By JOSH POLTILOVE and RAY REYES
jpoltilove@tampatrib.com and rreyes@tampatrib.com
Tampa Bay Online (www.tbo.com) October 28, 2008
Undercover Operation Video
TAMPA - One became a prostitute at age 12.
All six Tampa Bay teens rescued in a law enforcement operation last week worked prostitution hotspots such as Nebraska Avenue or were pimped on the Internet.
The operation to combat trafficking of children for sex led to the rescue of five Tampa teens and one from St. Petersburg, according to the FBI. The six were 16 or 17 years old, FBI Tampa spokesman Dave Couvertier said.
Five adults from Tampa were arrested on prostitution-related charges during "Operation Cross Country II," which was completed last week, authorities said. The FBI, Tampa Police Department, the Hillsborough County Sheriff's Office and other agencies participated in the crackdown locally.
Law enforcement agencies conducted the operation in 28 cities. There were 642 arrests, and 47 children were affected. A similar operation occurred in June and one child was rescued in Tampa.
Authorities focused on "hot spots" for prostitution, including motels along Nebraska Avenue in Tampa, casinos, large events that take place in the Bay area and online social networking sites.
Law enforcement agencies used stakeouts, undercover officers and tips from the public to find the children, Couvertier said.
Four of the six area children rescued were categorized as endangered runaways by the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children. The teens are typically runaways who come from foster care or broken homes, Couvertier said.
Pimps or people who work for pimps coerce the children into a life of prostitution by preying on their weaknesses, he said.
Some children are given drugs to feed their addictions. Others are promised "the good life," money, or more emotional fulfillment than what they have at home, Couvertier said.
It is very difficult for children to escape because pimps intimidate and threaten them to stay, he said.
Most teens are rescued during undercover operations. Sometimes, it's as simple as locating the children, getting into contact with them and arranging for a law enforcement officer to pick them up and drive them to safety, Couvertier said.
"Sex trafficking of children is one of the most violent and unconscionable crimes committed in this country," FBI Deputy Director John S. Pistole said in a written statement.
Reporter Josh Poltilove can be reached at (813) 259-7691.
Find this article at: http://www2.tbo.com/content/2008/oct/28/282015/fbi-says-operation-effective-against-trafficking-k
Thursday, October 30, 2008
Tuesday, October 7, 2008
LAW & DISORDER: Man held in sex trafficking
The Florida Times-Union
October 3, 2008
A Virginia man was arrested Thursday on charges of bringing two minors to Jacksonville to engage in prostitution.
Marvin Leigh Madkins, 28, of Newport News was indicted last week by a federal grand jury in Jacksonville on two counts of sex trafficking of minors and one count each of transporting minors to engage in criminal sexual activity and possessing a shotgun to further a crime of violence.
Federal prosecutors said Madkins recruited the two minors in Virginia and brought them to Jacksonville between April and June. He faces a life prison sentence and $1 million in fines if convicted.
U.S. Magistrate Monte Richardson ordered Madkins held until Monday, when he has scheduled a detention hearing.
Paul Pinkham
October 3, 2008
A Virginia man was arrested Thursday on charges of bringing two minors to Jacksonville to engage in prostitution.
Marvin Leigh Madkins, 28, of Newport News was indicted last week by a federal grand jury in Jacksonville on two counts of sex trafficking of minors and one count each of transporting minors to engage in criminal sexual activity and possessing a shotgun to further a crime of violence.
Federal prosecutors said Madkins recruited the two minors in Virginia and brought them to Jacksonville between April and June. He faces a life prison sentence and $1 million in fines if convicted.
U.S. Magistrate Monte Richardson ordered Madkins held until Monday, when he has scheduled a detention hearing.
Paul Pinkham
Klaas Kids is Doing Great Work.
I never feel I have thanked Brad Dennis of Klaas Kids Foundation enough for all the work he's done raising the awareness of American kids being exploited and trafficked in the sex trade in our own backyards. Together, through trainings and advocacy, we have brought the voices of our domestic victims to the table to be heard throughout Florida.
The Klaas Kids Foundation works to search and assist missing and trafficked children and their families. They provide many resources to families whose children run away, are missing or are known to be exploited in the commercial sex trade; including search and rescue services for children deemed "endangered" runaway/missing. They are also a wellspring of information and resources for the general community. Inquiries are taken from private citizens, social service agencies, law enforcement and others at (415) 331-6867.
