Libertad Latina News Index - English - 2001

LibertadLatina

Analysis of the political actions and policies of Mexico's National Action Party (PAN) in regard to their detrimental impact on women's basic human rights

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Added: May. 23, 2010

Guatemala, The United States

Esperanza Arreaga, age 62, lost two small daughters and 14 other family members when they were murdered by Guatemalan soldiers in the massacre of Las Dos Erres.

In this picture, Arreaga looks at the remains of massacre victims uncovered by forensic archeologists.

Photo: Larry Kaplow - GlobalPost

Ramiro Cristales, then age 5, witnessed Guatemalan special forces soldiers murder his family and rape and murder the 10 and 12-year-old girls from his village of Las Dos Erres, in 1982.

From a video statement by Ramiro Cristales, and a collage of photos, by GlobalPost.

Ramiro Cristales, after he was abducted by soldiers who murdered his family

U.S. rounds up Guatemalans accused of war crimes

Washington - U.S. federal agents are today closing in on four former Guatemalan soldiers accused of taking part in a 1982 massacre, which one law enforcement official called "the most shocking modern-day war crime American authorities have ever investigated."

One former soldier alleged to have taken part in the massacre of 251 villagers in the rural Guatemalan hamlet of Las Dos Erres is already in custody in Texas. Another former soldier in Florida and two more in California are under active investigation.

Law enforcement officials close to the case acknowledged the four men are part of a probe by the Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency into immigration violations aimed at rounding up suspects named in a recently revived, landmark human rights case in Guatemala. If found in violation of U.S. immigration laws, the men would likely face deportation to Guatemala and a possible prosecution there for war crimes.

For years these men, who are all accused of serving in a notoriously brutal Guatemalan military unit, have lived in America, blending in to communities in Florida, California and Texas. One is a popular karate teacher. One is a cook. The man in custody is a day laborer who had allegedly abducted and then adopted a boy who was orphaned in the slaughter 28 years ago.

That boy, Ramiro Cristales, who was 5 years old at the time, is now a key witness in the case in Guatemala against the former soldiers and against the man who raised him.

In an exclusive interview with GlobalPost, Cristales, one of only two known survivors of the massacre, saw his entire family murdered. He said he was frustrated it has taken so long for the men to be brought to justice. But he said he hoped U.S. and Guatemalan officials might work together to make that happen.

"They have to do something... The only thing I ask is justice," said Cristales, who is now hiding in an undisclosed location. One former soldier alleged to have taken part in the massacre of 251 villagers in the rural Guatemalan hamlet of Las Dos Erres is already in custody in Texas. Another former soldier in Florida and two more in California are under active investigation.

That boy, Ramiro Cristales, who was 5 years old at the time, is now a key witness in the case in Guatemala against the former soldiers and against the man who raised him.

"They have to do something... The only thing I ask is justice," said Cristales, who is now hiding in an undisclosed location.

The massacre in Las Dos Erres, where a total of 251 men, women and children were killed, is widely considered one of the darkest chapters of Guatemala's 36-year civil war that claimed some 200,000 lives, and in which the U.S. military played a shadowy role.

One month after allegedly raping young girls and women during the massacre, one of the men under investigation, Pedro Pimentel Rios, began work as an instructor at the School of the Americas, the Pentagon-run training school for Latin American militaries, then located in Panama...

Because the alleged crimes occurred before the passage of war crimes laws in the United States, prosecutors are not legally permitted to charge the men under any of those laws. This limitation in U.S. law has long frustrated federal prosecutors, who have only... been able to denaturalize and deport even suspected Nazi war criminals living in the United States.

U.S. officials began their investigation after the Inter-American Court on Human Rights decided last year that Guatemala's 1996 amnesty agreement does not apply to serious human rights violations, including the massacre at Las Dos Erres. Officials at Immigration and Customs Enforcement and the Department of Justice who monitor cases involving foreign-born human rights abusers decided to see if any of the accused killers were living in the United States...

U.S. involvement

Human rights groups have long criticized the involvement of the American government and military in Guatemala. The Las Dos Erres case reveals several connections between the two countries.

The U.S. government knew the Guatemalan army was probably responsible for the massacre at Las Dos Erres, yet the School of the Americas began to welcome new instructors and students from the army only days after the killings...

In the 1970s, President Jimmy Carter had introduced a ban on cooperating with the Guatemalan military. But President Ronald Reagan lifted the ban and the School of the Americas began admitting Guatemalan soldiers, including Rios, one of the alleged perpetrators of the massacre...

Just as the massacres were intensifying, Reagan re-established military and political cooperation with the Guatemalan government. Reagan saw [Guatemalan president Efrain] Rios Montt as a useful ally against leftist guerrillas and maintained friendly relations in the face of evidence that Rios Montt's government was responsible for increasing numbers of civilian massacres. (In July 1982, Amnesty International published a report listing more than 50 massacres of non-combatant civilians by the military.)

On Dec. 4, 1982, when the massacres in the Guatemalan countryside were fully under way, Reagan met with Rios Montt. Reagan publicly described Rios Montt as "a man of great personal integrity…[who] wants to improve the quality of life for all Guatemalans and to promote social justice." Reagan said that Rios Montt had received a "bum rap" from human rights groups.

It was an inauspicious day to make such a show of support. On the same day Reagan spoke, the 17 members of the Kaibiles [special forced] squad arrived at a military base near Las Dos Erres. On Dec. 7, the massacre started. Over the following two days, the men are alleged to have killed 251 residents of Las Dos Erres. "Everything that moved had to be killed," one of the soldiers later wrote in a sworn statement.

Last month archaeologists began exhuming the mass grave and DNA testing is now underway to confirm the identities of those killed.

"I lost everything"

The Kaibiles (counter-insurgency rangers) tortured the men first. They then began throwing children alive into the village well. Women were shot or beaten to death with a sledgehammer and then thrown in. Men were then shot and dumped on top. One of the Kaibiles abducted a 5-year-old boy [Ramiro Cristales]. Another boy escaped. They may be the only surviving witnesses...

Matt McAllester

Minnpost.com

May 06, 2010

LibertadLatina Commentary

Chuck Goolsby

Genocide, Femicide and Human Trafficking in Guatemala All Grew From the Same Roots

The mass murders (genocide) of the Mayan majority population during the 1980s took place through the complicity of the U.S. Government, especially during the administration of President Ronald Reagan. Some 200,000 innocent civilians were murdered by government military forces. While the International Court in the Hague, and other international human rights courts have aggressively prosecuted perpetrators, or at least charged suspects in cases of genocidal mass murders in Bosnia, Sudan and other regions, the largest act of ethnic cleansing and genocide in the modern history of the the Americas, the Guatemalan Civil War, has, until recently, been off limits to effective prosecution. We thank the Inter-American Court of Human Rights for laying the groundwork for renewed prosecutions in important cases such as that of Las Dos Erres massacre. Many other cases have yet to be investigated.

In all, some 440 Mayan villages, located mostly in Guatemala's northwest highland region, were completely destroyed by Guatemalan soldiers who were supported with military training and equipment by the United States, Argentina and Israel.

The mass murderers in Guatemala thought that they would have a lifetime of protection in regard to their crimes, because past conservative U.S. presidential administrations lead them to believe that they had U.S. support. Thanks to the changing political and legal landscape in the Americas, serious prosecutions of these criminals may finally take place.

In the mid 1980s myself and many other activists in Washington, DC and across the Americas worked hard to publish and broadcast news on the ongoing massacres. We also protested in front of Congress and organized to the lives of Guatemalans from the murderous hands of these cruel perpetrators.

Today in 2010, Guatemala has highest rate of femicide murders in all of the Americas. Several thousand women have been murdered during the past several years. These crimes, Guatemala's inability to investigate the rape / torture killings of so many women and girls, and that nation's serious problems with the sex trafficking of women and girls are all a direct outgrowth of the impunity that the world community ALLOWED to exist in Guatemala during the 1970s, 80s and 90s.

During the early 2000's, I joined the anti human trafficking listserv of Dr. Donna Hughes, Professor and Eleanor M. and Oscar M. Carlson Endowed Chair of the Women's Studies Program at the University of Rhode Island. Dr. Hughes was one of the original pioneers of the modern U.S. movement against human trafficking. Her listserv, which as made up of many notable names in the anti-slavery movement across the globe that many would recognize, totaled about 400 members. Simultaneous to her work with this listserv, Dr. Hughes was also writing for the conservative National Review Online.

