Lex Talamo

alexa.talamo@shreveporttimes.com

This story is part of Modern Day Slavery: Sex Trafficking in Louisiana. Read the entire series here.

The public will never know their real names.

Take the case of “Julie” — a nine-year-old girl in Caddo Parish who was sexually abused by her father and then prostituted by her mother out of her own home.

Or the case of R.V., a 14-year-old girl who was taken from her home in Florida and trafficked to New Orleans, where she was arrested, at 15 in a 2010 sting operation for prostitution.

Or the most recent cases of a minor who was advertised as a prostitute online by a Baton Rouge couple who pleaded guilty in Jan. 2016 to conspiring to commit sex trafficking of a minor, or the 14-year-old girl trafficked in from Dallas to a Shreveport motel.

There’s an underground movement in Louisiana — creeping along interstates, hiding in darkened hotel rooms and operating out of homes and neighborhoods.

Child sex-trafficking — selling children for money, drugs, food, rent or greed — is a growing epidemic in the state with more than 100 child victims recovered by the FBI and law enforcement in 2015 alone.

How it happens

Alex Person, a Gingerbread House forensic interviewer, said the Shreveport-based nonprofit sees several cases of child sex-trafficking each year.

Children usually are trafficked in one of two ways. They fall in line with a trafficker, who gains their loyalty by offering them protection or a false sense of being loved, or they enter the lifestyle through “homegrown trafficking” — sold by their parents, relatives or caregivers.

“What we see mainly here is that homegrown trafficking,” Person said. “People get to the end of the week and resort to the most awful thing to get money for rent, for drugs, for cars... and they resort to handing their kids over to pay through sexual acts.”

In 2015, the Louisiana Department of Child and Family Services had seven cases of children trafficked by their parents.

An additional 31 cases were reported of children in foster care who were trafficked or deemed at high risk of becoming trafficked. New Orleans, Shreveport and Baton Rouge were the cities with the highest incidences of child sex-trafficking, according to DCFS data.

SURVIVOR STORIES :I was 4 when my dad started trafficking me

Children at highest risk of homegrown trafficking tend to come from poorer areas where prostitution may be rampant or tolerated, according to a National Academies report on the sexual exploitation and trafficking of minors in the United States.

But children from any background can become victims of child trafficking. Take the case of Amber Stevens, a white U.S. teen who came from a loving two-parent family. At 16, Stevens attended a party where she was drugged, kidnapped and forced into sex-trafficking for eight days before being found and rescued by police.

Bridget Lee, who works with the Purchased program for children trafficked or are at risk of being trafficked, said trafficking in Louisiana — especially the Shreveport area — is a bigger problem than most realize.

“There are stings happening monthly where they’re finding 14-year-old girls in hotels being prostituted out, and they’re traveling here. So it’s not just girls from Shreveport, it’s girls who are coming to Shreveport and traveling through Shreveport,” Lee said.

According to data from the Department of Children and Family Services, 102 of 172 sex trafficking victims in Louisiana in 2015 were children. . Eighteen of those victims were under the age of 12.

And according to data from the FBI, 13 of those children were rescued from the Shreveport area. An additional 25,000 children remain at risk of sexual exploitation in the United States every year, according to Polaris Project, a nonprofit working to combat and prevent modern-day slavery and human trafficking.

Louisiana has become a hub for sex trafficking because of the interstates I-20, I-49 and I-10 that give traffickers easy transportation routes, said FBI Supervisory Senior Resident Agent Chris Cantrell.

Cantrell added that sex trafficking of children is common enough in Louisiana as to make the issue among the top five criminal priorities of the FBI’s Child Exploitation Task Force.

“A lot of people think of trafficking as an overseas issue, and it’s not,” Cantrell said. “Trafficking happens every day.”

Children forced into sex-trafficking through violent kidnappings make up a small number of the total child-sex trafficking cases in the United States. Instead, traffickers look for vulnerable children whom they can “groom” into the lifestyle.

At particular risk are children who run away or are homeless.

Within 48 hours of hitting the streets, an average of one of three children are approached about prostitution, according to the National Runaway Switchboard. An estimated one in six runaways will become sex trafficking victims, according to 2014 data from the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children.

A 2015 Loyola University survey of 99 homeless youth at Covenant House in New Orleans found 14 percent met the federal definition of being victims of trafficking, with 11 percent having been sex-trafficked. Jim Kelly, executive director for Covenant House, said more than 80 percent of the youth have histories of sexual or physical abuse and many have been kicked out of their homes and into life on the street.

