Archive for December, 2013

This post originally appeared on the Huffington Post’s website on December 13, 2013.

By: Chris Baughman; former detective, Las Vegas Metropolitan Police

Many people argue that the legalization of prostitution in this country would make all the associated problems magically disappear. After years working as a detective in the Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department, I am here to say that it wouldn’t work.

The main arguments in favor of legalization are that it would be better because we could create safe environments for the women and men who sell sex. They could be tested regularly and work in nicer conditions with medical care, and the government could tax sales and generate more revenue.

Prostitution is illegal in Las Vegas, but there are legal brothels in nearby towns. The impact of them is seen in Las Vegas. Girls working in the brothels include those who are sent there by pimps. Those girls are beaten and threatened — not within the walls of the brothels, but when they leave. Brothel owners either turn a blind eye to this or feel powerless to do anything. Girls may be safer from attacks by johns inside a brothel, but we cannot regulate this violence outside the brothel walls.

Pimps and traffickers have told me that when our former Mayor talked about legalizing prostitution in Las Vegas, they thought he was seeking to help them. Why wouldn’t they? Pimps could then deploy every girl they have (and more) and have them working in plain sight with impunity. They are smart criminals, and to think that they wouldn’t place girls in legal brothels is naïve at best. And when all those brothels were set up on the strip — who would feed the monster? Pimps and brothel owners would inevitably be out looking for more, newer and better boys and girls. And who would they be? They’d be our sons and daughters.

Legalization does not benefit the people selling sex; nor does legalization produce female empowerment. What it does is serve the owners of brothels, pimps and the johns who frequent them. Furthermore, it is immoral to think that the government would want any part of profiting from this behavior. We have been down that road before and that was called slavery. Legalization of prostitution would legitimatize and increase modern day slavery.

This blog post is part of a series produced by The Huffington Post and the producers of the film TRICKED, a new documentary that sheds light on the reality of sex trafficking in the United States and follows the exploiters, the purchasers, the police officers, the survivors, the families and the social workers involved in the sex trade. The film opens on December 13. For more information about TRICKED, click here.

Click here to read a news story originally published by ABC 7News in Denver about a Colorado woman that was arrested in early December as a result of a seven month investigation.

We will likely hear more on this story as the case unfolds.

Click here to view the original press release on Love’s website.

Love’s Travel Stops Partners with Truckers Against Trafficking

Company also donates $10,000 to help raise awareness

OKLAHOMA CITY, Okla., December 10, 2013 – Love’s Travel Stops announced today a partnership with Truckers Against Trafficking (TAT), a national nonprofit organization dedicated to raising awareness among professional truck drivers and travel stop employees to combat human trafficking in our country. Love’s also donated $10,000 to help TAT with the costs of producing materials to support its mission.

“Love’s is a critical player in the travel stop industry, so they have incredible potential to reach thousands, if not millions, with this message, including their own employees.” said Kendis Paris, executive director of Truckers Against Trafficking. “As a corporation that actively cares about making a difference in their communities, Love’s is now helping to empower and mobilize people all over the country with this message, which is a huge step forward in the effort to save lives.”

As part of the partnership, Love’s has incorporated a video produced by Truckers Against Trafficking into its training program for 10,000 employees working at more than 300 travel stops nationwide. The video helps employees identify trafficking situations, and it details the steps to alert proper authorities. Love’s also worked with TAT to print and distribute posters with the hotline help number to be displayed in all of its locations.

“With much of our business taking place along interstate highways, we have a unique advantage to help Truckers Against Trafficking,” said Jenny Love Meyer, vice president of communications for Love’s. “It’s our hope that by conveying the message to professional drivers and training our employees to recognize these situations, we can truly make a difference.”

Pocket Card Networks, one of Love’s vendors, is also showing support by donating advertising space and distribution for the TAT wallet-sized information cards on its card racks inside Love’s Travel Stops geared to professional truck drivers.

Truckers Against Trafficking continually seeks additional ways for the trucking industry to get involved in the fight against human trafficking. The organization also builds coalitions between state and local law enforcement, anti-trafficking organizations and general managers of travel stops to create a tight bond between people who have the skills to identify and assist in stopping human trafficking along our nation’s interstate highways.

About Truckers Against Trafficking
Truckers Against Trafficking (TAT) is a 501(c) 3 that exists to educate, equip, empower and mobilize members of the trucking and travel plaza industry to combat domestic sex trafficking. The national hotline to call if human trafficking is suspected is 1-888-373-7888. To learn more, go to www.truckersagainsttrafficking.org.