The majority of U.S. listserv participants were conservatives. I educated that community of professionals and activists about the dynamics of the Latin American crisis in human trafficking at a time when few were aware of the issues. As part of that work, I discussed the mass murder of innocent Mayan indigenous peoples (among others) during the Guatemalan Civil War. I also discussed Nobel Peace Prize Laureate Dr. Rigoberta Menchu, who fled into the jungle to avoid becoming a victim of government massacre. Conservative members of the listserv became so infuriated with my simple and truthful educational postings, that several of them quit the listserv. Dr. Hughes told me by phone, almost apologetically, that she had to ban me from the listserv to prevent her conservative following from leaving. In an earlier conversation she had rationalized the human rights abuses in Guatemala by stating that some victims supported communist insurgency. What Mayans actually supported was building a future for themselves that was free from the 500 years of peonage (slavery) that Spanish descendants had subjected them to.

U.S. Conservatives had long supported the efforts of former President Ronald Reagan to back often brutal right wing dictators in Latin America. Any mention of the mass murders of Guatemalan innocents, including women and girls, was considered to be an abomination. In the late 1995, for example, former Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich denounced then-Democratic Representative Robert G. Torricelli, who was also of the House Intelligence Committee, for having publicly exposed information, and who had called for hearing in regard to the human rights atrocities in Guatemala. In the same time period, Speaker Gingrich demanded that the Public Broadcasting Service (PBS) not air a documentary on the massacres of Mayan peoples in Guatemala, and only relented after 'alternative views' were added to the program. Alternative views?

This truthful account of one part of the history of the Guatemalan Genocide sheds light on other aspects of the modern U.S. response to the human trafficking crisis in Latin America.

The U.S. based anti-trafficking movement is a unique social space where conservatives, liberals and others (and I am 'other') may join in common purpose. Unfortunately, politics has often been played with the issue of Latin American human trafficking. Conservatives such as Donna Hughes and her followers shunned any discussion of the important gender related human rights issues that are closely associated with the modern human slavery issue in Latin America. The U.S. State Department's Trafficking in Persons (TIP) office rarely, if ever mentioned Latin America's trafficking issues during the administration of President George W. Bush. U.S. neglect of the problem during the administration of President George W. Bush allowed billion dollar cartels and other criminal elements free reign to grow their $16 billion per year Latin American human slavery businesses (IOM figure) without U.S. opposition.

On the other end of the political spectrum, some liberals, including, perhaps, influential members of the administration of President Barack Obama, also politicize human trafficking from a leftist perspective. It does not add to Obama administration strategy to have any highly visible discussion of human trafficking and the mass rape and enslavement of women and girls in Mexico and Central America, when such visibility would raise doubt in Congress, and among the public, as to the value of funding the war on drug traffickers, when Mexico's soldiers are the culprits in many rapes and murders of indigenous women, which is closely related to their internal deployment across Mexico. Those who favor legalization of prostitution also have a strong influence in the Obama Administration, leading to a diminished focus on sex trafficking, as opposed to labor trafficking.

By justifying the genocide of Mayan indigenous peoples during the Guatemalan Civil War (a view that is consistent with excusing the mass murder of U.S. indigenous peoples), U.S. conservatives, together with their allies in Guatemala, set-up the circumstances that lead not only to the anti-Mayan genocide, but also to the largest crisis of ongoing murders of women in the Americas, the current Guatemalan femicide. A similar conservative-lead environment of social and governmental tolerance for mass gender atrocities existing in neighboring Mexico. We assert that the lack of willingness of the U.S. government and NGOs to fully engage the issue of human trafficking in Latin America (where half of the world's estimated $32 billion of human trafficking apparently takes place) during the George W. Bush administration and beyond, has its roots in conservative unwillingness to acknowledge their past complicity in support for ruthless dictators such as Guatemalan president Efrain Rios Montt.

To be clear, U.S. conservatives cannot declare their opposition to modern day human trafficking and slavery on the one hand, and on the other, declare that the genocide in Guatemala, or Mexico's current repression of women's rights (and until recently, inaction on human trafficking) by a conservative federal government, are justifiable expressions of conservatism.

You just can't have it both ways.

The left, which has often indifferent to the issue of human trafficking, bears a similar responsibility for condoning inaction... because human trafficking, is, for some, a round peg that will not fit into the square holes of their personal ideologies.

Shame on those who politicize human trafficking, be they from the right or the left!

The victims, and those at-risk, await our effective and hurried efforts to protect and rescue them.

Public servants, put the politics aside, and get to work! There is no time to waste.

End impunity now!

Chuck Goolsby

LibertadLatina

May 23, 2010

See also:

Added: May. 23, 2010

Guatemala

An indigenous woman walks by a street poster of Guatamala's most brutal president, Efrain Rios Montt.

In the words of a poem by Pablo Neruda: 'For the one who gave the order of agony, I ask for punishment.'

Guatemala: Massacre investigation breakthrough

Recently declassified documents from US archives have shed further light on the extent of US complicity in Guatemalan human rights crimes, one of Latin America’s most brutal examples of population control.

The hard-working farmers of Dos Erres, in Peten department, had never asked for much — just a few acres of recently-cleared land from which to scratch a meager living in a country racked by violence.

When armed guerrillas cut across their land six months prior to December 7, 1982, community leaders had done everything possible to placate the national army, even inviting the soldiers in for inspections.

They had nothing to hide, they said. But a psychopathic military killing machine had already condemned them to death on the grounds that they were the soil in which the seed of resistance grows.

Acting on orders issued by the US-backed regional command, a death squad of army Kaibiles (counterinsurgency rangers) entered the peaceful hamlet early that morning, smashing in doors, killing livestock, starting fires and rounding up groups of men, women and children.

Hours of rape and torture ensued, followed by execution in small groups. After being shot, stabbed or bludgeoned to death with a sledgehammer, the victims were hurled into a village well or left in nearby fields.

By nightfall, more than 250 were dead - almost the entire population. There were two child survivors - one who escaped and one, Ramiro Cristales, who was spared by his parents’ murderer only to be subsequently raised as a domestic slave (reputedly an army custom). Cristales, now aged in his 30s, has recently come forward at considerable risk to his own life as an eyewitness to the horror at Dos Erres.

His testimony to the Guatemalan truth commission has been corroborated by previously classified material obtained by the National Security Archive’s Guatemala Documentation Project under the US Freedom of Information Act...

David T. Rowlands

Green Left (Australia)

May 22, 2010

Washington, D.C. - Following this week's arrest of a former Guatemalan special forces soldier, the National Security Archive is posting a set of declassified documents on one of Guatemala's most shocking and unresolved human rights crimes, the Dos Erres massacre.

On May 5, 2010, agents from U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) arrested Gilberto Jordan, 54, in Palm Beach County, Florida, based on a criminal complaint charging Jordan with lying to U.S. authorities about his service in the Guatemalan Army and his role in the 1982 Dos Erres massacre. The complaint alleges that Jordan, a naturalized American citizen, was part of the special counterinsurgency Kaibiles unit that carried out the massacre of hundreds of residents of the Dos Erres village located in the northwest Petén region. Jordan allegedly helped kill unarmed villagers with his own hands, including a baby he allegedly threw into the village well.

The massacre was part of the Guatemalan military's "scorched earth campaign" and was carried out by the Kaibiles ranger unit. The Kaibiles were specially trained soldiers who became notorious for their use of torture and brutal killing tactics. According to witness testimony, and corroborated through U.S. declassified archives, the Kaibiles entered the town of Dos Erres on the morning of December 6, 1982, and separated the men from women and children. They started torturing the men and raping the women and by the afternoon they had killed almost the entire community, including the children.

Nearly the entire town was murdered, their bodies thrown into a well and left in nearby fields. The U.S. documents reveal that American officials deliberated over theories of how an entire town could just "disappear," and concluded that the Army was the only force capable of such an organized atrocity. More than 250 people are believed to have died in the massacre...

The National Security Archive

George Washington University

May 7, 2010

See also:

LibertadLatina Note

An indigenous woman in Guatemala holds a sign saying, WANTED: Jose Efrain Rios Montt (the unseen part says, "for genocide") - during the 2008, 28th anniversary of the Spanish Embassy Massacre in Guatemala City, Guatemala.

General José Efraín Ríos Montt is best known for heading a military dictatorship from 1982–1983 that was responsible for some of the worst atrocities against civilians in the 36-year Guatemalan civil conflict.

Photo: MiMundo

My observations about the only human trafficker I have ever met.

...To further tie together these linked issues, I know victims of that genocide, and I have met a perpetrator, through one of his family members. This family member talked to me at length about this perpetrator’s activities in Guatemala. I will refer to him here as ‘Juan.’

