KANSAS CITY (AP) — Defense attorneys are lashing out at federal prosecutors over court documents in a bizarre Missouri sex-slave torture case that include allegations one of the defendants tried to hire a hit man to kill the lead prosecutor and another bragged about torturing and killing two people over a drug debt.
Fri, Mar. 04, 2011 Posted: 12:17 PM EDT
The Evangelical Free Church of America, in partnership with national believers in India, plans to open a women’s center next week to provide a physical and spiritual haven for victims of human trafficking.
The launch date for Mutki Women’s Center in India is set for March 15.
Sharon (last name withheld for security reasons), a leader for the project said, “Still several things need to come together but March 15th is definitely the tentative plan.”
The center is being established to address both the needs of girls who are at high risk of being trafficked and to provide aftercare for girls and women who have been rescued from being trafficked and struggle to return to life within their community.
Numerous impoverished villages in India are considered “source villages” for human trafficking. Hundreds of girls are trafficked out of these villages every year to larger cities through the deception of a trafficker promising marriage or good job. Once they arrive to their destination city they are sold into brothels where they are broken through beatings and rape.
The few who are rescued from this modern day slavery return to their village without any means to support themselves, with very complex emotional, physical and spiritual needs, and are at greater risk to return to sexual slavery.
Human trafficking is a global problem with over 27 million documented slaves (“Free the Slaves,” Kevin Bales). Though men, women, boys and girls are all bought and traded within this epidemic of modern day slavery, women and girls are at the highest risk.
Sharon made the comparison that “more people are enslaved in the world today than the total number of slaves throughout the time period when slave trafficking was legal.”
ReachGlobal, the mission’s arm of EFCA adds, “The total market value of illicit human trafficking is estimated to be over $32 billion – more than Nike, Starbucks and Google combined!”
Human trafficking is officially defined as: “The recruitment, transportation, harboring, or receipt of persons, by means of threat or use of force or other forms of coercion, of abduction, of fraud, of deception, of the abuse of power of a position of vulnerability or of giving or receiving payments or benefits to achieve the consent of a person having control over another person, for the purpose of exploitation.”
This legal definition is important in the prosecution and conviction of human traffickers.
Sharon added, “Trafficking does NOT have to involve being moved from one location to another. If a person is forced, coerced, abducted, deceived into a situation of enslavement, even if it is in the same town, it is considered trafficking. And if the person is a minor, there does not need to be proof that there was coercion of force.”
Though the problem is global, including the United States, the highest numbers of those trafficked are in Asia. South Asia is home to the world’s largest population of slaves today. This slavery includes forced work in brick kilns and factories as well as sexual exploitation. Asia also has the highest numbers forced into sex trafficking. An estimated 500,000 minor girls are in forced prostitution in India, and in the Philippines up to 100,000 children are victims, Sharon said.
She added, “Kolkata has one brothel area with 10,000 women and Mumbai has the two largest brothel areas in the world – each with 50,000 women. Most of these women were trafficked into sex exploitation as minors.”
Sex tourism is a primary culprit in the sex trade and has increased in the past decade. Men from the West and other Asia countries travel to Southeast Asia to purchase sex cheaply, including sex with minors.
The growing global population living below poverty levels combines with the increasing numbers of consumers with excess resources for pleasure seeking to fuel the human trafficking industry. Internet pornography and internet sex marketing makes cheap sex readily available.
The Mutki Women’s Center will address the social, spiritual, physical and emotional needs of these victims by providing a nurturing environment for life training and occupational skills. The goal is to share the life changing Good News of Jesus Christ with women while also giving them practical help for to return to live within their communities and reduce their risk to be victims of the human trafficker.
“Trafficking is an attack of evil on the glory of God in His creation,” said Sharon. “Trafficking devalues human beings and destroys lives intended for God’s glory.”
A young woman, called Deepa, escaped from a brothel in Kolkata where she was enslaved for three and a half years. She is back with her family and has pleaded with the Mukti team to help her find work. It is the hope of the team that income generating projects can be provided for Deepa and women like her.