Click here for Klaas Kids' October 2008 newsletter.
The Klaas Kids Foundation works to search and assist missing and trafficked children and their families. They provide many resources to families whose children run away, are missing or are known to be exploited in the commercial sex trade; including search and rescue services for children deemed "endangered" runaway/missing. They are also a wellspring of information and resources for the general community. Inquiries are taken from private citizens, social service agencies, law enforcement and others at (415) 331-6867.
Click here for Klaas Kids' October 2008 newsletter.
Tuesday, September 9, 2008
CSEC Working Group
The next Commercially Sexually Exploited Children's Working Group meeting will be
Wednesday
September 10th
2pm - 4pm
Kristi House
1265 NW 12th Ave.
If you are not on the member list, please send an email to sandys@kristihouse.org to RSVP.
Wednesday
September 10th
2pm - 4pm
Kristi House
1265 NW 12th Ave.
If you are not on the member list, please send an email to sandys@kristihouse.org to RSVP.
Thursday, August 7, 2008
CSEC 101 Trainings
RSVP today for the following trainings on commercial sexual exploitation of children (CSEC). Please come if you are interested in learning about the issue of domestic minor sex trafficking and identifying and engaging youth for services, particularly girls, who are at-risk or being exploited in the sex trade.
CSEC 101 / Identifying & Engaging Victims for Services (MIAMI)
Thursday
August 14th
5-8pm
Kristi House
1265 NW 12th Ave.
Miami, FL
Parking is free and plentiful. Water and coffee provided. Feel free to bring your own food.
RSVP / Questions: Sandy 305-547-6855 or sandys@kristihouse.org
************************************************
CSEC 101 / Identifying & Engaging Victims for Services (FT. MYERS)
August 28th
8am - 12pm
Sugden Welcome Center
Florida Gulf Coast University
Ft. Myers, FL
RSVP / Questions: Christina cgallagh@fgcu.edu
CSEC 101 / Identifying & Engaging Victims for Services (MIAMI)
Thursday
August 14th
5-8pm
Kristi House
1265 NW 12th Ave.
Miami, FL
Parking is free and plentiful. Water and coffee provided. Feel free to bring your own food.
RSVP / Questions: Sandy 305-547-6855 or sandys@kristihouse.org
************************************************
CSEC 101 / Identifying & Engaging Victims for Services (FT. MYERS)
August 28th
8am - 12pm
Sugden Welcome Center
Florida Gulf Coast University
Ft. Myers, FL
RSVP / Questions: Christina cgallagh@fgcu.edu
Tuesday, July 22, 2008
Coming Soon....
The CSEC Project at Kristi House is preparing to launch the Girls are Not for Sale outreach campaign spearheaded by GEMS and using the documentary film Very Young Girls . Watch the trailor below and check out the links and the following article to find out more. Contact Sandy at 305-547-6800 if you are in South Florida and you would like to schedule a training on CSEC.
Village Voice - July 2, 2008
Feminist Law Professors Blog
New York Sun – July 3, 2008
New York Times – July 4, 2008
“Very Young Girls” trailer – You Tube
A Look at the Harrowing Lives of Child Prostitutes
The New York Times - City Room
“Very Young Girls” is an 83-minute documentary film that opens on Friday at the IFC Center in Greenwich Village. This is the film’s first commercial release; it received critical acclaim at its premiere last September at the Toronto International Film Festival. (See a review by Jeannette Catsoulis of The Times.)
The film offers a vivid and disturbing look at the sexual exploitation and trafficking of teenage girls in New York City. The average age of girls when they enter the sex industry is 13. The girls interviewed in the film — all identified by their real first names, except for one given the pseudonym Nicole — were participants in a New York-based nonprofit advocacy group, Girls Educational and Mentoring Services, which was established in 1998 by Rachel Lloyd, a former prostitute, originally from England, who has dedicated her career to combating human trafficking and sexual exploitation of girls. GEMS now works with about 200 girls a year.
Among the girls interviewed are Shaneiqua, a former A student who craved affection and described her first time having sex with her pimp in this way: “I thought that was the best thing that ever happened to me — the best, best.” Soon the man, nearly 20 years her senior, told her, “I would love you a lot more if you brought in more money.” After the first time she had sex for money, she said, “My whole body just felt dead.”