Juan’s grandfather owned a large ranch in Guatemala, and when he was feeling especially angry, he would go to the Mayan village at the far-end of his ranch and "shoot a few Indians" (a direct quote). During the time of the 1970s-1980s Guatemalan Civil War, Juan was a member of the Guatemalan president's security detail, the Presidential Guard. This security unit had a secondary task, aside from protection, of receiving a daily hit list from the president’s palace, finding these persons and murdering them for being suspected ‘subversives.’

The bodies of the victims were typically left laying in the street as a message to the population. Juan stated to his family: "Me daba mucha lastima tener que malograr a las mujeres" - that is: "it really saddened me to have to tear-up the women [on the hit list]." In other words, he supposedly felt sad for having willfully kidnapped, tortured, gang-raped and finally murdered his mostly Mayan women and girl victims over a number of years...

During the mid 1990s, before I even knew what sex trafficking was, Juan’s family member explained to me that Juan was engaged in smuggling people into the United States under peculiar circumstances, and had ties to Colombian mafias. Today, I understand that what was being explained to me was the fact that Juan, a former mass rapist and murderer of women, had 'graduated' to sex trafficking women into the U.S. while living a comfortable and otherwise 'normal' life in Washington, DC.

It was also explained to me that Juan would travel to Guatemala City, place an add in a local paper seeking young girls to work as escorts, and that 13 and 14-year-old girls gleefully responded. Juan then 'trained' these girls as prostitutes, and sent them out as escorts for wealthy businessmen.

In Washington, DC, Juan, when working in the role of office building cleaning crew manager, imposed quid-pro-quo sexual demands upon the Latina women who applied to work at his office building.

The world's past denial of the Guatemalan Genocide plays into the world's current lack of attention to ongoing femicide, mass kidnappings of babies for illegal adoptions and prostitution, and the mass trafficking of Guatemalan women into the brothels of southern Mexico...

Chuck Goolsby

LibertadLatina

Ashoka anti-trafficking competition entry

June 18, 2008

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LibertadLatina Note

Mayan women and supporters gather to protest a then-recent massacre in Quetzaltenango, Guatemala - 1978

Photo: El Gráfico

In the early 1980's I lived in a house in Washington, DC where a couple who had fled Guatemala were invited to stay. The husband was an agronomist from Spain. His wife was a white U.S. citizen from the Midwest. They told me how they were saved from a death squad execution in Guatemala. A Guatemalan woman told the couple that her boyfriend, a high-ranking Guatemalan military officer, has told her one night while he was drunk that the couple had been put on the to-be-murdered list that was printed nightly in the presidential palace (using a computer system set up by the Israeli military). Having been warned by their friend, the couple and their young child immediately fled Guatemala. What was their crime? The husband taught rural Mayan communities how to grow food better and improve their nutrition. For the Guatemalan military, anything that benefited the Mayan population was subversive, and deserved a murderous response. Any arguments that the Mayan majority was subversive fly out the window when one understands that the goal of the genocide was ethnic cleansing, pure and simple.

Chuck Goolsby

LibertadLatina

May 23, 2010

See also:

Israel and Guatemala

The history of Israel's relations with Guatemala roughly parallels that of its ties with El Salvador except the Guatemalan military was so unswervingly bloody that Congress never permitted the ... Reagan Administration to undo the military aid cutoff implemented during the Carter years.

Weaponry for the Guatemalan military is the very least of what Israel has delivered. Israel not only provided the technology necessary for a reign of terror, it helped in the organization and commission of the horrors perpetrated by the Guatemalan military and police. And even beyond that: to ensure that the profitable relationship would continue, Israel and its agents worked actively to maintain Israeli influence in Guatemala.

Throughout the years of untrammeled slaughter that left at least 45,000 dead, and, by early 1983, one million in internal exile - mostly indigenous Mayan Indians, who comprise a majority of Guatemala's eight million people - and thousands more in exile abroad, Israel stood by the Guatemalan military. Three successive military governments and three brutal and sweeping campaigns against the Mayan population, described by a U.S. diplomat as Guatemala's "genocide against the Indians," had the benefit of Israeli techniques and experience, as well as hardware...

...It does not take convoluted reasoning to conclude that "both the U.S. and Israel bear rather serious moral responsibility" for Guatemala.

Third World Traveler

Heroes and Killers of the 20th century

MoreorLess.com

May 26, 2009

More about Former Guatemalan president Efrain Ríos Montt

In 1978, [Efrain Ríos Montt] left the Roman Catholic Church and became a minister in the California-based evangelical/pentecostal Church of the Word; since then Jerry Falwell and Pat Robertson have been personal friends [both Falwell and Robertson defended Ríos Montt's human rights abuses]. Ríos Montt's brother Mario is a Catholic bishop, and in 1998 succeeded the assassinated Bishop Juan Gerardi as head of the human rights commission uncovering the truth of the disappearances associated with the military and his brother.

About Efrain Ris Montt

Wikipedia

See also:

Bill Clinton during his presidency

Clinton says U.S. did wrong in Central American Wars - March 10, 1999

...President Clinton admitted Wednesday to Guatemalans that U.S. support for "widespread repression" in their bloody 36-year civil war was a mistake.

"For the United States, it is important that I state clearly that the support for military forces or intelligence units which engaged in violent and widespread repression ... was wrong," Clinton said as he began a round-table discussion on Guatemala's search for peace.

"The United States must not repeat that mistake. We must and we will instead continue to support the peace and reconciliation process in Guatemala," he said on the third day of a Central American tour.

CNN

March 10, 1999

See also:

LibertadLatina

Read our special section of the crisis of sexual exploitation and femicide facing women and girls in modern Guatemala.

Added: May. 23, 2010

Mexico

These workers from the Adulam shelter were arrested for forcing children and elderly clients into labor slavery, while also subjecting some of the victims to rape.

Photo: Mexico City Prosecutor's Office

Desmantelan redes de trata de personas en México

Una red de explotación laboral camuflada en un hogar social, que abusaba de menores de edad, y otra de prostitución que simulaba ser un salón "spa" fueron desarticuladas por la policía, informó hoy la Procuraduría General de Justicia de la capital mexicana.

El 13 de mayo la Fiscalía capitalina comenzó un operativo que se saldó este lunes con cinco detenciones y con la liberación de 37 personas, entre ellas 27 menores, a las que supuestamente se explotaba laboral y sexualmente en la casa de asistencia a indigentes "Adulam", ubicada en el oeste de la ciudad.

Asimismo, el pasado martes fueron capturados Claudia Escalante González y Hugo Escalante Penkoff, presuntos responsables de la red de prostitución que se ocultaba en una casa de masajes antiestrés en el sur de la capital, donde se engañó y obligó a vender su cuerpo a varias jóvenes mediante amenazas y extorsiones.

En marzo, cuatro de los huéspedes de "Adulam" denunciaron que eran obligados a comerciar con distintos productos en la calle, sin obtener remuneración, y a entregar entre 700 y 800 pesos diarios (entre cincuenta y sesenta dólares) ya que, si no lo hacían, se les negaba el alimento.

Una menor de dieciséis años denunció también que Emilio Moctezuma, director de "Adulam" y uno de los detenidos, la violó mientras una de las asistentes de éste la sujetaba.

Todas las víctimas eran amenazadas constantemente con ser trasladadas a otras casas fuera del Distrito Federal y a un lugar llamado Isla Veracruz, donde la hermana de esta última chica fue enviada para ejercer la prostitución.

Además, una mujer declaró que desconoce el paradero de su hija desde que le fue arrebatada recién nacida y enviada a un hogar de asistencia en el vecino estado de México, y otra -también menor de edad-, aseguró que le practicaron un aborto sin su consentimiento.

Human trafficking networks are dismantled in Mexico City

The Mexico City Prosecutor's Office has announced that establishments dedicated to human exploitation have been taken down. One location, which operated as a shelter for children and the elderly. The other passed itself off as a massage parlor, but was actually a house of prostitution.

On May 13, 2010 the city prosecutor's office commenced an operation that concluded with 5 arrests and the liberation from slavery of 27 children and 10 adults, who were subjected to labor and sexual exploitation in the Casa Adulam shelter, located on the west side of Mexico City.

At the same time, the authorities arrested Claudia Escalante González y Hugo Escalante Penkoff, who are alleged to have run a prostitution network out of a massage parlor. A number of youth were entrapped and forced to sell their bodies in prostitution while facing threats and extortion.

In March of 2010, four residents of Casa Adulam denounced to police that they were forced to sell between 700 and 800 pesos of various products on the streets of Mexico City. On days when the victims failed to meet their quota, they were not fed.

