Human Trafficking Watch

This is a must-read:

Teen recounts horror of sex slavery - TODAY: People - MSNBC.com:

A typical 16-year-old in a middle-class home in suburban Pensacola, Fla., Newell?s nightmare began innocently enough: A new friend she had met in high school asked her to come to her home for a sleepover. Newell?s mother, Lisa Brant, didn?t like the idea, but after weeks of lobbying by her daughter, Brant met with the girl and the man she said was her father to make sure her daughter would be safe. But the girl?s ?father? was really a convicted felon, and the girl, who had a record of prostitution in Texas, was an accomplice in the abduction. ?Her dad took us to this house and said he’d be right back and he left us there,? Newell recounted in a taped interview. ?And I asked for some water because I was thirsty. And I drank the water and I blacked out.?

The very fact that this is going on in Saudi Arabia tells us many things about the Saudi culture. Their PR firms can peddle a lot of nonsense about how modern they are, but the Saudis are entrenched in their old ways.

Child-protection groups say children are often given away in return for hefty dowries, or as a result of old customs in which a father promises his infant daughters and sons to cousins out of a belief that marriage will protect them from illicit relationships.

Depraved. Sick. Sad.

This is an interesting story about the out-of-control gang activity in British Columbia. Among the vices, human trafficking tied to sex crimes appears:

Their major centres of criminal operation are Metro Vancouver, southern Ontario and Montreal, the report said. Some of the B.C. crime groups are also involved in human trafficking, it said.

“A small number of organized crime groups, mostly based in B.C. and Quebec, are involved in the facilitation of international trafficking in persons (TIP), it said.

“Conversely, several street gangs are active within the domestic TIP market for the purposes of sexual exploitation. These groups facilitate the recruitment, control, movement and exploitation of Canadian-born females in the domestic sex trade, primarily in strip bars in several cities across the country.”

From the kansascity.com Crime Scene blog, James Hart posts a press release from  US Attorney John Wood:

Ling Xu, also known as “Cherry,” 46, Zhong Yan Liu, also known as “Lucky,” 36, and Cheng Tang, also known as “Tom,” 22, all citizens of China residing in Overland Park, pleaded guilty in separate appearances this morning before U.S. District Judge Fernando J. Gaitan.

Each of the defendants pleaded guilty to coercing persons to travel across state lines and national borders to engage in prostitution and illegal sexual services.

They also pleaded guilty to money laundering by wiring more than $500,000 from the proceeds of that unlawful activity to China. Xu also pleaded guilty to aggravated identity theft for using the passports and identification of her female workers in order to make most of those wire transfers. All three defendants remain in federal custody

The Kansas City Business Journal has more.

Some law enforcement officials have gotten together to give presentations on human trafficking. It’s sad that when I see an article like this, it appears to be Human Trafficking 101 and the narrative is pushed that it’s new to everybody and we need to understand what’s going on.

It’s a brutal form of organized crime that entices young women to come to the United States with promises of legal employment, and traps them in prostitution or forced labor with violence against them and often death threats to families back home, the top prosecutors said.

“The women were all vulnerable, they had all been courted by men,” Milgram recalled of one Brooklyn-based prostitution ring she prosecuted. “There were rapes, there were forced abortions. . . . We characterized some of it as torture.”

“We’re only going to make progress on this . . . by making everyone understand what a big problem this is,” Christie said. “I tell people in law enforcement, “All you have to do is have one of these cases, and you’ll understand.’ “

This is a bizarre story in that the perpetrator, Jeremy Noyes,  allegedly was attempting to convince a New Zealand woman to raise her daughter as his sex slave. The FBI was tipped off by a classmate via a Web site and then a former girlfriend confirmed the allegations. However, the FBI can’t confirm the mother and daughter exist.

Noyes wanted them to move in with him and that “his long term intent was to assemble a ‘family’ of female sex slaves that would begin with” the woman and her daughter.

“Noyes intended to impregnate (the 4-year-old) when she was between the ages of 8 and 14 and then continue to breed the future offspring that would result from his plan,” Noyes’ classmate told the FBI. “Noyes intends to buy a farm or an island where he could put his new society together.”

The FBI investigation said it found women who corresponded with Noyes online and, in turn, the child-sex images in his e-mail account earlier this month.

I’m always astounded when women are willing to deal in child porn and even more so when those women involve their own children. I can only hope the women who sent him the images don’t actually have children. Hopefully the images will lead to their arrests also.

Ex-WCW Wrestler Hardbody Harrison Sentenced To Imprisonment For Sex Trafficking, Forced Labor

Sociopath,  Hardbody Harrsion had it all figured out:

From April to August 2005, Norris and a co-conspirator, Aimee Allen, lured his victims to his homes in Cartersville with promises of careers in professional wrestling. Once there, Norris turned the recruited women, many of whom were poor, homeless or addicted to drugs, to work for him as prostitutes and servants.

The victims were forced to have sex with Norris and other men at nightclubs, in apartments, at hotels, in the back of Norris’ truck, and in other locations in North Carolina and northern Georgia. Norris kept the earnings of his forced prostitution ring to himself.

Norris kept the victims indebted to him to force them to serve him. He also prevented the victims from escaping and isolated them from the families.

Photo credit goes to ninemsn staff

Every once in a while, I’ll see a story like this one where people are kept against their will as performers. This usually happens with Chinese citizens, but obviously can happen anywhere.

They were forced to work 15 to 20 hours a day for about $200 a week instead of the promised $957, with $757 deducted as “expenses for their upkeep.”

An appalled spectator tipped off the police after seeing the show, in which Giusi, the 19-year-old woman, tried to escape from the piranha tank “trembling with terror” her head was held down by Ingrassia.

Her 16-year-old sister, Olga, was bitten by snakes that she was forced to drape on her body, and she had injuries to her stomach where the snakes had wound themselves too tightly around her. The circus owners had rubbed ointment on snake bites on her legs but had refused to take her to a doctor.

Police said the Bulgarian family had lived in the back of a cockroach-infested lorry used for animal transport. The only meat they had been given since January consisted of leftovers from the circus owners’ Easter lunch last weekend.

Reports said Giusi had a tumour on her ear for which she had twice been operated in Bulgaria. Doctors had told her never to get water in her ears, especially cold water. However the water tank in which she was forced to swim with eight piranhas was kept at a temperature just above zero in order to make the piranhas lethargic.

Illegal immigration makes it so easy to manipulate the immigrants. They are the target of politicians who want them to vote. They are the target of businesses who want them to pay premiums. They are also the target of individuals who use their illegal status to keep them has house slaves.

Celestin, now 22, testified Wednesday that she considered suicide after years of beatings and intimidation. She tearfully described sleeping on the floor, rummaging through cast-off clothes in the garage for something to wear, bathing from a bucket or a garden hose and scrubbing floors when she should have been in school.

She said Theodore and Maude Paulin often struck her with their hands, shoes or objects such as a curling iron or a mortar if she didn’t finish the work to their satisfaction.

Defense attorneys argued during trial the Celestin’s allegations of abuse were motivated by her desire to be a permanent legal resident of the U.S.

The jury was also asked to consider whether Paulin should forfeit her home and other property used to keep Celestin working and out of school.

This went on for six years.  This is not isolated. Think of this story the next time you hear opponents of enforcing immigration laws making excuses for keeping things as they are.