in brothels. Such trafficking is indeed a problem, but the far greater scandal and the worst violence involves American teenage girls.

If a middle-class white girl goes missing, radio stations broadcast amber alerts, and cable TV fills the air with “missing beauty” updates. But 13-year-old black or Latina girls from poor neighborhoods vanish all the time, and the pimps are among the few people who show any interest.

These domestic girls are often runaways or those called “throwaways” by social workers: teenagers who fight with their parents and are then kicked out of the home. These girls tend to be much younger than the women trafficked from abroad and, as best I can tell, are more likely to be controlled by force.

Pimps are not the business partners they purport to be. They typically take every penny the girls earn. They work the girls seven nights a week. They sometimes tattoo their girls the way ranchers brand their cattle, and they back up their business model with fists and threats.

“If you don’t earn enough money, you get beat,” said Jasmine, an African-American who has turned her life around with the help of Covenant House, an organization that works with children on the street. “If you say something you’re not supposed to, you get beat. If you stay too long with a customer, you get beat. And if you try to leave the pimp, you get beat.”

The business model of pimping is remarkably similar whether in Atlanta or Calcutta: take vulnerable, disposable girls whom nobody cares about, use a mix of “friendship,” humiliation, beatings, narcotics and threats to break the girls and induce 100 percent compliance, and then rent out their body parts.

It’s not solely violence that keeps the girls working for their pimps. Jasmine fled an abusive home at age 13, and she said she — like most girls — stayed with the pimp mostly because of his emotional manipulation. “I thought he loved me, so I wanted to be around him,” she said.

That’s common. Girls who are starved of self-esteem finally meet a man who showers them with gifts, drugs and dollops of affection. That, and a lack of alternatives, keeps them working for him — and if that isn’t enough, he shoves a gun in the girl’s mouth and threatens to kill her.

Solutions are complicated and involve broader efforts to overcome urban poverty, including improving schools and attempting to shore up the family structure. But a first step is to stop treating these teenagers as criminals and focusing instead on arresting the pimps and the customers — and the corrupt cops.

“The problem isn’t the girls in the streets; it’s the men in the pews,” notes Stephanie Davis, who has worked with Mayor Shirley Franklin to help coordinate a campaign to get teenage prostitutes off the streets.

Two amiable teenage prostitutes, working without a pimp for the “fast money,” told me that there will always be women and girls selling sex voluntarily. They’re probably right. But we can significantly reduce the number of 14-year-old girls who are terrorized by pimps and raped by many men seven nights a week. That’s doable, if it’s a national priority, if we’re willing to create the equivalent of a nationwide amber alert.

Torture a hallmark of Phoenix's drug kidnappings

CNN: Phoenix, AZ: Jaime Andrade had just gotten out of the shower when the men came to snatch him.

His wife, Araceli Valencia, was mopping the kitchen in their family home on a typical warm spring morning in Phoenix, Arizona, "when she suddenly felt a hard object pointed to the back of her head and a voice in Spanish tell her not to move," according to a Phoenix, Arizona, police investigative report.

"I told you not to look at me!" Valencia heard one of the kidnappers bark as he struck Andrade across the head.

Her four children bawling, Valencia was hustled into a bedroom where an armed man fondled her and threatened to rape her if she didn't tell him where Andrade hid his money, according to the report.

After beating and binding Andrade, one of the kidnappers put a gun to Valencia's head. His message: We're taking your husband and SUV. We'll be watching your house. If you call the cops, he's a dead man.

Andrade, his wife would later tell police, was a mechanic and freelance human smuggler, or coyote. Police say his 2006 kidnapping was evidence of a growing trend in Phoenix: drug and human traffickers abducting each other for ransoms or retribution.

The trend continues, as police investigated roughly a kidnapping a day in 2007 and 2008 and are on track to shatter those numbers this year. Police are stingy with details of fresh cases navigating the court system, but recently allowed CNN to review the files from Andrade's kidnapping.