About Love’s Travel Stops & Country Stores
Founded in 1964 by Tom Love, Love’s Travel Stops & Country Stores is headquartered in Oklahoma City, Okla., and remains entirely family-owned and operated. With more than 300 locations and 180 Love’s Truck Tire Care centers in 39 states, Love’s approximate growth rate is 20 stores per year. Love’s is currently ranked No. 9 on Forbes Magazine’s annual listing of America’s Largest Private Companies. To learn more, go to www.loves.com, Facebook (www.facebook.com/lovestravelstops), or follow @LovesTravelStop on Twitter.

December 10, 2013
Click here to read the original article.

Love’s Travel Stops announced a partnership with Truckers Against Trafficking, a national nonprofit organization dedicated to raising awareness among professional truck drivers and travel stop employees to combat human trafficking in our country. Love’s also donated $10,000 to help TAT with the costs of producing materials to support its mission.

As part of the partnership, Love’s has incorporated a video produced by Truckers Against Trafficking into its training program for 10,000 employees working at more than 300 travel stops nationwide. The video helps employees identify trafficking situations, and it details the steps to alert proper authorities.

Love’s also worked with TAT to print and distribute posters with the hotline help number to be displayed in all of its locations.

Pocket Card Networks, one of Love’s vendors, is also showing support by donating advertising space and distribution for the TAT wallet-sized information cards on its card racks inside Love’s Travel Stops geared to professional truck drivers.

Truckers Against Trafficking continually seeks additional ways for the trucking industry to get involved in the fight against human trafficking. The organization also builds coalitions between state and local law enforcement, anti-trafficking organizations and general managers of travel stops to create a tight bond between people who have the skills to identify and assist in stopping human trafficking along our nation’s interstate highways.

By: Bryce Haugen and Forum News Service
Click here to read the original article on the Perham Focus website

In his first 15 years in the trucking industry, Bill Brady was unaware of youth sex trafficking along America’s highways, a problem hiding in plain sight.

But after the New York Mills resident joined Lodestar Transport Services in Barnesville as an owner-operator, he learned about the issue through Truckers Against Trafficking, a Colorado-based group dedicated to ending the crime. And Brady decided to take action.

“I didn’t realize it was going on,” said Brady, one of the 2013 finalists for American Trucker magazine’s “Trucker of the Year,” in a phone interview as he drove his big rig through Nebraska. “I could have been doing something about this.”
“I don’t want to see this happen to any kids I know,” he added. “I just don’t want to see this happen to anybody’s kids. If there is a way to prevent this from happening, I’d like to get the knowledge out there.”

Over the past year, Brady has participated in panel discussions at Minnesota high schools, Columbia University in New York and at another college in Missouri. He’s also spread awareness throughout central Minnesota, including in Wadena, where he grew up and where more than 1,000 people are employed in trade, transportation and utilities, according to the Minnesota Department of Employment and Economic Development.
One of Brady’s stops was at Wadena’s Polman Transfer, which employs 85 drivers. He dropped off a training video and handed out fliers to employees.

“(Truckers Against Trafficking) is doing a good job of getting the information out,” said co-owner DJ Polman.
The sex trafficking problem “is surprising,” Polman said. “It just takes somebody to take a phone call. If you see anything out of the ordinary, don’t be afraid to call the authorities. It could save somebody’s life.”

Forced prostitution, particularly of underage girls, definitely exists, said John Sivicky, a 37-year veteran of the open road.
“They’re out there,” said the safety director and dispatcher at Tony’s Transfer in Wadena. “You get approached all the time at the truckstop … It’s just a vicious cycle. (Truckers) can’t tell whether they’re being held against their will or not.”
When Sivicky attended the Louisville truck show in the spring, he stopped by the Trucker’s Against Trafficking booth and picked up decals for his drivers.

“It’s a good program,” he said. “I’m the safety side of the company – I have to watch these things.”
Locally, the trafficking problem appears to be under the radar or nonexistent.
“I don’t believe we have had anything like that. Not in our area,” said Erica Penner, who has worked as a dispatcher for 15 years for the Wadena County Sheriff’s Department.

Otter Tail County administrative assistant Lisa Langston said she also hadn’t heard of any cases during her 12 years on the job.

“I think I would remember one like that,” she said.

Carol Henry, manager of the Petro Serve USA truck stop along U.S. 71 in Bemidji, said her store has not had an issue with prostitution. Neither has the Big Chief truck stop outside of Fergus Falls, said manager Amber Leuthardt.
But just because it’s not obvious, Sivicky said, doesn’t mean it’s not happening: “It’s amazing. You can be in the middle of nowhere and it’s going on out there.”