"Most of our kids are thrown out of homes that no longer want them. They're pushed out, or else they age out of foster care or come out of juvie, in some cases out of jail. They find themselves alone and on the street. They have to survive," Kelly said.

"Maybe it's petty crime, maybe it's dealing drugs, maybe it's having sex with someone to have a roof over your head. Maybe it's dancing in a strip joint. Our kids fight to survive."

Cassie Hammett, executive director of the HUB Urban Ministries and the Purchased program, said selling sex becomes a means of survival for many run-away children, who then become dependent on a trafficker for protection and also a sense of social connection. Other risk factors that make teens vulnerable to becoming exploited include previous sexual or physical abuse, multiple foster care placements or an LGBT orientation.

PREGNANT & TRAFFICKED :Abortions common for victims

“The pimp is very manipulative in the first steps of grooming that child,” Hammett said. “The way they do that is coming alongside them and saying, ‘Hey, you need somewhere to go, let me give you some place that’s safe. Let me take care of you, let me buy you clothes and a new cell phone. What is it you need? Let me be that for you’,” Hammett said.

Hammett added it could be months down the road before a trafficker asks the child to perform sexual acts. By that time, the child has formed a bond with the trafficker and may even have fallen in love with him, Hammett said.

“There’s a lot of mind games at play,” Hammett said. “When it gets to the point of that person asking them to do sexual acts for money, that child depends so heavily on them for things they need ... they’re not going to do anything to mess that up.”

Hammett wanted to clear up some misconceptions about child-sex trafficking. Trafficking does not have to involve travel across state lines and a child cannot make a lawful decision to sell sex, Hammett said.

“For children, the federal definition is quite simple. It’s any time a child under the age of 18 engages in prostitution, they are always a victim of human trafficking,” Hammett said. “The law recognizes that a child can’t consent to those behaviors and that life style.”

What happens after the rescue

Louisiana has some of the strictest criminal penalties in the nation for traffickers, according to Shared Hope International’s Protected Innocence Challenge report card. Those who engage in sexual activity with children can face up to 50 years in federal prison, fines of up to $75,000 and asset forfeiture.

Since 2003 there have been more than 4,800 children rescued and 2,000 traffickers convicted. Fifteen of those cases involved life sentences, according to data from the FBI.

“We’ve prosecuted pimps and we’ve had some life sentences,” Cantrell said. “That’s been huge, to get some justice for all that injustice.”

Undercover stings often net arrests of traffickers and johns and recovery of child victims. Multiple agencies, however, said they run into the problem of where to put those children once they have been recovered.

Cantrell said the FBI relies heavily on partnerships with nongovernmental organizations to help place children recovered.

“The multi-discipline approach is so huge. If it wasn’t for that group, we’d be back to ‘What can we do?’” Cantrell said.

Federal standards for child safe houses are some of the strictest in the nation. One of the major problems juvenile justice agencies and nonprofit organizations face is a lack of emergency housing.

“Law enforcement wants to take kids somewhere that's safe, where they're protected and there's no risk of them leaving, and we just haven't found any place here in Shreveport that's accessible that same night,” said Shobana Powell, a mental health coordinator with Caddo Parish Juvenile Services. “Our biggest challenge has been emergency housing.”

Jaco Booyens, an international filmmaker whose sister was sex trafficked as a teen, said the lack of safe homes in the nation for children is due, in part, to the strict federal standards attached.

“We have under 400 beds in the nation for youth," Booyens said. "It’s very hard to open a safe house for minors. In some states it’s more difficult to open a safe house for minors than it is to open a hospital.”

The Free Indeed Home in New Orleans, founded by Beth and Rafael Salcedo, is the only safe houses specifically for children in the state. Beth Salcedo said it took about two years to meet the federal standards and obtain a license. Salcedo said the home has helped 35 young women since its opening in March of 2015, including three young women from the Shreveport area who were referred by the probation department. The home can house up to 10 young women, but Salcedo said the home receives no federal funding and has been struggling to stay open.

"The problem is we don't have any funding. We have to stay open, and that is tenuous at this point," Salcedo said. "I'm spending so much time keeping these girls in tow. My first job is to keep these girls well. I don't have the money to hire fund raisers or grant writers. I need funding to be able to sustain these girls."

In addition, many children who have been trafficked aren't able to be placed in traditional foster care homes due to the complexity of trauma they've experienced, according to a July 2015 report from the Children's Bureau. Powell said the Jewell House, a Shreveport-based group home, has stepped up and offered temporary shelter for girls who have been trafficked. But the group home is not a secured facility and that can be a problem for children who have been living life on the run.

