Child Exploitation.org
Most people have no idea how large the problem truly is.
North America
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WASHINGTON—Tens of thousands of U.S., Mexican and Canadian children and youths
become victims of juvenile pornography, prostitution and trafficking each year. So
significant is the problem that even most law-enforcement and child-welfare officials do not
realize its scope.
"Child sexual exploitation is the most hidden form of child abuse in the U.S. and North
America today. It is the nation's least recognized epidemic," said Richard J. Estes, a
University of Pennsylvania professor of social work and the author of "The Commercial
Sexual Exploitation of Children in the U.S., Canada and Mexico." Neil Weiner of Penn's
Center for the Study of Youth Policy co-authored the international report.
The three-year project was funded by the National Institute of Justice of the U.S.
Department of Justice, the W.T. Grant Foundation, the Fund for Nonviolence and the
Research Foundation of the University of Pennsylvania. Estes reported that his and
Weiner's research identified 17 groups of children in the U.S. who are at "substantial risk"
of being sexually exploited.
"The largest of these groups are runaway, thrownaway and other homeless American
children who use 'survival sex' to acquire food, shelter, clothing and other things needed to
survive on America's streets," Estes said. "These children are solicited for sex repeatedly
by men, many of whom are married and have children of their own," Estes said. "Like other
groups of sexually exploited persons, street children are exposed to violence, drug abuse,
rape and, sometimes, even murder at the hands of the pimps, 'customers' and traffickers
that make up their world."
The Department of Homeland Security yesterday announced a law enforcement initiative
known as Operation Predator, aimed at protecting children from pornographers, child
prostitution rings, Internet predators and human traffickers.
The program, coordinated through the department's Bureau of Immigration and Customs
Enforcement (ICE), uses the Internet to more effectively identify child predators, prosecute
them and force them out of the country if they are foreigners subject to deportation.
"Operation Predator integrates the department's authorities to target those who exploit
children," Homeland Security Secretary Tom Ridge said. "The Department of Homeland
Security is coordinating the department's once-fragmented investigative and intelligence
resources into a united campaign against child predators."
As part of the program, ICE officials will partner with the National Center for Missing and
Exploited Children to facilitate the exchange of information on missing children, as well as
investigative intelligence leads.
For the first time, bureau officials said, an ICE senior special agent has been assigned to
the center to coordinate those leads requiring law enforcement attention.
ICE officials also will work with the FBI, the U.S. Postal Inspection Service, the U.S. Secret
Service and the Justice Department to develop a National Child Victim Identification
Program.
These are U.S. agencies for reporting Child Pornography.
Please also see:
Report Child Pornography - International Agencies
Child Pornography Articles and Media Reports
Cyber Tipline
National Center For Missing & Exploited Children
Charles B. Wang International Children's Building
699 Prince Street
Alexandria, VA 22314-3175
Phone: (703) 274-3900
Toll-free: 1-800-843-5678
www.cybertipline.com
Child Exploitation and Obscenity Section
Criminal Division
U.S. Department of Justice
1331 F Street NW, 6th Floor
Washington DC 20004
Phone: 202-514-5780
www.usdoj.gov/criminal/ceos/
INDEPTH: CHILD PORN
Child porn FAQ
CBC News Online | June 22, 2004
If I e-mail photos of my own children taking a bath to family members, am I breaking the
law? No. The Criminal Code's definition of child pornography stresses that even if children
appear nude in a photo, the focus has to be on sexual organs and the picture must be
distributed for an explicitly sexual purpose.
Sometimes I get spammed e-mail with links to child pornography sites. If I click on one by
accident, have I broken the law? Not if there's no intent. Senior Counsel Carole Morency, a
legislator working on the new proposed changes to Canada's child pornography laws, says
the law targets those who actively seek out child porn. Still, technically speaking, any
picture you view on the web is downloaded and saved on your computer's hard drive. Even
if you regularly empty your Recycle Box and clear out your caches, experts can still usually
find it later. Morency says it's an understandable concern that some may fear an accidental
download will come back to haunt them, but points out any sort of investigation would
eventually prove their innocence.
A family run prostitution network in Canada made more than $1 million in two years by
prostituting foreign women. A man, his son, his wife, their daughter and daughter-in-law all
recruited females who participated in the overall operation. Many of the 20 prostitutes --
aged 23 to 39 -- were related to the operators by marriage or blood, Murarotto said. They
worked out of apartments and each turned over at least $15,000 a year to the operators
(George Christopoulos, "Family Ran Prostitution Ring," Toronto Sun, 16 May 1998)
Xuong Han Luong faces charges of owning a brothel in Toronto, Canada, and living off the
avails of prostitution. He held at least five Thai women in the brothel, forcing them into
prostitution. Although the brothel was raided in 1996, police believe the same group
reopened it. (Rob Lamberti, "Cops Raid Den of Thai Sex ‘Salves’ 2 Men Arrested For
Running Bawdy House," Toronto Sun, 10 May 1998)
Adam Jermaine Ingram, 20, and Kevin Roy Woods, 18 are accused of paying $3,000 to
buy a 13-year-old girl from a man in Vancouver, Canada, abducting her and her friend and
raping them while on route to San Diego. Their actions violate, among other laws, the 1948
White Slave Traffic Act, prohibiting the transport of minors across state lines with the intent
of engaging in criminal activity. (Teen Girls Abducted,"The Province, 21 December 1997)
11 women, aged 18-25, from the former Soviet Union, were forced to become exotic
dancers in a strip club. The women were recruited from the former Soviet Union with the
promise that they would become highly paid models in Canada. They entered Canada
illegally, and the traffickers took their passports and other identification and held them in
Toronto.
US CHILD PORNOGRAPHY LEGISLATION
The US Supreme Court has overthrown a congressional ban on virtual paedophilia. It ruled
the First Amendment protects pornography or other sexual images that only appear to
depict real children engaged in sex. The judgment is a victory for both pornographers and
legitimate artists such as filmmakers. They argued that a broad ban on simulated child sex
could make it a crime to depict a sex scene like those in the recent movies Traffic or Lolita.
The law was challenged by a trade association for pornographers.
It barred sexually explicit material that "appear(s) to be a minor" or that is advertised in a
way that "conveys the impression" that a minor was involved in its creation. The law was
Congress' answer to then-emerging computer technology that allowed the computer
alteration of innocent images of real children, or the creation from scratch of simulated
children posed in sexual acts. The law was an expansion of existing bans on child
pornography. Congress had justified the wider ban on grounds that while no real children
were harmed in creating the material, real children could be harmed by feeding the prurient
appetites of paedophiles or child molesters.
WASHINGTON (CNN) -- A study released Monday revealed that between 300,000 and
400,000 U.S. children -- many from middle class homes -- are victims of some type of
sexual exploitation every year.
The three-year study, funded in part by the U.S. Department of Justice, analyzed the
problem of sexual exploitation -- particularly commercial sexual exploitation -- of children in
the United States, Canada and Mexico.
"Child sexual exploitation is the most hidden form of child abuse in the U.S. and North
America today," said Richard J. Estes, co-author of the study. "It is the nation's least
recognized epidemic."
He said the findings debunked many myths about what kind of children are involved in
sexual exploitation.
Study summary
Among the findings of a study titled "The Commercial Sexual Exploitation of Children in the
U.S., Canada and Mexico":
325,000 children are sexually exploited in the United States annually. Of that figure,
121,911 ran away from home and 51,602 were thrown out of their homes by a parent or
guardian.
25 percent of exploiters of children are other children.
Children who engage in prostitution can earn between $200 and $1,500 per day.
75 percent of children who are victims of commercial sexual exploitation are from middle
class backgrounds.
40 percent of the girls who engaged in prostitution were sexually abused at home, as were
30 percent of the boys.
Source: The Associated Press
Child Exploitation
Opening quote: Since the passage of the Child Protection Act of 1984, Postal Inspectors
have conducted 4,474 child exploitation investigations, resulting in the arrests of 3,711
individuals who used the mail in violation of federal child exploitation laws.
Child pornography and the sexual exploitation of children are tragic, heart-rending crimes
that plague law enforcement agencies worldwide. Child pornographers who assume
(incorrectly) the U.S. Mail will provide a safe, reliable, and anonymous vehicle for
exchanging such material are aggressively targeted by U.S. Postal Inspectors, regarded
internationally as leaders in the fight against child exploitation.
In keeping with this reputation, the Chief Postal Inspector was offered and accepted a seat
on the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children's (NCMEC's) Board of Directors
in FY 2002. The Postal Inspection Service has developed strong, cooperative relations with
the NCMEC over the years, and it is expected that representation on its board will foster an
even more effective partnership through mutual, coordinated efforts to protect children
from sexual abuse and exploitation. NCMEC Cyber Tipline reports are reviewed at
Inspection Service National Headquarters and forwarded to field Inspectors who are child
exploitation specialists for investigation or referral, as appropriate, and an Inspector is
assigned full-time to the NCMEC.
The impact of migrant trafficking on Canada is estimated at between $120 million to $400
million per year and accounts for approximately 8,000 to 16,000 people arriving in Canada
per year illegally. ("Organized Crime Impact Study," Solicitor General of Canada)
Vietnamese and Chinese mafia are increasing operations in brothels in Toronto, Canada.
They traffic in women from Southeast Asia. Agents pay recruiters up to $8,000 for a
woman, who then sell the women to pimps for about $15,000. Agents take 10% of the
earnings beyond the original contract. The women are forced to service buyers’ 12 hours a
day, 400 buyers or $400,000 to pay off their debt. Women are abused and terrorized,
being beaten and reportedly burned with hot irons. (Rob Lamberti, "Sex Slaves: Fodder for
Flesh Factories the Women Earn Nothing But Tips Until They Pay Off Their $40,000
Contracts," Toronto Sun, 10 May 1998)
About twelve 16-30-year-old Asian girls and women were trafficked into Canada each week
on visitor's permits and sold into prostitution. The girls and women were bought in North
America for up to $15,000 by a network that made about U.S. $1. 4 - $2.2 million annually.
The women are sold to brothel owners in Markham and Scarborough Toronto and Los
Angeles and forced into $40,000 debt bondage. (Police, "Police Bust Sex-slave Ring" 11
September 1997 & "Toronto police uncover sex slave ring," United Press International, 11
September 1997)
1000 employment authorizations for foreign exotic dancers are issued every year.
("Canada’s Paper for EU Conference on Trafficking in Women for Sexual Exploitation" 10-
11 June 1996)
Recruitment of exotic dancers into Canada is legal, and may be linked to the issues of
trafficking and sexual exploitation. Women who enter Canada to work as exotic dancers are
vulnerable to sexual and economic exploitation, deprivation of freedom, and can be
coerced into criminal activities, whether they have entered legally or illegally. ("Canada’s
Paper for EU Conference on Trafficking in Women for Sexual Exploitation" 10-11 June
1996)
Male buyers in Canada are increasingly seeking Filipinas more so than Thai women,
because they believe Filipinas pose less of risk for AIDS. (Rob Lamberti, "Sex Slaves:
Fodder for Flesh Factories the Women Earn Nothing But TipsUntil They Pay Off Their
$40,000 Contracts," Toronto Sun, 10 May 1998)
Methods and Techniques of Traffickers
As many as 100 Honduran children have been smuggled overland into Canada from
Honduras, by a professional drug ring trafficking children to Vancouver.
CHILD LABOUR, SLAVERY, SEXUAL EXPLOITATION AND THE GLOBAL ECONOMY BY
EUGENE W. PLAWIUK
This last summer an international conference was held in Sweden its primary concern was
on the sexual exploitation of children world wide. Much of its focus however was on the
condition of children in developing countries, countries that are now being targeted by
multinational corporations for large scale investment as part of the so called new global
economy. The conference drew international attention to the matter of the international sex
trade; the use of young girls and boys as prostitutes in countries such as India, Pakistan,
Philippines, Thailand, etc. and the booming business of sexual tourism. Sexual tours of
developing countries are organized for North American, European and Japanese
businessmen. These tours have been a booming business for the past twenty years,
despite the very real dangers of sexually transmitted diseases and AIDS. The sexual
tourism industry in many Asian countries is a direct result of the war economy imposed on
these countries during the American war in Vietnam, Cambodia and Laos in the 1960's and
70's. Countries such as the Philippines and Thailand were major staging areas for
American troops, resulting in a war based black market economy of sex, drugs and other
goods. There is a direct economic link between sexual tourism and the exploitation of
developing countries by multinational corporations based in industrial capitalist countries
such as the United States, Germany and Japan. While the news media focused on the
sensational exploitation of children in third world countries during the conference, they did
not make a clear link between child sexual exploitation and child labour. However many
representatives at the conference, including representatives of the International Labour
Organization (ILO), did make this link. And the link is clear. As developing countries
welcome increased foreign investment and major corporations move operations out of
North America, Nike is a good example, they move into cheap labour zones in Latin
America, Asia, and Africa. As the urban metropolitan areas in these countries develop a
new industrial base traditional rural agricultural economies in these countries are destroyed.
TRAFFICKING
Trafficking in women plagues the United States as much as it does underdeveloped
nations. Organized prostitution networks have migrated from metropolitan areas to small
cities and suburbs. Women trafficked to the United States have been forced to have sex
with 400-500 men to pay off $40,000 in debt for their passage. (Avita Ramdas, president of
the Global Fund for Women sponsoring a recent prostitution conference, Brad
Knickerbocker, "Prostitution’s Pernicious Reach Grows in the US" Christian Science
Monitor, 23 October 1996)
In mid-1997 in Queens New York police were informed of more than 60 Mexican immigrants
including 12 children ranging in age from 6 months to 6 years, being held in "involuntary
servitude". (Deborah Sontag, "Deaf Mexicans Are Found in Forced Labor," New York
Times, 20 June 1997)
The United Nations now lists Mexico as the number one center for the supply of young
children to North America. Most are sold to rich, childless couples unwilling to wait for bona
fide adoption agencies to provide them with a child. The majority are sent to international
pedophile organizations. Many times the children are snatched while on errands for their
parents. Often they are drugged and raped. Most of the children over 12 end up as
prostitutes. Hector Ramirez, a former deputy, or Mexican Member of Parliament, stated that
"many of the state and city authorities [are] doing absolutely nothing to stop what is going
on." (Allan Hall, The Scotsman, 25 August 1998)
5,000 women of Chinese descent are in prostitution in Los Angeles. (Kathryn McMahon,
Daniel B. Wood, "A Crusade to Free Captive Daughters," Christian Science Monitor, 12
March 1998)
Chinese women are being trafficked into the United States for brothels in New York and
North Carolina. They are held in $40,000 debt bondage. ("Chinese women ‘forced into
prostitution’ in US," BBC, 3 March 1998)
Traffickers force Chinese immigrants into indentured servitude, women into prostitution and
men into the restaurant business. In September 1998, 153 men and 21 women, including
35 juveniles, arrived in San Diego, California from China via Mexico, after paying smugglers
$30,000. In 1997, 69 and in 1993, 650 Chinese immigrants were intercepted in the same
area. If caught by immigration (INS) officials, most will be sent back to China, unless they
receive political asylum. The smugglers may face jail time in the United States. (Paula
Story, "Chinese Immigrant Boat Reaches US," Associated Press Online, 19 September
1998)
Traffickers in Miami were receiving Asian children who were being trafficked through
Europe by Japanese and Chinese criminal gangs. In one month, at least 15 children were
smuggled into the United States for prostitution. ("Pedophilia ring uncovered in Italy," USA
Today, Nov. 1997)
25 distinct Russian organized crime groups are operating in the United States in the areas
of prostitution, fraud, money laundering, murder, extortion and drug trafficking and the
Federal Bureau of Investigation has approximately 250 pending investigations targeting
Russian gangs in 27 states. (Barbara Starr, "Former Soviet Union a playground for
organized crime: A gangster’s paradise," ABC News, 14 September 1998)
TWO ARRESTED AFTER JOINT CHILD SEX TOURISM INVESTIGATION BY THE UNITED
STATES, MOLDOVA AND ROMANIA
PHILADELPHIA - United States Attorney Patrick L. Meehan and John Kelleghan, Acting
Special Agent-in-Charge for U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) in
Philadelphia, today announced the filing of an indictment1 against Anthony Mark Bianchi,
44, of North Wildwood, New Jersey.
Bianchi is charged with one count of conspiracy to engage in illicit sexual conduct in foreign
places, two counts of traveling with the intent to engage in illicit sexual conduct, two counts
of engaging in illicit sexual conduct in foreign places and one count of using a facility in
foreign commerce to entice a minor to engage in sexual activity. ICE agents arrested
Bianchi at his North Wildwood, N.J. on Wednesday, January 11th.
Also charged by authorities in the Republic of Moldova is 28-year-old Ion Gusin, who
allegedly served as Bianchi's translator. Moldovan police arrested Gusin Wednesday.
From December 2003 through until at least October 17, 2005, the defendant allegedly
conspired to travel from Philadelphia International Airport to Cuba, the Republic of Moldova
and Romania to engage in illicit sexual conduct with males younger than 16 years of age.
The defendant also allegedly used the telephone in an attempt to obtain illicit sexual
activity from Romanian males younger than 16.
In one instance, the defendant took a young male to a Romanian pub for his birthday.
According to the indictment, while at the pub, Bianchi gave the boy a very sweet wine to
drink and after he became intoxicated, Bianchi engaged in illicit sexual conduct with him.
"Americans who believe they can sexually abuse children abroad without facing
consequences at home are sadly mistaken, " said Kelleghan. "ICE will use all of its
resources to bring international sex tourists to justice."
"Sexual predators who travel overseas to pursue their victims need to know that distance is
not a deterrent to law enforcement," said Meehan. "This case involved authorities in three
countries and showed the lengths to which we are willing to travel to take these people out
of circulation and make sure they face the consequences."
Children deserve a childhood that includes a period of innocence - a protected space.
We're not protecting our children when we allow them to be used for the monetary gain or
sexual gratification of adults. Ervin Duggan, President of PBS
Tragically, children, the most vulnerable of our population are those most at risk from
sexual exploitation. Using children as sexual commodities has become a global growth
industry. In our own country, even provocative advertisements that sexualize children are
symptoms of what has become a disturbing trend. Children have become fair game in our
sexually saturated society. When we sexualize children, a daunting descent is begun that
puts us on the path of seeing them in a sexual way. Surely our culture is progressive
enough to see the consequences of this process of desensitization.
This article will briefly explore some of the Canadian laws, studies, and court cases that
deal with child sexual exploitation.
Many of the laws dealing with this problem are effective. However, too frequently the laws
are not enforced, or when they are, charges are often dismissed in court. Sometimes a
loop-hole in the law or the use of the Charter of Rights results in someone who admits guilt
being given a light or even no sentence at all. This may be because we live in a very
sexually charged society. The limits or "line in the sand" are always being moved. In fact,
our children constitute one of the newest sexual frontiers.
For example, in May 1996, Chateau Mouton Rothchild brought forth a wine label with a
drawing of a nude, reclining, pre-adolescent girl. A big debate followed - was the label
obscene, or was it art? In California, the label could not be used. A LCBO spokesperson
defended the label by stating that that province's moral and artistic climate is more tolerant
- "what the heck, this is the 20th century. Let's go ahead with it." (Globe and Mail, May 2,
1996) Rothchild's press release stated "the fragile and mysterious girl seems to hint at
some secret promise, a pleasure to be shared." A spokesman for the advertising company
stated "the agency is trying to be current with today's attitudes." (Saveur Fare, No. 12, p.2)
The statements, along with the picture of a sexually provocative female child left no doubt
about the double entendre that was intended by clever profit driven advertisers. There are
numerous
There are numerous “jean” billboards and magazine ads of young adolescents. The
question often asked is “What product is being sold?” Calvin Klein answered that very
question when he said, “Sex will sell my jeans.” The fragrance companies have copied his
style. Have you noticed how often these ads portray young children with adults in a very
suggestive relationship? This in no way says that love and affection are not extremely
important in families. In fact, without love and affection, families fail. However these ads
could easily be interpreted as exploitive relationships with children.
In 1996, members of the Ontario Film Review Board stated at their annual luncheon
meeting that they would never approve films depicting sex with children. That is no longer
their policy. Often these very films that would have been considered illegal a few years ago
are now acclaimed as award winning productions.
Federal authorities have shut down an exclusive Internet chat room that traded in
graphic child pornography, including "on demand" videos of children as young as
infants being molested, U.S. Atty. Gen. Alberto Gonzales announced Wednesday.
An international investigation into the chat room "Kiddy pics & Kiddyvids" led to
charges against 27 people in the U.S., Australia, Britain and Canada.
Thirteen U.S. residents, including three men from the Chicago suburbs, are charged
as members of the chat room, Gonzales said at a news conference in the Dirksen U.
S. Courthouse.
The investigation also uncovered seven sexually abused children and four
molesters, authorities said.
Gonzales said chat room members could access "thousands and thousands" of
pictures and videos that he described as "the worst imaginable forms of child
pornography."
The three suspects from the Chicago area are Brian A. Annoreno, 29, of Bartlett;
Gregory J. Sweezer, 48, of Aurora; and David B. Holst, 27, of North Aurora.