When Sivicky sees someone too young, he said, he calls the police.

Brady said he plans to continue his fight against sex trafficking with presentations around the state and country, and by passing out Truckers Against Trafficking literature to area truckers.

“I know I’ve got a long way to go,” said the 37-year-old with an estimated 2.4 million miles behind him.
For more information, visit truckersagainsttrafficking.org. To report trafficking, call the organization’s national hotline, at 1-888-373-7888.

“Be aware of your surroundings,” said Sydni Mansager, safety director and co-owner of Lodestar. “Better call and make a mistake than not call and find a young girl dead in the ditch.”

By Clarissa Hawes, Land Line staff writer
Click here to view original article on the Land Line magazine site

A truck driver’s passion for climbing has driven him to tackle his biggest adventure yet – scaling Mount Aconcagua in Argentina – to raise money and awareness about human trafficking.

Owner-operator Matt Hopkins of Dillon, Mont., plans to scale one of the seven tallest mountains in the world to raise money for Truckers Against Trafficking.
Matt Hopkins, 27, of Dillon, Mont., is an owner-operator who has been hauling cattle for the past five years, which is about the same time when he discovered his love of climbing.

Over the next three months, Hopkins hopes to raise at least $22,837, which is the same number of vertical feet he will climb to reach the summit of Mount Aconcagua. The money he raises will go directly to Truckers Against Trafficking to further its mission to “educate, equip, empower and mobilize” the trucking industry about human trafficking. Click here to donate or find out more about Hopkins’ journey.

“I have always loved the outdoors and hiking and really got into climbing about five years ago,” he told Land Line on Tuesday, Nov. 19.

Through a climbing forum, Hopkins said he started talking to a guy who was looking for partners to climb with him on Mount Aconcagua.

“He was climbing for a humanitarian expedition to help raise money for the children of Greece and that’s when I realized I wanted to do this climb for something bigger than myself,” he said. “Human trafficking has always been something that’s bothered me since I understood and learned what it was about six or seven years ago.”

Hopkins said he was further inspired to use his passion for climbing to raise money to help fight human trafficking after hearing an advertisement about Truckers Against Trafficking on Sirius XM’s Road Dog Trucking channel while driving down the road.

He then called Laura Cyrus, an administrator at Truckers Against Trafficking, to help him achieve his goal. Cyrus, who is also a climber, works in TAT’s office in Denver.

“I have to give props to Laura for helping me out with this,” Hopkins said. “When I called, she seemed receptive to the idea and really worked with me to get this project going.”

Mount Aconcagua is the highest peak in both the Western and Southern Hemispheres and is one of the Seven Summits – one of the seven highest mountains on the seven continents.

His goal is to eventually climb Mount Vinson, the tallest peak in Antarctica.

“In order to get down toward Mount Vinson you have to be familiar with South America and the rules and regulations down there,” Hopkins said. “Hopefully, the climb up Mount Aconcagua will be a stepping stone to help me climb Mount Vinson eventually.”

Hopkins said he plans to take the whole month of February 2014 off from trucking for the climb. He said the trek to the summit of Mount Aconcagua and back down should take around 15 days, barring severe weather. Hopkins said he estimates that he will reach the summit of Mount Aconcagua around Feb. 12, 2014, and that donations will be accepted until he reaches the summit.

“It’s time to do something like this – something bigger than myself,” he said.

By JENIFER B. McKIM
New England Center for Investigative Reporting
December 01, 2013 12:06 AM
Click here to see original article

When six men were arrested in a police sting in downtown Boston in the fall of 2012 for allegedly seeking underage prostitutes, Suffolk County District Attorney Daniel F. Conley touted the arrests and released the men’s names and pictures to local media. It was meant to put all potential sex buyers on notice — those seeking girls and women of any age could expect to be treated as criminals, part of a statewide get-tough-on-johns campaign.

Defendants, including a Sharon father of five and a Bellingham engineer, were charged under a new state law that increased fines and jail time for sex buyers and became effective in early 2012. Each man faced a minimum $1,000 fine for attempting to buy sex and up to five years in state prison for seeking to purchase sex from a minor via the Internet.

But a year later, the get-tough talk has proven to be largely that — just talk. Four of the six men have seen their charges reduced, dismissed or continued without a finding. None of them was convicted of seeking to buy sex from minors. No one has received a $1,000 fine. Instead, the steepest fines required one defendant to pay $65 a month in court fees for a year and watch a “john” video detailing the pernicious effects of the sex trade on prostitutes, their customers — and families — and the communities at large.

