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By: Department of Justice Press Release
Published: September 21, 2010

SACRAMENTO, CA—United States Attorney Benjamin B. Wagner announced that Deandre Lornell Brown, 25, of Sacramento, was convicted today of five counts of conspiracy, sex trafficking of children and using force, fraud, or coercion, and participating in a venture that engaged in sex trafficking of children. The guilty verdict was returned by a federal court jury in Sacramento after a five-day trial before United States District Judge Frank C. Damrell Jr.

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WEST SIDE | Man accused of recruiting girls in their early teens

They were all given street names that began with the letter “P.” But there was another way that the girls involved in an alleged child prostitution ring were identified.

Many of them, including a 14-year-old girl, had “P Child,” tattooed on their chest, shoulder, wrist or back.

That allegedly was the way alleged pimp Datqunn Sawyer “branded” his young prostitutes, authorities said, as they charged him with running a child prostitution ring on the West Side out of his home and his mother’s home since 2009.

Sawyer, 31, of Chicago, was arrested Thursday on charges that he, with two others, recruited girls as young as 13 to work as prostitutes — then kept them in the positions by using violence and threats.

“These defendants are alleged to have maintained control over vulnerable girls through violence and intimidation,” Cook County State’s Attorney Anita Alvarez said.

Alvarez said the investigation meant nine girls would no longer be “forced to engage in the horrific trade of sex trafficking.”

A federal criminal complaint made public Thursday charged that their services were advertised through Craigslist. But Sawyer also made the girls “walk the track,” or go out in public places and try to pick up customers in cars or on street corners. They charged $150 to $350 for sexual services, and authorities say Sawyer kept the money, “providing his prostitutes with only minimal subsistence.”

One of the girls, who was 15, told the FBI she once angered Sawyer because she sometimes carried a teddy bear or the Bible when she was living with him, according to the charges.

She said she was scolded for “acting her age” and that she needed to “act the age I gave you,” which was 18, according to the complaint.

Two others, Waymond Orr, 30, and Kevin Sharp, 51, also of Chicago, were charged in state court, each with one count of pandering. While Sharp was arrested along with Sawyer on Thursday, Orr, who was sometimes considered Sawyer’s “enforcer,” according to charges, remains a fugitive.

By: Duaa Eldeib, Tribune reporter
Published: September 15, 2010

Most of the two dozen former pimps and madams questioned by DePaul University researchers for a study on Chicago’s sex trade had suffered both physical and sexual abuse as children.

The study, “From Victims to Victimizers: Interviews with 25 ex-pimps in Chicago,” by researcher Jody Raphael and Brenda Myers-Powell, a former longtime prostitute, found a staggering 88 percent of those surveyed suffered physical abuse growing up, while 76 percent endured sexual abuse. In many cases, the abuse forced them to leave home early and turn to pimping to survive.

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By: The Christian Institute
Published: September 16, 2010

‘Sugar daddy’ websites – which match young women with older men in financial arrangements that often involve sex – are targeting cash-strapped students.

According to The Times, the websites are using internet search-based advertising to promote their sites to people who use search phrases that suggest they are struggling to pay their university bills.

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Domestic Minor Sex Trafficking Subcommittee on Crime, Terrorism, and Homeland Security
Wednesday, Sept. 15th at 1:00 p.m., in the House Hearing on
Judiciary Committee’s Crime Subcommittee.

Watch the hearing on webcast (watch here) .

Testimonies Provided by:

Nicholas A. Sensley Chief of Police, Truckee, California

Ernie Allen President & CEO ~ National Center for Missing & Exploited Children

Deborah Richardson Chief Program Officer ~ Women’s Funding Network

Tina Frundtt Founder and Executive Director ~ Courtney’s House

Linda Smith (U.S. Congress 1994-98) Founder and President ~ Shared Hope International

by Amanda Kloer

When Craigslist voluntarily blocked their adult services section, the pimps, johns, and traffickers who had been using the site to buy and sell children and victims of human trafficking were, for the first time in ages, briefly lost about where to continue advertising for rape. Lucky for them, Gawker.com stepped in with a helpful guide on how to continue profiting from the sexual exploitation of children. And by sharing their guide to buying sex online with their nearly 20 million readers, Gawker is practically guaranteed to be facilitating more child rape.

Like Craigslist, the sex-for-sale websites Gawker is promoting are a mixed bag of men, women, and transgender individuals voluntarily engaged in prostitution; adults who have been forced or coerced into prostitution; and children. The latter two categories are victims of human trafficking, and online classified ads like Craigslist and the websites in Gawker’s guide have played an increasingly large role in facilitating their repeated rape for profit. The demand for commercial sex, which when it outstrips willing suppliers causes human trafficking, is a complex and nuanced phenomenon. It’s affected by the price and availability of commercial sex, social norms and laws around buying sex, and potential buyers’ ethical views. Craigslist’s adult services section and similar sites have provided a space where buying sex is easy, normalized, and anonymous, effectively increasing the demand without increasing the supply. Hence, the human trafficking on online classified sites like Craigslist.