All three have admitted to federal agents that they possessed child pornography,
according to court documents.
Annoreno is charged with molesting an infant girl for a live video "streamed" over
the Internet to another chat room member, known as "Big(underscore)Daddy619."
That individual, a resident of Alberta, Canada, is accused of molesting four children
for streaming videos but was not identified by name in court documents.
A computer seized at Holst's home contained images of an exposed 18-month-old
girl and a video of a girl between the ages of 9 and 12 engaged in sex acts with a
man, a complaint states.
Holst told investigators he was "burned out" with adult pornography, the complaint
states.
Julie Myers, the Homeland Security Department's assistant secretary for
Immigration and Customs Enforcement, said the chat room represents a disturbing
evolution in online child pornography.
Where commercial Web sites frequently reproduce the same images over and
over, "peer-to-peer" chat rooms are manufacturing new, "homegrown" child
pornography, Myers said.
"Tragically and frighteningly, the kids in these images are getting younger, and the
images are getting more and more violent and graphic," she said.
A criminal complaint charges that on Jan. 1, Annoreno e-mailed a photograph of a
baby girl with her genitals exposed. The following day, he received an e-mail of a
girl removing her underwear and exposing herself, the complaint states.
Sweezer admitted to possessing thousands of images, according to a complaint.
Annoreno's attorney, Michael Falconer, said Wednesday that he does not believe
investigators have a video showing his client molesting a child.
Falconer described Annoreno as a "computer wizard" but said he otherwise has a
very low IQ.
"He might admit to anything," Falconer said, adding he believes Annoreno lives with
his parents.
Calls to attorneys for Holst and Sweezer were not returned Wednesday. Attempts to
reach all three men at their homes were unsuccessful.
Annoreno, who authorities said used the screen-name "Acidburn," was arrested
Jan. 8 and is in custody in Kankakee.
Holst was arrested Jan. 11 and is free on $25,000 bond.
Sweezer, arrested March 9, is also free after his wife posted their home for bond.
Prosecutors charge that Royal Raymond Weller of Clarksville, Tenn., ran the chat
room under the screen-name "G.O.D."
When Weller was arrested March 6, Lisa A. Winebrenner of Osceola, Iowa, took
over as the chat room's host, authorities allege.
Winebrenner, who was arrested Tuesday, is accused of trying to destroy evidence
of child pornography and advising other members on March 10 to do the same.
Known by the screen-name "HumbleDuchess," Winebrenner even discussed a
contingency plan to keep the chat room running in the event of her arrest, authorities
charge.
Winebrenner's sister, Hope, said the family is numb after her arrest and doesn't
know what to make of the charges.
"As far as the downloading ... they're saying she did it, so we're guessing she did
it," Hope Winebrenner said.
She said she does not know if Winebrenner has an attorney.
Assistant Secretary Myers said that, increasingly, similar chat rooms are using
sophisticated methods to hide their activity from law enforcement and to destroy
evidence when they are detected.
And unlike commercial Web sites that charge fees law enforcement can track,
"Kiddy pics & Kiddyvids" was free and exclusive to its members, Myers said.
Members tipped each other off to suspected law enforcement attempts to access
the site, and hosts kicked off anyone they thought compromised security, authorities
charged.
The chat room was discovered after police in Edmonton, Canada, arrested a
member, said Tony Warr, deputy police chief in Toronto.
The investigation was ongoing and police in Canada used tracking software to
locate other members of the chat room and alerted authorities in the U.S., Australia
and Britain, Warr said.
Gonzales did not detail how long the chat room was in operation before it was shut
down.
He declined to say whether the sexually abused children identified in the
investigation have been placed in protective custody but offered assurances they
are safe.
KANSAS CITY, Mo. – Todd P. Graves, United States Attorney for the Western
District of Missouri, announced recently that a record number of child exploitation
cases were filed in federal court in 2005. "Preventing the exploitation of children,
and prosecuting those who use the Internet to prey upon them, is my highest local
priority," Graves said at a news conference in Kansas City today. "Thanks to
tougher federal laws and aggressive prosecution, child sexual predators can find no
refuge from justice in cyberspace." According to Graves, 42 child exploitation
cases were filed in the Western District of Missouri in 2005. Those cases included
charges related to child pornography, enticing a minor to engage in illicit sexual
activity, distributing obscenity to a minor, or sexual abuse of a child. "We’re in the
forefront of efforts nationwide to protect our children," Graves said. "This district
was ranked sixth nationally in prosecutions of child exploitation cases among the 93
federal districts in 2005. We prosecuted more child exploitation cases than any
district east of the Rocky Mountains. And we’re redoubling our efforts this year, with
13 child exploitation cases filed in just the past two months." During the past year,
Graves added, there were 38 convictions in child exploitation cases, either by trial
or guilty plea. "This continues a trend of dramatic increases in the number of child
exploitation cases filed in the Western District of Missouri," Graves said. "Before I
launched the Computer Crimes and Child Exploitation Unit in 2002, we averaged
about a dozen cases per year. That tripled in the unit’s first full year, with 36 cases
filed in 2004 followed by a 17 percent increase last year." These numbers, Graves
added, don’t include other computer-related crimes prosecuted by the Computer
Crimes and Child Exploitation Unit, such as hacking, ID theft, Internet fraud and
counterfeiting. On Friday, a federal grand jury in Jefferson City returned indictments
in five separate and unrelated cases for attempting to entice a minor to engage in
illicit sexual activity or distributing obscene material to a minor. In 2005, there was a
total of three child exploitation cases filed in Jefferson City. Defendants in last week’
s Jefferson City cases included a youth swim coach, a prison guard, and a
commercial airline pilot. "This is a tragic reminder that child sexual predators come
from all walks of life, and all socio-economic backgrounds," Graves said. "We have
prosecuted Boy Scout leaders, church volunteers, social workers, a police officer, a
mayor from a small town, several businessmen, prominent attorneys, even a judge.
What makes this scary is the fact that the perpetrator can be someone you’d never
expect, someone the parents and children know and trust." As the Internet has
grown more pervasive, with faster downloads, popular chat rooms, new software
such as file-sharing and instant messaging, and digital photography, sexual
predators have seized upon the new technology. With digital cameras and video
recorders, producing child abuse images has now become easy and inexpensive.
The Internet allows images and videos to be copied and disseminated to tens of
thousands of individuals at the click of a button. The distribution and receipt of such
images can be done almost anonymously. As a result, child pornography is readily
available through virtually every Internet technology (web sites, email, instant
messaging/ICQ, Internet Relay Chat (IRC), newsgroups/bulletin boards, and peer-to-
peer). The technological ease, lack of expense, and anonymity in obtaining and
distributing child pornography has resulted in an explosion i! n the availability,
accessibility, and volume of child pornography. "Not only is child pornography
easier to collect over the Internet," Graves said, "this technology has opened virtual
doors to help predators contact their victims directly without their parents being
aware of it. Unfortunately, the same advances in computer and telecommunication
technology that allow our children to reach out to new sources of knowledge and
cultural experiences are also leaving them vulnerable to exploitation and harm by
computer-sex offenders." According to a U.S. Department of Justice study, of the
estimated 24 million child Internet-users, one in five has received unwanted sexual
solicitations, with teen girls being the primary target.
Child Neglect
Child neglect is the most prevalent form of child maltreatment in the United States.
According to the National Child Abuse and Neglect Data System (NCANDS), of the
approximately 903,000 US children who were victims of abuse and neglect in 2001,
59.2% suffered from neglect alone, including medical neglect. According to the
NCANDS, 35.6% of child maltreatment fatalities in the United States in 2001
occurred as a result of neglect, 21.9% as a result of physical abuse and neglect,
and 3.3% as a result of neglect along with another type of maltreatment. In an
independent study, Prevent Child Abuse America estimated that 1,291 children in
the United States died in 2000 as a result of maltreatment, and that 45% of these
child maltreatment fatalities were attributable to neglect (Peddle et al., 2002).
What is neglect?
The NCANDS defines neglect as “a type of maltreatment that refers to the failure by
the caregiver to provide needed, ageappropriate care although financially able to
do so or offered financial or other means to do so.” Neglect is usually typified by an
ongoing pattern of inadequate care and is readily observed by individuals in close
contact with the child. Physicians, nurses, daycare personnel, relatives, and
neighbors are frequently the ones to suspect and report neglect in infants, toddlers,
and preschool-aged children. Once children are in school, school personnel often
notice indicators of child neglect such as poor hygiene, poor weight gain,
inadequate medical care, or frequent absences from school.
Types of neglect
Professionals define four types of neglect physical, educational, emotional, and
medical.
Physical neglect accounts for the majority of cases of maltreatment. NCANDS
estimates that 7.1 of every 1,000 US children experience physical neglect. Physical
neglect generally involves the parent or caregiver not providing the child with basic
necessities (e.g., adequate food, clothing, and shelter). Failure or refusal to provide
these necessities endangers the child’s physical health, well-being, psychological
growth, and development. Physical neglect also includes child abandonment,
inadequate supervision, rejection of a child leading to expulsion from the home, and
failure to adequately provide for the child’s safety and physical and emotional
needs. Physical neglect can severely impact a child’s development by causing
failure to thrive; malnutrition; serious illness; physical harm in the form of cuts,
bruises, burns, or other injuries due to lack of supervision; and a lifetime of low self-
esteem.
Educational neglect involves the failure of a parent or caregiver to enroll a child of
mandatory school age in school or provide appropriate home schooling or needed
special educational training, thus allowing the child or youth to engage in chronic
truancy. Educational neglect can lead to the child failing to acquire basic life skills,
dropping out of school, or continually displaying disruptive behavior. Educational
neglect can pose a serious threat to the child’s emotional well-being, physical
health, or normal psychological growth and development, particularly when the child
has special educational needs that are not met.
Emotional neglect includes actions such as engaging in chronic or extreme spousal
abuse in the child’s presence, allowing a child to use drugs or alcohol, refusing or
failing to provide needed psychological care, constantly belittling the child, and
withholding affection. Parental behaviors considered to be emotional child
maltreatment include
Ignoring (consistent failure to respond to the child’s need for stimulation, nurturance,
encouragement, and protection or failure to acknowledge the child’s presence),
Rejecting (actively refusing to respond to the child’s needs [e.g., refusing to show
affection]),
Verbally assaulting (constant belittling, name calling, or threatening),
Isolating (preventing the child from having normal social contacts with other children
and adults),
Terrorizing (threatening the child with extreme punishment or creating a climate of
terror by playing on childhood fears), and
Corrupting or exploiting (encouraging the child to engage in destructive, illegal, or
antisocial behavior).A pattern of this parental behavior can lead to the child’s poor
self-image, alcohol or drug abuse, destructive behavior, and even suicide. Severe
neglect of an infant’s need for stimulation and nurturance can result in the infant
failing to thrive and even infant death.
Emotional neglect is often the most difficult situation to substantiate in a legal
context and is often reported secondary to other abuse or neglect concerns.
Medical neglect is the failure to provide appropriate health care for a child (although
financially able to do so), thus placing the child at risk of being seriously disabled or
disfigured or dying. According to NCANDS, in 2000, 3% of substantiated cases of
child maltreatment in the United States (25,450 children) were victims of medical
neglect. Concern is warranted not only when a parent refuses medical care for a
child in an emergency or for an acute illness, but also when a parent ignores
medical recommendations for a child with a treatable chronic disease or disability,
resulting in frequent hospitalizations or significant deterioration.
Even in non-emergency situations, medical neglect can result in poor overall health
and compounded medical problems.
Parents may refuse medical care for their children for different reasons religious
beliefs, fear or anxiety about a medical condition or treatment, or financial issues.
Child protective services agencies generally will intervene when
medical treatment is needed in an acute emergency (e.g., a child needs a blood
transfusion to treat shock),
a child with a life-threatening chronic disease is not receiving needed medical
treatment (e.g., a child with diabetes is not receiving medication), or
a child has a chronic disease that can cause disability or disfigurement if left
untreated (e.g., a child with congenital cataracts needs surgery to prevent
blindness).In these cases, child protection services agencies may seek a court
order for medical treatment to save the child’s life or prevent life-threatening injury,
disability,or disfigurement.
Although medical neglect is highly correlated with poverty, there is a distinction
between a caregiver’s inability to provide the needed care based on cultural norms
or the lack of financial resources, and a caregiver’s knowing reluctance or refusal to
provide care. Children and their families may be in need of services even though
the parent may not be intentionally neglectful. When poverty limits a parent’s
resources to adequately provide necessities for the child, services may be offered
to help families provide for their children.
Teen prostitution and the sexual exploitation of children is a growing problem in the
United States. Government statistics report a substantial increase in teen
prostitution, and indicate that thirteen is the average age of newly recruited teen
prostitutes. Although the majority of teen prostitutes are runaways from poor and
inner-city neighborhoods, the percentage of teen prostitutes from upper and middle
class homes is trending upward.
The stereotype that young prostitutes come from dysfunctional or abusive homes is
not always true. Some young people are simply seeking financial autonomy from
their parents and view sex as an easy means to that end. Pimps and madams now
target upper and middle class girls who can be lured with promises of designer
clothes, jewelry and financial independence. Law enforcement officials now report
that most teen prostitutes from upper and middle class homes were recruited in
suburban neighborhoods at shopping malls, fast food restaurants and other place
that parents generally believe are safe for their children.
One organization that is addressing this growing problem is the Paul & Lisa
Program, a non-profit established to help children at risk of sexual exploitation. The
focus of the program is to empower youth to choose healthier, more promising
lifestyles and to educate youth and the general public about the dangers of
prostitution. The organization highlights the fact that teen prostitution is not just a
problem in poor or urban neighborhoods, but is becoming more prevalent in
suburban communities as well. For more information about this organization and
general information about child prostitution visit: http://www.paulandlisa.org/who.html
A new study out of the University of Pennsylvania School of Social Work concludes
that official reports seriously underestimate the problem. The study identifies 17
groups of children in the U.S. who are at "substantial risk" of being sexually
exploited. The largest groups are runaway and other homeless American children
who use survival sex to acquire food, shelter, clothing and other things needed to
survive on American streets. The customers of street children in the United States,
Mexico and Canada include:
· pedophiles and traffickers
· transient males, including members of the military
· long-haul truck drivers
· seasonal workers
· conventioneers
· sex tourists
These researches developed an eleven-point action agenda with the goal of
eliminating further commercial sexual exploitation of America’s youth. For instance,
in the U.S. child sexual exploitation affects as many boys as girls, but boys are less
protected by human-service and law enforcement systems because of the
widespread belief that boys are better able than girls to fend for themselves. This
study found many gaps in policies and suggests services to combat sexual
exploitation and help the victims. For more information about this study, please visit:
http://www.ssw.upenn.edu/~restes/CSEC.htm
The United Nations reported that an estimated 300,000 children are involved in
prostitution in the United States. The UN report emphasized the fact that sexual
exploitation affects young people from all cultural, social and economic
backgrounds. As more and more children are electing to participate in this kind of
lifestyle, it is important that adults take time to educate their children about the
dangers of prostitution and pornography, and open the lines of communication so
that children are comfortable expressing their wants and needs. With the help of
supportive adults, children can learn to set healthier goals, and acquire the skills
necessary to avoid being lured by the fabricated glamour of life on the streets.
Hazing in High School
In this week’s episode of The Guardian, Lulu convinces Jake to bring a lawsuit on
behalf of a teenage girl who, as part of her initiation to the high school cheerleading
squad, has oral sex with a member of the basketball team while the rest of the
cheerleading squad and basketball team watch. The girl is suspended from school,
humiliated, and wants to change school districts to avoid embarrassment.
Hazing is generally associated with college students making their way into
fraternities and sororities by partaking in silly and embarrassing rites of passage.
But hazing is far from harmless and is no longer exclusive to college campuses.
Hazing is becoming more and more common in high school sports and activities.
School Districts may be found liable for failing to supervise or intervene. For more
information on school district liability for hazing, visit http://lgst.wharton.upenn.
edu/srosner/HoustanLawReview-2002.pdf
According to a study by researchers at Alfred University, children as young as
twelve are subjected to hazing rituals to join sports, church and social groups. The
initiation activities are becoming increasingly more physically and emotionally
dangerous. Sadly, over the past few years, several students have died from alcohol
poisoning after being forced to consume liquor until they passed out.
The results of the Alfred University interviews with high school students are
alarming. More than 1.5 million high school students are hazed each year. 61% of
the students interviewed reported that their first hazing incident occurred between
the ages of 13 and 15. The study defined hazing as “any humiliating or dangerous
activity expected of you to join a group, regardless of your willingness to
participate.” The types of hazing activities reported ranged from forced alcohol and
drug consumption and public nudity to sexual assault, rape and extreme physical
abuse. The Alfred University study found that more than half of the hazing victims
were also forced to participate in illegal activities such as stealing, drug abuse,
physical assault on strangers or other students, or harassment. While sports teams
had the highest number of hazing incidents, church groups, choirs and bands also
showed surprisingly high numbers. To read the entire study conducted by Alfred
University, visit
http://www.alfred.edu/news/html/hazing_study.html
The work of anti-hazing organizations has prompted many legislative changes.
According to ABC News, 42 states now have enacted anti-hazing laws. However,
most high school and college students interviewed in Alfred University’s study did
not know that hazing is illegal in their states. To read the entire ABC news article
visit http://abcnews.com/sections/us/DailyNews/hazing000828.html For a list of
state hazing laws, visit http://www.stophazing.org/laws.html .
Parents’ perceptions and beliefs about hazing play a significant role in students’
attitudes about hazing. Students whose parents were hazed are more likely to be
hazed themselves. Nearly half of the students interviewed in the Alfred University
study admitted that they would not report hazing incidents to a parent or adult for
fear of humiliation, backlash from peers, or because their parents might see the
incident as harmless or a natural part of growing up. Adults can protect children by
talking with children about hazing and being aware that hazing occurs in all kinds of
peer groups.
Adults should ask questions and make sure that another adult is present at all group
and team functions. Adults also can plan events to welcome and celebrate new
members of a group or team. Many school and church groups have found positive
alternatives to hazing. Some groups plan team-building activities to benefit the
group and/or the community. Other groups ask new members to participate in
community service or work together on physically challenging obstacle courses or
other skill tests as part of team try-outs.
Positive and safe initiation rites can benefit and promote team spirit. Unfortunately,
the boundaries between positive and negative initiation are not clear to many teens.
It is troubling that almost all of the students who participated in humiliating hazing
activities agreed that those activities were wrong.
Hazing can cause long-term problems. Children who are humiliated or feel that their
reputation and character have been damaged may have difficulty moving beyond
those negative feelings. Many children who were hazed report that they
subsequently perform worse in school. Some children even skip school to avoid
humiliation or seeing their perpetrators. Other children report quitting activities after
being hazed or avoiding new activities for fear of hazing.
Being a part of a group or team can be a healthy and wonderful experience for
children. It is the responsibility of parents, coaches and teachers to ensure that
school teams and groups are safe and positive environments for children to learn
and grow.
Poverty and homelessness in America is an obvious and disturbing issue. But what
is less obvious and even more disturbing is that a great majority of the poor and
homeless are teens and children. In the U.S., one out of every four homeless
individuals is a child. Despite this population’s very real existence, they do not exist
to many people.
Whenever there is a school shooting, the media inundates us with images of the
event for weeks after it happens. Yet the public never hears about the 13 children
who die on the streets every day (Stand Up for Kids). Few realize how serious the
problem is because they rarely see homeless kids, nor do they hear about their
struggles.
Homeless teens and children are a particularly hidden population because they do
not want to be returned to their homes. The majority of them come from homes of
extreme poverty or horrible abuse, and tend to hide in alleys, under bridges, and
other unseen places. In fact, as many as 92% of homeless youth were physically or
sexually abused in their homes (Better Homes Fund). It is easy to overlook such an
invisible population, but the problem has reached catastrophic proportions.
Currently there are 1.3 million homeless and runaway street kids in the United
States (Stand Up for Kids). These numbers only include reported runaways, and do
not account for children who were forced out of their homes, abandoned by the
foster care system, or are part of a homeless family.
The problem is especially critical because little is being done to address the
situation. Homeless children often have few resources at their disposal, rendering
them helpless and alone. While much discussion centers on helping homeless
adults, homeless children are often overlooked.
Oftentimes, people may be reluctant to help these kids because they fear
encouraging their “misbehavior” or keeping them from returning home. Homeless
kids are perceived as delinquent teenagers who have run away from home
because they refuse to follow rules or feel they can take care of themselves.
Alarmingly, the average age of a homeless person in the United States is nine
(Institute of Children and Poverty). There are in fact many kids below the age of nine
on the streets, some with their families but most trying to survive on their own.
Unable to support themselves with a job, children so young have very few options.
Many have to resort to prostitution, stealing, or selling drugs just to eat every day.
Stand Up for Kids, an organization that provides necessities for homeless youth,
and volunteers who are willing to listen to their problems, reports that almost half of
the children on the streets turn to prostitution within 48 hours of leaving home.
In addition to the necessity of finding food, homeless teens and children face
constant police hassling and the threat of physical and sexual assault. One study
found that 60% of youth on the streets have been raped or assaulted (Youth Care).