A 16-year-old girl also reported to police that she was raped by both the Adulam shelter's director, Emilio Moctezuma, and a male resident of the shelter, while one of the women shelter workers held her down.

All of the victims were constantly threatened with being taken to other shelters outside of Mexico City.

One of these locations was called Veracruz Island. The sister of the above-mentioned rape victim had earlier been taken to that location and forced to engage in prostitution. Another victim, a woman, told police that her newborn child was kidnapped from her by shelter employees and taken to another shelter in the neighboring state of Mexico. An underage girl victim reported that she was forced to have an abortion without her consent.

EFE

May 21, 2010

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Perspective on this case from the Breaking Chains Ministry

The article [above] highlights a very important action that is just the beginning of what is going to be massive fruit from the last trip I took... There were 5 arrests and at least 10 more coming from this operation including the scum who rob these children from their homes and families. They used physical... as well as mental abuse and threats to force these children to serve as prostitutes. The big one is still coming but this is VERY GOOD....the government of Mexico is working to stop this evil and that is God!!! This is just the beginning...there are 6 operations live right now so please continue to pray for Jesus justice...

Reverend Stephen Cass

Breaking Chains Ministry

May 21, 2010

See also:

Added: May. 23, 2010

Mexico

Rescatan a 37... esclavizados de casa de asistencia

Sin embargo, los inculpados refirieron que por su labor habían sido recibidos por el presidente Felipe Calderón y en la Embajada de Estados Unidos.

De acuerdo con la dependencia policiaca, los detenidos explotaban a niños y adultos, a quienes obligaban a vender diversos productos en la calle sin recibir ningún pago.

Incluso, se informó que la cuota diaria que les exigían era de 800 pesos. En el operativo, se liberaron a 37 niños y... personas de la tercera edad.

Las víctimas dijeron a la policía que fueron violadas, otras que las obligaban a entregar a sus hijos recién nacidos, e incluso una dijo que fue presionaba para que abortara.

RECHAZO. Durante su presentación ante los medios de comunicación, los inculpados denunciaron una presunta fabricación de culpables por parte del Ministerio Público.

Y se dijeron dispuestos a someterse a cualquier tipo de investigación y análisis, “pero de autoridades que sean imparciales”.

Agregaron que el Albergue Casa Adulam goza de una trayectoria reconocida por varias organizaciones sociales, incluso por las propias autoridades federales.

Es de mencionar que los cinco detenidos cumplirán un arraigo de 30 días.

Thirty seven are rescued from shelter

This story repeats the story of the arrests in the Casa Adulam case. It adds that Casa Adulam was previously praised for its work by the Calderon administration, and they had been received at the U.S. Embassy in Mexico City.

Cronica

May 21, 2010

Note: Allegations of abuses taking place at Casa Adulam had been received and investigated since 2007. - LL

Added: May. 23, 2010

Mexico

Deputy Rosi Orozco (left)and Actress Mira Sorvino, (right) appointed in 2009 as Goodwill Ambassador on Human Trafficking for the United Nations, at the Blue Heart Campaign launch in Mexico City on April 14, 2010

A... Moment With Mira Sorvino

Mira Sorvino... talks at length about her activism.

Mirror: Could you talk about your work as a human rights activist?

Sorvino: I was Amnesty International's campaign spokesperson to “Stop Violence Against Women” for over two years and on the subject of trafficking, I am Goodwill Ambassador for the UN Office on Drugs and Crime ((UNODC).

Mirrror: What’s been your experience?

Sorvino: I just came back from Mexico for the kick-off the U.N.’s worldwide campaign to combat trafficking. The goal is to raise awareness and to get countries to commit to fighting this trafficking within their borders.**

Mirror: Can you talk about that trip?

Sorvino: It was a fascinating trip and I did a lot of public speaking. It’s a country where not much is known about trafficking [?-LL], so I felt like I was able to be informative. The most important thing for me, by far, was going to go to a shelter for recently liberated girls, and I mean girls. I’ve met trafficking victims before, but they were all past 30. These were teenagers and children. I met a little girl who was eight years old who had been sold into a brothel when she was four. She was walking around with a big smile on her face showing everyone her arithmetic homework. When I saw her I thought ‘Oh God, please tell me she’s the daughter of someone here.’ She was a victim, just like all the other girls, but we should call them survivors. I felt like I wanted to adopt her, but I can’t adopt everyone who is needy. I just wanted to save her and protect her for the rest of her life so she would never undergo anything like what had happened to her. There is only one shelter in Mexico for girls like this and I got to meet thirty lucky survivors, but there are hundreds of thousands of girls exactly like them all over Mexico...

Mirror: How many cases are prosecuted in the U.S.?

Sorvino: We have only a 1 percent solve rate and have about same number of trafficking cases as murder cases. Can you imagine if we only solved 1 percent of the murder cases? So it means that we have intensify our efforts and raise public awareness, train the police, get the judiciary to be very well informed, and encourage everyone to become a watcher. It’s very subterranean and hard to find, but it’s always concerned citizens who call in with tips that break cases...

Mirror: Why are men attracted to these little girls?

Sorvino: The sexual drive in men is so strong that unless they are educated correctly throughout their formative years, once they are focused on a certain kind of sex object that they find stimulating, that’s going to continue to be stimulating for them. Every culture has always put a prize on virginity and youthful beauty so a child who hasn’t been “spoiled” by other people will always be more ideal to the “John” who wants to have something special. But, men need to be educated to the terrible sorrow that behavior is creating because many times the buyer of commercial sex is not really thinking about the individual, but just view it as a service. I think if you did sensitivity training for males worldwide, you might be able to discourage them from buying sex.

Mirror: We applaud you for doing this important work.

Sorvino: Thank you so much...

Beverly Cohn

The Santa Monica Mirror

Edition 50 - May 20-26, 2010

Added: May. 23, 2010

Haiti

Cassandre St. Vil

Christina Boyle

The New York Daily News

April 18,2010

Escala violencia hacia las mujeres en campamentos de Haití

Preparan abogadas estrategia legal para abordar problemática

Una delegación de abogadas y activistas de Estados Unidos constató en Haití, la alarmante violencia que persiste contra las mujeres en esa nación, y la escalada de otras formas de agresión en los asentamientos provisionales.

Ante la afirmación de algunas fuentes oficiales que responsabilizan a las víctimas de la escalda, “es importante contrarrestar este mito de que es por la promiscuidad, son crímenes violentos por extraños en la noche y ameritan la atención de la policía y otros grupos que ayudan a organizar los campamentos” dijo la coordinación de la delegación y abogado del Institute for Justice & Democracy in Haiti (IJDH), Blaine Bookey.

Los testimonios de mujeres niñas dan cuenta de que son crímenes perpetrados por grupos armados y asaltantes que las golpean y las amenaza si denuncian las violaciones. Las mujeres entrevistadas también sostienen que cuando reportan, la policía no las toma en serio.

“Es inaceptable que estas violaciones no sean castigadas, ahora estamos trabajando casos legales contra los violadores y para que las mujeres tengan la justicia que se merecen” dijo Mario Joseph, abogado del Bureau des Avocats Internationaux (BAI) que recibió la delegación en su oficina de Puerto Príncipe...

María Suárez Toro

RIF / CIMAC Women's News Agency

May 21, 2010

See also:

Added: May. 23, 2010

Haiti

U.S. Delegation Finds Inadequate Response, and “Victim-Blaming” Approach to Rapes in Haitian Displacement Camps

Lawyers collect rape survivor accounts and plan legal strategy

Port-au-Prince - In over a week of on-site interviews and exploration, a delegation of U.S. lawyers, health professionals, and community activists found continued alarming rates of rape and other gender-based violence (GBV) in the displaced persons camps throughout Port-au-Prince since the Haitian earthquake in January. Expressed sentiments on the part of some Haitian government officials that victims are somehow to blame for the rapes is outrageous to human rights attorneys and community members, who find that women face a grave lack of security necessary to prevent and respond to the sexual violence crisis. Medical services are overwhelmed and unable to meet women's healthcare needs stemming from the assaults.

"It is critical that we dispel the myth that these rapes are a result of promiscuity," said Blaine Bookey, an attorney with the Institute for Justice & Democracy in Haiti (IJDH), and coordinator of the delegation. "These are violent crimes being perpetrated by strangers in the dark of night and they merit the attention of the police and other groups helping organize the camps."

