Posted on 06/14/2007 6:10:24 PM PDT by SwinneySwitch
Police say she passed out cards that offered the teen girls for sex
A 16-year-old girl endured being sold into prostitution by her mother but finally went to Houston police after seeing her younger sister also forced to perform sex acts, investigators said Wednesday.
The teenager had complied with her mother who even distributed business cards offering her daughters for sex but feared that her 14-year-old sister would be hurt, officers said.
Nelsi Yolanda Latuda and her boyfriend, Pedro Espinoza-Escama, both of the 5500 block of Antoine, are charged with two counts each of compelling prostitution of a minor. They were ordered held in lieu of bail totaling $20,000 each.
Latuda, 35, is the girls' mother, but they are not related to Espinoza-Escama, who is 21, Harris County Assistant District Attorney Justin Wood said.
Houston police declined to comment about the investigation or identify the suspects but confirmed that a couple were arrested Sunday on unrelated charges and later questioned about the allegations regarding Latuda's daughters.
"They were interrogated, and they confessed to forcing the juveniles into prostitution," spokesman Victor Senties said.
Wood said the prostitution scheme went on for months and that Latuda and her boyfriend printed and passed out business cards near their northwest Houston home, offering the girls for sex.
The pair arranged meetings and delivered the girls, Wood said.
"I have never dealt with a case where biological children were being prostituted out by their own mother," he said.
Police said Latuda and her daughters are from Honduras and have lived in Houston for about two years. The girls are staying with relatives, Wood said.
Officials with Harris County Children's Protective Services would not confirm whether they are investigating the case.
On Wednesday evening, no one answered the door at the apartment complex where the family lives. Neighbors said they often saw the girls playing outside the apartment but didn't know them or their mother.
Children of the Night, a California-based advocacy group for abused teenagers, estimates that 300,000 juveniles are working as prostitutes in the United States. The ages typically range from 11 to 17, the group reports.
Espinoza-Escama is scheduled to appear in court today. Latuda is due for a court hearing Friday.
Latuda pleaded guilty in 2006 to possession of less than 1 gram of a controlled substance and was sentenced to 10 days in jail.
dale.lezon@chron.com , mike.glenn@chron.com
Just doing the pimping that Americans won’t do.
Yup, these familiy values should have stopped at the Rio Grande..
“Mom accused of prostituting her 2 daughters [Hondurans in Houston, Texas]”
YEAH! FAMILY VALUES! YEAH!!!!
Related to the Hiltons?
Bush is going to acelerate their citizenship process. These are his favorite kind of “immigrants.”
YEAH! FAMILY VALUES! YEAH!!!!
Like Jorge Arbusto said, they don't stop at the Rio Grande.
/sarc>
The story does not mention the immigration status of the scumbags. It does not even mention IF the immigration status is even an issue. That is tragic. How can we see if illegal immigrants are responsible for more crime per 100,000 than the majority if we can’t ask and keep records. Just as the “civil rights” groups have forced the police to keep records on many aspects of their day to day work,(traffic stops etc.) why not the immigration status of the charged? It could be useful information.
Just prostituting the children that American parents will not.
WAY back when, in U.S. Embassies, people who were known to have worked in prostitution were not given visas. Theirs’ was a category that the visa department saw as PERSONA NON GRATA. Did something change?
>>>>Children of the Night, a California-based advocacy group for abused teenagers, estimates that 300,000 juveniles are working as prostitutes in the United States. The ages typically range from 11 to 17, the group reports.<<<<
http://www.lifetimetv.com/movies/originals/humantrafficking.html
Available to rent at Block buster - Human Trafficking
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-backroom/1472612/posts
Sex Tourism: Addressing the Demand for Trafficking
ESTIMONY OF ROSA, AGE 14
before U.S. Senate Foreign Relations Committee
When I was fourteen, a man came to my parents’ house in Veracruz, Mexico and asked me if I was interested in making money in the United States. He said I could make many times as much money doing the same things that I was doing in Mexico. At the time, I was working in a hotel cleaning rooms and I also helped around my house by watching my brothers and sisters. He said I would be in good hands, and would meet many other Mexican girls who had taken advantage of this great opportunity. My parents didn’t want me to go, but I persuaded them.
A week later, I was smuggled into the United States through Texas to Orlando, Florida. It was then the men told me that my employment would consist of having sex with men for money. I had never had sex before, and I had never imagined selling my body.
And so my nightmare began. Because I was a virgin, the men decided to initiate me by raping me again and again, to teach me how to have sex. Over the next three months, I was taken to a different trailer every 15 days. Every night I had to sleep in the same bed in which I had been forced to service customers all day.
I couldn’t do anything to stop it. I wasn’t allowed to go outside without a guard. Many of the bosses had guns. I was constantly afraid. One of the bosses carried me off to a hotel one night, where he raped me. I could do nothing to stop him.
Because I was so young, I was always in demand with the customers. It was awful. Although the men were supposed to wear condoms, some didn’t, so eventually I became pregnant and was forced to have an abortion. They sent me back to the brothel almost immediately.
I cannot forget what has happened. I can’t put it behind me. I find it nearly impossible to trust people. I still feel shame. I was a decent girl in Mexico. I used to go to church with my family. I only wish none of this had ever happened.
Unfortunately...some do and some have....but the key
is family values..once gone..they never resurface?? JK
You really think it's socially acceptable to prostitute your own daughters in Honduras -- or anywhere for that matter? Sick people exist everywhere. I remember, not that it matters, that the Mayor of Waterbury, Connecticut, went to prison three years ago for paying a 100% full blooded American woman with crack cocaine in order to let him sleep with her young daughters. Sick people exist in all cultures. No people has a monopoly on perversion.
You really think it's socially acceptable to prostitute your own daughters in Honduras -- or anywhere for that matter? Sick people exist everywhere. I remember, not that it matters, that the Mayor of Waterbury, Connecticut, went to prison three years ago for paying a 100% full blooded American woman with crack cocaine in order to let him sleep with her young daughters. Sick people exist in all cultures. No people has a monopoly on perversion.
more more frpom the cult of Aztec
The alleged boyfriend, Pedro Espinoza-Escama, is allegedly an illegal immigrant allegedly.
Ping!
If you want on, or off this S. Texas/Mexico ping list, please FReepMail me.
I might have guessed drug money would be involved. "Victimless" crime, eh?
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