Homeless youth must face all the difficulties homeless adults do, but are more
helpless and lacking in maturity.
In addition to Stand Up for Kids, there are a few organizations that reach out to
homeless and street kids, like Kidsacks in Cleveland, which gives sleeping bags to
homeless kids. Both of these organizations and a few others focus on giving kids
what they need and assuring them that someone cares. Other organizations like
Hamilton Transitional Housing Program in San Francisco focus on homeless
families and enrichment for the children of these families. Despite the efforts of
these organizations, much still needs to be done to help homeless teens and
children. And until there are no children on the streets, there will always be more to
be done.
(CBS/AP) In one of the largest coordinated crackdowns against child prostitution in
the United States, the government has arrested 19 people and charged more than
30 across several states.
The crackdown was the latest phase of an ongoing national investigation into
criminal enterprises involved in the recruitment of children for prostitution called
"Innocence Lost."
Charges have been filed in recent days in Florida, Michigan, New Jersey and
Pennsylvania, and others are expected, according to a law enforcement official who
spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to talk about the
topic before Gonzales' announcement.
Attorney General Alberto Gonzales and FBI Assistant Director Chris Swecker
announced the recent arrests a news conference in Washington today, saying that
the operation has identified more than 30 child victims, bringing the overall total
identified to more than 200 since 2003.
Items seized in this latest sweep included residential properties, vehicles, U.S.
currency, electronics, jewelry, and child pornography images, according to the
Justice Department.
"Our society has no place for those who prey on children and no tolerance for child
prostitution or sex trafficking," said Gonzales. "The Justice Department and our
partners in the law enforcement community are committed to stopping this terrible
practice and protecting our children."
A grand jury in Camden, New Jersey, indicted eight people Wednesday on charges
they conspired to recruit girls to be prostitutes in Atlantic City, Las Vegas and New
York, according to court documents. The defendants managed a prostitution ring
that also extended to Florida, Georgia, Massachusetts, Pennsylvania and the
District of Columbia, the indictment said.
Matthew Thompkins and five others were arrested Sunday and are in custody in
New Jersey, the official said. Thompkins had a central role in the conspiracy, the
indictment said.
In Detroit, a grand jury charged four Ohio residents with forcing two girls, 14 and 15,
to have sex at a truck stop in Michigan. The girls had been held as virtual prisoners
in Toledo, Ohio, where they were told to address one defendant, Deric Willoughby,
as "Daddy," and taken to hotel rooms for prostitution. Their payments were
eventually turned over to Willoughby, the indictment said.
Two other defendants, Jennifer Huskey and Brandy Shope, are adults who also
worked as prostitutes, the indictment says.
A fourth person, Richard Lamar Gordon, is identified in the indictment as a truck
driver who took the girls from a parking lot in the Toledo area to the Michigan truck
stop and had sex with one of them. He has not been arrested, the official said.
Domestic child prostitution cases have been a federal law enforcement priority
since 2003 with the advent of the Justice Department's Innocence Lost Initiative.
When he became attorney general in February, Gonzales said he would focus on
reducing all forms of human trafficking.
Several federal laws ban sexual trafficking in children, including one that specifically
applies to taking minors across state lines to engage in prostitution.
There were more than 160 arrests in such cases in the government spending year
that ended Sept. 30, according to the FBI.
Rescuing Our Child Prostitutes
They arrive in the bus and train stations of our major Canadian cities - lonely and
frightened, often hungry and broke. Frequently, they are running away from physical
and/or sexual abuse at home or in foster care. These vulnerable adolescents, some
as young as 12 years of age, are easily spotted by the pimps who hang out at these
stations, and who select these youngsters as additions to their "stable" of
prostitutes. Pimps befriend these vulnerable teenagers, feed them and provide
them with clothes and a warm place to stay. Next comes dependency on alcohol,
drugs and, of course, sex. At this point, the pimps are ready to push their young
victims onto the streets to start earning money. If the youngsters balk, there are
physical beatings, and more drugs used to propel them into the dark and
dangerous world of prostitution. The average length of time young girls (and boys)
survive on the streets is seven years before they die as a result of a homicidal act
by a pimp or paedophile, a drug overdose, AIDS or from an act of suicide.
Something had to be done about this appalling situation. The Province of Alberta,
under the inspired and determined leadership of MLA Heather Forsyth (Calgary -
Fish Creek), came up with an answer. In 1999, as a result of her efforts, Alberta
passed the Protection of Children Involved in Prostitution Act, which permitted
police to pick up and detain children for 72 hours without charging them. Such
action allows the youngsters to escape from their pimps and enables them to
receive medical, psychological and addiction counselling and special legal
services. More than 400 child prostitutes have been apprehended since this law
was passed, some as young as 12 years of age. A similar law has also been
passed in BC.
Of course, it wasn't long before this law was challenged and overturned (last July) on
the basis that it violated the Charter of Rights as being an infringement of a child's
liberties and freedom. Fortunately, the Alberta government sent this lower court
decision on for a Judicial Review where a judge with a some common sense, Mr.
Justice John Rooke of Alberta's Court of Queen's Bench, overturned the lower court
decision saying "ultimately, because they are children, their (children's) right to
liberty must give way to the overriding interest of protecting their general welfare as
long as the procedures employed to do so are fair."
Just to be on the safe side, however, the Alberta Government did amend its
legislation somewhat by enabling the police or Children's Aid workers to put a
teenage prostitute into a "safe-house" for up to five days; they could then be
required to apply for detainments to be increased up to a maximum of six weeks.
Under this amendment, the children would also be informed that they may contact a
lawyer and appear before a judge for a review.
After arresting a baby-faced 17-year-old girl for prostitution at Mandalay Bay
recently, Metro Police vice officers were jolted by her wistful request: "All I want is
my dinosaur."She explained to the officers that her mother had died a few years
ago so she had come to Las Vegas to live with her father. She had run away and
met a man who forced her into prostitution.Before her mother died, she had given
the teen a stuffed dinosaur toy and the teen wanted to make sure she didn't lose it.
Officers took her to her pimp's car, opened the trunk and handed her the toy. It was
worn and dirty."She hugged the dinosaur," said Sgt. Gil Shannon, a proponent of a
special program in Metro's vice unit that combats child prostitution. "It broke our
hearts."For the officers, it drove home the fact that even though she was having sex
for money, she was still just a child.Shannon won't estimate how many children ages
11 to 17 are working as prostitutes in Metro's jurisdiction but he says he knows the
total is increasing. He knows because the number of children being arrested on
prostitution charges in the Las Vegas Valley is rising.This year Metro already has
set a record -- 142 as of Friday, when three more child prostitutes were arrested.
The higher number of arrests can be attributed to a combination of factors, including
the growth of the residential and tourist populations and more effective police
investigative methods, Shannon said.And it seems there are more child prostitutes
than ever."From what I am seeing overall there has been more of a breakdown in
the family structure, more of these kids slipping through the cracks," Shannon said."
Then there are all the rap songs, videos, clothing, bumper stickers glorifying
prostitution," he said. "It's the 'in' thing to be a pimp, to be a 'ho.' "Especially in Las
Vegas. The city's "anything goes" image also contributes to the area's juvenile
prostitution problem, Shannon said."It's because it's Sin City," he said. "The slogan
is, 'What happens in Vegas stays in Vegas,' and that might apply to the rest of
(what's going on in) the city, but it doesn't apply to juvenile prostitution."Plenty of
activities that are considered illegal and immoral elsewhere are tolerated and even
encouraged in Las Vegas, but exploiting children for sexual gratification and greed
is not one of them, Shannon said.Juvenile prostitution has been a priority for Metro,
the Clark County juvenile probation department and local judges since 1994 when
the Stop Turning Out Child Prostitutes program, nicknamed STOP, was introduced.
Minors cannot legally consent to become prostitutes. They also lack the maturity to
consider the potential long-term effects of being a prostitute, authorities said.STOP,
which currently includes five Metro detectives in addition to Shannon, is built on the
belief that underage prostitutes aren't criminals but victims of pimps.That philosophy
is what sets STOP apart from efforts at other police departments where officers
"arrest them, take them to juvenile hall and call their parents. That's it. It stops right
there," Shannon said. "There's no intervention, no after care, nothing."STOP
emphasizes rehabilitation and follow-up. The goals are to arrest the people who got
the children into prostitution, to remove the children from the life of prostitution and
to provide ways for the children to return to normal lives, Shannon said.After
arresting a child for prostitution, authorities associated with STOP work to gain the
youngster's trust -- the same tactic pimps use.In the rehabilitation phase, police and
probation officers try to undo the lies the pimp told the teens and try to convince
them that "the pimp isn't the all-powerful, dangerous person they thought he was,"
said Sally Huncovsky, a supervisor with Clark County Family and Youth Services.
Sometimes the girls are resistant and try to use their sexuality to manipulate male
police and probation officers because they don't know how else to relate to men.
They "can't conceptualize an adult wanting to do something for them," she said.
Darrell Wiggins, a probation officer who works with juvenile prostitutes, said, "You
have to come after them how the pimps do ... I can speak their language, and I try to
get across, 'I'm trying to help you. What do you need?' "Metro officers who work with
STOP also have learned how to speak the language.After they are arrested,
underage prostitutes are usually held at the Clark County Juvenile Detention Center
for several weeks. During that time, parents or legal guardians are notified and
arrangements are made for places for the youngsters to stay if they can't go home.
The detectives who are part of STOP spend a lot of time talking to the juveniles,
trying to win their trust, getting them to tell them about their pimps, convincing them
to testify against the pimps.One of the most important aspects of the program is
that it gives the youths -- mainly repeat offenders -- the option of going to live at the
Children of the Night home in the Los Angeles suburb of Van Nuys, Calif., where
they can attend a private on-site school, learn life skills and receive drug and
alcohol counseling.Follow-up studies indicate 80 percent of the children who have
gone through the Children of the Night home have not returned to prostitution, said
Lois Lee, founder and director of the 24-year-old organization.Child prostitutes are
rehabilitated at a higher rate than adult prostitutes, who often work the streets for
years despite repeated arrests."With kids they're easier to catch and easier to
spot," Shannon said. "Their patterns of behavior aren't set."Metro's vice offices also
bear proof that local authorities are making progress in the fight against child
prostitution. The desks are decorated with cards and pictures from former
prostitutes who left "the game," the street lingo for prostitution.The transformations
of the girls and the way those changes make officers feel "can be amazing,"
Wiggins said.In his office is a photograph of a baby born to a former child prostitute
he helped. Sometimes he runs into girls around town and they hug and thank him.
But other times the efforts fail, and cops end up arresting the same girls again.
Metro Police say about 10 percent of the children they arrest for prostitution wind up
being arrested again for the same offense.That low percentage of repeat offenders
can be attributed to the fact that many are from other states, and as part of their
sentence, they are told not to return to Las Vegas, Shannon said.Whenever
Shannon sees teens who continue to work as prostitutes despite prior arrests, "it
makes me think about what I can do better next time," he said.More arrests
madeSince STOP's inception, Metro has arrested more than 800 prostitutes
between the ages of 11 and 17, and the number has grown in recent years with
stepped-up enforcement.The juvenile prostitutes arrested in Las Vegas are almost
always girls, Shannon said. He could only recall a few boys who were nabbed for
prostitution.Metro arrested 126 underage prostitutes last year, 122 in 2001, 77 in
2000, 90 in 1999 and 88 in 1998, according to Metro records.Just keeping track of
those statistics about arrests of child prostitutes is an important early step in
addressing the problem because "you can't manage what you can't measure,"
Shannon said.Shannon's ability to recite his jurisdiction's numbers off the top of his
head is another indication of the attention that child prostitution gets from authorities
in Las Vegas, Lee said.Police officers at other law enforcement agencies can't
quantify their child prostitution problem, which makes it hard to compare the
problem in Las Vegas to that of other cities, Lee said."Even LAPD doesn't keep
hardcore numbers," she said."If you called NYPD, they couldn't give you numbers."
Spokespeople for the Los Angeles Police Department, New York Police
Department and Seattle Police Department confirmed Lee's statement. None could
provide statistics on the number of child prostitutes they arrested and none has a
comprehensive program dealing with child prostitution.San Francisco, however,
recently established a program similar to STOP.Articles last year in the San
Francisco Examiner about the 2001 murder of a 15-year-old prostitute led to an
overhaul of how the city handles child prostitution.The articles showed that although
the girl passed through nearly every city agency, she was never detained,
prosecuted or counseled about changing her way of life. That prompted city officials
to create a child prostitution task force consisting of police, city departments and
juvenile probation officials.Minnesota authorities are trying to address the problem
on a statewide level. In 1998 police in Minneapolis broke up a ring that sent child
prostitutes to 24 states and Canada.The bust led to a study that resulted in a
legislative initiative designed to address the state's child prostitution problem.
Local, state and federal investigators now work together to find and prosecute
organized child-prostitution rings.Tracking the problem is difficult for numerous
reasons, starting with the fact that many children arrested for prostitution have fake
identification provided by pimps.The National Center for Missing and Exploited
Children estimates that between 100,000 and 300,000 children are sexually
exploited through prostitution and pornography per year.And according to national
statistics, approximately 440,000 children run away from home each year. Lee
estimates that about one-third of those runaways have brushes with prostitution.
Some children arrested by Metro are from Las Vegas, and others have found their
way to the area and fallen into the game, Shannon said."They're not just getting on
the bus and coming to Las Vegas on their own to be prostitutes," he said.Selling a
lieBusting pimps is key to keeping children away from a life of prostitution,
authorities say, and that's why going after pimps is a key aspect of STOP.Even if
children wind up working for an escort service or through referrals from the
magazines and handbills that advertise for in-room strippers, "the way they are
getting there is they are being turned out," or led into prostitution, "by the pimp,"
Shannon said."The pimp gets them the fake IDs and puts them to work for him
either on 'the track' (walking streets for customers) or through those other avenues,"
Shannon said.About half of the child prostitutes arrested in Las Vegas are part of
the western United States "pipeline" that includes Minnesota, Oregon and
Washington, he said. The pimps shuttle children from city to city in those states.
Pimps who put prostitutes in the pipeline can be charged with first-degee
kidnapping, Shannon said. If the prostitutes are underage, the pimps can be
charged with pandering children. Both are felonies.They could also be charged with
additional felonies: Living off the earnings of a prostitute; providing transportation to
a prostitute and living with a prostitute.But Shannon said pimps are typically
convicted of just one or two of the charges and too often they end up back on the
streets within a few months, or at most a few years.To try to ensure that pimps are
punished more harshly, Shannon is exploring the possibility of forming a task force
with local FBI agents to go after pimps on federal kidnapping charges, which have
stiffer penalties.The task force would have plenty of cases to keep it busy,
authorities said.Huncovsky said she's "never worked with a prostitute who didn't
have a pimp."Pimps are predatory, meeting girls in their neighborhoods, on bus
benches, in malls -- anywhere they can find them, Shannon said. They're good at
spotting vulnerable girls, Huncovsky said. Most of the time, when the girl first
encounters the pimp, she has no idea he has ulterior motives."You have a young
girl, her mother is at work and her father isn't around," Huncovsky said. "She's 15,
the pimp is 25. He will be her boyfriend (at first) and not even talk about pimping.""If
she starts being gone every night of the week, who's going to notice?" she said.
"No one is going to notice or care."Lee said "99.9 percent" of girls are abused and
sexually degraded at home before going into prostitution."If a kid was beaten with
baseball bats it makes them defenseless. They lack the aggression necessary for
survival." When a pimp comes along, "they just melt."The pimp eases into the role
slowly, sweet-talking to her and gaining her trust, alienating her from her family and
making her financially and emotionally dependent on him. She begins to feel like
she owes him, Huncovsky said.He then introduces the idea of prostitution with the
promise of money, glamour and excitement.The younger the girl, the more
impressionable she is and the more susceptible she is to the suggestion of having
sex for money. Girls who come from dysfunctional families may be manipulated into
prostitution "because they want to be a part of something," anything that remotely
resembles a family structure, Shannon said."Prostitution is selling a dream," he
said. "You're young and probably already a product of abuse. You hear, 'You're
going to be rich, you're going to have jewelry, you're going to be riding with daddy.'
"But it's all a lie, Shannon said. The pimps convince the girls they're worthless and
confiscate the money the girls earn, handing back only a few dollars here and there.
They take the girls' regular clothing and force them to wear only skimpy clothing.
Pimps threaten them, Shannon said, telling them things such as "If you try to get
away, I'll kill your mom and dad."And the girls endure regular abuse by their pimps,
Huncovsky said."We've seen them beaten up, tortured, burned. We get them in all
kinds of conditions."One watched her pimp kill another girl, Huncovsky said.The
pimp keeps the girl fearful, walking her through casinos and pointing out random
men and telling her, "He's on my payroll and he's watching you" to keep her from
leaving him, Shannon said.Shannon said child prostitutes come from all
neighborhoods, all economic backgrounds, all educational backgrounds, all races.
Most juvenile prostitutes are in their mid to late teens, but some are surprisingly
young.Several years ago, Shannon encountered an 11-year-old soliciting sex
outside a Strip casino. Shannon said she looked like a little girl playing dress-up --
which she was. Her makeup was smudged and her clothes were too big.She
approached Shannon and his partner and asked them if they wanted company.
After she was arrested, the girl told the officers her age and said she had ended up
on the streets after having trouble at home.Shannon recalled thinking, "You're a kid.
You're supposed to believe in Santa Claus." Instead, she most likely had a pimp.
While the lifestyle is inherently dangerous because it involves sexual encounters
with strangers, pimps pose more of a danger to young prostitutes than customers
do, Shannon said."If you're a little girl standing on the side of the road, and I say run
and you get hit by a car, am I at fault or is the car?" he said. "Not only do the pimps
say run, they push them."A Metro Police case from late October was typical.After
running away in August from the home she shared with her mother, a 15-year-old
girl took up with an 18-year-old man she considered her boyfriend. They stayed at
various motels around Fremont Street and Charleston Boulevard.The man old
crack, according to a police report, but before long, he told the girl she needed to
start working as a prostitute so they could get more money.The teen told police she
didn't want to be a prostitute, "but did so because she was afraid that (he) would
become angry with her and leave her," the police report says.In the area of Eastern
and Saint Louis avenues, the girl looked for customers while her pimp walked
behind her, giving her signals as to who she should get into the car with. She told
police he would also warn her if he thought a potential trick was an undercover cop.
She told police she performed 10 to 20 sex acts over the course of two months and
never charged less than $50, the report says. All of the money went to her pimp.An
adult prostitute told police on Oct. 31 that the 18-year-old was "pimping out a 15-
year-old" and gave a description of the car he drove. Police found the car, occupied
by the two, later that day.When officers questioned the girl about her relationship
with the man, "she became upset and started to cry ... She (said he) was making
her work as a prostitute." Both were arrested.Once a girl is caught up in "the game,"
it's difficult to escape, Shannon said. Getting arrested, which under most
circumstances would be a bad thing, could actually be a teenage prostitute's first
step toward returning to a normal life."Every time you turn a date you lose a bit of
your soul," Shannon said. "We find a reason to arrest them because we're trying to
save them."