The vast majority of the women and girls reported being raped by groups of armed, unknown assailants who often beat them in the course of the attack, and threatened them with further violence if they reported the rape. Perpetrators often attack at night, when women are asleep beside their children; or when they go to the latrines, men wait for them in the dark stalls. "It is totally unacceptable for these rapes to continue to go unpunished," said Mario Joseph, Managing Attorney at the Bureau des Avocats Internationaux (BAI), which hosted the delegation at its office in Port-au-Prince. "We are now building strong legal cases to hold rapists accountable and bring these women the justice they deserve."

Women who report rapes to the police describe being turned away, not taken seriously, or told to notify the police if they see the rapists again. "Pa tap vini" or "They never would have come," described one woman as to why she did not report her rape. These experiences foster the perception that reporting to the police is futile, especially if the survivor cannot identify her assailants. "If we are going to overcome a culture of complete impunity for rapists, we must create environments in which survivors are able to report these crimes and be taken seriously" said Lisa Davis, an attorney with MADRE. "Haiti's political and economic crises both before and as a result of the earthquake still do not relieve the authorities of the responsibility to protect women from sexual assault," said Deena Hurwitz, associate professor and director of the International Human Rights Law Clinic at the University of Virginia School of Law...

The Institute for Justice & Democracy in Haiti (IJDH)

May 17, 2010

Note: The above-described conditions of impunity facing women and girls in Haiti are also the daily 'normal' experiences of many women and girls across all nations in Latin America. - LL

Added: May. 23, 2010

Oregon, USA / Mexico

The Salvation Army's Christine MacMillan speaks at the recent Oregon anti-trafficking rally

Battling human trafficking

Christine MacMillan, director of the International Social Justice Committee for the Salvation Army, speaks last Friday at a rally put on by the student group, Slavery Still Exists. MacMillan spoke about the causes and effects of human trafficking.

Slavery Still Exists, an ASUO (Associated Students of the University of Oregon) student group, kicked off its human trafficking and advocacy awareness campaign with a rally Friday.

Kristin Rudolph, co-president of the club, said the rally’s purpose was to make students aware of a growing, worldwide injustice.

Community members gathered in the EMU amphitheater at noon to listen to the featured speaker, Christine MacMillan, talk about her personal experiences with human trafficking as the director of the Salvation Army’s International Social Justice Commission. The International Social Justice Commission has worked to fight global human rights violations, such as human trafficking, since its inception in 2007...

Rally attendees expressed surprise at learning the prevalence and proximity of human trafficking locally.

“I really didn’t know that this was such a big issue where I live,” University sophomore Apolinar Montero-Sanchez said. “I’m glad that people are getting aware of this stuff, because it’s a big problem.”

MacMillan shared several stories of human trafficking during the rally. For example, she explained that while sex trafficking is well-known, there are other forms of human trafficking, such as trafficking human organs. While visiting Mexico City, MacMillan discovered how unmarked ambulances pick up homeless children, strap the children onto gurneys, bring them to the hospital and drug them with anesthetics in order to traffic their organs. After removing organs, such as kidneys, the traffickers leave most of the children for dead.

Because the majority of the world is not informed about the topic, it continues to go on unbeknownst to many, according to MacMillan. She described human trafficking as “a very hidden problem in our world.”

She urged rally attendees to gain more knowledge about human trafficking and join the fight to end this problem...

Malaea Relampagos

Oregon Daily Emerald

May 17, 2010

Added: May. 23, 2010

Maryland, USA

Police Add Patrols After Man Grabs Girl

Annapolis police are adding patrols near school bus stops and around Bates Middle School after a pair of suspicious incidents involving a man approaching children.

ABC7's Brad Bell spotted some anxious parents waiting while their children got off school buses Friday afternoon.

"It has been the talk in this neighborhood the last couple days," said Joe Hall, a parent. "There's a lot of concerned parents."

So far there have been two reported incidents. On Wednesday, May 5, a man in a car approached a 13-year-old girl and, in Spanish, made suggestive remarks. The man then tried to lure her into his car, police said.

On Tuesday, May 18, a man matching the description from the first encounter made lewd comments and then actually grabbed a 13-year-old girl by her arm in a neighborhood a couple miles from where the first incident took place. The girl was able to break away, but police fear he may strike again

"The reason we're on patrol in the school bus areas and the walkways is to make sure something like that doesn't happen," said Ray Weaver, an Annapolis police spokesman.

Parents and neighbors appreciate the increased police presence and say they, too, are now on the look-out.

"Well, of course it concerns me to know there is a predator out there that's trying to victimize children," said Nancy Fields, an Annapolis resident.

"Me personally, since I have kids, I don't think he should be on the street," Hall said.

Police described the man as Hispanic. One victim said the man was 30-35 years old, average height, with black thinning hair. The other victim described him as six feet, one-inch tall, with a slim build. He wore a black baseball cap with the letters "NY" on the front, a blue zip-up hooded sweatshirt with white stripes and blue jeans.

The suspect's vehicle was described as a small, dark blue Honda and as a blue sedan with dark-tinted windows.

WJLA

May 21, 2010

Added: May. 23, 2010

Mississippi, USA

William Velasquez Castillo

Illegal immigrant arrested on child molestation charge

Pascagoula - An illegal immigrant sought for nearly a month and a half was wearing a shirt emblazoned with the phrase "I'm hiding from the cops" when he was arrested Wednesday on child molestation charges, and tried to wear the shirt inside out Thursday when he went before a Jackson County judge.

A guard removed William Velasquez Castillo from the courtroom, and the 27-year-old returned with his shirt on the proper way.

The guard said that Castillo must have switched his shirt around at the Jackson County Adult Detention Center before he was brought to the courthouse.

Castillo was arrested by U.S. Marshals in Lucedale late Wednesday evening, Jackson County Sheriff Mike Byrd said.

Investigators had been searching for Castillo since April 3, when a 10-year-old girl told investigators he molested her in a vehicle in Ocean Springs, Byrd said.

A warrant was issued for Castillo on April 23, and detectives believe he fled the area shortly after learning he was wanted, Byrd said.

Castillo was discovered by authorities at the Dorsett Hotel on Main Street in Lucedale.

Castillo told County Judge Larry Wilson that he was unemployed and had a previous felony shoplifting conviction.

"I served 1 year and 1 day," Castillo said. "It was from Harrison County."

Wilson said bail for Castillo at $50,000 and placed a hold on him for the U.S. Immigration and Custom Enforcement.

"ICE has their own investigation," Byrd said.

Cherie Ward

GulfFive.com

May 21, 2010

Added: May. 23, 2010

Arizona, USA

Jose Juan Martinez

Gilbert man accused of molesting girl for 4 years

Gilbert police officers arrested a 39-year-old man suspected of molesting a 12-year-old girl for four years.

Police were called to a home near Neely Street and Elliot Road Monday evening. The victim's mother told officers that her daughter said Jose Juan Martinez had molested her.

The girl told investigators that Martinez had molested her over the past four years and the most recent time was Friday.

Martinez was booked into jail on suspicion of 39 counts of sexual misconduct with a minor, one count of continuous sexual abuse of a minor and one count of molestation of a child.

Jennifer Thomas

azfamily.com

May 19, 2010

Added: May. 23, 2010

Texas, USA

Midland Police Searching for Suspect Who Tried to Kidnap Teenage Girl

Midland Police need your help tracking a down a man they say tried to kidnap a teenaged girl in broad daylight on Thursday afternoon.

It happened between 5:00 and 5:30 near the Family Dollar in the Kingsway Shopping Center on West Illinois.

Police tell NewsWest 9, the girl was walking home when a Hispanic man pulled up next to her, blocked her, then tried to talk her in to getting in his car.

The teen was able to get away.

Police are looking for a Hispanic man in his late 20's to late 30's, about 5'9," and heavy set weighing between 250 - 300 pounds.

He has moles or acne on his face and was wearing a white T-shirt.

He was driving a dented two door silver car.

If you have any information, call Midland police or midland crime stoppers at 694-TIPS.

NewsWest9.com

May 21, 2010

Added: May. 23, 2010

New York, USA

Thug bashes Chinese woman with pipe, assaults her in Queens: cops

A 23-year-old woman is on life-support in a Queens hospital after a weekend attack by a pipe-wielding rapist two months after she arrived in New York from China, cops said.

Officials are working desperately to get a visa for the woman's mother, who lives outside Beijing, so she can come to Queens to face the awful task of deciding her daughter's fate.

The young woman was returning from grocery shopping in downtown Flushing around 9:30 p.m. Saturday when a drunken Queens man smashed her in the head with a pipe and dragged her into an alley, authorities said.