For two and a half days after Andrade's abduction, the kidnappers -- including a man whom Andrade later said had been a friend -- deprived their victim of food and water. Through the door of the closet where he was held, Andrade could hear the cries of other victims being tortured in the house, the report said.

Meanwhile, Valencia had defied the kidnappers and called police, who listened to Andrade "scream and howl in pain" over the phone as the kidnappers tried to cut off his ear and a finger. The torture would continue until Valencia came up with the ransom, the kidnappers told her.

They were true to their word.

Andrade was pistol-whipped and beaten with a baseball bat and the butt of a rifle. The kidnappers tried to gouge out his eye and slashed open his left eyebrow. They burned his back as well -- presumably, police said, with a blowtorch found at the scene.

The blindfolded Andrade "could feel his pants and underwear being cut open by an unknown person," he told police. He was told to bend over and was beaten when he refused.

"Jaime felt his legs being forced apart and heard Aldo say he was going to get his money," the report said. The kidnappers then sodomized him with a broomstick, a pair of scissors and a wooden dowel used to hang clothes in a closet.

Kidnappers creative with coercion

Ferocity is often a hallmark of the abductions taking place in this south Arizona city of 1.5 million that serves as a prime transshipment point for drugs and human cargo.

Phoenix police say they have yet to witness the level of violence -- the beheadings, the bodies shoved in drums -- that their counterparts are seeing in Mexico City or the border town of Juarez.

"It gets close sometimes," said Lt. Lauri Burgett, who heads the Home Invasion and Kidnapping Enforcement squad.

Kidnappers will smash their victims' fingers with bricks, snip their backs open with wire cutters, carve them up with knives or simply shoot them.

"We've had them electrocuted. They set them in a tub with water and use kind of barbaric means and zap the tub. I think it was a battery hooked up," Burgett said.

Two kidnappings last year resulted in murders, she added, but it's not the norm.

Phoenix police formed the HIKE squad in October after two years of unprecedented kidnapping numbers -- 357 in 2007 and 368 in 2008 -- gave the city the dubious distinction of being the nation's kidnapping capital. Home invasions were not far behind: 317 in 2007 and 337 in 2008.

"It's all about the money. And there's so much money to be made in this that you can't stop it, but you can try to reveal it, and then you can try to do something about it," Burgett said.

The task force has made dozens of arrests, but as of March 31, the city had 101 reported kidnappings. If the trend continues, Phoenix will record an increase in kidnapping for a fourth straight year.

More frustrating is that the numbers represent only a third, maybe less, of the city's kidnappings, said Sgt. Tommy Thompson, a police spokesman with 16 years of drug enforcement experience. Most kidnappings aren't reported, he said, because the victims are generally smugglers, drug dealers or illegal immigrants -- or some combination of the three.
Other criminals targeted

The most common cases are criminal-on-criminal -- drug smugglers or coyotes snatching rivals or their loved ones. In some cases, a drug dealer may have lost a load or failed to make a payment, but there are also cases when kidnappers do it solely for the ransom, which can be between $30,000 and $250,000, Thompson said.

"[The victims are] wearing the doper bling-bling, and they target them," he said. "We've had several cases where the ransom amount has been $1 million that the person has asked for. In addition to that, they often ask for drugs -- 100 pounds of marijuana, perhaps a pound or two of speed, a pound or two of cocaine or several ounces of heroin."

Phoenix police have even arrested victims after rescuing them, Burgett said.

Less frequent but still accounting for 78 kidnappings last year are cases in which coyotes hold their human cargo captive or steal another coyote's patrons, known as pollos (Spanish for chickens), Burgett said.

Burgett said human trafficking is often linked to the drug trade because both industries require the same routes and subterfuge to ferry their wares into the country.

There are rarely "true victims" in Phoenix's kidnappings, the lieutenant said.