Cupcake Brown started turning tricks when she was 11 and continued to work the
streets for 14 years, until one day -- on her way to score some crack -- her reflection
in a plate-glass window horrified her. "You could see the imprint of my ribs -- I was a
size 1. I had no shoes. My hair was sticking up like Buckwheat. My lips were
cracked and burnt from the crack pipe," said Brown, 40, now a lawyer at Bingham
McCutchen in San Francisco. "It was then that I realized that I was dying, and I didn't
want to die like that." Brown hopes that a new safe house planned for sexually
exploited girls in San Francisco -- the first of its kind in the city and one of only a
handful in the United States -- will help get similarly troubled kids off the street at a
younger age. Last year, Oakland became the first city in the Bay Area to open such
group homes for child prostitutes. Others exist in Atlanta, Los Angeles and Alberta,
Canada. The San Francisco project, which will get the green light this week with the
signing of a contract between the city and two nonprofit groups to locate, open and
operate the safe house, is the culmination of a two-year collaboration that began
when then-Assistant District Attorney Kamala Harris co-founded the Coalition to
End the Exploitation of Kids. The group reported to the Board of Supervisors that
the city was home to 3,000 child prostitutes and that, in a survey of 7,000 local high
school-age girls, 20 percent admitted to having traded sex for food, shelter or
clothing. In addition, more than 100 minors are arrested each year for prostitution in
San Francisco. Supervisor Tom Ammiano created a 22-member task force, which
included attorney and former prostitute Brown, child advocates, social service
providers, experts on sexual abuse, philanthropists and city officials. After months of
study, the group recommended creating a residential and treatment program for
teenage girls who sell sex -- many of whom are forced into the business and who
were sexually abused at home. It also suggested the creation of a 24-hour
telephone hot line and a community outreach program, both of which also are in the
works. The San Francisco Foundation signed on to provide start-up money, and
today it will be publicly announced that the city has contracted with the Edgewood
Center for Children and Families and SAGE, Standing Against Global Exploitation,
to get the safe house up and running as soon as early 2005. The foster home will be
run in conjunction with the city departments of Public Health, Human Services, and
Children, Youth and Their Families. It will be placed in an undisclosed location and
is expected to have room for up to 10 girls, ages 12 to 17, who will be referred by a
network of city departments that come in contact with the at-risk group, such as the
public defender's office. The safe house is critical, Brown said, if San Francisco is
serious about addressing the plight of its teen prostitutes. "You can't just walk out of
that life -- you need somewhere to go," she said. "You need to learn how to be put
back in society. I think the reason that safe houses are such a needed place is ... it
gives a girl a changed venue. It's like telling a crack head don't smoke crack, but
they still live in the crack house." The Edgewood Center's chief executive officer,
Nancy Rubin, said the nonprofit group would be looking to lease a home that "looks
like any other four- or five-bedroom house." Residency will be voluntary, and the
girls will not be locked up, Rubin said. But there will be discipline. "A group home
mimics a highly functioning family," she said. "There are hours for homework, TV,
bedtime. Even though these girls have been on the street, they are children." Norma
Hotaling, a former prostitute who founded SAGE, said that there were a host of
social skills the counselors would have to impart. "You have children who through
very important developmental times in their lives have been very isolated, tortured
and brainwashed," she said. "Their ability to create intimate relationships is
nonexistent." Dr. Sandra Hernandez, chief executive officer of the San Francisco
Foundation, said she had become involved with the task force because she was
moved by the data. "It was really compelling to me that we basically had in the
pipeline kids who are very much on track to be exploited and abused and not
having the opportunity to succeed into adulthood," she said. "When the city has the
kind of (budget) deficit it has ... I thought it was important this not be added to the
bottom of the list." Once the shelter is up and running, she said, the operational
costs will come from public money earmarked for educational and health purposes,
such as Medi-Cal. According to a sample budget included in the task force's report,
the safe house is expected to cost about $500,000 annually. Hernandez said that
donors had been inspired to support the project upon learning that child prostitution
was not just a problem in less-developed countries, or the city's poorer districts. "It
was important to us to realize that this was happening right here in our shopping
malls, right here in our neighborhoods," Hernandez said. "These are kids who are
potentially friends of our children. ... It's happening all across the city, not just the
Tenderloin. Just because you don't see it doesn't mean it's not happening."
In Los Angeles young people are drawn to the City in the belief that they are going
to find their fortune in acting, singing or dancing. and Many runaway from home to
seek a better life. They are quickly picked up at bus and rail stations in Los Angeles
by 'pimps' who abuse them. These children and young people come from inner
cities, suburbs, and small towns, some are recruited by pimps from middle-class
areas, from schools and shopping malls in the suburbs and then taken to Los
Angeles and other larger Cities under the belief that they will become a movie star.
The vast majority of young people involved in abuse through prostitution are girls,
although police have seen an increase in the number of boys. Larger cities are
more likely to have a higher proportion of boys involved in prostitution as is noted in
Los Angeles which has a clear identified area where boys frequent; however,
service providers in smaller cities also report seeing a general increase in
prostitution activities for both sexes.
Pimp-controlled commercial sexual exploitation of children is linked to escort and
massage services, private dancing venues, drinking and photographic clubs, major
sporting, cultural and recreational events, conventions, and tourist destinations.
In the larger Cities of the United States, it is estimated that there can be as many as
500 prostitutes on the streets, especially in the summer months and in warmer
climates. At least 25-30 percent of those involved in exploitation through prostitution
are children younger than 18.
Many children are only 11 or 12 years old. The average age at which they enter
abuse through prostitution is reported as 14 years. It is estimated that about
293,000 American young people are at risk of becoming victims of commercial
sexual exploitation. Among children and young people living on the streets in the
United States, involvement in commercial sex activity is a problem of epidemic
proportion. Approximately 55% of young girls on the street engage in formal
prostitution. Of the girls engaged in formal prostitution, about 75% worked for a
pimp
As has been documented in the UK these children generally come from homes
where they have been abused, or from families that have abandoned them, they
often become involved in prostitution as a way of survival and to support
themselves. They are also forced to support their pimp financially.
The LAPD work closely with a number of organisations to combat this abuse,
increaslingly however, Outreach services which traditionally worked with young
people on the streets are stopping their services as the steets become more
threatening and dangerous for their workers.
Pedophiles Surfing the Internet to Find Victims
Source: Orlando Sentinel, November 8, 1997
Excerpts:
The information superhighway is rapidly becoming the favorite route for child
predators to reach and abuse children, law enforcement officials told Congress
Friday.
According to testimony at a hearing of the House Judiciary Crime Subcommittee,
as more homes have access to the Internet, it is easier for predators to trade child
pornography, and to abuse youngsters they meet online.
Predators use chat rooms to engage in typed conversation under assumed names,
said Stephen Wiley, head of the FBI Violent Crimes Major Offenders Section.
Predators will send child pornography images over the Internet to lower their
inhibitions of youngsters before trying to meet them for sex or to take pornographic
pictures, said Orlando FDLE agent Rehman, who specializes in investigating
computer child exploitation.
After identifying a victim, the predator, who sometimes poses online as a teenager,
tries to develop a relationship that will ultimately become sexual.
Recent cases of children who have been lured by people they met over the Internet
have led to tragedy.
A 15-year-old boy, Sam Manzi, was sexually assaulted by a 43-year-old man he
met in an America Online "chat room." Manzi was subsequently accused of sexually
assaulting and murdering an 11-year-old boy.
Wiley said the online problem has gotten so bad that a special initiative called
"Innocent Images'' has been set up to catch people who use the Internet to exploit
children.
"While parents strive to warn their children about the dangers outside of the home,
they may be failing to warn their children about the dangers within -- on the World
Wide Web,'' said Rep. Bill McCollum, R-Longwood, chairman of the subcommittee.
In many countries, including the US, Canada, the UK, and the Netherlands;
"children" are defined to be persons below the age of 18. In Australia, child
pornography is defined to include persons under 16 years. However, although
material depicting 16 and 17 year olds is not legally considered child pornography,
it is still illegal. It is rated as "Refused Classification", and thus illegal to sell or
distribute. The European Union recommends the harmonization of the age limit to
18 years. The Netherlands raised the age limit of a "child" to that number in October
2002. The UK Sexual Offenses Act 2003 did the same. It was compulsory to
dispose of possessions that became illegal. The age limit in Germany and Iceland
is 14 years.
Images of legal activities are not always legal. For example, in the U.S., child porn
includes anyone under 18; however, many states have an age of consent lower than
18. For some states the age of consent depends on the age gap between partners
as well as the age of the young partner. Therefore, it may be legal to have sex with
someone under 18 but not to take pictures of that person in sexual situations. The
young person is not even allowed to make such a picture of himself or herself for
personal use. One main reason for this disparity is that child pornography is
primarily addressed under federal law, while age of sexual consent is solely a state
issue.
Since the passage of the Sexual Offences Act 2003, UK law in general prohibits
images of 16 and 17 year olds as child pornography, even though they are above
the age of consent (16). However, there is an exception to the law, which provides
that a person (who may be over 18) who is married to, or in an enduring family
relationship with, a 16 or 17 year-old child may take or make indecent photographs
showing the child with no other person than himself with the child's consent, although
it is illegal for the sexual partner to show or distribute them to any other person
(Source: paragraphs 72-92, Explanatory Notes to Sexual Offences Act 2003).
There is no explicit defence where the child has photographs of himself, but it is a
general principle of English law that the person whom a law is intended to protect
cannot be prosectuted for an offence created by that law.
FEATURE-Sex tourism thriving in U.S. Bible Belt
Tue 4 Apr 2006 8:01 AM ET
By Verna Gates and Mickey Goodman
ATLANTA, April 4 (Reuters) - In a sleazy hotel room, "Brittany," then aged 16 and
drugged into oblivion, waited for the men to arrive. Her pimps sent as many as 17
clients an evening through the door.
A "john" could even pre-book the pretty young blonde for $1,000 a night, sometimes
flying in and then flying out from a nearby airport.
None of this happened in Bangkok or Costa Rica, places that have become
synonymous with sex tourism and underage sex.
It took place in Atlanta, the buckle of the U.S. Bible Belt, where the world's busiest
passenger airport provides a cheaper, more convenient and safer underage sex
destination for men seeking girls as young as 10.
"Men fly in, are met by pimps, have sex with a 14-year-old for lunch, and get home in
time for dinner with the family," said Sanford Jones, the chief juvenile judge of Fulton
County, Georgia.
A new federal law passed in 2003 ensures that American sex tourists landing on
foreign soil and hiring prostitutes under the age of 18 can get 30 years in prison.
But in Georgia, punishment for pimping or soliciting sex with a girl under 18 is only
five to 20 years, according to Deborah Espy, the Deputy District Attorney of Fulton
County.
"Men are coming to Atlanta to have sex with a child," said LaKendra Baker, project
manager for the Center to End Adolescent Sexual Exploitation (CEASE).
Half of the street-level prostitutes in Atlanta are believed to be under 18, according
to experts.
Others are booked through Internet sex sites and from social sites like Black Planet,
where girls innocently post profiles, said Baker.
Just in March, police arrested a Canadian man meeting a 14-year-old girl he found
through the Internet, said Cathey Steinberg, executive director of the Juvenile
Justice Fund, which funds treatment for abused girls and prevention.
Another man drove from North Georgia, with a bag containing a teddy bear, a love
note and condoms, snorting methamphetamine on the way.
He expected a 13-year-old girl, but instead found Heather Lackey, a corporal with
the Peachtree City Police Department.
"People are stunned that Atlanta's the No. 1 sex center in the country," said
Steinberg.
The FBI has identified 14 U.S. cities as centers for the sexual exploitation of
children. In addition to Atlanta, they are Chicago, Dallas, Detroit, Las Vegas, Los
Angeles, Miami, Minneapolis, New York, San Diego, San Francisco, St. Louis,
Tampa, and Washington, D.C.
RUNAWAYS AT MOST RISK
In all, an estimated 200,000 to 300,000 underage girls are prostituted in the United
States, according to a University of Pennsylvania study.
Most youths caught up in the sex trade are runaways, like Brittany, whose 19-year-
old "rescuers" soon demanded a return on their investment.
"I didn't have any place to go. My mom hated me for what I was doing to the family,"
said Brittany, who did not want to be identified by her real name.
Up to 90 percent of runaways are believed to end up as prostitutes, with a third
lured into prostitution within 48 hours. Some are sold into sexual slavery by their
parents, according to a 2005 study by the Atlanta Women's Agenda.
Some get seduced by recruiters. Pimps use handsome young men and sometimes
girls as fronts.
"A 16-year-old controlling a group of girls will not face the same penalties an adult
would receive," said Patricia Crone, director of the Office of Juvenile Justice
Demonstration Project.
Once snagged, the grooming process begins. Typically, the pimp's friends sleep
with her, then come threats, beatings and gang rapes. Caresses and gifts, including
drugs and alcohol, follow abuse, the Atlanta Women's Agenda study found.
Brittany said she was showered with fancy dinners, clothes and methamphetamine.
But she also describes horror. "It made me feel dirty. It was demeaning," said
Brittany.
The sex slaves are trafficked in and out of cities to supply sporting events,
conventions or rap concerts.
During the 1996 Olympics in Atlanta, one man kept boys and hosted sex parties
nightly, said Baker of the group CEASE.
The pimps even held an annual "Player's Ball" in Atlanta in 2003, openly buying and
selling women and naming a "Player of the Year," according to the Atlanta Women's
Agenda study.
The risks are worth it. While there are few reliable statistics, child sexual
exploitation is believed to be the world's third-biggest money maker for organized
crime, said Stephanie Davis, policy adviser to Atlanta Mayor Shirley Franklin.
One reason for the demand is the false assumption that youths are disease-free.
On the contrary, with tissues not fully developed, they are more prone to lacerations.
HIV infections among females aged 16 to 21 are 50 percent higher than for men, a
1998 study in the Journal of Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndromes reported.
Atlanta has won two new federal grants to establish units to fight the trafficking of
underage sex slaves and to hire more undercover detectives, said Carole Morgan,
director of the North Central Georgia Law Enforcement Academy.
But the experts fear that may not be enough.
"It won't stop until people say, 'My city isn't safe for kids anymore,'" said Crone.
"This is a place where you can buy, sell or rent kids. It must be stopped."
The fact is, there are more than 2,000 reports of missing children filed with law
enforcement agencies in the United States daily. Most are lost in a mall, store or
other public place and are easily found. Others just come home late. Some are
listed as runaways as a result of recurring discipline problems. A small number
become pawns in child custody cases. An even smaller number are found to be truly
missing and suspected of being abducted.
If one searches the Internet using the words "child abduction," one will find more hits
for attorneys and private investigators specializing in child custody cases than one
would find hits for how to find or prevent child abduction or exploitation. We often
hear the most about the truly abducted children because of the sinister and graphic
details of the case.
I can remember when parents, law enforcement agencies and schools taught about
stranger danger. They taught what children should do if a stranger approached,
tried to lure or made it as far as abducting a child. The stranger danger information
is valid to this day, to a point. The fact is, more than 90 percent of child abduction or
exploitation cases in this country occur at the hands of a parent, relative, family
member, acquaintance or associate of the family. Children should know not to get in
a car with any stranger. They should know that strangers will not search them out to
ask for their help; and that if any stranger makes them feel ill at ease, they should
get away at any cost, and then tell their parents or a trusted adult.
Now, factor in the Internet and the age of technology. Children are bombarded with
images and messages daily, some of which are not suitable for even some adults.
Before, child predators had to search out their victim and almost physically snatch
the child from their parents, school or home. Child predators now have an almost
anonymous swinging door into the home of the child.
The rules are changing. In addition to stranger danger, law enforcement agencies,
schools and churches now have to spread the word that not all child predators or
molesters are strangers, but may be someone the child knows and trusts. School
counselors are spreading the word through programs such as "Child Lures" and the
WHO Program. Law enforcement agencies and private organizations offer free
child fingerprinting. Parents should document their child's yearly growth with photos,
fingerprints and videos. Children should know that kids play with kids and adults
play with adults; if someone wants to change that rule, the child should let parents
know. Parents must exercise parental control over their child's Internet access.
Parents always should know where their children are, and with whom they are
spending their time.
We will not be able to prevent every case of child abduction, molestation or
exploitation. However, we can do our part to spread the word. Learn more about
how to prevent or report child abduction by contacting the National Center for
Missing and Exploited Children at www.missingkids.com. It should be the hope and
goal of every parent to see their child grow without fear of abduction, molestation or
exploitation.
For more information about this or any other crime prevention topic, call the Conroe
Police Department Crime Prevention Unit at (936) 522-3250, 3327 or 3226. If you
want to report a problem in your neighborhood, suspicious activity or drug activity,
call the CPD Narcotics Unit at (936) 522-3303. For questions, comments or
suggestions about this column, contact me at bberry@cityofconroe.org.
By Brian Krans
Sexual predators on the Internet were highlighted recently when a Department of
Homeland Security official was arrested on charges of seducing a minor on-line.
But, cases like that are nothing new. Law enforcement and government officials
have been combating on-line threats to children for years and are seeing more
results from their increased enforcement. "The predators are out there and we're
trying to get into the chat rooms, trying to get them before they make contact with a
child," said Roger Heaton, U.S. Attorney for the Central District of Illinois. "We've
been doing this since the late '90s." The Associated Press reported last week that
Brian Doyle, 55, a DHS spokesman, was arrested at his Maryland home for
allegedly sending pornography to who he thought was a teenage girl. In reality, it
was an undercover Florida detective posing as a 13-year-old girl. Investigations like
that are conducted often, Mr. Heaton said. "It's a good example of what can be
done, although not always in such a dramatic fashion," he said. Locally, federal
prosecutors have been handling similar cases -- including some where contact
already was made with a child. A recent case in the Quad-Cities is that of a
Pennsylvania man who authorities say met a 13-year-old girl in a Yahoo! chat room
and exchanged messages that were "romantic and sexually explicit in nature,"
according to court documents. He allegedly flew to the Quad-Cities last December
and had sex with the girl in a Moline hotel. The man, Daniel Fronczak, 27, of
Mahanoy City, Pa., is scheduled for trial in U.S. District Court, Rock Island,
beginning May 22. The Central Illinois CyberCrime Unit is designed to investigate
and prosecute computer crimes ranging from on-line fraud to exploitation through
the Internet. Mr. Heaton's office in the central district has three attorneys who deal
only with cybercrimes. "This is definitely a priority of our office," he said. According
to the Internet Crime Complaint Center, Illinois has the fifth-highest amount
nationwide of perpetrators of Internet crime. It's sixth-highest in the nation in Internet
crime complaints. The FBI's Innocent Images National Initiative -- with 36
undercover operations nationwide to stop on-line predators and child pornography
-- has recorded over 15,556 cases opened in its 10 years of operation. Among
those cases, 4,784 criminals were charged, 6,145 subjects were arrested and
4,822 convictions were obtained. Chris Swecker, an FBI executive, testified before
a U.S. House Energy and Commerce committee Thursday on the sexual
exploitation of children over the Internet. He said of the estimated 21 million
teenagers on the Internet, half of them use it every day. "We have come a long way
from the early electronic bulletin boards that pre-dated the Internet," Mr. Swecker
said. "As children use computers more and more, on-line child predators take
advantage of emerging technologies to facilitate their unimaginable criminal
activities."
The Internet Allows Pedophiles:
Instant access to other predators worldwide;
Open discussion of their sexual desires;
Shared ideas about ways to lure victims;
Mutual support of their adult-child sex philosophies;
Instant access to potential child victims worldwide;
Disguised identities for approaching children, even
to the point of presenting as a member of teen groups;
Ready access to "teen chat rooms" to find out how and who
to target as potential victims;
Means to identify and track down home contact information;
Ability to build a long-term "Internet" relationship
with a potential victim, prior to attempting to engage
the child in physical contact.
Computer technology and the Internet enables pedophiles to locate and interact
with other pedophiles more readily than ever before. Although pedophiles luring
kids on the Internet is a horrifying problem, the long-term organizational aspects are
more terrifying.
The common gathering place and the resultant support child predators are
providing each other is probably their most significant advantage, -- and the most
troublesome for a concerned public. The computer, a common household fixture, is
now a place where pedophiles can go to hear others say, "You're okay and what
you're doing is okay; don't listen to the rest of the world, just listen to us."
The ability to receive and offer comfort within the support of their like-minded group
reinforces pedophiles with the belief that their attraction to children and adult-child
sex are an acceptable way of life.
Child predators are forming an online community and bond that is unparalleled in
history. They are openly uniting against legal authorities and discussing ways to
influence public thinking and legislation on child exploitation.
While pedophile Websites are being tracked down and removed from Internet
servers in countries all over the world, they are still easily finding ways to post
Websites, Webrings, forums and chat rooms. Recent online topics have even
focused on fund raising efforts and plans to purchase a dedicated server for their
Websites.
It is easy to find and read messages between pedophiles supporting adult-child
sex. It is also increasingly common to observe pedophiles in chat rooms promoting
one another to move forward with advances on new victims and their families, -- in
what they define as "loving relationships."
The advancement of Internet technology allows pedophiles to exchange information
about children in an organized forum. They are able to meet in "online chat rooms"
and educate each other. These online discussions include sharing schemes about
how to meet, attract, and exploit children, -- and how to lure the parents of their
victims into a false sense of security about their presence within the sanctity of the
family structure. It has become an online "How To" seminar in pedophilia activities.
Pedophile chat rooms, forums, irc-chat, and newsgroups are filled with information
on "their" boys and girls and the "safety tips" that allow the abuse to remain hidden.
Some of their Websites have information posted telling children that it is okay to be
sexual with adults. It is in direct opposition to the messages advocates, teachers,
and parents have been trying instill in our country's children.
The larger the sense of community and support that is offered, the bolder
pedophiles have become in their graphic descriptions of sex with and exploitation
of children. The added comfort of anonymous email addresses and anonymous
surfing is helping pedophiles literally "hide in the open"! They appear to be feeling
safe enough in their nicknames to openly relate (and brag about) their stories of
child exploitation.
WASHINGTON (CNN) -- Attorney General Alberto Gonzales on Thursday issued
what he termed a "wake-up call" to the growing problems of pedophiles prowling
the Internet and online images of sexual abuse of children.
Gonzales described the depravity and horror of criminal acts against children in
unusually graphic detail.
"It is not an exaggeration to say that we are in the midst of an epidemic in the
production and trafficking of movies and images depicting the sexual abuse of
children," Gonzales said.
"The threat is frighteningly real, it is growing rapidly, and it must be stopped," he
said.
To highlight the Justice Department's growing concern, he traveled to the National
Center for Missing and Exploited Children in Alexandria, Virginia, to deliver his
speech.
Gonzales praised the center for its help, but said the public "does not yet
appreciate the scope, the nature and the import of this criminal activity and the
threat it poses to our kids."
The attorney general said one of every five children online is now solicited. He cited
a recent estimate that 50,000 predators are online at any given time prowling for
children.
"It is graphic, but if we do not talk candidly then it is easy for people to turn away,"
he said.