Once inside the alley along 41st Road, Carlos Salazar Cruz, 28, removed the woman's clothing from the waist down and raped her with the pipe, according to court papers.

Two months ago, the young woman, who dreamed of becoming a lawyer, traveled from her native China on a student visa. She moved in with a distant uncle in Flushing.

"She was working in a nail salon, saving up money. She was going to start attending school," said Assemblywoman Grace Meng (D-Flushing). "She had good grades in China. That's why her parents wanted her to come and expand her horizons."

Now, the woman who once dreamed of a better future is in the intensive care unit at New York Hospital Queens. She suffered a fractured skull, bleeding on the brain and trauma to her vaginal area.

Meng said she and Rep. Gary Ackerman (R-Bayside) are working to expedite a visa for the woman's mother. Cops collared Cruz a few blocks from the crime scene after a witness, who saw him drag the woman into the alley and then emerge alone - called 911. Police later recovered the pipe about a block from the alley.

Cruz, who did not have a criminal record, emigrated from Mexico two years ago and found work at a Manhattan fish market.

He was arraigned late Tuesday on a slew of charges, including a top count of attempted murder. Prosecutors vowed to upgrade charges if the woman is removed from life-support.

Cruz's family said he claims he blacked out drunk and doesn't remember the incident.

"He woke up and found himself cuffed to the hospital bed," said his stunned sister, Patricia Salazar, 26. "He never acted violently....We just don't know why he would do this. We can't explain it."

John Lauinger

The New York Daily News

May 20, 2010

Added: May. 23, 2010

California, USA

Illegal alien charged with murder

Barstow - A 31-year-old illegal alien who was arrested Saturday on suspicion of kidnapping and raping a 33-year-old woman has now been charged with murder.

Melissa Curley of Arizona died of strangulation with asphyxiation, according to the San Bernardino County Coroner’s office Wednesday.

Police arrested Cesar Rascon in Yermo Saturday afternoon and charged him with rape and kidnapping for the purposes of rape. Now Barstow police are charging him with murder.

Curley’s body was found at the Sunset Inn motel at 860 West Main Street after police received a 911 call at about 9 a.m. Saturday. Detectives learned that Curley was staying at the motel, but wasn’t registered for the room her body was found in. The room was registered to Rascon.

Police found Rascon working at a Yermo gas station at 4:57 p.m. Saturday and arrested him.

V V Daily Press

May 20, 2010

Added: May. 23, 2010

Idaho, USA

Rape suspect deported 4 times

Edmonds - The man accused of raping a woman behind an Edmonds grocery store has been deported at least four times in the past 15 years, reports KIRO Radio.

An officer responding to a woman's cry for help Sunday night found 46-year-old Jose Madrigal on top of the woman and arrested him.

According to court documents, the woman told police that Madrigal had followed her and offered her $35 for sex, but she said no. She said Madrigal then forced her into the bushes on the north side of the store and raped her.

Documents say Madrigal told police "Sometimes we have control in our brains, but we make mistakes."

The 28-year-old Edmonds woman was treated at a hospital.

Snohomish County prosecutors have charged Madrigal in district court with second degree rape. He is also is being held for the Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency.

The Associated Press

May 19, 2010

Added: May. 23, 2010

Southwest USA

U.S. Border Patrol Weekly Blotter: May 13 - May 19, 2010

Excerpt

May 19, 2010 - El Centro Sector - Border Patrol agents arrested an illegal alien from Guatemala near Cathedral City, California. Records checks revealed the subject had a prior conviction for sexual battery in the state of California and had been previously removed from the United States.

May 19, 2010 - Tucson Sector - Border Patrol agents arrested an illegal alien from Mexico near Douglas, Arizona. Records checks revealed the subject had a prior conviction for sex with a minor in the state of California and had been previously removed from the United States.

May 19, 2010 - Tucson Sector - Border Patrol agents arrested an illegal alien from Mexico near Willcox, Arizona. Records checks revealed the subject had prior convictions for multiple counts of lewd or lascivious acts with a child under 14, as well as other sex offenses in the state of California. The subject had also been previously removed from the United States.

May 16, 2010 - El Centro Sector - Border Patrol agents arrested an illegal alien from Mexico near Calexico, California. Records checks revealed the subject was a convicted sex offender who had been previously removed from the United States.

May 16, 2010 - Tucson Sector - Border Patrol agents arrested an illegal alien from Mexico near Amado, Texas. Records checks revealed the subject had prior convictions for driving under the influence and willful cruelty to a child by means of sexual penetration with a foreign object in the state of California. The subject had also been previously removed from the United States.

May 16, 2010 - Tucson Sector - Border Patrol agents arrested an illegal alien from Mexico near Three Points, Arizona. Records checks revealed the subject was a convicted sex offender in the state of California and had been previously removed from the United States.

May 14, 2010 - El Paso Sector - Border Patrol agents arrested an illegal alien from Mexico near Columbus, New Mexico. Records checks revealed the subject… was a registered sex offender in the state of Arizona. The subject had also been previously removed from the United States.

May 14, 2010 - Tucson Sector - Border Patrol agents arrested an illegal alien from Mexico near Ajo, Arizona. Records checks revealed the subject had a prior conviction for aggravated sexual assault in the state of Illinois and had been previously removed from the United States.

May 14, 2010 - Tucson Sector - Border Patrol agents arrested an illegal alien from Mexico near Douglas, Arizona. Records checks revealed the subject had a prior conviction for indecency with a child/sexual contact in the state of Texas and had been previously removed from the United States.

May 13, 2010 - Tucson Sector - Border Patrol agents arrested an illegal alien from Mexico near Douglas, Arizona. Records checks revealed the subject was a convicted sex offender in the state of Wyoming and had been previously removed from the United States.

May 13, 2010 - Tucson Sector - Border Patrol agents arrested an illegal alien from Mexico near Sasabe, Arizona. Records checks revealed the subject had a prior conviction for child molestation in the state of Washington and had been previously removed from the United States.

U.S. Border Patrol

May 19, 2010

Added: May. 23, 2010

Oregon, USA

Perez gets jail time

Judge cites official abuses

Former North Wasco County schools liaison Carlos Perez was sentenced Thursday to 45 days in jail and five years probation for making sexual advances to a 41-year-old Hispanic woman who had sought his help in receiving basic community services and Spanish-English translation aid.

Although he cut the jail time in half from the 90 days requested by Wasco County Deputy District Attorney Leslie Wolf, Wasco County Circuit Court Judge John Kelly said he was compelled to order some incarceration because Perez, a public official with many community and family connections, took advantage of and preyed on a low-income woman who speaks no English and who is an illegal alien.

“The offensive part of this has less to do with your laying hands on this woman than on your abuse of power,” Kelly told Perez before about 35 people at the Wasco County Courthouse in The Dalles. “You have status and respect in the community – you have power, and she has none.”

Kelly also ordered Perez to register as a sex offender and to have no contact with the victim or to come within 500 feet of her home. Perez, who was a family liaison and coordinator for the Columbia Gorge Educational Service District, is also barred from visiting any North Wasco County schools and from participating in any migrant services programs.

In addition, Perez will have to pay up to $3,000 into a state victims’ restitution fund to cover counseling sessions for the woman. He is also being let go from his job as a translator for Mid-Columbia Medical Center in The Dalles, Kelly said.

Perez maintained at Thursday’s proceeding that he was innocent, that the sentence was unfair and alleged it was the result of racial bias...

Wasco County District Attorney Eric Nisley said he thought the sentence was “appropriate,” and that there was “no evidence at all that this was based on his race,” Nisley said.

“The point is that a jury believed a Hispanic woman over a Hispanic man,” Nisley said. “It isn’t about Mr. Perez’s race.” ...

Keri Brenner

The Dalles Chroncicle

May 21, 2010

Added: May. 23, 2010

North Carolina, USA

Store surveillance photo of suspect

Suspect sought in string of sex assaults at stores

Charlotte - Police are still looking for a man they believe is behind several sexual assaults inside stores.

They have stepped up patrols at shopping centers in Southeast and Union County after they say at least five fondling incidents in three stores might be connected.

They say that they believe one man is responsible for the sexual assaults: two that happened at Wal-Mart on Tuesday, one at a Harris Teeter grocery store on Saturday of last week and two more at another Harris Teeter, this time in Union County, sometime in between.

WBTV talked to Dan Biber, a forensic psychologist who gave us insight as to what drives a person to sexual violence.

"Let's call it adrenaline," he said. "He gets a rush. Part of the rush is not just the sexual rush of groping women, but also the rush of doing it in public when there's a high risk of detection that he successfully avoids."