However, one criminal attorney who has represented at least 10 kidnappers in the last decade insists that the coyote business is "uglier than the drug trade" and that pollos are often killed or forced to do coyotes' bidding when they can't come up with the ransoms.

"In the drug business, the people getting killed are in the business. They are not end users, not consumers," said Antonio Bustamente. "In the coyote business, the people killed are really innocent. [First-time] illegal entry is a petty offense."

Though many might debate the innocence of victims entangled in Phoenix's border-related violence, police say there have been instances when the kidnappers snatched the wrong mark.

Girl mistakenly snatched

On the evening of March 17, 2008, a 13-year-old girl and her friend were walking out of a home in the suburb of Avondale. They were planning to play basketball. The friend, according to a police investigative report, was the niece of a man named "Chucky."

Chucky and his cohorts, witnesses told police, had earlier stolen 55 pounds of marijuana and left several men tied up in a vacant house.

Hours later, the investigative report said, armed men arrived at Chucky's sister's house in three vehicles, one a white Chevrolet Tahoe with blue-and-red strobes like the police use.

The men wanted Chucky, their drugs or $24,000. The 13-year-old said she didn't know Chucky. When she tried to walk away, "one of them grabbed her by the neck, pointed a gun at her and forced her in the vehicle," the report said.

Eventually, the men called the girl's mother to demand ransom. A police officer took the phone and informed the men they had the wrong girl. She was released relatively unharmed in the suburb of Surprise.

The case serves as a reminder that as police scramble to tamp the bloodshed before it reaches the levels proliferating south of the border, collateral damage is a reality.

The origins of the kidnappers -- 90 percent of whom hail from the Mexican state from which the notorious Sinaloa drug cartel takes its name -- also remind law enforcement that 150 miles south lies a country racked with a more extreme brand of violence.

The tortured Andrade was fortunate that police were able to find him. On Andrade's third day in captivity, an undercover officer posing as a loan shark convinced the kidnappers to lower their ransom from $50,000 to $10,000 and the title to the Ford Expedition they had stolen.

When the kidnappers arrived at the drop point, a Safeway supermarket parking lot, police swarmed on their green Chevrolet Tahoe, the report said. One of the men, Luis Alberto Castro-Vega, then 23, disclosed Andrade's whereabouts after police promised not to charge him with kidnapping.

Only Castro-Vega has been convicted of crimes associated with Andrade's kidnapping: first-degree burglary, theft by extortion, armed robbery and three counts of aggravated assault. In September 2006, a judge sentenced Castro-Vega to 54 years in prison.

Thompson said he hopes the stiff sentence sends a message that Phoenix police expect the kidnappings and violence to end, regardless of the targets and the perpetrators.

"The problems that occur when it's criminal versus criminal, that's still violence on the streets of America," he said. "If those people get in a gunbattle, those bullets have to go somewhere, and that could be a playground where kids are playing. That could be a neighbor's house where a neighbor is inside sleeping that has nothing to do whatsoever with the illegal activity, but yet they become senseless victims of the violence."

Craigslist Dropping Erotic Ads

FOX: WASHINGTON, D.C. - An "internet brothel." That's how Illinois Attorney General Lisa Madigan describes the "erotic services" section of Craigslist.

Madigan helped negotiate the deal that will put an end to the section of Craigslist.

Mark Lagon runs Polaris Project. It's a non-profit devoted to fighting human sex trafficking.

"The proof of the pudding is in the tasting," Lagon told FOX 5 on Wednesday. "Whether the adult section that replaces it is in fact more benign. Will it be policed? Will it no longer have prostitution for sale?"

Just last month, Lagon sent a letter to Craigslist CEO Jim Buckmaster offering assistance and asking Buckmaster to "take responsibility."

Craigslist says the new "adult services" section will be legal business only and those adult ads will now cost money. In Craiglist's defense, CEO Buckmaster blogged Wednesday, "...the record is clear that use of Craigslist classifieds is associated with far lower rates of violent crime than print classifieds let alone rates of violent crime pertaining to American society as a whole."