Another girl, Shaquanna, 15, is shown on a hospital bed, ingesting liquid medication that had been injected into a cup of Jell-O for her. She had been found on the side of a road, unconscious; she could not remember who had attacked her. Yet even in her painful condition — bruised, bloodied, her front teeth missing and chipped — she expresses relief. “I was praying for a situation to happen so that I’d be able to go home.”
The filmmaker, David Schisgall, said he had been making films about young people in war zones for MTV’s “True Life” series. “International sex trafficking was on our list of topics,” he said in a phone interview. “In the course of our search we found that there was trafficking going on in the United States that nobody was talking about.”
Mr. Schisgall, 40, who grew up in the Maryland suburbs outside Washington, said the “audience response has been overwhelmingly positive.” He said the film would be broadcast on Showtime in December.
He said he believed that the criminal justice system treated child prostitutes as criminals, rather than as victims. “It struck me as a great scandal,” he said, “and also as a great story.”
The girls make clear why leaving the men who exploit them is not easy. As one girl, Kim, tried to pack her suitcases, she recalled, her pimp “told me the next time I leave, he’s going to put me in a suitcase.”
Another former prostitute, Martha, put it this way: “I am his investment. I am his way of getting money. At the end of the day, if you think about it, a pimp does nothing more but collect the money.”
But the emotional ties are even stronger, in some cases, than the threat of violence and the relationships of economic dependence.
Ms. Lloyd, who was an executive producer for the film, says in the film: “Our primary competition is pimps. They’re spending 110 percent of their time and energy on recruiting, on brainwashing, on making this girl feel loved and special, and pulling her back in every time that she almost leaves. This has been four years of her life, from 12 to 16. He’s 35. He basically raised her.”
Ms. Lloyd is shown winning a human rights award from Reebok, the athletic footwear company. In her acceptance speech, she says that many Americans recognize sexual exploitation in countries like the Philippines, Thailand and Ukraine, but not in their own backyards. “When it’s happening two blocks away from this auditorium, when it’s happening in Bedford-Stuyvesant or Hunts Point or Queens Plaza, we look the other way.”
The film provides only a fleeting glimpse at the men who patronize prostitutes, showing a scene from the “Brooklyn John School,” a program in which men arrested for patronizing prostitutes complete an educational course and have their charges dismissed if they stay out of trouble for six months.
Several of the girls in the movie made it out of the sex trade. Mr. Schisgall said that Shaquanna, the girl who had been beaten and hospitalized, recently graduated as the valedictorian of her high school class in New York City.
Other girls had less certain futures. One, Ebony, became a prostitute at 15 and moved to Miami to be with a pimp. Despite Ms. Lloyd’s efforts to save her — including tracking her down during a vacation to Miami — Ebony ultimately returns to the street life, in part because she cannot stand the disapprobation and stares of her neighbors during a brief return to New York.
“I’d rather have him beat me than being over where people are looking at me sideways,” Ebony says, adding, “I have a home in Miami where I can go back to with no problem.”
The shoes of “Nicole,” who was arrested at 14 on prostitution charges. Her lawyer said Nicole’s pimp expected her to have sex with 30 men over four or five days.
A scene from “Very Young Girls,” David Schisgall’s documentary film about child prostitution and sex trafficking in New York City. (Photos: Swinging T Productions)
Dominique ran away from her home in the Bronx at 13, fleeing domestic violence. She quickly fell under the sway of a man who soon had her circling the blocks of Hell’s Kitchen, looking for johns. She explained the pimp’s influence this way: “He used to get into bed with me and used to, like, hold me like I was his kid. … He took care of me.”
“Very Young Girls” is an 83-minute documentary film that opens on Friday at the IFC Center in Greenwich Village. This is the film’s first commercial release; it received critical acclaim at its premiere last September at the Toronto International Film Festival. (See a review by Jeannette Catsoulis of The Times.)
The film offers a vivid and disturbing look at the sexual exploitation and trafficking of teenage girls in New York City. The average age of girls when they enter the sex industry is 13. The girls interviewed in the film — all identified by their real first names, except for one given the pseudonym Nicole — were participants in a New York-based nonprofit advocacy group, Girls Educational and Mentoring Services, which was established in 1998 by Rachel Lloyd, a former prostitute, originally from England, who has dedicated her career to combating human trafficking and sexual exploitation of girls. GEMS now works with about 200 girls a year.