"I have seen pictures of older men forcing naked young girls to have anal sex,"
Gonzales said. "There are videos on the Interne
become victims of juvenile pornography, prostitution and trafficking each year. So
significant is the problem that even most law-enforcement and child-welfare officials do not
realize its scope.
"Child sexual exploitation is the most hidden form of child abuse in the U.S. and North
America today. It is the nation's least recognized epidemic," said Richard J. Estes, a
University of Pennsylvania professor of social work and the author of "The Commercial
Sexual Exploitation of Children in the U.S., Canada and Mexico." Neil Weiner of Penn's
Center for the Study of Youth Policy co-authored the international report.
The three-year project was funded by the National Institute of Justice of the U.S.
Department of Justice, the W.T. Grant Foundation, the Fund for Nonviolence and the
Research Foundation of the University of Pennsylvania. Estes reported that his and
Weiner's research identified 17 groups of children in the U.S. who are at "substantial risk"
of being sexually exploited.
"The largest of these groups are runaway, thrownaway and other homeless American
children who use 'survival sex' to acquire food, shelter, clothing and other things needed to
survive on America's streets," Estes said. "These children are solicited for sex repeatedly
by men, many of whom are married and have children of their own," Estes said. "Like other
groups of sexually exploited persons, street children are exposed to violence, drug abuse,
rape and, sometimes, even murder at the hands of the pimps, 'customers' and traffickers
that make up their world."
The Department of Homeland Security yesterday announced a law enforcement initiative
known as Operation Predator, aimed at protecting children from pornographers, child
prostitution rings, Internet predators and human traffickers.
The program, coordinated through the department's Bureau of Immigration and Customs
Enforcement (ICE), uses the Internet to more effectively identify child predators, prosecute
them and force them out of the country if they are foreigners subject to deportation.
"Operation Predator integrates the department's authorities to target those who exploit
children," Homeland Security Secretary Tom Ridge said. "The Department of Homeland
Security is coordinating the department's once-fragmented investigative and intelligence
resources into a united campaign against child predators."
As part of the program, ICE officials will partner with the National Center for Missing and
Exploited Children to facilitate the exchange of information on missing children, as well as
investigative intelligence leads.
For the first time, bureau officials said, an ICE senior special agent has been assigned to
the center to coordinate those leads requiring law enforcement attention.
ICE officials also will work with the FBI, the U.S. Postal Inspection Service, the U.S. Secret
Service and the Justice Department to develop a National Child Victim Identification
Program.
These are U.S. agencies for reporting Child Pornography.
Please also see:
Report Child Pornography - International Agencies
Child Pornography Articles and Media Reports
Cyber Tipline
National Center For Missing & Exploited Children
Charles B. Wang International Children's Building
699 Prince Street
Alexandria, VA 22314-3175
Phone: (703) 274-3900
Toll-free: 1-800-843-5678
www.cybertipline.com
Child Exploitation and Obscenity Section
Criminal Division
U.S. Department of Justice
1331 F Street NW, 6th Floor
Washington DC 20004
Phone: 202-514-5780
www.usdoj.gov/criminal/ceos/
INDEPTH: CHILD PORN
Child porn FAQ
CBC News Online | June 22, 2004
If I e-mail photos of my own children taking a bath to family members, am I breaking the
law? No. The Criminal Code's definition of child pornography stresses that even if children
appear nude in a photo, the focus has to be on sexual organs and the picture must be
distributed for an explicitly sexual purpose.
Sometimes I get spammed e-mail with links to child pornography sites. If I click on one by
accident, have I broken the law? Not if there's no intent. Senior Counsel Carole Morency, a
legislator working on the new proposed changes to Canada's child pornography laws, says
the law targets those who actively seek out child porn. Still, technically speaking, any
picture you view on the web is downloaded and saved on your computer's hard drive. Even
if you regularly empty your Recycle Box and clear out your caches, experts can still usually
find it later. Morency says it's an understandable concern that some may fear an accidental
download will come back to haunt them, but points out any sort of investigation would
eventually prove their innocence.
A family run prostitution network in Canada made more than $1 million in two years by
prostituting foreign women. A man, his son, his wife, their daughter and daughter-in-law all
recruited females who participated in the overall operation. Many of the 20 prostitutes --
aged 23 to 39 -- were related to the operators by marriage or blood, Murarotto said. They
worked out of apartments and each turned over at least $15,000 a year to the operators
(George Christopoulos, "Family Ran Prostitution Ring," Toronto Sun, 16 May 1998)
Xuong Han Luong faces charges of owning a brothel in Toronto, Canada, and living off the
avails of prostitution. He held at least five Thai women in the brothel, forcing them into
prostitution. Although the brothel was raided in 1996, police believe the same group
reopened it. (Rob Lamberti, "Cops Raid Den of Thai Sex ‘Salves’ 2 Men Arrested For
Running Bawdy House," Toronto Sun, 10 May 1998)
Adam Jermaine Ingram, 20, and Kevin Roy Woods, 18 are accused of paying $3,000 to
buy a 13-year-old girl from a man in Vancouver, Canada, abducting her and her friend and
raping them while on route to San Diego. Their actions violate, among other laws, the 1948
White Slave Traffic Act, prohibiting the transport of minors across state lines with the intent
of engaging in criminal activity. (Teen Girls Abducted,"The Province, 21 December 1997)
11 women, aged 18-25, from the former Soviet Union, were forced to become exotic
dancers in a strip club. The women were recruited from the former Soviet Union with the
promise that they would become highly paid models in Canada. They entered Canada
illegally, and the traffickers took their passports and other identification and held them in
Toronto.
US CHILD PORNOGRAPHY LEGISLATION
The US Supreme Court has overthrown a congressional ban on virtual paedophilia. It ruled
the First Amendment protects pornography or other sexual images that only appear to
depict real children engaged in sex. The judgment is a victory for both pornographers and
legitimate artists such as filmmakers. They argued that a broad ban on simulated child sex
could make it a crime to depict a sex scene like those in the recent movies Traffic or Lolita.
The law was challenged by a trade association for pornographers.
It barred sexually explicit material that "appear(s) to be a minor" or that is advertised in a
way that "conveys the impression" that a minor was involved in its creation. The law was
Congress' answer to then-emerging computer technology that allowed the computer
alteration of innocent images of real children, or the creation from scratch of simulated
children posed in sexual acts. The law was an expansion of existing bans on child
pornography. Congress had justified the wider ban on grounds that while no real children
were harmed in creating the material, real children could be harmed by feeding the prurient
appetites of paedophiles or child molesters.
WASHINGTON (CNN) -- A study released Monday revealed that between 300,000 and
400,000 U.S. children -- many from middle class homes -- are victims of some type of
sexual exploitation every year.
The three-year study, funded in part by the U.S. Department of Justice, analyzed the
problem of sexual exploitation -- particularly commercial sexual exploitation -- of children in
the United States, Canada and Mexico.
"Child sexual exploitation is the most hidden form of child abuse in the U.S. and North
America today," said Richard J. Estes, co-author of the study. "It is the nation's least
recognized epidemic."
He said the findings debunked many myths about what kind of children are involved in
sexual exploitation.
Study summary
Among the findings of a study titled "The Commercial Sexual Exploitation of Children in the
U.S., Canada and Mexico":
325,000 children are sexually exploited in the United States annually. Of that figure,
121,911 ran away from home and 51,602 were thrown out of their homes by a parent or
guardian.
25 percent of exploiters of children are other children.
Children who engage in prostitution can earn between $200 and $1,500 per day.
75 percent of children who are victims of commercial sexual exploitation are from middle
class backgrounds.
40 percent of the girls who engaged in prostitution were sexually abused at home, as were
30 percent of the boys.
Source: The Associated Press
Child Exploitation
Opening quote: Since the passage of the Child Protection Act of 1984, Postal Inspectors
have conducted 4,474 child exploitation investigations, resulting in the arrests of 3,711
individuals who used the mail in violation of federal child exploitation laws.
Child pornography and the sexual exploitation of children are tragic, heart-rending crimes
that plague law enforcement agencies worldwide. Child pornographers who assume
(incorrectly) the U.S. Mail will provide a safe, reliable, and anonymous vehicle for
exchanging such material are aggressively targeted by U.S. Postal Inspectors, regarded
internationally as leaders in the fight against child exploitation.
In keeping with this reputation, the Chief Postal Inspector was offered and accepted a seat
on the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children's (NCMEC's) Board of Directors
in FY 2002. The Postal Inspection Service has developed strong, cooperative relations with
the NCMEC over the years, and it is expected that representation on its board will foster an
even more effective partnership through mutual, coordinated efforts to protect children
from sexual abuse and exploitation. NCMEC Cyber Tipline reports are reviewed at
Inspection Service National Headquarters and forwarded to field Inspectors who are child
exploitation specialists for investigation or referral, as appropriate, and an Inspector is
assigned full-time to the NCMEC.
The impact of migrant trafficking on Canada is estimated at between $120 million to $400
million per year and accounts for approximately 8,000 to 16,000 people arriving in Canada
per year illegally. ("Organized Crime Impact Study," Solicitor General of Canada)
Vietnamese and Chinese mafia are increasing operations in brothels in Toronto, Canada.
They traffic in women from Southeast Asia. Agents pay recruiters up to $8,000 for a
woman, who then sell the women to pimps for about $15,000. Agents take 10% of the
earnings beyond the original contract. The women are forced to service buyers’ 12 hours a
day, 400 buyers or $400,000 to pay off their debt. Women are abused and terrorized,
being beaten and reportedly burned with hot irons. (Rob Lamberti, "Sex Slaves: Fodder for
Flesh Factories the Women Earn Nothing But Tips Until They Pay Off Their $40,000
Contracts," Toronto Sun, 10 May 1998)
About twelve 16-30-year-old Asian girls and women were trafficked into Canada each week
on visitor's permits and sold into prostitution. The girls and women were bought in North
America for up to $15,000 by a network that made about U.S. $1. 4 - $2.2 million annually.
The women are sold to brothel owners in Markham and Scarborough Toronto and Los
Angeles and forced into $40,000 debt bondage. (Police, "Police Bust Sex-slave Ring" 11
September 1997 & "Toronto police uncover sex slave ring," United Press International, 11
September 1997)
1000 employment authorizations for foreign exotic dancers are issued every year.
("Canada’s Paper for EU Conference on Trafficking in Women for Sexual Exploitation" 10-
11 June 1996)
Recruitment of exotic dancers into Canada is legal, and may be linked to the issues of
trafficking and sexual exploitation. Women who enter Canada to work as exotic dancers are
vulnerable to sexual and economic exploitation, deprivation of freedom, and can be
coerced into criminal activities, whether they have entered legally or illegally. ("Canada’s
Paper for EU Conference on Trafficking in Women for Sexual Exploitation" 10-11 June
1996)
Male buyers in Canada are increasingly seeking Filipinas more so than Thai women,
because they believe Filipinas pose less of risk for AIDS. (Rob Lamberti, "Sex Slaves:
Fodder for Flesh Factories the Women Earn Nothing But TipsUntil They Pay Off Their
$40,000 Contracts," Toronto Sun, 10 May 1998)
Methods and Techniques of Traffickers
As many as 100 Honduran children have been smuggled overland into Canada from
Honduras, by a professional drug ring trafficking children to Vancouver.
CHILD LABOUR, SLAVERY, SEXUAL EXPLOITATION AND THE GLOBAL ECONOMY BY
EUGENE W. PLAWIUK
This last summer an international conference was held in Sweden its primary concern was
on the sexual exploitation of children world wide. Much of its focus however was on the
condition of children in developing countries, countries that are now being targeted by
multinational corporations for large scale investment as part of the so called new global
economy. The conference drew international attention to the matter of the international sex
trade; the use of young girls and boys as prostitutes in countries such as India, Pakistan,
Philippines, Thailand, etc. and the booming business of sexual tourism. Sexual tours of
developing countries are organized for North American, European and Japanese
businessmen. These tours have been a booming business for the past twenty years,
despite the very real dangers of sexually transmitted diseases and AIDS. The sexual
tourism industry in many Asian countries is a direct result of the war economy imposed on
these countries during the American war in Vietnam, Cambodia and Laos in the 1960's and
70's. Countries such as the Philippines and Thailand were major staging areas for
American troops, resulting in a war based black market economy of sex, drugs and other
goods. There is a direct economic link between sexual tourism and the exploitation of
developing countries by multinational corporations based in industrial capitalist countries
such as the United States, Germany and Japan. While the news media focused on the
sensational exploitation of children in third world countries during the conference, they did
not make a clear link between child sexual exploitation and child labour. However many
representatives at the conference, including representatives of the International Labour
Organization (ILO), did make this link. And the link is clear. As developing countries
welcome increased foreign investment and major corporations move operations out of
North America, Nike is a good example, they move into cheap labour zones in Latin
America, Asia, and Africa. As the urban metropolitan areas in these countries develop a
new industrial base traditional rural agricultural economies in these countries are destroyed.
TRAFFICKING
Trafficking in women plagues the United States as much as it does underdeveloped
nations. Organized prostitution networks have migrated from metropolitan areas to small
cities and suburbs. Women trafficked to the United States have been forced to have sex
with 400-500 men to pay off $40,000 in debt for their passage. (Avita Ramdas, president of
the Global Fund for Women sponsoring a recent prostitution conference, Brad
Knickerbocker, "Prostitution’s Pernicious Reach Grows in the US" Christian Science
Monitor, 23 October 1996)
In mid-1997 in Queens New York police were informed of more than 60 Mexican immigrants
including 12 children ranging in age from 6 months to 6 years, being held in "involuntary
servitude". (Deborah Sontag, "Deaf Mexicans Are Found in Forced Labor," New York
Times, 20 June 1997)
The United Nations now lists Mexico as the number one center for the supply of young
children to North America. Most are sold to rich, childless couples unwilling to wait for bona
fide adoption agencies to provide them with a child. The majority are sent to international
pedophile organizations. Many times the children are snatched while on errands for their
parents. Often they are drugged and raped. Most of the children over 12 end up as
prostitutes. Hector Ramirez, a former deputy, or Mexican Member of Parliament, stated that
"many of the state and city authorities [are] doing absolutely nothing to stop what is going
on." (Allan Hall, The Scotsman, 25 August 1998)
5,000 women of Chinese descent are in prostitution in Los Angeles. (Kathryn McMahon,
Daniel B. Wood, "A Crusade to Free Captive Daughters," Christian Science Monitor, 12
March 1998)
Chinese women are being trafficked into the United States for brothels in New York and
North Carolina. They are held in $40,000 debt bondage. ("Chinese women ‘forced into
prostitution’ in US," BBC, 3 March 1998)
Traffickers force Chinese immigrants into indentured servitude, women into prostitution and
men into the restaurant business. In September 1998, 153 men and 21 women, including
35 juveniles, arrived in San Diego, California from China via Mexico, after paying smugglers
$30,000. In 1997, 69 and in 1993, 650 Chinese immigrants were intercepted in the same
area. If caught by immigration (INS) officials, most will be sent back to China, unless they
receive political asylum. The smugglers may face jail time in the United States. (Paula
Story, "Chinese Immigrant Boat Reaches US," Associated Press Online, 19 September
1998)
Traffickers in Miami were receiving Asian children who were being trafficked through
Europe by Japanese and Chinese criminal gangs. In one month, at least 15 children were
smuggled into the United States for prostitution. ("Pedophilia ring uncovered in Italy," USA
Today, Nov. 1997)
25 distinct Russian organized crime groups are operating in the United States in the areas
of prostitution, fraud, money laundering, murder, extortion and drug trafficking and the
Federal Bureau of Investigation has approximately 250 pending investigations targeting
Russian gangs in 27 states. (Barbara Starr, "Former Soviet Union a playground for
organized crime: A gangster’s paradise," ABC News, 14 September 1998)
TWO ARRESTED AFTER JOINT CHILD SEX TOURISM INVESTIGATION BY THE UNITED
STATES, MOLDOVA AND ROMANIA
PHILADELPHIA - United States Attorney Patrick L. Meehan and John Kelleghan, Acting
Special Agent-in-Charge for U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) in
Philadelphia, today announced the filing of an indictment1 against Anthony Mark Bianchi,
44, of North Wildwood, New Jersey.
Bianchi is charged with one count of conspiracy to engage in illicit sexual conduct in foreign
places, two counts of traveling with the intent to engage in illicit sexual conduct, two counts
of engaging in illicit sexual conduct in foreign places and one count of using a facility in
foreign commerce to entice a minor to engage in sexual activity. ICE agents arrested
Bianchi at his North Wildwood, N.J. on Wednesday, January 11th.
Also charged by authorities in the Republic of Moldova is 28-year-old Ion Gusin, who
allegedly served as Bianchi's translator. Moldovan police arrested Gusin Wednesday.
From December 2003 through until at least October 17, 2005, the defendant allegedly
conspired to travel from Philadelphia International Airport to Cuba, the Republic of Moldova
and Romania to engage in illicit sexual conduct with males younger than 16 years of age.
The defendant also allegedly used the telephone in an attempt to obtain illicit sexual
activity from Romanian males younger than 16.
In one instance, the defendant took a young male to a Romanian pub for his birthday.
According to the indictment, while at the pub, Bianchi gave the boy a very sweet wine to
drink and after he became intoxicated, Bianchi engaged in illicit sexual conduct with him.
"Americans who believe they can sexually abuse children abroad without facing
consequences at home are sadly mistaken, " said Kelleghan. "ICE will use all of its
resources to bring international sex tourists to justice."
"Sexual predators who travel overseas to pursue their victims need to know that distance is
not a deterrent to law enforcement," said Meehan. "This case involved authorities in three
countries and showed the lengths to which we are willing to travel to take these people out
of circulation and make sure they face the consequences."
Children deserve a childhood that includes a period of innocence - a protected space.
We're not protecting our children when we allow them to be used for the monetary gain or
sexual gratification of adults. Ervin Duggan, President of PBS
Tragically, children, the most vulnerable of our population are those most at risk from
sexual exploitation. Using children as sexual commodities has become a global growth
industry. In our own country, even provocative advertisements that sexualize children are
symptoms of what has become a disturbing trend. Children have become fair game in our
sexually saturated society. When we sexualize children, a daunting descent is begun that
puts us on the path of seeing them in a sexual way. Surely our culture is progressive
enough to see the consequences of this process of desensitization.
This article will briefly explore some of the Canadian laws, studies, and court cases that
deal with child sexual exploitation.
Many of the laws dealing with this problem are effective. However, too frequently the laws
are not enforced, or when they are, charges are often dismissed in court. Sometimes a
loop-hole in the law or the use of the Charter of Rights results in someone who admits guilt
being given a light or even no sentence at all. This may be because we live in a very
sexually charged society. The limits or "line in the sand" are always being moved. In fact,
our children constitute one of the newest sexual frontiers.
For example, in May 1996, Chateau Mouton Rothchild brought forth a wine label with a
drawing of a nude, reclining, pre-adolescent girl. A big debate followed - was the label
obscene, or was it art? In California, the label could not be used. A LCBO spokesperson
defended the label by stating that that province's moral and artistic climate is more tolerant
- "what the heck, this is the 20th century. Let's go ahead with it." (Globe and Mail, May 2,
1996) Rothchild's press release stated "the fragile and mysterious girl seems to hint at
some secret promise, a pleasure to be shared." A spokesman for the advertising company
stated "the agency is trying to be current with today's attitudes." (Saveur Fare, No. 12, p.2)
The statements, along with the picture of a sexually provocative female child left no doubt
about the double entendre that was intended by clever profit driven advertisers. There are
numerous
There are numerous “jean” billboards and magazine ads of young adolescents. The
question often asked is “What product is being sold?” Calvin Klein answered that very
question when he said, “Sex will sell my jeans.” The fragrance companies have copied his
style. Have you noticed how often these ads portray young children with adults in a very
suggestive relationship? This in no way says that love and affection are not extremely
important in families. In fact, without love and affection, families fail. However these ads
could easily be interpreted as exploitive relationships with children.
In 1996, members of the Ontario Film Review Board stated at their annual luncheon
meeting that they would never approve films depicting sex with children. That is no longer
their policy. Often these very films that would have been considered illegal a few years ago
are now acclaimed as award winning productions.
Federal authorities have shut down an exclusive Internet chat room that traded in
graphic child pornography, including "on demand" videos of children as young as
infants being molested, U.S. Atty. Gen. Alberto Gonzales announced Wednesday.
An international investigation into the chat room "Kiddy pics & Kiddyvids" led to
charges against 27 people in the U.S., Australia, Britain and Canada.
Thirteen U.S. residents, including three men from the Chicago suburbs, are charged
as members of the chat room, Gonzales said at a news conference in the Dirksen U.
S. Courthouse.
The investigation also uncovered seven sexually abused children and four
molesters, authorities said.
Gonzales said chat room members could access "thousands and thousands" of
pictures and videos that he described as "the worst imaginable forms of child
pornography."
The three suspects from the Chicago area are Brian A. Annoreno, 29, of Bartlett;
Gregory J. Sweezer, 48, of Aurora; and David B. Holst, 27, of North Aurora.
All three have admitted to federal agents that they possessed child pornography,
according to court documents.