There are four basic battle fronts in combating human trafficking; prevention, rescue, restoration and prosecution of human traffickers. The EFCA works alongside and in partnership with several Christian organizations along these battle fronts.
The International Justice Mission is the largest global Christian organization engaged in rescue of minors along with prosecution of the perpetrators. Prosecution requires the highest levels of expertise from lawyers and those involved in criminal investigation. Freedom Firm of India also works to prosecute traffickers and works closely with local law enforcement and judicial systems.
Freedom Firm of India also works to rescue those enslaved. In the past, social workers have had to travel up to 30 hours by train to provide aftercare for these victims. EFCA’s TouchGlobal Justice Initiative partnership with Freedom Firm of India seeks to train local Indian believers to assist within their own villages in the follow-up of rescued girls.
EFCA’s TouchGlobal Justice Initiative is initially targeting India, coming alongside national believers in the establishment of the Mutki Women’s Center. Staff are already at work in anti-trafficking efforts on other continents working with national believers in this battle against modern slavery.
Elaine Baldwin
Christian Post Contributor
(Source: christianpost.com)
Every year Building Bridges brings a conference to campus addressing a social justice issue. This year’s topic is “Slavery Past and Present.” Building Bridges Co-Chairs Elizabeth Coco, junior English, gender, women and sexuality studies and religion major and Shanda Kirkeide, senior health fitness major described more about the conference.
Monday, March 7
8pm - 10pm
Atlanta Teen Sex Trafficking
Atlanta ranks as one of the highest in the nation when it comes to sex trafficking of teenagers, predominately girls under 15. On any given weekend in Atlanta more than 120 girls are “raped for profit,” meaning they are picked up by a pimp and forced into sex.
Illegal brothel operator, ‘Jenny’ Yan. Photo: Mal Fairclough
CHINESE organised crime syndicates are running multimillion-dollar prostitution rackets across Melbourne by bribing officials and exploiting abysmal regulation. The syndicates are linked to human trafficking and arrange for dozens of Asian women to travel from interstate and overseas - often on student visas - to work in brothels.
In several instances, figures linked to the illegal prostitution syndicates - including Mulgrave woman Xue Di Yan - are also licensed by the Victorian government to run legal brothels.
The bribery involves a senior City of Yarra enforcement officer responsible for shutting down illegal brothels who had been receiving regular bribes from two brothel operators since 2005.
Advertisement: Story continues belowBut the council official, who is expected to face corruption charges and resigned late last year, is only one factor contributing to the boom in illegal brothels. There are an estimated 300 to 400 illegal brothels in Victoria, which is around four times the number of the state’s legal ones.
Victoria’s illegal sex industry has enjoyed a decade of unparalleled growth due to a systemic failure by police, Consumer Affairs, the Immigration Department and local councils, which are variously hamstrung due to inadequate powers, legal loopholes and under-resourcing.
A recent six-month police operation run by a small team of detectives from Richmond has highlighted the reach and resilience of the illegal industry.
The police operation culminated in November with the City of Yarra official’s arrest, raids on up to a dozen illegal brothels and the discovery of two Chinese women on student visas and two Chinese women with no visas. Of those women, authorities say two were “living in a residence being used for massage services”.
But the police inquiry was limited to Melbourne’s inner north and the crime syndicates it targeted are still operating, making thousands of untaxed dollars every week by selling sexual services in “massage” or “relaxation” premises. Some syndicate figures have even set up new illegal brothels.
At least one of these syndicates is, according to a government source, “suspected of human trafficking” from Asia and interstate.
The Saturday Age investigation can also reveal how Melbourne’s prostitution racket organisers are thumbing their noses at the often piecemeal efforts to combat them by state and federal authorities.
Ms Yan, one of the central targets of the Richmond police operation, has run a multimillion-dollar prostitution racket in Melbourne for over a decade despite efforts by authorities to disrupt her.
In 1999, the now disbanded Victoria Police vice squad told a court that Ms Yan was running several illegal brothels, including one in Nicholson Street, North Fitzroy.
Ms Yan or her associates were simultaneously managing a licensed brothel, the Oriental Plums, in Thomastown. A year later, after police raided Oriental Plums, immigration authorities found at least one Chinese woman working there illegally.