But pressure on Craigslist intensified after a Boston medical student was arrested for a murdering a masseuse he met through Craigslist.

Many say they'll wait and see. That list includes Maryland Attorney General Doug Gansler.

"It is a good next step in our efforts to eliminate illegal sexual classified ads on the site," said Gansler. "We will continue to monitor the site to make sure Craigslist keeps its word."

Official: More than 1M child prostitutes in India

CNN: NEW DELHI, India: Around 1.2 million children are believed to be involved in prostitution in India, the country's federal police said Monday.

Ashwani Kumar, who heads the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI), told a seminar on human trafficking, that India occupied a "unique position" as what he called a source, transit nation and destination of this trade.

India's home secretary Madhukar Gupta remarked that at least 100 million people were involved in human trafficking in India.

"The number of trafficked persons is difficult to determine due to the secrecy and clandestine nature of the crime.

"However, studies and surveys sponsored by the ministry of women and child development estimate that there are about three million prostitutes in the country, of which an estimated 40 percent are children," a CBI statement said.

Prostitution in pilgrim towns, exploitation through sex tourism and pedophilia are some of some of the "alarming trends" that have emerged in recent years in India, it noted.

Authorities believe 90 percent of human trafficking in India is "intra-country."

This week on Marketplace Middle East

CNN: In Focus -- The Darker Side of Labor

Governments in the Middle East are moving with plans to pass legislation and adopt protocols against human trafficking and forced labor, but implementation and enforcement remain challenging.

This week MME explores how domestic workers and laborers struggle to survive, and how governments are trying to force change within their societies.

Facetime -- Roger Plant, International Labour Organisation

Over 12 million people are victims of forced labor and human trafficking, a problem that spans the globe. The Middle East relies heavily on foreign labor, which in some cases can make up 80 percent of the total population.

This week MME talks to Roger Plant from the UN's International Labour Organisation about this week's global report on forced labor and human trafficking -- and what countries can do to attack the $36 billion business of illegally trading workers.

Anderson Cooper - Southeast Asia

West woman wins trafficking award

BBC: A West Country woman has been recognised for her work to highlight the problem of human trafficking.

Trish, whose full identity cannot be revealed for safety reasons, won the prize at the Extraordinary Women Awards in Nottingham.

She put trafficking in the spotlight last October when she launched the Unchosen Film Festival in Bristol.

It explored all aspects of the illegal human trafficking trade, from slavery to the sex industry.
Up to 4,000 women are trafficked in to the UK each year, and many are forced in to the illegal sex trade.

Trish was nominated by the Pierian Centre in St Pauls, and came out top in the Extraordinary Personal Contribution category at the awards.

"Human trafficking is the second largest illegal business in the world," she said. "And it's with this in mind that I've been grateful and humble to receive this award.

"I intend to use the opportunity to raise even more awareness of this underground activity in order to successfully rescue some of its victims in Bristol and the surrounding villages."

FBI Initiatives

• Participating in joint law enforcement task forces (there are up to 30 such task forces around the country right now);
• Using intelligence to identify traffickers and gain insights into how they conduct their operations (i.e., finances, logistics);
• Looking at possible human trafficking elements in cases initially identified as human smuggling, Internet crimes against children, and/or sex tourism matters; and
• Perhaps most importantly, working closely with trafficking victims—many of whom don't speak English—to enlist their help in prosecuting their captors AND to make sure they get the support they need to cope with the horrors they've been through and get back on their feet.

Poor Latinos are victims of abuse nationwide, activists say

CNN: Low-income Latinos are routinely discriminated against in the South, a new report says, but the study's author and others say the problem exists nationwide, with millions of Spanish-speaking immigrants living "beyond the protection of the law."

The report, released Wednesday by the Southern Poverty Law Center, documents the experiences of 500 immigrants in the South, finding that Latinos routinely are cheated out of wages, are denied basic health protection and fall victim to racial profiling.

