Posted on 02/10/2020 6:51:40 AM PST by Kaslin
This past weekend the Super Bowl rolled through Miami, bringing traffickers seeking to sell their victims online to sex buyers. The FBI Child Exploitation and Human Trafficking Task Force, working with the Metro-Dade Police Department, arrested three of these alleged sex traffickers during online undercover stings.
These arrests shine a light on sex trafficker’s use of the internet. A report by the non-profit Polaris Project states, “What we do know is that the internet has forever blurred the once bright lines between the social and the commercial and that traffickers have taken notice and adjusted their business models accordingly.”
The FBI provided me with copies of the criminal complaints for the three suspected traffickers. For those not familiar with a criminal complaint, they contain an affidavit with the allegations. The affidavit is sworn to by a law enforcement agent, in these cases, an FBI agent, that detail all the facts and allegations supporting the criminal charges. These complaints contain a bevy of detailed information, including victim interviews, witness statements, and suspect admissions. These specific complaints provide an insider’s snapshot of the domestic trafficking world.
To understand the trafficking world, it is necessary to first look at who the victims are. According to the National Human Trafficking Hotline, “There is no single profile for trafficking victims; trafficking occurs to adults and minors in rural, suburban, or urban communities across the country. Victims of human trafficking have diverse socio-economic backgrounds, varied levels of education, and may be documented or undocumented. Traffickers target victims using tailored methods of recruitment and control they find to be effective in compelling that individual into forced labor or commercial sex.” Essentially, victims can be anyone and anywhere.
I reviewed each complaint to build a picture of how these traffickers operated their criminal enterprise and recruited their victims. A common thread throughout the complaints is that each victim met their trafficker through social media or a private chat app. In one of these cases, the trafficker used his victims to recruit a girl through a shared private messaging app.
Once pulled into the trafficker’s world, the victims are sold to sex buyers through web site message boards, apps, and social media. For instance, the complaint stated the trafficker, “decided to advertise [online] all three women [the victims] for commercial sex.” Before his arrest, the trafficker allegedly intended to bring the girls to the NBA All-Star Weekend and to Mardi Gras to sell them in each location. The trafficker reportedly exploited a victim, a minor, posting over two-hundred and fifty online prostitution advertisements trying to sell her at each place the group traveled. It continues to show traffickers look at their victims as a commodity to sell repeatedly.
Just weeks before the Super Bowl and these arrests, Kara Smith from the non-profit group DeliverFund posted about how traffickers groom their victims; and this rings eerily true throughout these FBI criminal complaints. Smith said, “traffickers use any tools available to them to connect with potential victims, such as social media and video gaming consoles. They search for vulnerable characteristics such as emotional neediness, low self-confidence, and economic stress. Traffickers work to obtain trust through conversations over an extended period of time, sometimes sending their current victims to interact with potential victims. Traffickers force victims into a dependent relationship via gifts, love, friendships, drugs, or alcohol. With their new role in victims’ lives, traffickers work to wedge themselves between victims and their friends and family. Traffickers maintain their control via threats, violence, fear, or blackmail.”
Throughout my over twenty years of law enforcement from the southwest border to our Nation’s Capitol, I have seen criminals adapt their methods to the times, in these cases, moving from print to the internet. You can guarantee that traffickers use the internet to sell their victims in every state. Law enforcement, and those that support them, change their methods as well. What are a few steps the public can take? For one, recognize the signs of trafficking. Two, become educated on current and pending legislation. Three, support those fighting sex trafficking.
These people should be hanged.
Nothing new and no meat to this article.
Sex trafficking at the Super Bowl?
They should’ve started with the half-time show. There were a coupla hookers onstage.
Deflection. These arrests shine a light on sex trafficker's use of major sporting events as venues for buying/selling children. When Formula One racing came to Austin, local police were warned that all these kings, prime ministers and sultans coming to the race were a thriving market for flesh peddlers and that the city would try their best to uncover underaged sex "workers" and arrest them (to get them away from their handlers) and funnel them to care groups who would try to deprogram them and put them in a much better environment. But there's always more where those came from. Jeffrey Epstein was, I believe, a top-dollar procurer of underaged girls for the "upper crust". That's how he became involved with Bill Clinton, Prince Andrew and (like him or not) Alan Dershowitz. These people have the attitude that they're above the law and, in reality, they are. That's why Epstein had to be silenced before he could spill the beans on anyone important. Blaming the internet for sex trafficking is like blaming the airlines who flew the children for sex trafficking.
I went to a seminar in Austria four years ago. I learned that the county we lived in at the time, Johnson County KS is a hub for recruiting victims. Wow. So talk with your children and grandchildren. If they use the internet or go to the mall, they are at risk.
I agree.
Never been a shortage of sex trafficking before the internet.
They are above the law right now if they can reach out and kill probably the most important criminal at the prison system at the time, one that the justice dept was supposed to be keeping an eye on too.
Scary stuff.
The halftime performers are groomers. They call what those women did “empowerment” in grooming terms.
I was gonna post a picture of the strumpets as they pawed their nethers...but then thought better of it.
It continues to show traffickers look at their victims as a commodity to sell repeatedly.
was not a ground-shaking revelation? LOL.
Seriously, the only novelty may be calling pimps "traffickers".
I would be the traffickers are black and the victims white......
Many are illegals and that traps them ( fear. Language. Knowledge of laws etc )
American girls who find themselves in this situation have either bad or absentee parents. Or are kidnapped
The best way to stop this nonsense is to execute both parties — the customer as well as the trafficker — if the supply is radically diminished, the demand will wither on the vine.
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