The lack of guilty findings and hefty fines for men arrested for buying sex is played over and over in courts across the Bay State, the New England Center for Investigative Reporting found in a review of court records and interviews with law enforcement and prosecutors. Not one of the state’s 11 district attorney’s offices could cite a case in which a sex buyer received even the minimum $1,000 fine, much less jail time since the law became effective nearly two years ago, according to a NECIR survey.

Instead, the state’s purported effort to go after sex buyers — championed by Massachusetts Attorney General Martha Coakley as key to fighting human trafficking — is struggling to gain traction, faced with inadequate resources, a lack of knowledge about the law and a long-held resistance to holding so-called “johns” accountable for their role in the sex trade, according to interviews with victim advocates, law enforcement and researchers.

For those who have gotten out of the sex trade — like 30-year-old Adaiah Rojas, who was recruited into prostitution at age 16 — such news is disheartening. Even though Rojas has been out of that world for more than a decade, the Lynn native and youth mentor can’t forget the threats, beatings and insults she received at the hands of sex buyers who were often released by police as she was led off in handcuffs.

“Why protect these men that are cheating on their wives, living double lives, while, me as a minor, I was labeled and put out there to be a horrible person,” asked Rojas. “I was treated as a criminal. I was treated with disgust.”

Sen. Mark Montigny, a New Bedford Democrat who authored the sex trafficking law, said he was “chagrined” to hear that purported sex buyers — especially those allegedly seeking minors — were being treated leniently.

“I’m saying to DAs and cops and judges, when a minor gets involved, it is rape,” he said. “If they thought they were engaging in sex with a minor, severe penalties must be applied.”

Jake Wark, a spokesman for the Suffolk County District Attorney’s Office, said many men charged with buying sex receive leniency in the courts because they are first offenders. The agency, he said, will now be more aggressive in instituting fines. The DA’s office examined its practices in response to an NECIR request.

“That changes effective immediately,” he said, referring to the lack of larger fines. “The 2012 law has given us a new tool to drive demand down even further and we intend use it.”

Protect and help victims

Gov. Deval Patrick signed the “Act Relative to The Commercial Exploitation of People” in late 2011, legislation meant to protect and help victims of human trafficking, including thousands of local women and girls believed to have been forced into prostitution in Massachusetts. The law also increased penalties for buyers as well as sex traffickers.

Coakley said the law is still new and there is further work to do to educate law enforcement and the public about the role sex buyers play in promoting sex trafficking. Already, her office has charged 13 people with human trafficking since the law was passed — an option that was unavailable to state prosecutors before last year. A task force she chairs issued recommendations in August to improve efforts to quash demand, including implementing a statewide “john school” and offering more training “to ensure cases are investigated, pursued, prosecuted, and not merely dismissed.

Although law enforcement nationwide has been targeting sex buyers since the 1960s, efforts have come in spurts and starts. The current focus is spawned by the belief that, similar to the country’s war on drugs, prostitution cannot be effectively countered without a crackdown on those who buy sex. Sex trafficking, defined as commercial sex involving minors as well as any forced prostitution with adults, is the “fastest growing industry of organized crime,” according to a 2011 report by the Federal Bureau of Investigations. The problem among U.S. street children is of “epidemic proportion,” the FBI said. Hundreds of thousands of children may be at risk.

Lina Nealon, director of the Cambridge-based Demand Abolition project that focuses on sex buyers, said that despite the growing severity of the problem, society generally looks at men who purchase sex differently from the girls and women who provide it. Women are still arrested more than twice as often as the men who buy their services, according to 2012 state and federal data.

Nealon said she struggles to educate people that prostitution is not a “victimless crime.” Most U.S. women are recruited into prostitution as children and controlled by pimps who keep their money in a trade often described as “modern-day slavery,” she said. If they don’t get out, many women become addicted to drugs and alcohol as a way to cope. They are often assaulted by their clients and pimps. Some, particularly from Asia, are smuggled into Massachusetts and forced to prostitute themselves to pay their traffickers.

The profile of the typical buyer of sex is often not unlike that of the police officers, prosecutors and judges they face. At least one of out 10 U.S. men has admitted to buying sex, according to Michael Shively, a Cambridge-based researcher who studies sex buyers. Of the 293 men arrested for prostitution-related charges in Massachusetts in 2012, most were white and ranged in age from 16 to over 65, state data shows. The majority are educated and have formal partners, according to Demand Abolition.

Because of this, many men are still simply let go by police without charges, according to interviews and public records.

Withholding names

In Brookline, for example, police charged a woman and man in October on charges meant for prostitutes and pimps, releasing their names to the media. However, police redacted the name of the alleged sex buyer from police reports, saying the man had not been arrested.