The first part of the film intersperses interviews with the girls with scenes shot by two brothers, Anthony and Chris Griffith, who taped their exploits in the New York area as pimps for what they hoped could become a cable television series. (The brothers were ultimately convicted of trafficking minors across state lines and were sentenced to 10 years in federal prison; the videos were used as evidence.)
Among the girls interviewed are Shaneiqua, a former A student who craved affection and described her first time having sex with her pimp in this way: “I thought that was the best thing that ever happened to me — the best, best.” Soon the man, nearly 20 years her senior, told her, “I would love you a lot more if you brought in more money.” After the first time she had sex for money, she said, “My whole body just felt dead.”
Another girl, Shaquanna, 15, is shown on a hospital bed, ingesting liquid medication that had been injected into a cup of Jell-O for her. She had been found on the side of a road, unconscious; she could not remember who had attacked her. Yet even in her painful condition — bruised, bloodied, her front teeth missing and chipped — she expresses relief. “I was praying for a situation to happen so that I’d be able to go home.”
The filmmaker, David Schisgall, said he had been making films about young people in war zones for MTV’s “True Life” series. “International sex trafficking was on our list of topics,” he said in a phone interview. “In the course of our search we found that there was trafficking going on in the United States that nobody was talking about.”
Mr. Schisgall, 40, who grew up in the Maryland suburbs outside Washington, said the “audience response has been overwhelmingly positive.” He said the film would be broadcast on Showtime in December.
He said he believed that the criminal justice system treated child prostitutes as criminals, rather than as victims. “It struck me as a great scandal,” he said, “and also as a great story.”
The girls make clear why leaving the men who exploit them is not easy. As one girl, Kim, tried to pack her suitcases, she recalled, her pimp “told me the next time I leave, he’s going to put me in a suitcase.”
Another former prostitute, Martha, put it this way: “I am his investment. I am his way of getting money. At the end of the day, if you think about it, a pimp does nothing more but collect the money.”
But the emotional ties are even stronger, in some cases, than the threat of violence and the relationships of economic dependence.
Ms. Lloyd, who was an executive producer for the film, says in the film: “Our primary competition is pimps. They’re spending 110 percent of their time and energy on recruiting, on brainwashing, on making this girl feel loved and special, and pulling her back in every time that she almost leaves. This has been four years of her life, from 12 to 16. He’s 35. He basically raised her.”
Ms. Lloyd is shown winning a human rights award from Reebok, the athletic footwear company. In her acceptance speech, she says that many Americans recognize sexual exploitation in countries like the Philippines, Thailand and Ukraine, but not in their own backyards. “When it’s happening two blocks away from this auditorium, when it’s happening in Bedford-Stuyvesant or Hunts Point or Queens Plaza, we look the other way.”
Dominique says in the film that she ran away from her family at 13 because of domestic violence. She quickly fell under the influence of a pimp.
The film pulls few punches. Though it portrays the girls as victims, it does not hide the consequences of their actions. “Can you sit back and think about that, of what your mother must have felt?” Miranda, Dominique’s mom, asks her, describing her daughter’s actions as “despicable.”
The film provides only a fleeting glimpse at the men who patronize prostitutes, showing a scene from the “Brooklyn John School,” a program in which men arrested for patronizing prostitutes complete an educational course and have their charges dismissed if they stay out of trouble for six months.
Several of the girls in the movie made it out of the sex trade. Mr. Schisgall said that Shaquanna, the girl who had been beaten and hospitalized, recently graduated as the valedictorian of her high school class in New York City.
Other girls had less certain futures. One, Ebony, became a prostitute at 15 and moved to Miami to be with a pimp. Despite Ms. Lloyd’s efforts to save her — including tracking her down during a vacation to Miami — Ebony ultimately returns to the street life, in part because she cannot stand the disapprobation and stares of her neighbors during a brief return to New York.
“I’d rather have him beat me than being over where people are looking at me sideways,” Ebony says, adding, “I have a home in Miami where I can go back to with no problem.”
The shoes of “Nicole,” who was arrested at 14 on prostitution charges. Her lawyer said Nicole’s pimp expected her to have sex with 30 men over four or five days.
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