Annoreno is charged with molesting an infant girl for a live video "streamed" over
the Internet to another chat room member, known as "Big(underscore)Daddy619."
That individual, a resident of Alberta, Canada, is accused of molesting four children
for streaming videos but was not identified by name in court documents.
A computer seized at Holst's home contained images of an exposed 18-month-old
girl and a video of a girl between the ages of 9 and 12 engaged in sex acts with a
man, a complaint states.
Holst told investigators he was "burned out" with adult pornography, the complaint
states.
Julie Myers, the Homeland Security Department's assistant secretary for
Immigration and Customs Enforcement, said the chat room represents a disturbing
evolution in online child pornography.
Where commercial Web sites frequently reproduce the same images over and
over, "peer-to-peer" chat rooms are manufacturing new, "homegrown" child
pornography, Myers said.
"Tragically and frighteningly, the kids in these images are getting younger, and the
images are getting more and more violent and graphic," she said.
A criminal complaint charges that on Jan. 1, Annoreno e-mailed a photograph of a
baby girl with her genitals exposed. The following day, he received an e-mail of a
girl removing her underwear and exposing herself, the complaint states.
Sweezer admitted to possessing thousands of images, according to a complaint.
Annoreno's attorney, Michael Falconer, said Wednesday that he does not believe
investigators have a video showing his client molesting a child.
Falconer described Annoreno as a "computer wizard" but said he otherwise has a
very low IQ.
"He might admit to anything," Falconer said, adding he believes Annoreno lives with
his parents.
Calls to attorneys for Holst and Sweezer were not returned Wednesday. Attempts to
reach all three men at their homes were unsuccessful.
Annoreno, who authorities said used the screen-name "Acidburn," was arrested
Jan. 8 and is in custody in Kankakee.
Holst was arrested Jan. 11 and is free on $25,000 bond.
Sweezer, arrested March 9, is also free after his wife posted their home for bond.
Prosecutors charge that Royal Raymond Weller of Clarksville, Tenn., ran the chat
room under the screen-name "G.O.D."
When Weller was arrested March 6, Lisa A. Winebrenner of Osceola, Iowa, took
over as the chat room's host, authorities allege.
Winebrenner, who was arrested Tuesday, is accused of trying to destroy evidence
of child pornography and advising other members on March 10 to do the same.
Known by the screen-name "HumbleDuchess," Winebrenner even discussed a
contingency plan to keep the chat room running in the event of her arrest, authorities
charge.
Winebrenner's sister, Hope, said the family is numb after her arrest and doesn't
know what to make of the charges.
"As far as the downloading ... they're saying she did it, so we're guessing she did
it," Hope Winebrenner said.
She said she does not know if Winebrenner has an attorney.
Assistant Secretary Myers said that, increasingly, similar chat rooms are using
sophisticated methods to hide their activity from law enforcement and to destroy
evidence when they are detected.
And unlike commercial Web sites that charge fees law enforcement can track,
"Kiddy pics & Kiddyvids" was free and exclusive to its members, Myers said.
Members tipped each other off to suspected law enforcement attempts to access
the site, and hosts kicked off anyone they thought compromised security, authorities
charged.
The chat room was discovered after police in Edmonton, Canada, arrested a
member, said Tony Warr, deputy police chief in Toronto.
The investigation was ongoing and police in Canada used tracking software to
locate other members of the chat room and alerted authorities in the U.S., Australia
and Britain, Warr said.
Gonzales did not detail how long the chat room was in operation before it was shut
down.
He declined to say whether the sexually abused children identified in the
investigation have been placed in protective custody but offered assurances they
are safe.
KANSAS CITY, Mo. – Todd P. Graves, United States Attorney for the Western
District of Missouri, announced recently that a record number of child exploitation
cases were filed in federal court in 2005. "Preventing the exploitation of children,
and prosecuting those who use the Internet to prey upon them, is my highest local
priority," Graves said at a news conference in Kansas City today. "Thanks to
tougher federal laws and aggressive prosecution, child sexual predators can find no
refuge from justice in cyberspace." According to Graves, 42 child exploitation
cases were filed in the Western District of Missouri in 2005. Those cases included
charges related to child pornography, enticing a minor to engage in illicit sexual
activity, distributing obscenity to a minor, or sexual abuse of a child. "We’re in the
forefront of efforts nationwide to protect our children," Graves said. "This district
was ranked sixth nationally in prosecutions of child exploitation cases among the 93
federal districts in 2005. We prosecuted more child exploitation cases than any
district east of the Rocky Mountains. And we’re redoubling our efforts this year, with
13 child exploitation cases filed in just the past two months." During the past year,
Graves added, there were 38 convictions in child exploitation cases, either by trial
or guilty plea. "This continues a trend of dramatic increases in the number of child
exploitation cases filed in the Western District of Missouri," Graves said. "Before I
launched the Computer Crimes and Child Exploitation Unit in 2002, we averaged
about a dozen cases per year. That tripled in the unit’s first full year, with 36 cases
filed in 2004 followed by a 17 percent increase last year." These numbers, Graves
added, don’t include other computer-related crimes prosecuted by the Computer
Crimes and Child Exploitation Unit, such as hacking, ID theft, Internet fraud and
counterfeiting. On Friday, a federal grand jury in Jefferson City returned indictments
in five separate and unrelated cases for attempting to entice a minor to engage in
illicit sexual activity or distributing obscene material to a minor. In 2005, there was a
total of three child exploitation cases filed in Jefferson City. Defendants in last week’
s Jefferson City cases included a youth swim coach, a prison guard, and a
commercial airline pilot. "This is a tragic reminder that child sexual predators come
from all walks of life, and all socio-economic backgrounds," Graves said. "We have
prosecuted Boy Scout leaders, church volunteers, social workers, a police officer, a
mayor from a small town, several businessmen, prominent attorneys, even a judge.
What makes this scary is the fact that the perpetrator can be someone you’d never
expect, someone the parents and children know and trust." As the Internet has
grown more pervasive, with faster downloads, popular chat rooms, new software
such as file-sharing and instant messaging, and digital photography, sexual
predators have seized upon the new technology. With digital cameras and video
recorders, producing child abuse images has now become easy and inexpensive.
The Internet allows images and videos to be copied and disseminated to tens of
thousands of individuals at the click of a button. The distribution and receipt of such
images can be done almost anonymously. As a result, child pornography is readily
available through virtually every Internet technology (web sites, email, instant
messaging/ICQ, Internet Relay Chat (IRC), newsgroups/bulletin boards, and peer-to-
peer). The technological ease, lack of expense, and anonymity in obtaining and
distributing child pornography has resulted in an explosion i! n the availability,
accessibility, and volume of child pornography. "Not only is child pornography
easier to collect over the Internet," Graves said, "this technology has opened virtual
doors to help predators contact their victims directly without their parents being
aware of it. Unfortunately, the same advances in computer and telecommunication
technology that allow our children to reach out to new sources of knowledge and
cultural experiences are also leaving them vulnerable to exploitation and harm by
computer-sex offenders." According to a U.S. Department of Justice study, of the
estimated 24 million child Internet-users, one in five has received unwanted sexual
solicitations, with teen girls being the primary target.
Child Neglect
Child neglect is the most prevalent form of child maltreatment in the United States.
According to the National Child Abuse and Neglect Data System (NCANDS), of the
approximately 903,000 US children who were victims of abuse and neglect in 2001,
59.2% suffered from neglect alone, including medical neglect. According to the
NCANDS, 35.6% of child maltreatment fatalities in the United States in 2001
occurred as a result of neglect, 21.9% as a result of physical abuse and neglect,
and 3.3% as a result of neglect along with another type of maltreatment. In an
independent study, Prevent Child Abuse America estimated that 1,291 children in
the United States died in 2000 as a result of maltreatment, and that 45% of these
child maltreatment fatalities were attributable to neglect (Peddle et al., 2002).
What is neglect?
The NCANDS defines neglect as “a type of maltreatment that refers to the failure by
the caregiver to provide needed, ageappropriate care although financially able to
do so or offered financial or other means to do so.” Neglect is usually typified by an
ongoing pattern of inadequate care and is readily observed by individuals in close
contact with the child. Physicians, nurses, daycare personnel, relatives, and
neighbors are frequently the ones to suspect and report neglect in infants, toddlers,
and preschool-aged children. Once children are in school, school personnel often
notice indicators of child neglect such as poor hygiene, poor weight gain,
inadequate medical care, or frequent absences from school.
Types of neglect
Professionals define four types of neglect physical, educational, emotional, and
medical.
Physical neglect accounts for the majority of cases of maltreatment. NCANDS
estimates that 7.1 of every 1,000 US children experience physical neglect. Physical
neglect generally involves the parent or caregiver not providing the child with basic
necessities (e.g., adequate food, clothing, and shelter). Failure or refusal to provide
these necessities endangers the child’s physical health, well-being, psychological
growth, and development. Physical neglect also includes child abandonment,
inadequate supervision, rejection of a child leading to expulsion from the home, and
failure to adequately provide for the child’s safety and physical and emotional
needs. Physical neglect can severely impact a child’s development by causing
failure to thrive; malnutrition; serious illness; physical harm in the form of cuts,
bruises, burns, or other injuries due to lack of supervision; and a lifetime of low self-
esteem.
Educational neglect involves the failure of a parent or caregiver to enroll a child of
mandatory school age in school or provide appropriate home schooling or needed
special educational training, thus allowing the child or youth to engage in chronic
truancy. Educational neglect can lead to the child failing to acquire basic life skills,
dropping out of school, or continually displaying disruptive behavior. Educational
neglect can pose a serious threat to the child’s emotional well-being, physical
health, or normal psychological growth and development, particularly when the child
has special educational needs that are not met.
Emotional neglect includes actions such as engaging in chronic or extreme spousal
abuse in the child’s presence, allowing a child to use drugs or alcohol, refusing or
failing to provide needed psychological care, constantly belittling the child, and
withholding affection. Parental behaviors considered to be emotional child
maltreatment include
Ignoring (consistent failure to respond to the child’s need for stimulation, nurturance,
encouragement, and protection or failure to acknowledge the child’s presence),
Rejecting (actively refusing to respond to the child’s needs [e.g., refusing to show
affection]),
Verbally assaulting (constant belittling, name calling, or threatening),
Isolating (preventing the child from having normal social contacts with other children
and adults),
Terrorizing (threatening the child with extreme punishment or creating a climate of
terror by playing on childhood fears), and
Corrupting or exploiting (encouraging the child to engage in destructive, illegal, or
antisocial behavior).A pattern of this parental behavior can lead to the child’s poor
self-image, alcohol or drug abuse, destructive behavior, and even suicide. Severe
neglect of an infant’s need for stimulation and nurturance can result in the infant
failing to thrive and even infant death.
Emotional neglect is often the most difficult situation to substantiate in a legal
context and is often reported secondary to other abuse or neglect concerns.
Medical neglect is the failure to provide appropriate health care for a child (although
financially able to do so), thus placing the child at risk of being seriously disabled or
disfigured or dying. According to NCANDS, in 2000, 3% of substantiated cases of
child maltreatment in the United States (25,450 children) were victims of medical
neglect. Concern is warranted not only when a parent refuses medical care for a
child in an emergency or for an acute illness, but also when a parent ignores
medical recommendations for a child with a treatable chronic disease or disability,
resulting in frequent hospitalizations or significant deterioration.
Even in non-emergency situations, medical neglect can result in poor overall health
and compounded medical problems.
Parents may refuse medical care for their children for different reasons religious
beliefs, fear or anxiety about a medical condition or treatment, or financial issues.
Child protective services agencies generally will intervene when
medical treatment is needed in an acute emergency (e.g., a child needs a blood
transfusion to treat shock),
a child with a life-threatening chronic disease is not receiving needed medical
treatment (e.g., a child with diabetes is not receiving medication), or
a child has a chronic disease that can cause disability or disfigurement if left
untreated (e.g., a child with congenital cataracts needs surgery to prevent
blindness).In these cases, child protection services agencies may seek a court
order for medical treatment to save the child’s life or prevent life-threatening injury,
disability,or disfigurement.
Although medical neglect is highly correlated with poverty, there is a distinction
between a caregiver’s inability to provide the needed care based on cultural norms
or the lack of financial resources, and a caregiver’s knowing reluctance or refusal to
provide care. Children and their families may be in need of services even though
the parent may not be intentionally neglectful. When poverty limits a parent’s
resources to adequately provide necessities for the child, services may be offered
to help families provide for their children.
Teen prostitution and the sexual exploitation of children is a growing problem in the
United States. Government statistics report a substantial increase in teen
prostitution, and indicate that thirteen is the average age of newly recruited teen
prostitutes. Although the majority of teen prostitutes are runaways from poor and
inner-city neighborhoods, the percentage of teen prostitutes from upper and middle
class homes is trending upward.
The stereotype that young prostitutes come from dysfunctional or abusive homes is
not always true. Some young people are simply seeking financial autonomy from
their parents and view sex as an easy means to that end. Pimps and madams now
target upper and middle class girls who can be lured with promises of designer
clothes, jewelry and financial independence. Law enforcement officials now report
that most teen prostitutes from upper and middle class homes were recruited in
suburban neighborhoods at shopping malls, fast food restaurants and other place
that parents generally believe are safe for their children.
One organization that is addressing this growing problem is the Paul & Lisa
Program, a non-profit established to help children at risk of sexual exploitation. The
focus of the program is to empower youth to choose healthier, more promising
lifestyles and to educate youth and the general public about the dangers of
prostitution. The organization highlights the fact that teen prostitution is not just a
problem in poor or urban neighborhoods, but is becoming more prevalent in
suburban communities as well. For more information about this organization and
general information about child prostitution visit: http://www.paulandlisa.org/who.html
A new study out of the University of Pennsylvania School of Social Work concludes
that official reports seriously underestimate the problem. The study identifies 17
groups of children in the U.S. who are at "substantial risk" of being sexually
exploited. The largest groups are runaway and other homeless American children
who use survival sex to acquire food, shelter, clothing and other things needed to
survive on American streets. The customers of street children in the United States,
Mexico and Canada include:
· pedophiles and traffickers
· transient males, including members of the military
· long-haul truck drivers
· seasonal workers
· conventioneers
· sex tourists
These researches developed an eleven-point action agenda with the goal of
eliminating further commercial sexual exploitation of America’s youth. For instance,
in the U.S. child sexual exploitation affects as many boys as girls, but boys are less
protected by human-service and law enforcement systems because of the
widespread belief that boys are better able than girls to fend for themselves. This
study found many gaps in policies and suggests services to combat sexual
exploitation and help the victims. For more information about this study, please visit:
http://www.ssw.upenn.edu/~restes/CSEC.htm
The United Nations reported that an estimated 300,000 children are involved in
prostitution in the United States. The UN report emphasized the fact that sexual
exploitation affects young people from all cultural, social and economic
backgrounds. As more and more children are electing to participate in this kind of
lifestyle, it is important that adults take time to educate their children about the
dangers of prostitution and pornography, and open the lines of communication so
that children are comfortable expressing their wants and needs. With the help of
supportive adults, children can learn to set healthier goals, and acquire the skills
necessary to avoid being lured by the fabricated glamour of life on the streets.
Hazing in High School
In this week’s episode of The Guardian, Lulu convinces Jake to bring a lawsuit on
behalf of a teenage girl who, as part of her initiation to the high school cheerleading
squad, has oral sex with a member of the basketball team while the rest of the
cheerleading squad and basketball team watch. The girl is suspended from school,
humiliated, and wants to change school districts to avoid embarrassment.
Hazing is generally associated with college students making their way into
fraternities and sororities by partaking in silly and embarrassing rites of passage.
But hazing is far from harmless and is no longer exclusive to college campuses.
Hazing is becoming more and more common in high school sports and activities.
School Districts may be found liable for failing to supervise or intervene. For more
information on school district liability for hazing, visit http://lgst.wharton.upenn.
edu/srosner/HoustanLawReview-2002.pdf
According to a study by researchers at Alfred University, children as young as
twelve are subjected to hazing rituals to join sports, church and social groups. The
initiation activities are becoming increasingly more physically and emotionally
dangerous. Sadly, over the past few years, several students have died from alcohol
poisoning after being forced to consume liquor until they passed out.
The results of the Alfred University interviews with high school students are
alarming. More than 1.5 million high school students are hazed each year. 61% of
the students interviewed reported that their first hazing incident occurred between
the ages of 13 and 15. The study defined hazing as “any humiliating or dangerous
activity expected of you to join a group, regardless of your willingness to
participate.” The types of hazing activities reported ranged from forced alcohol and
drug consumption and public nudity to sexual assault, rape and extreme physical
abuse. The Alfred University study found that more than half of the hazing victims
were also forced to participate in illegal activities such as stealing, drug abuse,
physical assault on strangers or other students, or harassment. While sports teams
had the highest number of hazing incidents, church groups, choirs and bands also
showed surprisingly high numbers. To read the entire study conducted by Alfred
University, visit
http://www.alfred.edu/news/html/hazing_study.html
The work of anti-hazing organizations has prompted many legislative changes.
According to ABC News, 42 states now have enacted anti-hazing laws. However,
most high school and college students interviewed in Alfred University’s study did
not know that hazing is illegal in their states. To read the entire ABC news article
visit http://abcnews.com/sections/us/DailyNews/hazing000828.html For a list of
state hazing laws, visit http://www.stophazing.org/laws.html .
Parents’ perceptions and beliefs about hazing play a significant role in students’
attitudes about hazing. Students whose parents were hazed are more likely to be
hazed themselves. Nearly half of the students interviewed in the Alfred University
study admitted that they would not report hazing incidents to a parent or adult for
fear of humiliation, backlash from peers, or because their parents might see the
incident as harmless or a natural part of growing up. Adults can protect children by
talking with children about hazing and being aware that hazing occurs in all kinds of
peer groups.
Adults should ask questions and make sure that another adult is present at all group
and team functions. Adults also can plan events to welcome and celebrate new
members of a group or team. Many school and church groups have found positive
alternatives to hazing. Some groups plan team-building activities to benefit the
group and/or the community. Other groups ask new members to participate in
community service or work together on physically challenging obstacle courses or
other skill tests as part of team try-outs.
Positive and safe initiation rites can benefit and promote team spirit. Unfortunately,
the boundaries between positive and negative initiation are not clear to many teens.
It is troubling that almost all of the students who participated in humiliating hazing
activities agreed that those activities were wrong.
Hazing can cause long-term problems. Children who are humiliated or feel that their
reputation and character have been damaged may have difficulty moving beyond
those negative feelings. Many children who were hazed report that they
subsequently perform worse in school. Some children even skip school to avoid
humiliation or seeing their perpetrators. Other children report quitting activities after
being hazed or avoiding new activities for fear of hazing.
Being a part of a group or team can be a healthy and wonderful experience for
children. It is the responsibility of parents, coaches and teachers to ensure that
school teams and groups are safe and positive environments for children to learn
and grow.
Poverty and homelessness in America is an obvious and disturbing issue. But what
is less obvious and even more disturbing is that a great majority of the poor and
homeless are teens and children. In the U.S., one out of every four homeless
individuals is a child. Despite this population’s very real existence, they do not exist
to many people.
Whenever there is a school shooting, the media inundates us with images of the
event for weeks after it happens. Yet the public never hears about the 13 children
who die on the streets every day (Stand Up for Kids). Few realize how serious the
problem is because they rarely see homeless kids, nor do they hear about their
struggles.
Homeless teens and children are a particularly hidden population because they do
not want to be returned to their homes. The majority of them come from homes of
extreme poverty or horrible abuse, and tend to hide in alleys, under bridges, and
other unseen places. In fact, as many as 92% of homeless youth were physically or
sexually abused in their homes (Better Homes Fund). It is easy to overlook such an
invisible population, but the problem has reached catastrophic proportions.
Currently there are 1.3 million homeless and runaway street kids in the United
States (Stand Up for Kids). These numbers only include reported runaways, and do
not account for children who were forced out of their homes, abandoned by the
foster care system, or are part of a homeless family.
The problem is especially critical because little is being done to address the
situation. Homeless children often have few resources at their disposal, rendering
them helpless and alone. While much discussion centers on helping homeless
adults, homeless children are often overlooked.
Oftentimes, people may be reluctant to help these kids because they fear
encouraging their “misbehavior” or keeping them from returning home. Homeless
kids are perceived as delinquent teenagers who have run away from home
because they refuse to follow rules or feel they can take care of themselves.
Alarmingly, the average age of a homeless person in the United States is nine
(Institute of Children and Poverty). There are in fact many kids below the age of nine
on the streets, some with their families but most trying to survive on their own.
Unable to support themselves with a job, children so young have very few options.
Many have to resort to prostitution, stealing, or selling drugs just to eat every day.
Stand Up for Kids, an organization that provides necessities for homeless youth,
and volunteers who are willing to listen to their problems, reports that almost half of
the children on the streets turn to prostitution within 48 hours of leaving home.
In addition to the necessity of finding food, homeless teens and children face
constant police hassling and the threat of physical and sexual assault. One study
found that 60% of youth on the streets have been raped or assaulted (Youth Care).