Shelley Anderson, a Bossier Marshall’s office chief deputy, said one of the biggest challenges facing law enforcement is not only the recovery of a child but also the fact many teens who have been trafficked are “hostile witnesses.” They may have formed a bond with their trafficker and will lie about their situation out of loyalty or from deep-rooted mistrust of law enforcement.

In April of 2016, the Bossier City Marshal had a case of a 14-year-old Louisiana teen who ran away to Texas with a trafficker. The teen’s record indicated she had been apprehended multiple times in multiple states,

“They don’t see law enforcement as helpful, and that’s when you bring in Cassie (with Purchased) or the Gingerbread House,” Anderson said. “But how do you place a juvenile in an unsecure facility and have them be safe and not run? How do you convince her she’s a 14-year-old kid when she’s been doing this for two to three years?”

Beth Salcedo helped found the only safe home for children in Louisiana — the Free Indeed Home in the New Orleans area. Salcedo said a very real challenge is working with the teenagers, who have been referred from Lafayette, Livingston, Baton Rouge, St. Tammany and Shreveport as well as the New Orleans area.

“Girls are stand-offish at first. They never self-disclose at the very beginning,” Salcedo said. “They’re in love with their pimps. Generally, they won’t self-disclose. My idea of success is the girls would go on to have a good life. That rarely happens. Many have returned to the streets.”

But the home has seen success. Teens come to Free Indeed Home with a host of diagnoses: post traumatic stress disorder, bipolar disorder, depression, oppositional defiant disorder, conduct disorder. With the services the home provides, including individual trauma therapy two to three times a week as well as life skills coaching and counseling, Salcedo said several girls have been able to start healing journeys.

“A lot of these girls have never had boundaries. We give them boundaries in the home,” Salcedo said. “They start off very rough at first and then they start trusting us.”

The FBI tracks children who go missing and uploads their photos into the national database for the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children but Cantrell said social services providers are primarily in charge of tracking children following recoveries.

"We don't have a built in mechanism to do that," Cantrell said.

Cantrell said the FBI does have the capacity to track which children become arrested or recovered again, in order to target which children might need additional services. But Anderson said the situation won’t change until the state makes stiffer penalties on Johns and the traffickers. Meanwhile Anderson said law enforcement’s response to placing child recoveries often involves difficult decisions including placing those children in detention centers.

“The people I work with, if they have to make an arrest to keep a person safe, they will make that decision. They have the children’s best interest at heart. ” Anderson said.

She added: “It might not be what the general public likes but they don’t take her out of high heels and a thong and put her in gym clothes. They don’t see the emotional breakdown. At the end of the day, we all took an oath to protect and serve. We don’t always get happy endings… but that day, we saved a life.”

Kelly know well that teenagers, especially ones who have become involved with sex trafficking, are not always the easiest population to manage. But he encouraged people to remember that they are still children, who have often grown up in abusive, violent and traumatic situations.

"Too often, we're quick to judge," Kelly said. "What I know about young people who have been involved in human trafficking or the sex industry is that every one of them have a story. Every one of them is good. Every one of them is trying. When you understand where they've come from and what they’ve been through, it’s not for us to judge. Its for us to say, 'What can we do to help?'”

Warning Signs of Child Trafficking

►Signs of physical abuse such as burn marks, bruises or cuts

► Unexplained absences from class

► Less appropriately dressed than before

► Sexualized behavior

► Overly tired in class

► Withdrawn, depressed, or distracted

► Brags about making or having lots of money

► Displays expensive clothes, accessories or shoes

► New tattoo (tattoos are often used by pimps as a way to brand victims. Tattoos of a name, symbol of money or barcode could indicate trafficking)

► Older boyfriend or new friends with a different lifestyle

► Talks about wild parties or invites other students to attend parties

► Shows signs of gang affiliation (a preference for specific colors, display gang symbols)

Source: Shared Hope International

YOUTH HOTLINES:

Covenant House Youth Hotline: 504-584-1111

Purchased Juvenile Hotline: 318-459-8549

To Get Involved (donations, volunteering, further information):

Covenant House: 903-575-0070 or www.covenanthouse.org

The HUB Urban Ministries/Purchased: 318-606-2518 or purchasedshreveport.com.

The Gingerbread House: 318-674-2900 or http://gingerbreadhousecac.org



