Doug Schneider

USA TODAY NETWORK-Wisconsin

Experts%3A Human trafficking often linked with drug dealing%2C sexual assault and robberies

Worldwide%2C human trafficking generates %2432 billion a year%2C according to a United Nations agency

To Sister Celine Goessl, the news was tragic but not surprising.

Police who staged a raid at a Fox Valley motel in April found a 17-year-old Green Bay girl and a 14-year-old Appleton girl being sold to men for sex. The 14-year-old, who police said had seen 18 men before the arrest, would tell police that she needed money to repay a suspected pimp who had threatened her.

Prosecutors said the teens were the victims of human trafficking — a form of slavery in which force, fraud or coercion is employed to make another person provide labor, usually a sex act. Prosecutors charged the three Green Bay adults who accompanied the girls with prostitution, child trafficking, soliciting a child for prostitution and child enticement.

For Sister Goessl, it's a story she hears all too often.

"It seems like this is happening in almost every single county in Wisconsin," she said.

The Wisconsin Office of Justice Assistance has documented trafficking cases in more than half of Wisconsin's 72 counties, both urban and rural, amid more than 200 cases overall. Three-fourths involved sex trafficking. About one-sixth of the victims were minors.

But as trafficking has spread, it has become harder to find and more difficult to stop. Experts say pimps and prostitutes use the Internet to arrange meetings with "johns" by posting ads on backpage.com and other websites.

"What we don't see is the old stereotypical image of the street-walker," said Lyn Beyer, executive director of Reach Counseling Services Inc., which provides sexual-assault prevention and counseling services in the Fox Valley. "Nowadays, everything is done (online) or through cellphones, so most of this happens in hotel rooms. So that's part of the reason why the community doesn't get a sense that it's happening here."

Beyer said human traffickers often move up from Chicago, stopping at Wisconsin cities along Interstate 41 before heading west.

Green Bay, with its location along interstates, attractiveness to tourists and its ability to attract thousands of cash-laden weekend visitors for football games and concerts, can present a level of demand that appeals greatly to traffickers, said Brown County Sheriff's Lt. Jim Valley, who frequently investigates sex crimes against minors.

Beyond Brown County

Green Bay police made eight prostitution arrests during a sting operation in spring last year, then busted a total of 22 hookers and customers during a crackdown in the fall. Ashwaubenon public safety officers have made arrests, targeting both prostitutes and the people who pay them.

"We also try to get to the people who traffic them," said Capt. Jody Crocker. "But that's difficult because they may fear violence, or they may view that person as their lifeline."

But the problem is not limited to Brown County.

• In Oshkosh, authorities made 31 arrests linked to prostitution and human trafficking in 2013. A year later, they reported making 50.

• In Shawano County, three women were charged with prostitution last September after they offered sex for money.

• In Sheboygan, a 29-year-old man agreed in May to plead no contest to one count of human trafficking and another of trafficking of a child. Prosecutors say the man brought teenage girls to Sheboygan and arranged for them to have sex with men at various locations, ordering the girls to give him the money they collected.

• In Wausau, a 40-year-old man was convicted last year of trafficking a 22-year-old woman who was grabbed off a Milwaukee street in 2010. A judge sentenced the man to 17 years in prison after testimony showed that he forced the women to have sex with different men in motels over a nine-day span before her escape.

• Statewide, 10 Wisconsin children were rescued from trafficking and 100 suspects were arrested over one weekend in 2013 during a nationwide FBI investigation.

Police elsewhere tell similar stories — and say they could do more if they had more resources.

"If this office needs to do a drug case, we have multiple officers we can assign and we can get help from (neighboring) departments," said Brown County Sheriff's Lt. Jim Valley, who frequently investigates sex crimes involving underage victims. "For human-trafficking cases, we maybe have one."

Worldwide, human trafficking generates $32 billion a year, according to a United Nations agency called the International Labour Organization.

'Not for sale'

The message from the Green Bay Police Department was simple, following last year's sting that netted eight arrests.

"These operations are important because of the inherent health and public safety concerns caused by this behavior," the department wrote on Nixle, the public-messaging service it uses.

"The illicit sex trade historically has connections to human trafficking, drug dealing, sexual assault and robberies. The victims are not only those involved in all aspects of this lifestyle, but their families and the community."

Organizations large and small are heeding the call to help stamp out human trafficking in Wisconsin.

Last year, the state Legislature passed a law that strengthened penalties against traffickers. Earlier this year, an estimated 650 people attended an anti-trafficking conference, in Milwaukee, called "Not for Sale."

"That person you thought was just a runaway or a delinquent," said U.S. Attorney Julie Pfluger, who prosecutes federal child exploitations in Wisconsin. "That person might be a victim of trafficking."

On a smaller scale, forums and workshops have been held in the past few years at various locations around the state, including an event earlier this year at the University of Wisconsin-Green Bay. Some of the women who attended the UWGB event then met in May, inside Heartland Church near the Howard-Suamico line, to discuss ways that they might assist the survivors of human trafficking.

The group plans further meetings this summer.

— dschneid@greenbaypressgazette.com and follow him on Twitter @PGDougSchneider

— Contributing: Noelle Dickmann, the Oshkosh Northwestern; Shereen Siewert, Gannett Wisconsin Media