"Under Siege: Life for Low-Income Latinos in the South" details stories such as that of a Tennessee woman who says she was jailed at a cheese factory for asking for pay, a bean picker in Alabama who says his life savings were taken by police at a traffic stop, and a rapist in Georgia who was not arrested because the suspect's victim was an undocumented immigrant.

Forty-one percent of the people surveyed said they had experienced theft of their wages by employers. Forty-seven percent said they know someone who was treated unfairly by police. Seventy-seven percent of women surveyed said they have been sexually harassed by bosses, many saying that bosses used their immigration status as leverage.

"This report documents the human toll of failed policies that relegate millions of people to an underground economy, where they are beyond the protection of the law," said Mary Bauer, author of the report. "Workplace abuses and racial profiling are rampant in the South."

But such discrimination is also rampant nationwide, she said. The human-rights law center focused on the South because that's the area the Montgomery, Alabama-based group knows best, she said.

"This is not limited to the South," she said. "This does not stop when you get to some particular border. These same issues happen everywhere."

The problem may seem more acute in the South because Latinos are a relatively new immigrant group to the area, some observers say.

"Newcomers in any new region are always the first to be exploited. They're at the bottom of the pecking order," said Gustavo Arellano, the California-based author of the nationally syndicated "Ask a Mexican" column and a national radio commentator. "What's going on in the South now has already happened in Southern California."

Teodoro Maus, president of the Georgia Latino Alliance for Human Rights, has heard thousands of discrimination complaints from Mexican immigrants during the past two decades. "In the South, you just open the door and you find it," he said.

"It's absolutely correct that there's generalized discrimination," he told CNN. "There's a general feeling that discrimination is valid because these people are illegal, because these people have no right to be here."

But the attitude toward discrimination has changed throughout the years, said Maus, who was also the Mexican consul general in Atlanta, Georgia, from 1990 to 1994 and from 1995 to 2001.

"The big difference from previous years is that there were discriminatory acts before, but not the belief that discrimination is allowed," he said.

Bolstered by what Maus called "an ultraconservative element," some people "realized they could have open aggression against a group of people who could not defend themselves."

Arizona also has experienced widespread discrimination, Maus and others say.

Bernardo Mendez Lugo, Mexico's deputy consul in Tucson, Arizona, said he sees three main forms of discrimination: racial profiling by law enforcement officers, problems in the workplace and difficulties in the rental housing market.

"There is much abuse," he said Wednesday.

Police officers frequently stop Latin-looking drivers "for any reason" and immediately call immigration officials if the motorist does not have an Arizona driver's license or other local identification, Mendez Lugo said.

In the workplace, he said, employees often find they are passed over for promotions despite their qualifications or length of employment. The abuse, Mendez Lugo said, is generally aimed at undocumented workers.

"They are told, 'I'm going to call immigration [authorities] if you keep asking,' " Mendez Lugo said.

Federal officials say there are more than 12 million undocumented immigrants in the United States. Most of them come from Mexico and other Latin American countries.

John McManus, president of the conservative John Birch Society, doesn't see a widespread abuse problem.

"I would probably expect there would be some," he said. "There's a small number of unscrupulous people who will always take advantage of others. Generally speaking, I don't think that's the case."

Nor does McManus believe the source of the information.

"I don't put any stock at all in anything the Southern Poverty Law Center says," McManus said. "They like to distort a lot of things."

The center urged the federal government to strengthen labor laws and crack down on racial profiling.

"We're talking about a matter of basic human rights here," said Southern Poverty Law Center President Richard Cohen. "By allowing this cycle of abuse and discrimination to continue, we're creating an underclass of people who are invisible to justice and undermining our country's fundamental ideals."

Rudd: Human smugglers 'scum of the earth'

CNN: Australia's prime minister Friday slammed those engaged in human trafficking after an explosion aboard a boat carrying Afghan refugees killed three people and injured more than 40 others near Ashmore Reef, off Australia's northwest coast.

