Family jailed for sex trafficking

BBC: 4 June 2009 - Three members of a Hungarian family have been jailed for trafficking women to the UK for sexual exploitation, by an Inner London Crown Court judge.
Istvan Kalocsai, 42, and his son Istvan, 19, were jailed for six-and-a-half and five years respectively for sex trafficking offences.

Istvan's wife Istvanne, 39, got three years for controlling prostitution. All three lived in Barking in Essex.

Police said they had exploited "another human being in the most horrible way".

The family were arrested after a young Hungarian woman was found cowering in the toilets of London City Airport, the court had heard.

Tricked and beaten

They tricked her into leaving her village home and forced her into prostitution with threats and beatings.

A second son, Gabor Kalocsai, 22, is still on the run from police and believed to be in Hungary.
In May 2008 a cleaner found the young woman, who was in her early 20s, unable to speak English, with no passport or baggage, and begging to be flown back to Hungary.

Police first thought she had been robbed, but after speaking to her via a translator, it became clear she had been trafficked into the UK and forced to work as a prostitute.

She originally came from a remote village in Hungary and was told she could have an all-expenses paid trip to Britain, where she would then work legitimately to pay back the cost of her trip.

But no sooner had she been picked up by Istvan Kalocsai and his sons, than the three men began to threaten her, telling her she had been sold to them and "there is no going back now".

Terrified, she was driven through Germany and even forced into prostitution on the way to the UK, when the family sent her to have sex with lorry drivers, telling her she had to earn petrol money.

Once in the country the young woman was taken to the Kalocsai family home in Barking, Essex, where she was bought mini skirts and taught how to "walk like a working girl" by the family's mother.

The sons, Gabor and Istvan Jnr, would go out with the victim and negotiate fees with the clients before she would either take them back to a hotel address in Barking or a local park.

On several occasions she was beaten by the father and mother and was told that she had to earn £200 a day.

She believed that if she refused to work, she would be beaten until she did.

At first the young woman was not allowed out of the family's home unless it was to work or when she went shopping with the mother.

But after an incident where she was stopped by police for prostitution while she was with Gabor, the family members accompanied her less often.

After two months she finally escaped, following an incident where the mother threatened to kill one of her friends.

Det Con Mark Simpson, of the Metropolitan Police's Human Trafficking Team, said: "They sought to profit from the exploitation of another human being in the most horrible way.

"Through violence and intimidation they forced her to do things against her will and failed to honour any of her basic human rights."

At the Kalocsai's home police found that a second Hungarian woman had been living there while the family prostituted her at brothels in west London and over the internet.

The Metropolitan Police are working closely with the Hungarian human trafficking team in Budapest to find him.

Hookers for Jesus founder, Christian rocker wed in Vegas

CNN: June 5, 2009 - She was a call girl working the streets of Sin City. He's a guitarist in a heavy metal band. They found commonality in their Christian faith and Friday evening, the two were married in a Las Vegas, Nevada, ceremony broadcast live via the Web.

Annie Lobért, who founded Hookers for Jesus, and musician Oz Fox of the Christian band Stryper said their "I do's" at the Church of South Las Vegas in front of an applauding crowd and an audience on the Internet. The wedding had been widely touted on several Christian Web sites.

Lobért, 41, walked up to the stage in a white strapless gown, gloves and veil. Earlier this week, she wrote on her MySpace blog: "I am getting married. It's about time."

She had worked as a prostitute for 11 years, making as much as $500 an hour. She said she hit rock bottom when she overdosed on cocaine and everything went black, according to an ABC interview posted on her Web site. She asked Jesus to help her and became what many jokingly call a "porn-again Christian."

Lobért says her mission now is to save the souls of women who sell their bodies. She often spends time at night on Las Vegas streets handing out Bibles to prostitutes and seeking to convince them there is a better way to make a living.

The Hookers for Jesus Web site describes the organization as "an international, faith-based organization that addresses the realities of human sex trafficking, sexual violence and exploitation linked to pornography and the sex industry."

Before he administered the vows, Pastor Benny Perez said Lobért was a shining example of Christ's love for everyone.

Fox, 47, is a longtime member of Stryper, which stands for Salvation Through Redemption, Yielding Peace, Encouragement and Righteousness. The band's albums include "Reborn: and "In God We Trust."

Nevada Governor Signs Legislation Cracking Down on Child Sex Trafficking

Polaris Project: Carson City, NV, May 26, 2009 - Nevada Governor Jim Gibbons signed legislation into law last Friday targeting human traffickers and pimps who exploit children in prostitution – bringing Nevada law more in line with other western states.

Assemblyman John Hambrick (R, 2), a former law enforcement officer and Assemblyman Bernie Anderson (D, 31) introduced this bi-partisan legislation in response to witnessing the many children grossly exploited and subject to violence in the sex trade. In May of 2007, outreach workers identified over 400 prostituted children on the streets of Nevada alone, and while the use of children in prostitution is a severe form of human trafficking under federal law, it still remains rampant. In the U.S. uncountable child victims are trapped in pimp-controlled street prostitution or sold on the internet, with no hope of escape. Victims face a horrific life in which they are repeatedly threatened, beaten, raped, starved, or psychologically tortured. These crimes are committed for one reason: the financial profit of traffickers.

The newly enacted law improves Nevada’s response to trafficking by adding severe financial penalties - and risk - to the crime of prostituting a child, while providing a funding mechanism to prevent and prosecute the crime. "The new law targets traffickers’ greatest motivation – their profits," stated Hambrick, "and clearly demonstrates that we mean business." The new law provides for criminal fines of up to $100,000 for a person convicted of prostituting a child between the ages of 14 and 18, and fines of up to $500,000 if the child is under 14. The assets of those convicted may also be forfeited and directed to law enforcement and to organizations working to end the sex trafficking of minors. The new fines are more in line with Nevada’s neighboring state of Arizona and several other western states that have sent a strong message to traffickers that exploitation will not be tolerated.

According to Hambrick, "this new law is but a first step in cracking down on the malicious and insidiously cruel crime of human trafficking in Nevada, and I look forward to even more comprehensive reforms in the next session." Human trafficking is the modern day practice of slavery and it is the fastest growing criminal industry in the world, generating over $36 billion annually. Victims of human trafficking in the U.S. are children and adults, and both foreign nationals and U.S. citizens, who are subjected to force, fraud, and coercion for sexual or labor exploitation.

Ambassador Mark Lagon, Executive Director at Polaris Project commented, "We commend Nevada legislators, advocates, and Governor Gibbons for addressing this critical need. We look forward to Nevada authorities -- in concert with non-governmental organizations -- taking even greater steps next year to end human trafficking of both minors and adults, by implementing greater penalties against traffickers and improving protections for victims."

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."