Brookline Police Captain Thomas G. Keaveney told NECIR that the buyer likely wasn’t arrested because he cooperated with police. However, he said the man will be summoned to court on prostitution-related charges. Keaveney said he didn’t agree with the decision to withhold his name. “I can make sure that doesn’t happen again,” he said. “I know we are not protecting this guy.”

In Lawrence, police arrested accused madam Lori Barron in June on charges that she ran a brothel. But so far no clients have been charged although police are still investigating a list of alleged sex buyers, including firefighters, a police officer and city councilors, according to police reports.

“The men are still being let go,” said Audrey Morrissey, associate director of the Boston-based My Life My Choice Project, a nonprofit that works with young sex trafficking victims. “It is very upsetting.”

Despite growing concerns about domestic sex trafficking, the number of arrests for prostitution in Massachusetts and the nation has actually dropped over the last 15 years, according to national and state numbers. In Massachusetts, 2,835 men and women were arrested on prostitution-related charges in 1995 compared to about 944 in 2012, state numbers show.

Shively, who runs a research site called DemandForum.net, said the decline is partly due to the fact that police departments are struggling financially and also because prostitution has largely moved out of the public eye with the help of technology, migrating from street solicitations to online advertising, from public corners to hotels and private homes.

There is frustration throughout the criminal justice system over the lack of legal consequences for sex buyers, Shively said. Law enforcement efforts to go after buyers are hampered by funding constraints, cutbacks in manpower, and a discouraging lack of follow through in the courts, he said. Prosecutors are often less than zealous when they receive cases they know are not likely to be winners. And judges, buried under burgeoning caseloads, must weigh the time needed to try misdemeanor cases when grave felonies demand their attention.

In certain areas of the state, efforts to crack down on johns are having some impact. More than 900 cities and towns across the U.S. have at one time or another pursued buyers, be they by reverse stings, car seizures or what is known as “public shaming,” where men’s identities are released to the public, according to DemandForum. These include New Bedford, Worcester, Boston, and Plymouth County. But impediments abound.

‘Plenty of frustration’

“There’s plenty of frustration to go around when it comes to addressing prostitution regarding adults and child sex trafficking,” said Shively, a senior associate with Abt Associates in Cambridge, a research company that supports DemandForum. “There are clear double standards, clear inequities.”

Across the state, police departments concede that the task of bringing johns to justice is rife with obstacles. Reverse stings, including female decoys, are more complicated and costly than simply picking up prostitutes. Capt. Robert Rufo of the Woburn Police Department says he is concerned about sex trafficking, but the department is overwhelmed by drug crimes.

Rufo also said he gets frustrated when cases fall apart in court. For example, four men arrested in March for buying sex all saw their cases dismissed after each paid a fine of $500, he said.

“I can tell you that of all the arrests, I don’t even recall even testifying in a prostitution case because it doesn’t get that far,” he said. “It’s just a fine, court cost, and a ‘please don’t come back to Woburn.’

In Suffolk County, many men who are arrested on charges of buying sex end up without a conviction, records show. Of 82 men who were arrested for the prostitution-related “sex for a fee” charge in 2012 and through the fall of 2013, nearly three-quarters were able to avoid guilty findings through dismissals, pre-trial probation and other legal maneuvering.

Wark said courts are generally forgiving with first-time offenders. He said even the embarrassment of an arrest can do the job — very few men end up arrested a second time.

Take Richard McIver, a 46-year-old truck driver from Brockton, who was one of the men nabbed in last year’s police sting in Boston. McIver allegedly reached out to a police officer posing as a 17-year-old girl on the online website, backpage.com, police records show.

McIver eventually pleaded guilty to one count of seeking to buy sex and was required to pay $65 a month in court fees for a year. The more serious count of attempting to entice a minor online was set aside as he was placed on “pre-trial probation” for three years. That case will be closed without a conviction if he stays out of trouble.

McIver’s attorney, Elana Mikelus Gordon, said her client denied that he sought out a 17-year-old. She said he’s like many men seeking a paid “escort,” an activity she says is popular with many politicians and public figures who’ve been caught over the years. Nonetheless, she said the stress and embarrassment of the arrest and court case was enough to make him change his ways.

“He wants to forget this ever happened,” she said. “He’s learned his lesson.”

The New England Center for Investigative Reporting (www.necir.org) is a nonprofit investigative reporting newsroom based at Boston University and WGBH TV/radio. NECIR interns Michael Bottari, Steph Solis and Sarah Capungan contributed to this report. Contact Jenifer B. McKim at jmckim@necir.org or follow her on Twitter @jbmckim