"People smugglers are engaged in the world's most evil trade and they should all rot in jail because they represent the absolute scum of the earth," Prime Minister Kevin Rudd told reporters.

"We see this lowest form of human life at work in what we saw on the high seas yesterday. That's why this government maintains its hardline, tough, targeted approach to maintaining border protection for Australia. And that's why we have dedicated more resources to combat people smuggling than any other government in Australian history."

The boat was carrying 49 refugees, officials said. In addition to the three killed, two others were missing.

Rudd would not comment on the cause of the explosion, citing the ongoing investigation.
The prime minister acknowledged that human smuggling was an increasing problem exacerbated by "global factors" but defended his government's border security policies.

"Our staff, our naval staff, our coast watch staff, our aerial surveillance staff and others, our police, are doing a first class job backed up by our intelligence officers as well, also in collaboration with partners across the region," the prime minister said.

"Because it is a global phenomenon and we are finding push factors operating from around the world, our active partnership with international governments and international agencies like the UNHCR is equally critical. This is a fight on many fronts. It is a fight which we have been engaged in for some time and a fight which other governments around the world are equally engaged in with us."

Rudd said the refugees' requests for asylum "will be treated under the normal provisions of the law through the examination of each of their individual cases."

Judge: 'Gripping temptation' to let Madonna adopt

CNN: A judge who barred Madonna's second adoption from Malawi on Friday said she had "a gripping temptation" to approve the adoption, but decided doing so would open doors to child trafficking, court records show.

The American pop star had filed a petition to adopt a girl, Chifundo James, 3. The rejection was based on a residency requirement and the judge's belief that the child was in good hands at an orphanage.

"There is a gripping temptation to throw caution to the wind and grant an adoption in the hope that there will be a difference in the life of even just one child," Justice E.J. Chombo wrote in a ruling.

"But removing the very safeguard that is supposed to protect our children ... could actually facilitate trafficking of children by some unscrupulous individuals."

Chombo was referring to a residency requirement in Malawi law that requires people to live in the country for some time before adopting.

If Madonna was granted the adoption without established residency, critics argue it could open the door for others to adopt children and leave the country.

"Anyone could come to Malawi and quickly arrange for an adoption that might have grave consequences on the very children that the law seeks to protect," the judge wrote.

Court papers provided to CNN also revealed that the judge considered the petition different from that of David Banda, whom Madonna adopted from Malawi in 2006.

David "was to be returned to his biological father within a period of six months from the time that Mchinji Orphanage had admitted him," Chombo wrote.

"This is the same father that had desperately appealed for help after the death of his wife because of his incapacity to look after David and the unwillingness of wife's family to care for the child."

In the case of Chifundo, the orphanage taking care of her was able and willing, according to Chombo, who did not handle the first adoption. Court records show her 14-year-old mother died days after her birth.

The ruling followed weeks of criticism by human rights activists, who accused the mother of three of using her fame to circumvent a residency law for foreigners adopting in the country.
Save the Children UK had also urged Madonna to let the child be raised by her relatives in her home community.

The denial was applauded by a coalition of local nonprofits.

"Inter-country adoption is not the best way of providing protection to children ... supporting children from outside our country only helps five of the 1.5 million orphans we have," said Mavuto Bamusi, the national coordinator of Malawi Human Rights Consultative Committee.

Malawi government officials said Thursday that they supported Madonna's second adoption.

The recently divorced singer was married to British filmmaker Guy Ritchie. She has been involved with Malawi for several years and made a documentary, "I Am Because We Are," to highlight poverty, AIDS and other diseases devastating children in that country. She also co-founded a nonprofit group, Raising Malawi, which provides programs to help the needy.

Madonna's lawyer has filed a notice to appeal the ruling with the Supreme Court, according to Ken Manda, high court registrar.