That is frightening to shoppers like Tracy Brown who said, "that's even more frightening to know that someone is getting a rush from assaulting people because ultimately, that's what you're doing."

Another reason? Biber told us the man could be rationalizing his actions by downplaying the severity of the assaults.

"He might in his own mind, think this is no big deal," he said. "He might just think, well, rape would be bad but this doesn't count."

According to CMPD officers, the girl was in the grocery store at 11516 Providence Road at approximately 12:15 p.m. when a man came up and forcefully fondled her from behind.

Police say two more women reported being groped at a Harris Teeter in Union County. They say, before Union Co. deputies arrived, two employees escorted the suspect off the property because the victims didn't want to press charges.

The latest incident happened Tuesday afternoon when two women told police they were forcibly fondled at a Wal-Mart store on Highway 51.

The incident happened around 2:24 p.m. at the Wal-Mart located at 3209 Pineville-Matthews Road. Investigators say the two victims, who are 55 and 47 years old, actually tried to restrain the man--but he was able to get away.

On Thursday morning, police released in-store photos of the suspect from two incidents at the Harris Teeters. The photos were taken on May 15 between 12:15 and 12:20 pm at the Harris Teeter at 11516 Providence Road.

Police are looking for a Hispanic man who is about 25 years old, and is between 5 feet 8 inches and 5 feet 10 inches tall and weighs about 150 pounds.

Although the incidents happened inside the stores, police say the man drives a white van with ladders on it...

WBTV

May 19, 2010

Added: May. 23, 2010

New Jersey, USA

Reverend Moises Cotto

Authorities say evidence backs charges against Newark pastor in Linden sex assault case

Newark - At the Newark church where his congregants dress all in white, he was known as a husband, father and respected pastor for more than 20 years.

But, authorities said, Moises Cotto, the 55-year-old pastor, had been meeting for the past two years with a female congregant at a motel in Linden where the pair had sex — and forced two teenage girls to videotape them in the act.

Cotto was arrested at his apartment in East Orange on Monday night, and charged with kidnapping, aggravated assault, attempted aggravated sexual assault and endangering the welfare of a minor.

His parishioner, Brenda Pabon, 37, of Middlesex County, has been charged with kidnapping and endangering the welfare of a minor.

But Wednesday, the assistant pastor of the Newark church, Yahweh Templo El Candelero, said he is convinced Cotto is innocent. He called Pabon a "problematic parishioner," saying she had recently threatened the pastor and vowed to leave his congregation along with her husband.

"I do think that an injustice is being done, based on my friendship with the minister," said Assistant Pastor A. Diaz. "There’s no truth to the allegations. He’s been an upstanding pastor for more than 20 years."

The church carefully screens pastors, Diaz said, and holds them to "high standards."

Prosecutors say they have significant physical evidence that corroborates the victims’ allegations...

Julie O'Connor

The Star-Ledger

May 20, 2010

Added: May. 20, 2010

Peru

Young adolescent mothers, abandoned in situations of abuse by stepfathers, learn to love and care for their children at the Chuka Chuka center.

(See note on Chuka Chuka below the following article)

90% de niñas madres fueron ultrajadas

Alarmante estadística. El 90 % de niñas peruanas que dieron a luz, entre los 12 y 16 años, fueron embarazadas producto de violación, frecuentemente por incesto.

Estos datos brindados por la Organización Panamericana de la Salud (OPS) fueron analizados en el Congreso de la República por la Comisión Especial Revisora de la Ley de Protección Frente a la Violencia Familiar a fin de abordar las causas y los efectos de esta realidad.

La congresista Olga Cribilleros (PAP), coordinadora de la citada comisión, señaló que si no se toma en cuenta el aspecto presupuestal, no será posible realizar un real cambio de los problemas de violencia familiar que se vive en el país. Mencionó que la falta de personal idóneo, jueces especializados así como recursos para capacitación a docentes que desarrollen el tema con contenidos adecuados dificultan la lucha contra la violencia familiar. Sobre las sanciones a los violadores, en Costa Rica, Perú y Uruguay, bajo el Código Penal, se prevé que un violador puede quedar libre si propone casarse con su víctima y ella consiente. Al respecto, la comisión estudia la legislación comparada de otros países para elaborar el anteproyecto de la nueva ley de protección frente a la violencia familiar...

Ninety percent of young adolescent mothers became pregnant due to rape

[We note that the definition of 'rape' used in this Peruvian news article refers to forcible rape, and not statutory rape as that crime is defined in the United States. - LL]

Some 90% of Peruvian girls who became pregnant between the ages of 12 and 16 became pregnant due to rape, often in situations of incest.
These statistics, provided by the Pan American Health Organization (PAHO), have been analyzed in the Congress of the Republic by the Special Commission to Revise the Law of Protection Against Family Violence. Their goal is to understand the causes and effects of this reality.

Congresswoman Olga Cribilleros, of the Partido Aprista Peruano (PAP - Peruvian APRA Party), who is the coordinator of the commission, said that without [congressional] funding, it would be impossible to bring about real changes in the problem of family violence that exists in the country. She added that the lack of qualified personnel, specialized judges and resources for training teachers to develop relevant content for students all hinder the fight against domestic violence.

In regard to punishing rapists, the commission is examining the laws of others nations. Commission members note that under the penal codes of Peru, Costa Rica, and Uruguay [not to mention Mexico and other Latin American nations], a rapist [even if the victim is age 12] can go free if he proposes to marry his victim and she consents.

For Gina Yañez, director of the Manuela Ramos Movement, these statistics demonstrate that work should begin immediately on this issue, especially in school and family settings, so that victims know what to do if they are raped.
According to PAHO's study, 33% of women between 16 and 49 have been victims of sexual harassment, and at least 45% have been threatened, insulted or have had their personal property destroyed.

Diario la Primera Peru

May 19, 2010

In Peru it is not uncommon for women to raise 5 or more children., each with a different biological father. What is also common is for the mother’s latest companion to rape the eldest daughters, often resulting in pregnancy.

One expects a reaction from the mother, but not the sort of reaction that is so evident here in Peru. As a result of the rape the mother feels shamed and jealous and abandons her own daughter who is often without the comfort of additional family members for support and understanding.

These abandoned, pregnant, adolescent rape victims (‘adolescents’), often only thirteen or fourteen years old face a dull future. They are without money; support; homes and job prospects. Most worrying of all, they are carrying an unborn baby, who will enter a world where education will not be available to them and their options for a self-sustainable life non-existent.

It is not uncommon for such desperate girls to drift into the sex trade and drugs; further blighting their lives and potential to contribute to society

Our mission: To save as many of these girls and their unborn children as we can, to prepare them for and steer them into a richer more productive life than they could have known without this project.

Chuka Chuka

See also:

Adolescent prostitution in Lima, Peru

Video news report from Peru showing underage prostitution in the capital city of Lima. Young sex workers are shown sniffing glue, caring for their toddlers in the prostitution zone late at night, and negotiating with johns for the going price of 20 Soles (US$7.00).

(In Spanish)

ATV

Posted on YouTube

Added: May. 20, 2010

Texas, USA

Slain Houston Police Officer Rodney Johnson

Businessman sentenced for harboring illegal alien cop-killer

A Houston, Texas landscaping business owner was sentenced to three months in prison and three months home confinement for harboring the illegal alien who molested a child and ultimately killed a Houston police officer in 2006, according to a report obtained yesterday by the National Association of Chiefs of Police.

The investigation was conducted by the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement and the Houston Police Department.

Robert Lane Camp, 47, the owner of Camp Landscaping in Deer Park, Texas, and now a convicted felon, was also sentenced to a five-year probationary term with special conditions by U.S. District Judge Vanessa Gilmore. Camp pleaded guilty on Oct. 5, 2009, admitting that he knowingly harbored Juan Leonardo Quintero-Perez (Quintero), an illegal alien, by employing him and leasing a residence to him.

According to court documents, Camp employed Quintero in his landscape business. When Quintero was arrested and charged by the State of Texas with indecency with a child in 1998, Camp bonded Quintero out of jail and continued to employ him. Quintero was sentenced to a term of deferred adjudication for the state offense.

Quintero was deported in 1999, but illegally reentered the United States in Arizona, then flew to Houston. When Quintero returned to Houston, he resumed his employment with Camp. Camp also rented Quintero a home and listed Quintero's wife, a U.S. citizen, in government records as an employee instead of Quintero.