If Craigslist (or any other online classifieds site) wasn’t a website, but an abandoned warehouse at the edge of town where children as young as 11 were being bought and sold for sex by dozens of men a night, no one would argue that warehouse’s closing impinged upon “freedom of speech.” No one would claim, as Danah Boyd on the Huffington Post recently did, that the child sex warehouse should continue to operate since “a one-stop-shop is more helpful for law enforcement.” And if the pimps and traffickers were locked out of it one night, no one would publish a guide directing them to other abandoned warehouses they can turn into child sex factories. A website and a warehouse may not be exactly the same, but with this guide Gawker is standing on a virtual street corner directing would-be child traffickers and abusers to new meeting points. And the saddest part is that they really don’t seem to understand that’s what they’re doing.

humantrafficking.change.org

by Amanda Kloer

The high number of fatalities for teen drivers across America is incredibly concerning. But in Michigan, teens are actually significantly more likely to be trafficked into the commercial sex industry than killed in a car crash. That’s because child sex trafficking is growing at an alarming rate across the state.

In May, 141 underage Michigan girls were forced into prostitution. That’s a 20% increase from the number of children victimized in the commercial sex industry the previous February. And it’s hundreds of times higher than the annual teen auto fatality or suicide rate, as points of comparison. Across the state, advocates are becoming concerned at just how common prostitution is becoming for young girls. And the victims, for the most part, aren’t smuggled in from foreign countries or even from other states. They are local girls, pimped by local pimps and bought by local men.

According to Rebbecca McDonald, president of Women at Risk International in Michigan, young girls are lured into the industry slowly. Pimps will target teens who are sexually active and entice them with offers of cash, designer clothes, and other cool stuff. What starts out as a one-time occurrence to get a great pair of jeans or a crisp $100 bill soon spirals out of control for kids. And before they know it, they’re being turned out on the street or advertised online by their pimp, who keeps the money they earn.

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by Amanda Kloer

This week the California state senate unanimously approved legislation which would allow courts to seize private property used to commit human trafficking. That means pimps and traffickers could lose their cars, homes, and gadgets. If passed, this sort of legislation would go a long way from deterring pimps from trafficking women and girls and provide important funds for trafficking survivors.

SB 677, the legislation authored by Senator Leland Yee (D-San Francisco), would make any property owned by pimps and used to commit human trafficking the state’s for the taking. That means if a pimp drives a trafficked girl around in his car, he could lose it. If he houses her at his condo, he could lose it. And if he advertises for her on Craigslist on his brand new iPhone, he could lose that too. The legislation would also add civil penalties up to $25,000, meaning victims could recover some of what was spent on things that can’t be reclaimed, like drugs or travel.

If Yee’s bill becomes law in California, it will mean pimps and traffickers could lose massive amounts of money and property. And since financial gain is what propels the sex trafficking industry, concern about losing their bling might just make some pimps think twice before selling someone against their will or a child who can’t consent to sex.

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By: Tolu Olorunda

I was browsing the web a few days ago when I ran across the following headline: “16yr old gets life in prison for killing her pimp.” Perhaps my considerable awareness of the way the internet works–Shock and Awe = Traffic–was what led to initial skepticism; but once I clicked the YouTube video link, all ambiguity vacated.

I was introduced to the story of Sarah Kruzan, 29, a female inmate in California. Filmed by the National Center for Youth Law, an advocacy group assisting her, Sarah tells in full detail her background, and the path leading up to the prison cell she resides in today.

She grew up in Riverside, California, in the home of a drug-addicted mother who frequently abused her. Nonetheless, this “over-achiever” excelled in school, making the principal’s Honor Roll consistently, running track, winning a Young Author’s Award for a book on the effects of drugs. It all seemed like the perfect Horatio Alger mythology come true, until she met a 31-year-old man, G.G.

The missing “father figure” vacuum in her life was happily filled by G.G. who would take her and her friends skating and to the mall. “G.G. was there at some times,” she says, “and he would talk to me, take me out, and give me all these lavish gifts… and then he would tell me, sex-wise, ‘you don’t need to give it up for free’.” G.G. was a skilled manipulator who knew what he wanted, and just how to get it. When Sarah turned 13, he raped her.

“He uses his manhood to hurt–like break you in,” Sarah recounts. The break-you-in allusion is a mere euphemism for prostitution. At that same age, Sarah was put on the streets, working 12-hour shifts (6P.M.-6.A.M.) for G.G. Sarah saw none of the money she worked for. “Everything was his,” she reports.

Three years later, fed up and frustrated, Sarah snapped and killed G.G., and was subsequently sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole. Plus four years.

She recounts the court proceedings: “I remember my lawyer saying that he wanted to ask for me to be sentenced as a Juvenile because Y.A. [California Youth Authority] had found me amenable and susceptible to the treatment; but the judge said that because of my crime–and he said it was well thought-out–that I deserved life without.”

“That means I’m gonna die here,” she heartbreakingly reflects. And with tears soaking up her eyes, admits all wrongdoing: “I definitely know I deserve punishment: I mean, you don’t just take somebody’s life and think that it’s okay; so, yes, definitely, I deserve punishment.” But then she asks, and answers, a question the judge who sentenced her should have pondered more carefully: “How much? I don’t know.”