In late 2010 Richmond detectives found Ms Yan’s syndicate was still running the Nicholson Street premises as an illegal brothel. It also retains its state government licence to run Oriental Plums, which is registered in the name of one of Ms Yan’s relatives.
Over the past three years, the Department of Immigration and Citizenship has discovered on at least two occasions several Asian women without proper visas working in brothels - legal and illegal - linked to Ms Yan.
The Yan syndicate is also linked to one of the men caught bribing the City of Yarra official.
Chinese-Australian Anton Lu, who runs an illegal brothel in Swan Street, Richmond, is understood to have bribed the City of Yarra official in return for tipoffs about raids. Mr Lu has also studied to become a licensed migration agent.
Another Chinese-Australian citizen who runs a rival prostitution racket comprising up to four illegal brothels, Tony Tang, was also bribing the official.
The illegal brothels run by Anton Lu, Tony Tang and Xue Di Yan make millions of dollars for organised crime syndicates every year and freely advertise as Asian massage providers in newspapers.
Ms Yan owns or has recently sold multimillion-dollar properties in Richmond, Fitzroy North and Mulgrave. Her Fitzroy North and Richmond premises housed illegal brothels until late last year.
The policing and regulation of the illegal and legal sex industry is handled by a multitude of agencies, including the Consumer Affairs and Justice departments, the police and local councils.
Police and council sources said that aside from some infrequent joint investigations, most agencies do not work together or share information. The sources said most agencies lacked the power and resourcing to be effective, a view backed by the Coalition when in opposition.
March 5, 2011
While the Baillieu government has signalled it wants to overhaul the way the state combats the sex industry, and has acknowledged the current system is a failure, it is yet to outline in detail any proposed changes, aside from giving police a greater role.
But policing experts, including Monash University associate professor Colleen Lewis, have said that any such move should be subject to strict oversight to avoid corruption.
Integrity concerns led to the police vice squad being disbanded in the late 1990s, a move which industry watchers believe has contributed to the boom in illegal brothels.
But putting police in charge would also contradict the recommendations of a year-long inquiry into sex trafficking in Victoria, released last June, which said the Attorney-General should have responsibility for brothel regulation.
(Source: theage.com.au)
went to Carr Center’s study group on the intersectionality between human trafficking and pornography. A new field of study only beginning to be accepted in the academia as a legitimate subject. Gail Dines, a professor at Wheelock College and a leading expert on the oppressive nature of pornography, talked about the normalization of pornographic contents in the media and subsequent radicalization of exposure, the pedagogical significance of image production, the recent trend of the “choice” debate, and how to prepare for a career like hers. Such a fearless woman. There was also a douchebag in the group who insisted that without empirical evidences, nothing is valid. Regardless, some of her points/observations:
Dines argues that porn is founded upon dehumanization and debasement of women. It’s about power and it’s about control. The proliferation of pornographic images in mass media shapes how men view themselves and certain women: the society normalizes porn as a male necessity and dehumanizes women in the films in order to displace guilt from the viewer who may be repulsed by his choice of arousal in other context. A question Dines kept asking: if eleven-year-old boys grow up watching the cover of Sports Illustrated, only to transition to the natural step of porn, what are they going to do 10 years down the line?
According to Dines, the average duration of the career of trafficked women as porn actresses is 3 months. The recent trend in having three male to one female where the men would simultaneously force—vaginal, anal, and oral sex—on her would lead to physical dysfunctions/conditions where women would no longer be able to continue. In fact, recent studies show that these women are growing fecal matter in their throat as a result of an increased demand for violent deep throat porn.
She talked about how difficult it was for her to raise a son in an environment such as ours today. She apparently told her son that his sexuality is a beautiful and powerful thing that the porn/media market wanted to take over and warned him to make a conscious choice about giving his sexuality away before exploring and cultivating on his own. What a beautiful thing to say.
Still trying to process everything…
(Source: siminator)
LY THIA’s Story: Join Project Futures to put an end to sex trafficking.
Thursday, March 3 2011, 12:37 PM EST