Homeless youth must face all the difficulties homeless adults do, but are more
helpless and lacking in maturity.
In addition to Stand Up for Kids, there are a few organizations that reach out to
homeless and street kids, like Kidsacks in Cleveland, which gives sleeping bags to
homeless kids. Both of these organizations and a few others focus on giving kids
what they need and assuring them that someone cares. Other organizations like
Hamilton Transitional Housing Program in San Francisco focus on homeless
families and enrichment for the children of these families. Despite the efforts of
these organizations, much still needs to be done to help homeless teens and
children. And until there are no children on the streets, there will always be more to
be done.
(CBS/AP) In one of the largest coordinated crackdowns against child prostitution in
the United States, the government has arrested 19 people and charged more than
30 across several states.
The crackdown was the latest phase of an ongoing national investigation into
criminal enterprises involved in the recruitment of children for prostitution called
"Innocence Lost."
Charges have been filed in recent days in Florida, Michigan, New Jersey and
Pennsylvania, and others are expected, according to a law enforcement official who
spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to talk about the
topic before Gonzales' announcement.
Attorney General Alberto Gonzales and FBI Assistant Director Chris Swecker
announced the recent arrests a news conference in Washington today, saying that
the operation has identified more than 30 child victims, bringing the overall total
identified to more than 200 since 2003.
Items seized in this latest sweep included residential properties, vehicles, U.S.
currency, electronics, jewelry, and child pornography images, according to the
Justice Department.
"Our society has no place for those who prey on children and no tolerance for child
prostitution or sex trafficking," said Gonzales. "The Justice Department and our
partners in the law enforcement community are committed to stopping this terrible
practice and protecting our children."
A grand jury in Camden, New Jersey, indicted eight people Wednesday on charges
they conspired to recruit girls to be prostitutes in Atlantic City, Las Vegas and New
York, according to court documents. The defendants managed a prostitution ring
that also extended to Florida, Georgia, Massachusetts, Pennsylvania and the
District of Columbia, the indictment said.
Matthew Thompkins and five others were arrested Sunday and are in custody in
New Jersey, the official said. Thompkins had a central role in the conspiracy, the
indictment said.
In Detroit, a grand jury charged four Ohio residents with forcing two girls, 14 and 15,
to have sex at a truck stop in Michigan. The girls had been held as virtual prisoners
in Toledo, Ohio, where they were told to address one defendant, Deric Willoughby,
as "Daddy," and taken to hotel rooms for prostitution. Their payments were
eventually turned over to Willoughby, the indictment said.
Two other defendants, Jennifer Huskey and Brandy Shope, are adults who also
worked as prostitutes, the indictment says.
A fourth person, Richard Lamar Gordon, is identified in the indictment as a truck
driver who took the girls from a parking lot in the Toledo area to the Michigan truck
stop and had sex with one of them. He has not been arrested, the official said.
Domestic child prostitution cases have been a federal law enforcement priority
since 2003 with the advent of the Justice Department's Innocence Lost Initiative.
When he became attorney general in February, Gonzales said he would focus on
reducing all forms of human trafficking.
Several federal laws ban sexual trafficking in children, including one that specifically
applies to taking minors across state lines to engage in prostitution.
There were more than 160 arrests in such cases in the government spending year
that ended Sept. 30, according to the FBI.
Rescuing Our Child Prostitutes
They arrive in the bus and train stations of our major Canadian cities - lonely and
frightened, often hungry and broke. Frequently, they are running away from physical
and/or sexual abuse at home or in foster care. These vulnerable adolescents, some
as young as 12 years of age, are easily spotted by the pimps who hang out at these
stations, and who select these youngsters as additions to their "stable" of
prostitutes. Pimps befriend these vulnerable teenagers, feed them and provide
them with clothes and a warm place to stay. Next comes dependency on alcohol,
drugs and, of course, sex. At this point, the pimps are ready to push their young
victims onto the streets to start earning money. If the youngsters balk, there are
physical beatings, and more drugs used to propel them into the dark and
dangerous world of prostitution. The average length of time young girls (and boys)
survive on the streets is seven years before they die as a result of a homicidal act
by a pimp or paedophile, a drug overdose, AIDS or from an act of suicide.
Something had to be done about this appalling situation. The Province of Alberta,
under the inspired and determined leadership of MLA Heather Forsyth (Calgary -
Fish Creek), came up with an answer. In 1999, as a result of her efforts, Alberta
passed the Protection of Children Involved in Prostitution Act, which permitted
police to pick up and detain children for 72 hours without charging them. Such
action allows the youngsters to escape from their pimps and enables them to
receive medical, psychological and addiction counselling and special legal
services. More than 400 child prostitutes have been apprehended since this law
was passed, some as young as 12 years of age. A similar law has also been
passed in BC.
Of course, it wasn't long before this law was challenged and overturned (last July) on
the basis that it violated the Charter of Rights as being an infringement of a child's
liberties and freedom. Fortunately, the Alberta government sent this lower court
decision on for a Judicial Review where a judge with a some common sense, Mr.
Justice John Rooke of Alberta's Court of Queen's Bench, overturned the lower court
decision saying "ultimately, because they are children, their (children's) right to
liberty must give way to the overriding interest of protecting their general welfare as
long as the procedures employed to do so are fair."
Just to be on the safe side, however, the Alberta Government did amend its
legislation somewhat by enabling the police or Children's Aid workers to put a
teenage prostitute into a "safe-house" for up to five days; they could then be
required to apply for detainments to be increased up to a maximum of six weeks.
Under this amendment, the children would also be informed that they may contact a
lawyer and appear before a judge for a review.
After arresting a baby-faced 17-year-old girl for prostitution at Mandalay Bay
recently, Metro Police vice officers were jolted by her wistful request: "All I want is
my dinosaur."She explained to the officers that her mother had died a few years
ago so she had come to Las Vegas to live with her father. She had run away and
met a man who forced her into prostitution.Before her mother died, she had given
the teen a stuffed dinosaur toy and the teen wanted to make sure she didn't lose it.
Officers took her to her pimp's car, opened the trunk and handed her the toy. It was
worn and dirty."She hugged the dinosaur," said Sgt. Gil Shannon, a proponent of a
special program in Metro's vice unit that combats child prostitution. "It broke our
hearts."For the officers, it drove home the fact that even though she was having sex
for money, she was still just a child.Shannon won't estimate how many children ages
11 to 17 are working as prostitutes in Metro's jurisdiction but he says he knows the
total is increasing. He knows because the number of children being arrested on
prostitution charges in the Las Vegas Valley is rising.This year Metro already has
set a record -- 142 as of Friday, when three more child prostitutes were arrested.
The higher number of arrests can be attributed to a combination of factors, including
the growth of the residential and tourist populations and more effective police
investigative methods, Shannon said.And it seems there are more child prostitutes
than ever."From what I am seeing overall there has been more of a breakdown in
the family structure, more of these kids slipping through the cracks," Shannon said."
Then there are all the rap songs, videos, clothing, bumper stickers glorifying
prostitution," he said. "It's the 'in' thing to be a pimp, to be a 'ho.' "Especially in Las
Vegas. The city's "anything goes" image also contributes to the area's juvenile
prostitution problem, Shannon said."It's because it's Sin City," he said. "The slogan
is, 'What happens in Vegas stays in Vegas,' and that might apply to the rest of
(what's going on in) the city, but it doesn't apply to juvenile prostitution."Plenty of
activities that are considered illegal and immoral elsewhere are tolerated and even
encouraged in Las Vegas, but exploiting children for sexual gratification and greed
is not one of them, Shannon said.Juvenile prostitution has been a priority for Metro,
the Clark County juvenile probation department and local judges since 1994 when
the Stop Turning Out Child Prostitutes program, nicknamed STOP, was introduced.
Minors cannot legally consent to become prostitutes. They also lack the maturity to
consider the potential long-term effects of being a prostitute, authorities said.STOP,
which currently includes five Metro detectives in addition to Shannon, is built on the
belief that underage prostitutes aren't criminals but victims of pimps.That philosophy
is what sets STOP apart from efforts at other police departments where officers
"arrest them, take them to juvenile hall and call their parents. That's it. It stops right
there," Shannon said. "There's no intervention, no after care, nothing."STOP
emphasizes rehabilitation and follow-up. The goals are to arrest the people who got
the children into prostitution, to remove the children from the life of prostitution and
to provide ways for the children to return to normal lives, Shannon said.After
arresting a child for prostitution, authorities associated with STOP work to gain the
youngster's trust -- the same tactic pimps use.In the rehabilitation phase, police and
probation officers try to undo the lies the pimp told the teens and try to convince
them that "the pimp isn't the all-powerful, dangerous person they thought he was,"
said Sally Huncovsky, a supervisor with Clark County Family and Youth Services.
Sometimes the girls are resistant and try to use their sexuality to manipulate male
police and probation officers because they don't know how else to relate to men.
They "can't conceptualize an adult wanting to do something for them," she said.
Darrell Wiggins, a probation officer who works with juvenile prostitutes, said, "You
have to come after them how the pimps do ... I can speak their language, and I try to
get across, 'I'm trying to help you. What do you need?' "Metro officers who work with
STOP also have learned how to speak the language.After they are arrested,
underage prostitutes are usually held at the Clark County Juvenile Detention Center
for several weeks. During that time, parents or legal guardians are notified and
arrangements are made for places for the youngsters to stay if they can't go home.
The detectives who are part of STOP spend a lot of time talking to the juveniles,
trying to win their trust, getting them to tell them about their pimps, convincing them
to testify against the pimps.One of the most important aspects of the program is
that it gives the youths -- mainly repeat offenders -- the option of going to live at the
Children of the Night home in the Los Angeles suburb of Van Nuys, Calif., where
they can attend a private on-site school, learn life skills and receive drug and
alcohol counseling.Follow-up studies indicate 80 percent of the children who have
gone through the Children of the Night home have not returned to prostitution, said
Lois Lee, founder and director of the 24-year-old organization.Child prostitutes are
rehabilitated at a higher rate than adult prostitutes, who often work the streets for
years despite repeated arrests."With kids they're easier to catch and easier to
spot," Shannon said. "Their patterns of behavior aren't set."Metro's vice offices also
bear proof that local authorities are making progress in the fight against child
prostitution. The desks are decorated with cards and pictures from former
prostitutes who left "the game," the street lingo for prostitution.The transformations
of the girls and the way those changes make officers feel "can be amazing,"
Wiggins said.In his office is a photograph of a baby born to a former child prostitute
he helped. Sometimes he runs into girls around town and they hug and thank him.
But other times the efforts fail, and cops end up arresting the same girls again.
Metro Police say about 10 percent of the children they arrest for prostitution wind up
being arrested again for the same offense.That low percentage of repeat offenders
can be attributed to the fact that many are from other states, and as part of their
sentence, they are told not to return to Las Vegas, Shannon said.Whenever
Shannon sees teens who continue to work as prostitutes despite prior arrests, "it
makes me think about what I can do better next time," he said.More arrests
madeSince STOP's inception, Metro has arrested more than 800 prostitutes
between the ages of 11 and 17, and the number has grown in recent years with
stepped-up enforcement.The juvenile prostitutes arrested in Las Vegas are almost
always girls, Shannon said. He could only recall a few boys who were nabbed for
prostitution.Metro arrested 126 underage prostitutes last year, 122 in 2001, 77 in
2000, 90 in 1999 and 88 in 1998, according to Metro records.Just keeping track of
those statistics about arrests of child prostitutes is an important early step in
addressing the problem because "you can't manage what you can't measure,"
Shannon said.Shannon's ability to recite his jurisdiction's numbers off the top of his
head is another indication of the attention that child prostitution gets from authorities
in Las Vegas, Lee said.Police officers at other law enforcement agencies can't
quantify their child prostitution problem, which makes it hard to compare the
problem in Las Vegas to that of other cities, Lee said."Even LAPD doesn't keep
hardcore numbers," she said."If you called NYPD, they couldn't give you numbers."
Spokespeople for the Los Angeles Police Department, New York Police
Department and Seattle Police Department confirmed Lee's statement. None could
provide statistics on the number of child prostitutes they arrested and none has a
comprehensive program dealing with child prostitution.San Francisco, however,
recently established a program similar to STOP.Articles last year in the San
Francisco Examiner about the 2001 murder of a 15-year-old prostitute led to an
overhaul of how the city handles child prostitution.The articles showed that although
the girl passed through nearly every city agency, she was never detained,
prosecuted or counseled about changing her way of life. That prompted city officials
to create a child prostitution task force consisting of police, city departments and
juvenile probation officials.Minnesota authorities are trying to address the problem
on a statewide level. In 1998 police in Minneapolis broke up a ring that sent child
prostitutes to 24 states and Canada.The bust led to a study that resulted in a
legislative initiative designed to address the state's child prostitution problem.
Local, state and federal investigators now work together to find and prosecute
organized child-prostitution rings.Tracking the problem is difficult for numerous
reasons, starting with the fact that many children arrested for prostitution have fake
identification provided by pimps.The National Center for Missing and Exploited
Children estimates that between 100,000 and 300,000 children are sexually
exploited through prostitution and pornography per year.And according to national
statistics, approximately 440,000 children run away from home each year. Lee
estimates that about one-third of those runaways have brushes with prostitution.
Some children arrested by Metro are from Las Vegas, and others have found their
way to the area and fallen into the game, Shannon said."They're not just getting on
the bus and coming to Las Vegas on their own to be prostitutes," he said.Selling a
lieBusting pimps is key to keeping children away from a life of prostitution,
authorities say, and that's why going after pimps is a key aspect of STOP.Even if
children wind up working for an escort service or through referrals from the
magazines and handbills that advertise for in-room strippers, "the way they are
getting there is they are being turned out," or led into prostitution, "by the pimp,"
Shannon said."The pimp gets them the fake IDs and puts them to work for him
either on 'the track' (walking streets for customers) or through those other avenues,"
Shannon said.About half of the child prostitutes arrested in Las Vegas are part of
the western United States "pipeline" that includes Minnesota, Oregon and
Washington, he said. The pimps shuttle children from city to city in those states.
Pimps who put prostitutes in the pipeline can be charged with first-degee
kidnapping, Shannon said. If the prostitutes are underage, the pimps can be
charged with pandering children. Both are felonies.They could also be charged with
additional felonies: Living off the earnings of a prostitute; providing transportation to
a prostitute and living with a prostitute.But Shannon said pimps are typically
convicted of just one or two of the charges and too often they end up back on the
streets within a few months, or at most a few years.To try to ensure that pimps are
punished more harshly, Shannon is exploring the possibility of forming a task force
with local FBI agents to go after pimps on federal kidnapping charges, which have
stiffer penalties.The task force would have plenty of cases to keep it busy,
authorities said.Huncovsky said she's "never worked with a prostitute who didn't
have a pimp."Pimps are predatory, meeting girls in their neighborhoods, on bus
benches, in malls -- anywhere they can find them, Shannon said. They're good at
spotting vulnerable girls, Huncovsky said. Most of the time, when the girl first
encounters the pimp, she has no idea he has ulterior motives."You have a young
girl, her mother is at work and her father isn't around," Huncovsky said. "She's 15,
the pimp is 25. He will be her boyfriend (at first) and not even talk about pimping.""If
she starts being gone every night of the week, who's going to notice?" she said.
"No one is going to notice or care."Lee said "99.9 percent" of girls are abused and
sexually degraded at home before going into prostitution."If a kid was beaten with
baseball bats it makes them defenseless. They lack the aggression necessary for
survival." When a pimp comes along, "they just melt."The pimp eases into the role
slowly, sweet-talking to her and gaining her trust, alienating her from her family and
making her financially and emotionally dependent on him. She begins to feel like
she owes him, Huncovsky said.He then introduces the idea of prostitution with the
promise of money, glamour and excitement.The younger the girl, the more
impressionable she is and the more susceptible she is to the suggestion of having
sex for money. Girls who come from dysfunctional families may be manipulated into
prostitution "because they want to be a part of something," anything that remotely
resembles a family structure, Shannon said."Prostitution is selling a dream," he
said. "You're young and probably already a product of abuse. You hear, 'You're
going to be rich, you're going to have jewelry, you're going to be riding with daddy.'
"But it's all a lie, Shannon said. The pimps convince the girls they're worthless and
confiscate the money the girls earn, handing back only a few dollars here and there.
They take the girls' regular clothing and force them to wear only skimpy clothing.
Pimps threaten them, Shannon said, telling them things such as "If you try to get
away, I'll kill your mom and dad."And the girls endure regular abuse by their pimps,
Huncovsky said."We've seen them beaten up, tortured, burned. We get them in all
kinds of conditions."One watched her pimp kill another girl, Huncovsky said.The
pimp keeps the girl fearful, walking her through casinos and pointing out random
men and telling her, "He's on my payroll and he's watching you" to keep her from
leaving him, Shannon said.Shannon said child prostitutes come from all
neighborhoods, all economic backgrounds, all educational backgrounds, all races.
Most juvenile prostitutes are in their mid to late teens, but some are surprisingly
young.Several years ago, Shannon encountered an 11-year-old soliciting sex
outside a Strip casino. Shannon said she looked like a little girl playing dress-up --
which she was. Her makeup was smudged and her clothes were too big.She
approached Shannon and his partner and asked them if they wanted company.
After she was arrested, the girl told the officers her age and said she had ended up
on the streets after having trouble at home.Shannon recalled thinking, "You're a kid.
You're supposed to believe in Santa Claus." Instead, she most likely had a pimp.
While the lifestyle is inherently dangerous because it involves sexual encounters
with strangers, pimps pose more of a danger to young prostitutes than customers
do, Shannon said."If you're a little girl standing on the side of the road, and I say run
and you get hit by a car, am I at fault or is the car?" he said. "Not only do the pimps
say run, they push them."A Metro Police case from late October was typical.After
running away in August from the home she shared with her mother, a 15-year-old
girl took up with an 18-year-old man she considered her boyfriend. They stayed at
various motels around Fremont Street and Charleston Boulevard.The man old
crack, according to a police report, but before long, he told the girl she needed to
start working as a prostitute so they could get more money.The teen told police she
didn't want to be a prostitute, "but did so because she was afraid that (he) would
become angry with her and leave her," the police report says.In the area of Eastern
and Saint Louis avenues, the girl looked for customers while her pimp walked
behind her, giving her signals as to who she should get into the car with. She told
police he would also warn her if he thought a potential trick was an undercover cop.
She told police she performed 10 to 20 sex acts over the course of two months and
never charged less than $50, the report says. All of the money went to her pimp.An
adult prostitute told police on Oct. 31 that the 18-year-old was "pimping out a 15-
year-old" and gave a description of the car he drove. Police found the car, occupied
by the two, later that day.When officers questioned the girl about her relationship
with the man, "she became upset and started to cry ... She (said he) was making
her work as a prostitute." Both were arrested.Once a girl is caught up in "the game,"
it's difficult to escape, Shannon said. Getting arrested, which under most
circumstances would be a bad thing, could actually be a teenage prostitute's first
step toward returning to a normal life."Every time you turn a date you lose a bit of
your soul," Shannon said. "We find a reason to arrest them because we're trying to
save them."