Even while the possibility of life beyond bars looks gloomy for Sarah, she’s tried to “educate” herself, “reading books,” though admits it’s hard to “excel in prison.”

Perhaps this was what her judge imagined when he condemned her for lack of “moral scruples.” But given the opportunity at a parole hearing, Sarah would like to tell the board: “first of all, I’ve learned what moral scruples are; second, that every day is a challenge … that I’ve found the ability to believe in myself, and that I have a lot of good to offer, now–the person who I am today, at 29: I believe that I could set a positive example. I’m very determined to show that no matter what you’ve done, or where you’ve come from, or what you’ve experienced in life, it’s up to you to change.”

This is California, a state with 150,000 inmates, 70% recidivism, 200% capacity, and $10 billion for its prison industrial complex budget. So, it makes sense that even harmless offenders like Sarah Kruzan, whose action while unlawful seem reasonable, are condemned as irredeemable, thus deserving of an existence devoid of any shot at redemption.

But there’s another side to it: There’s the pervasive sexism and misogyny of the justice system that fails to receive sufficient address even in the most progressive of circles. While the disproportionate incarceration of Black males is in need of all legal, moral, and financial challenge available, the booming of an incarcerated female population is in dire need of an equally ferocious amount of intervention. For instance, the Women In Prison Project, a non-profit social group, reported in March last year that “[f]rom 1995 to 2006, the number of women inmates in state and federal prisons nationwide increased by 64%.” And that the “growth rate for women in state and federal prisons in 2006 (4.5%) was higher than the average annual rate of growth in each of the previous five years (2.9%).”

In all the years Sarah Kruzan was being abused, tortured, manhandled, and molested, it’s hard to imagine no one who mattered was unaware. But it also has to do with “public attitudes,” as PBS reported last year in a short exposé, Fighting Child Prostitution. Using the Atlanta prostitution market as a case study, it revealed several instances where teenage prostitutes were “going to jail while their pimps and johns ran free.” Alesia Adams, a renowned social worker on issues around sexual exploitation, explained: “Very few people see these children as victims. And they don’t understand the … victimization of this child and the dynamics of what has happened to her.”

In short, more than a legal matter, it reflects the priorities and presuppositions of a society morally bankrupt. It explains why the 2005 Academy Award for Best Original Song was awarded to “It’s Hard Out Here for a Pimp,” a commercial Rap tale about the hardships of “making change off these women.”

Chances are if G.G. had survived that day, it’s unlikely any charges would have been filed against him for conducting a prostitution ring, or for robbing young girls of their innocence. The more likely outcome is what developed after his death: The transformation of an assailant into a victim, and of a victim into an assailant.

In such a sexually involved case as this, punishing the victim to redeem the assailant is nothing new. The story of Lena Baker, a Black maid denied clemency and afterward executed in 1945 for killing her White male pimp/captor, rips the veil off a society, and its justice system, in bed with Patriarchy. (“What I done, I did in self-defense or I would have been killed myself. Where I was, I could not overcome it.”)

Of course, beyond the criminalization of Youth and the pervasiveness of sexism in the legal system, it also grants evidence to the militarized surrounding enveloping all segments of our lives.

We all know the case of two Pennsylvania judges exposed earlier this year for receiving $2.6 million in kickbacks by sending teenagers to a privately run juvenile detention center–sometimes for crimes such as building spoof MySpace pages to satirize a school principal. But even with the aid of such opportune revelation, mainstream press still fell short of broadening the discourse to include concerns about the school-to-prison pipeline, or the penitentiary privatization schemes that bank on the missteps of human beings.

Acclaimed playwright Wallace Shawn touched on this with grace in his latest text, Essays. [Haymarket Books, 2009, p. 20.] He wrote: “We actually have a large army as well, and a navy and an air force, plus the F.B.I., Coast Guard, Central Intelligence Agency, and marine–oy. It turned out that simply in order to be secure and protect our neighborhood, we needed an empire.”

This is the empire that greed built. And its captives include anyone as young as 5 and as old as 84.

By Phillip Mcneal

(WIREUPDATE) ”The online classified website Craigslist has removed its controversial Adult Services portion of its website. Technology blog TechCrunch was the first to report the section had been blacked out with the word “Censored.”
In August several state attorneys general called for the closing down of the Adults Services section on Craigslist due to the continued prostitution advertisements and continuing public outrage.

A multi-state letter was sent to Craigslist CEO Jim Buckmaster and founder Craig Newmark, claiming that because craigslist cannot or will not be capable of screening adult services ads, it should stop accepting them altogether and shut down the section.
Craigslist clearly lacks the wherewithal” or will ”to fight flagrant prostitution ads that persist on its site, the letter said. Prostitution is a booming business on craigslist, perhaps more than ever before.
We understand that prostitution is profitable ”but its human toll is intolerable, and craigslist should cease being an enabler. Despite its much-touted manual review of Adult Services, craigslist has failed to block blatant prostitution ads.
The section was shut down on Friday night to all users in the United States, but is still viewable by international users.