Cupcake Brown started turning tricks when she was 11 and continued to work the
streets for 14 years, until one day -- on her way to score some crack -- her reflection
in a plate-glass window horrified her. "You could see the imprint of my ribs -- I was a
size 1. I had no shoes. My hair was sticking up like Buckwheat. My lips were
cracked and burnt from the crack pipe," said Brown, 40, now a lawyer at Bingham
McCutchen in San Francisco. "It was then that I realized that I was dying, and I didn't
want to die like that." Brown hopes that a new safe house planned for sexually
exploited girls in San Francisco -- the first of its kind in the city and one of only a
handful in the United States -- will help get similarly troubled kids off the street at a
younger age. Last year, Oakland became the first city in the Bay Area to open such
group homes for child prostitutes. Others exist in Atlanta, Los Angeles and Alberta,
Canada. The San Francisco project, which will get the green light this week with the
signing of a contract between the city and two nonprofit groups to locate, open and
operate the safe house, is the culmination of a two-year collaboration that began
when then-Assistant District Attorney Kamala Harris co-founded the Coalition to
End the Exploitation of Kids. The group reported to the Board of Supervisors that
the city was home to 3,000 child prostitutes and that, in a survey of 7,000 local high
school-age girls, 20 percent admitted to having traded sex for food, shelter or
clothing. In addition, more than 100 minors are arrested each year for prostitution in
San Francisco. Supervisor Tom Ammiano created a 22-member task force, which
included attorney and former prostitute Brown, child advocates, social service
providers, experts on sexual abuse, philanthropists and city officials. After months of
study, the group recommended creating a residential and treatment program for
teenage girls who sell sex -- many of whom are forced into the business and who
were sexually abused at home. It also suggested the creation of a 24-hour
telephone hot line and a community outreach program, both of which also are in the
works. The San Francisco Foundation signed on to provide start-up money, and
today it will be publicly announced that the city has contracted with the Edgewood
Center for Children and Families and SAGE, Standing Against Global Exploitation,
to get the safe house up and running as soon as early 2005. The foster home will be
run in conjunction with the city departments of Public Health, Human Services, and
Children, Youth and Their Families. It will be placed in an undisclosed location and
is expected to have room for up to 10 girls, ages 12 to 17, who will be referred by a
network of city departments that come in contact with the at-risk group, such as the
public defender's office. The safe house is critical, Brown said, if San Francisco is
serious about addressing the plight of its teen prostitutes. "You can't just walk out of
that life -- you need somewhere to go," she said. "You need to learn how to be put
back in society. I think the reason that safe houses are such a needed place is ... it
gives a girl a changed venue. It's like telling a crack head don't smoke crack, but
they still live in the crack house." The Edgewood Center's chief executive officer,
Nancy Rubin, said the nonprofit group would be looking to lease a home that "looks
like any other four- or five-bedroom house." Residency will be voluntary, and the
girls will not be locked up, Rubin said. But there will be discipline. "A group home
mimics a highly functioning family," she said. "There are hours for homework, TV,
bedtime. Even though these girls have been on the street, they are children." Norma
Hotaling, a former prostitute who founded SAGE, said that there were a host of
social skills the counselors would have to impart. "You have children who through
very important developmental times in their lives have been very isolated, tortured
and brainwashed," she said. "Their ability to create intimate relationships is
nonexistent." Dr. Sandra Hernandez, chief executive officer of the San Francisco
Foundation, said she had become involved with the task force because she was
moved by the data. "It was really compelling to me that we basically had in the
pipeline kids who are very much on track to be exploited and abused and not
having the opportunity to succeed into adulthood," she said. "When the city has the
kind of (budget) deficit it has ... I thought it was important this not be added to the
bottom of the list." Once the shelter is up and running, she said, the operational
costs will come from public money earmarked for educational and health purposes,
such as Medi-Cal. According to a sample budget included in the task force's report,
the safe house is expected to cost about $500,000 annually. Hernandez said that
donors had been inspired to support the project upon learning that child prostitution
was not just a problem in less-developed countries, or the city's poorer districts. "It
was important to us to realize that this was happening right here in our shopping
malls, right here in our neighborhoods," Hernandez said. "These are kids who are
potentially friends of our children. ... It's happening all across the city, not just the
Tenderloin. Just because you don't see it doesn't mean it's not happening."
In Los Angeles young people are drawn to the City in the belief that they are going
to find their fortune in acting, singing or dancing. and Many runaway from home to
seek a better life. They are quickly picked up at bus and rail stations in Los Angeles
by 'pimps' who abuse them. These children and young people come from inner
cities, suburbs, and small towns, some are recruited by pimps from middle-class
areas, from schools and shopping malls in the suburbs and then taken to Los
Angeles and other larger Cities under the belief that they will become a movie star.
The vast majority of young people involved in abuse through prostitution are girls,
although police have seen an increase in the number of boys. Larger cities are
more likely to have a higher proportion of boys involved in prostitution as is noted in
Los Angeles which has a clear identified area where boys frequent; however,
service providers in smaller cities also report seeing a general increase in
prostitution activities for both sexes.
Pimp-controlled commercial sexual exploitation of children is linked to escort and
massage services, private dancing venues, drinking and photographic clubs, major
sporting, cultural and recreational events, conventions, and tourist destinations.
In the larger Cities of the United States, it is estimated that there can be as many as
500 prostitutes on the streets, especially in the summer months and in warmer
climates. At least 25-30 percent of those involved in exploitation through prostitution
are children younger than 18.
Many children are only 11 or 12 years old. The average age at which they enter
abuse through prostitution is reported as 14 years. It is estimated that about
293,000 American young people are at risk of becoming victims of commercial
sexual exploitation. Among children and young people living on the streets in the
United States, involvement in commercial sex activity is a problem of epidemic
proportion. Approximately 55% of young girls on the street engage in formal
prostitution. Of the girls engaged in formal prostitution, about 75% worked for a
pimp
As has been documented in the UK these children generally come from homes
where they have been abused, or from families that have abandoned them, they
often become involved in prostitution as a way of survival and to support
themselves. They are also forced to support their pimp financially.
The LAPD work closely with a number of organisations to combat this abuse,
increaslingly however, Outreach services which traditionally worked with young
people on the streets are stopping their services as the steets become more
threatening and dangerous for their workers.
Pedophiles Surfing the Internet to Find Victims
Source: Orlando Sentinel, November 8, 1997
Excerpts:
The information superhighway is rapidly becoming the favorite route for child
predators to reach and abuse children, law enforcement officials told Congress
Friday.
According to testimony at a hearing of the House Judiciary Crime Subcommittee,
as more homes have access to the Internet, it is easier for predators to trade child
pornography, and to abuse youngsters they meet online.
Predators use chat rooms to engage in typed conversation under assumed names,
said Stephen Wiley, head of the FBI Violent Crimes Major Offenders Section.
Predators will send child pornography images over the Internet to lower their
inhibitions of youngsters before trying to meet them for sex or to take pornographic
pictures, said Orlando FDLE agent Rehman, who specializes in investigating
computer child exploitation.
After identifying a victim, the predator, who sometimes poses online as a teenager,
tries to develop a relationship that will ultimately become sexual.
Recent cases of children who have been lured by people they met over the Internet
have led to tragedy.
A 15-year-old boy, Sam Manzi, was sexually assaulted by a 43-year-old man he
met in an America Online "chat room." Manzi was subsequently accused of sexually
assaulting and murdering an 11-year-old boy.
Wiley said the online problem has gotten so bad that a special initiative called
"Innocent Images'' has been set up to catch people who use the Internet to exploit
children.
"While parents strive to warn their children about the dangers outside of the home,
they may be failing to warn their children about the dangers within -- on the World
Wide Web,'' said Rep. Bill McCollum, R-Longwood, chairman of the subcommittee.
In many countries, including the US, Canada, the UK, and the Netherlands;
"children" are defined to be persons below the age of 18. In Australia, child
pornography is defined to include persons under 16 years. However, although
material depicting 16 and 17 year olds is not legally considered child pornography,
it is still illegal. It is rated as "Refused Classification", and thus illegal to sell or
distribute. The European Union recommends the harmonization of the age limit to
18 years. The Netherlands raised the age limit of a "child" to that number in October
2002. The UK Sexual Offenses Act 2003 did the same. It was compulsory to
dispose of possessions that became illegal. The age limit in Germany and Iceland
is 14 years.
Images of legal activities are not always legal. For example, in the U.S., child porn
includes anyone under 18; however, many states have an age of consent lower than
18. For some states the age of consent depends on the age gap between partners
as well as the age of the young partner. Therefore, it may be legal to have sex with
someone under 18 but not to take pictures of that person in sexual situations. The
young person is not even allowed to make such a picture of himself or herself for
personal use. One main reason for this disparity is that child pornography is
primarily addressed under federal law, while age of sexual consent is solely a state
issue.
Since the passage of the Sexual Offences Act 2003, UK law in general prohibits
images of 16 and 17 year olds as child pornography, even though they are above
the age of consent (16). However, there is an exception to the law, which provides
that a person (who may be over 18) who is married to, or in an enduring family
relationship with, a 16 or 17 year-old child may take or make indecent photographs
showing the child with no other person than himself with the child's consent, although
it is illegal for the sexual partner to show or distribute them to any other person
(Source: paragraphs 72-92, Explanatory Notes to Sexual Offences Act 2003).
There is no explicit defence where the child has photographs of himself, but it is a
general principle of English law that the person whom a law is intended to protect
cannot be prosectuted for an offence created by that law.
FEATURE-Sex tourism thriving in U.S. Bible Belt
Tue 4 Apr 2006 8:01 AM ET
By Verna Gates and Mickey Goodman
ATLANTA, April 4 (Reuters) - In a sleazy hotel room, "Brittany," then aged 16 and
drugged into oblivion, waited for the men to arrive. Her pimps sent as many as 17
clients an evening through the door.
A "john" could even pre-book the pretty young blonde for $1,000 a night, sometimes
flying in and then flying out from a nearby airport.
None of this happened in Bangkok or Costa Rica, places that have become
synonymous with sex tourism and underage sex.
It took place in Atlanta, the buckle of the U.S. Bible Belt, where the world's busiest
passenger airport provides a cheaper, more convenient and safer underage sex
destination for men seeking girls as young as 10.
"Men fly in, are met by pimps, have sex with a 14-year-old for lunch, and get home in
time for dinner with the family," said Sanford Jones, the chief juvenile judge of Fulton
County, Georgia.
A new federal law passed in 2003 ensures that American sex tourists landing on
foreign soil and hiring prostitutes under the age of 18 can get 30 years in prison.
But in Georgia, punishment for pimping or soliciting sex with a girl under 18 is only
five to 20 years, according to Deborah Espy, the Deputy District Attorney of Fulton
County.
"Men are coming to Atlanta to have sex with a child," said LaKendra Baker, project
manager for the Center to End Adolescent Sexual Exploitation (CEASE).
Half of the street-level prostitutes in Atlanta are believed to be under 18, according
to experts.
Others are booked through Internet sex sites and from social sites like Black Planet,
where girls innocently post profiles, said Baker.
Just in March, police arrested a Canadian man meeting a 14-year-old girl he found
through the Internet, said Cathey Steinberg, executive director of the Juvenile
Justice Fund, which funds treatment for abused girls and prevention.
Another man drove from North Georgia, with a bag containing a teddy bear, a love
note and condoms, snorting methamphetamine on the way.
He expected a 13-year-old girl, but instead found Heather Lackey, a corporal with
the Peachtree City Police Department.
"People are stunned that Atlanta's the No. 1 sex center in the country," said
Steinberg.
The FBI has identified 14 U.S. cities as centers for the sexual exploitation of
children. In addition to Atlanta, they are Chicago, Dallas, Detroit, Las Vegas, Los
Angeles, Miami, Minneapolis, New York, San Diego, San Francisco, St. Louis,
Tampa, and Washington, D.C.
RUNAWAYS AT MOST RISK
In all, an estimated 200,000 to 300,000 underage girls are prostituted in the United
States, according to a University of Pennsylvania study.
Most youths caught up in the sex trade are runaways, like Brittany, whose 19-year-
old "rescuers" soon demanded a return on their investment.
"I didn't have any place to go. My mom hated me for what I was doing to the family,"
said Brittany, who did not want to be identified by her real name.
Up to 90 percent of runaways are believed to end up as prostitutes, with a third
lured into prostitution within 48 hours. Some are sold into sexual slavery by their
parents, according to a 2005 study by the Atlanta Women's Agenda.
Some get seduced by recruiters. Pimps use handsome young men and sometimes
girls as fronts.
"A 16-year-old controlling a group of girls will not face the same penalties an adult
would receive," said Patricia Crone, director of the Office of Juvenile Justice
Demonstration Project.
Once snagged, the grooming process begins. Typically, the pimp's friends sleep
with her, then come threats, beatings and gang rapes. Caresses and gifts, including
drugs and alcohol, follow abuse, the Atlanta Women's Agenda study found.
Brittany said she was showered with fancy dinners, clothes and methamphetamine.
But she also describes horror. "It made me feel dirty. It was demeaning," said
Brittany.
The sex slaves are trafficked in and out of cities to supply sporting events,
conventions or rap concerts.
During the 1996 Olympics in Atlanta, one man kept boys and hosted sex parties
nightly, said Baker of the group CEASE.
The pimps even held an annual "Player's Ball" in Atlanta in 2003, openly buying and
selling women and naming a "Player of the Year," according to the Atlanta Women's
Agenda study.
The risks are worth it. While there are few reliable statistics, child sexual
exploitation is believed to be the world's third-biggest money maker for organized
crime, said Stephanie Davis, policy adviser to Atlanta Mayor Shirley Franklin.
One reason for the demand is the false assumption that youths are disease-free.
On the contrary, with tissues not fully developed, they are more prone to lacerations.
HIV infections among females aged 16 to 21 are 50 percent higher than for men, a
1998 study in the Journal of Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndromes reported.
Atlanta has won two new federal grants to establish units to fight the trafficking of
underage sex slaves and to hire more undercover detectives, said Carole Morgan,
director of the North Central Georgia Law Enforcement Academy.
But the experts fear that may not be enough.
"It won't stop until people say, 'My city isn't safe for kids anymore,'" said Crone.
"This is a place where you can buy, sell or rent kids. It must be stopped."
The fact is, there are more than 2,000 reports of missing children filed with law
enforcement agencies in the United States daily. Most are lost in a mall, store or
other public place and are easily found. Others just come home late. Some are
listed as runaways as a result of recurring discipline problems. A small number
become pawns in child custody cases. An even smaller number are found to be truly
missing and suspected of being abducted.
If one searches the Internet using the words "child abduction," one will find more hits
for attorneys and private investigators specializing in child custody cases than one
would find hits for how to find or prevent child abduction or exploitation. We often
hear the most about the truly abducted children because of the sinister and graphic
details of the case.
I can remember when parents, law enforcement agencies and schools taught about
stranger danger. They taught what children should do if a stranger approached,
tried to lure or made it as far as abducting a child. The stranger danger information
is valid to this day, to a point. The fact is, more than 90 percent of child abduction or
exploitation cases in this country occur at the hands of a parent, relative, family
member, acquaintance or associate of the family. Children should know not to get in
a car with any stranger. They should know that strangers will not search them out to
ask for their help; and that if any stranger makes them feel ill at ease, they should
get away at any cost, and then tell their parents or a trusted adult.
Now, factor in the Internet and the age of technology. Children are bombarded with
images and messages daily, some of which are not suitable for even some adults.
Before, child predators had to search out their victim and almost physically snatch
the child from their parents, school or home. Child predators now have an almost
anonymous swinging door into the home of the child.
The rules are changing. In addition to stranger danger, law enforcement agencies,
schools and churches now have to spread the word that not all child predators or
molesters are strangers, but may be someone the child knows and trusts. School
counselors are spreading the word through programs such as "Child Lures" and the
WHO Program. Law enforcement agencies and private organizations offer free
child fingerprinting. Parents should document their child's yearly growth with photos,
fingerprints and videos. Children should know that kids play with kids and adults
play with adults; if someone wants to change that rule, the child should let parents
know. Parents must exercise parental control over their child's Internet access.
Parents always should know where their children are, and with whom they are
spending their time.
We will not be able to prevent every case of child abduction, molestation or
exploitation. However, we can do our part to spread the word. Learn more about
how to prevent or report child abduction by contacting the National Center for
Missing and Exploited Children at www.missingkids.com. It should be the hope and
goal of every parent to see their child grow without fear of abduction, molestation or
exploitation.
For more information about this or any other crime prevention topic, call the Conroe
Police Department Crime Prevention Unit at (936) 522-3250, 3327 or 3226. If you
want to report a problem in your neighborhood, suspicious activity or drug activity,
call the CPD Narcotics Unit at (936) 522-3303. For questions, comments or
suggestions about this column, contact me at bberry@cityofconroe.org.
By Brian Krans
Sexual predators on the Internet were highlighted recently when a Department of
Homeland Security official was arrested on charges of seducing a minor on-line.
But, cases like that are nothing new. Law enforcement and government officials
have been combating on-line threats to children for years and are seeing more
results from their increased enforcement. "The predators are out there and we're
trying to get into the chat rooms, trying to get them before they make contact with a
child," said Roger Heaton, U.S. Attorney for the Central District of Illinois. "We've
been doing this since the late '90s." The Associated Press reported last week that
Brian Doyle, 55, a DHS spokesman, was arrested at his Maryland home for
allegedly sending pornography to who he thought was a teenage girl. In reality, it
was an undercover Florida detective posing as a 13-year-old girl. Investigations like
that are conducted often, Mr. Heaton said. "It's a good example of what can be
done, although not always in such a dramatic fashion," he said. Locally, federal
prosecutors have been handling similar cases -- including some where contact
already was made with a child. A recent case in the Quad-Cities is that of a
Pennsylvania man who authorities say met a 13-year-old girl in a Yahoo! chat room
and exchanged messages that were "romantic and sexually explicit in nature,"
according to court documents. He allegedly flew to the Quad-Cities last December
and had sex with the girl in a Moline hotel. The man, Daniel Fronczak, 27, of
Mahanoy City, Pa., is scheduled for trial in U.S. District Court, Rock Island,
beginning May 22. The Central Illinois CyberCrime Unit is designed to investigate
and prosecute computer crimes ranging from on-line fraud to exploitation through
the Internet. Mr. Heaton's office in the central district has three attorneys who deal
only with cybercrimes. "This is definitely a priority of our office," he said. According
to the Internet Crime Complaint Center, Illinois has the fifth-highest amount
nationwide of perpetrators of Internet crime. It's sixth-highest in the nation in Internet
crime complaints. The FBI's Innocent Images National Initiative -- with 36
undercover operations nationwide to stop on-line predators and child pornography
-- has recorded over 15,556 cases opened in its 10 years of operation. Among
those cases, 4,784 criminals were charged, 6,145 subjects were arrested and
4,822 convictions were obtained. Chris Swecker, an FBI executive, testified before
a U.S. House Energy and Commerce committee Thursday on the sexual
exploitation of children over the Internet. He said of the estimated 21 million
teenagers on the Internet, half of them use it every day. "We have come a long way
from the early electronic bulletin boards that pre-dated the Internet," Mr. Swecker
said. "As children use computers more and more, on-line child predators take
advantage of emerging technologies to facilitate their unimaginable criminal
activities."
The Internet Allows Pedophiles:
Instant access to other predators worldwide;
Open discussion of their sexual desires;
Shared ideas about ways to lure victims;
Mutual support of their adult-child sex philosophies;
Instant access to potential child victims worldwide;
Disguised identities for approaching children, even
to the point of presenting as a member of teen groups;
Ready access to "teen chat rooms" to find out how and who
to target as potential victims;
Means to identify and track down home contact information;
Ability to build a long-term "Internet" relationship
with a potential victim, prior to attempting to engage
the child in physical contact.
Computer technology and the Internet enables pedophiles to locate and interact
with other pedophiles more readily than ever before. Although pedophiles luring
kids on the Internet is a horrifying problem, the long-term organizational aspects are
more terrifying.
The common gathering place and the resultant support child predators are
providing each other is probably their most significant advantage, -- and the most
troublesome for a concerned public. The computer, a common household fixture, is
now a place where pedophiles can go to hear others say, "You're okay and what
you're doing is okay; don't listen to the rest of the world, just listen to us."
The ability to receive and offer comfort within the support of their like-minded group
reinforces pedophiles with the belief that their attraction to children and adult-child
sex are an acceptable way of life.
Child predators are forming an online community and bond that is unparalleled in
history. They are openly uniting against legal authorities and discussing ways to
influence public thinking and legislation on child exploitation.
While pedophile Websites are being tracked down and removed from Internet
servers in countries all over the world, they are still easily finding ways to post
Websites, Webrings, forums and chat rooms. Recent online topics have even
focused on fund raising efforts and plans to purchase a dedicated server for their
Websites.
It is easy to find and read messages between pedophiles supporting adult-child
sex. It is also increasingly common to observe pedophiles in chat rooms promoting
one another to move forward with advances on new victims and their families, -- in
what they define as "loving relationships."
The advancement of Internet technology allows pedophiles to exchange information
about children in an organized forum. They are able to meet in "online chat rooms"
and educate each other. These online discussions include sharing schemes about
how to meet, attract, and exploit children, -- and how to lure the parents of their
victims into a false sense of security about their presence within the sanctity of the
family structure. It has become an online "How To" seminar in pedophilia activities.
Pedophile chat rooms, forums, irc-chat, and newsgroups are filled with information
on "their" boys and girls and the "safety tips" that allow the abuse to remain hidden.
Some of their Websites have information posted telling children that it is okay to be
sexual with adults. It is in direct opposition to the messages advocates, teachers,
and parents have been trying instill in our country's children.
The larger the sense of community and support that is offered, the bolder
pedophiles have become in their graphic descriptions of sex with and exploitation
of children. The added comfort of anonymous email addresses and anonymous
surfing is helping pedophiles literally "hide in the open"! They appear to be feeling
safe enough in their nicknames to openly relate (and brag about) their stories of
child exploitation.
WASHINGTON (CNN) -- Attorney General Alberto Gonzales on Thursday issued
what he termed a "wake-up call" to the growing problems of pedophiles prowling
the Internet and online images of sexual abuse of children.
Gonzales described the depravity and horror of criminal acts against children in
unusually graphic detail.
"It is not an exaggeration to say that we are in the midst of an epidemic in the
production and trafficking of movies and images depicting the sexual abuse of
children," Gonzales said.
"The threat is frighteningly real, it is growing rapidly, and it must be stopped," he
said.
To highlight the Justice Department's growing concern, he traveled to the National
Center for Missing and Exploited Children in Alexandria, Virginia, to deliver his
speech.
Gonzales praised the center for its help, but said the public "does not yet
appreciate the scope, the nature and the import of this criminal activity and the
threat it poses to our kids."
The attorney general said one of every five children online is now solicited. He cited
a recent estimate that 50,000 predators are online at any given time prowling for
children.
"It is graphic, but if we do not talk candidly then it is easy for people to turn away,"
he said.
"I have seen pictures of older men forcing naked young girls to have anal sex,"
Gonzales said. "There are videos on the Interne