On Sept. 22, 2006, Quintero was arrested while driving a Camp company vehicle by Houston Police Officer Rodney Johnson. While sitting in the back seat of Officer Johnson's patrol car, Quintero retrieved a pistol hidden on his person, and shot and killed Officer Johnson. Quintero was convicted of capital murder in the 248th District Court of Harris County, Texas, and has been sentenced to life in prison.

Jim Kouri, CPP is currently fifth vice-president of the National Association of Chiefs of Police

The Examiner

May 12, 2010

LibertadLatina Commentary

Chuck Goolsby

Issues that may not (but should) be discussed during Mexican President Felipe Calderón's May 19-20, 2010 visit to Washington, DC

The May 19-20, 2010 visit of Mexico's President Felipe Calderón to the White House is being closely watched in regard to how the U.S. will react to Calderón's speech before Congress. We know that the war against drug cartels and immigration are top on the agenda.

The issue of mass gender atrocities facilitated by state corruption, complacency and criminal impunity are also critical issues in U.S. / Mexican relations. While these topics are rarely discussed in the mainstream English-language press, holding Mexico's federal government accountable for defending the lives, integrity and dignity of women and girls is just as important as addressing the drug war and immigration. In fact, we believe that the U.S. press needs to step up to the plate and ask both President Calderón and President Obama about their commitment to saving women and girls from mass kidnapping, mass rape and wholesale enslavement, which are crimes that impact tens of thousands of women and children each year in the Aztec Nation.

President Calderón took a major positive step on April 14, 2010 by launching the world's first nationally sponsored instance of the United Nations Blue Heart Campaign Against Human Trafficking. Yet a day later, Calderón's diplomats derided, in front of the Inter-American Court of Human Rights, the rape complaint of indigenous victim Inés Fernández Ortega, who had been gang raped by soldiers in 2002, with no effective response from the Mexican civilian and military criminal justice systems.

We repeat here below our list of some of the most critical gender rights issues that are not being addressed by the Calderón administration.

During the past several years LibertadLatina has dedicated its efforts to bringing world attention to the mass rapes, kidnappings and enslavement of women, children and men that occurs with almost total impunity in Mexico.

According to the Southern Cone (southern South American) office of the United Nations-affiliated International Organization for Migration (IOM), an estimated $16 billion of the $32 million in annual profits created by the human slavery industry globally are generated in Latin America. That 50% 'share' of the criminal marketplace for worldwide slavery victims has never been responded to by the engagement of 50% of the global anti-trafficking movement's energy, resources or focus.

That lack of attention, together with the willingness of past U.S. administrations to effectively ignore Latin America's crisis in human slavery, allowed a drug-profit fueled criminal industry to grow exponentially in the region while the world effectively looked the other way in apathy.

Mexico is home base for the largest problems in Latin American human trafficking.

We have decided to focus on the crisis in Mexico because solving that one single national emergency will have the most positive impact on the entire regional crisis.

In the United States, 60% of U.S. trafficking victims are Latin American. Most of them have been trafficked across the Mexican border into the U.S.

The population of Mexico (and especially its poor and vulnerable Indigenous peoples), also suffer immensely from modern slavery. In addition, Central American migrants are kidnapped, raped and trafficked by the many thousands as they cross Mexico. Some are also murdered.

Southern Mexico's narrow border with Guatemala and Belize is the one 'bottleneck' where literally millions of South and Central American migrants who seek to travel to the United States must cross into Mexico. Human traffickers and also rapist thugs and robbers await these innocent migrants like trolls under a bridge. They rape an estimated 450 to 600 women and girls among these migrants every single day of the year with complete impunity on the Mexican side of its southern border, with no discernable response from Mexican officials and authorities. In fact, police and military forces have harassed migrants and their NGO caregivers. Many of these victims are kidnapped (10,000 during a 6 month period, according to a study by Mexico's National Human Rights Commission). A number of those victims are sold into slavery, often to be trafficked to brothels in Mexico, the U.S. and Europe.

The NGO Save the Children has described the southern border of Mexico as being the largest region in the entire world for the commercial sexual exploitation of children. The city of Tapachula, for example, has 20,000 persons engaging in prostitution in its 1,500 bars and brothels. Half of that number are children and underage youth at any given time. Local police don't interfere with this 'business,' they focus on keeping child prostitutes away from schools and upscale residential neighborhoods.

Across Mexico, women, and especially those from Mexico's traditionally discriminated against Indigenous peoples, who are 30% of the population, are also raped with impunity. The perpetrators are not only criminal thugs, but also military soldiers engaged in the drug war. President Calderón has steadfastly denied that any problem exists with military rapes of civilians, and he has refused to allow accused soldiers to be tried in civilian courts.

On April 15, 2010, one day after the launch of the Blue Heart campaign, President Calderón sent his federal lawyers to the Inter-American Court of Human Rights to fight against Inés Fernández Ortega, an Indigenous woman who was gang-raped by soldiers in her home in 2002. The government lawyers denied that any rape took place, and blamed the victim for the lack of justice (an assertion that women's rights activists in Mexico are repulsed by).

Fernández Ortega, her family and her lawyers have faced intimidation and death threats. Her brother, a witness in her case, was murdered shortly after she began her now 8 year effort to find justice in her case.

For Inés Fernández Ortega and many other women victims of criminal impunity in Mexico, the Inter-American Court of Human Rights has become the venue of last resort after having faced institutional injustice, impunity, and a corrupt and uncaring government response to their plight.

During the 500 year period since the Spanish conquest of Mexico, Indigenous women have been easy target for rapists and human traffickers. We who are Indigenous know this history inside out, no matter what corner of the Americas we hail from.

What is an abomination in today's world is the fact that in Mexico and across much of Latin America, Indigenous women and girls continue to be enslaved and brutalized with the implied consent of national governments. By extension, none of these women can count on the protection of their national governments and local police forces in the face of such gender atrocities.

In Mexico, an estimated 3,000 to 4,000 Indigenous children and underage youth have been kidnapped and then sold to the Japanese Yakuza mafias, who then transport the victims to Japan, where they are enslaved as 'Geisha' prostitutes. Despite the existence of this story during the past several years, there are no visible signs that either Mexico or Japan have ever lifted a finger to rescue the victims.

In a similar case, a reporter in Spain posed as a pimp, and was offered 6 Mayan Indigenous girls for sale. They were all 13-years-old. The sale price was $25,000 each, because Indigenous girl children were considered to be "exotic" merchandise.

All of these issues are emergencies that demand your immediate attention, President Calderón. We call upon U.S. President Barack Obama, First Lady Michelle Obama and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton to raise these important issues with Mexico.

The victims, and those at risk, await our serious and effective efforts to defend and rescue them now!

End impunity now!

Chuck Goolsby

LibertadLatina

May 20, 2010

Added: May. 20, 2010

California, USA

Jacobo Reyes

Cops: Man Fondled Little Girl While She Slept

Police say the suspect confessed to fondling five other girls and women.

Santa Ana .-- Police have arrested a 47-year-old man on suspicion of molesting an 11-year-old girl in her bedroom in Santa Ana.

Jacobo Reyes was arrested Monday and is being held without bail, according to Cpl. Anthony Bertanga.

Santa Ana investigators linked him to the crime with DNA evidence, Bertagna said.

Investigators asked Reyes to come in for questioning about the Feb. 11 attack in the 300 block of South Newhope Street.

They arrested him after he confessed to fondling up to five other girls and women ages 11 to 22 as they slept, Bertagna said.

In the Feb. 11 attack, police say Reyes climbed into the girl's bedroom, gaining entry by removing a screen in an unlocked window.

The girl could not describe her attacker because it was too dark, but he left behind genetic material that matched Reyes' DNA, Bertagna said.

Reyes was booked on suspicion of felony assault to commit rape and burglary.

Prosecutors are reviewing the case and have not yet charged him.

KTLA News

May 19, 2010

See also:

Added: May. 20, 2010

California, USA

Previously deported illegal alien admits to being serial molester

On Tuesday, police in Santa Ana arrested Roberto Jacobo Reyes, after DNA evidence linked him to the sexual assault of an 11-year-old girl in February. According to police, Reyes entered the girl’s bedroom through an unlocked window.

Under questioning for that crime, Reyes has reportedly admitted to having assaulted at least four other victims, ages 11-22, in the same manner.

Santa Ana Police Cpl. Anthony Bertagna told the LA Times: “His M.O. was to break into unsecured windows or unsecured doors.“

Reyes is currently being held in the Santa Ana City Jail on suspicion of felony assault to commit rape and burglary, while the Orange County district attorney prepares more charges.

In 2007, Reyes was deported back to Mexico after serving three years in prison for burglary. While in prison, his fingerprints linked him to a sexual assault.

In 1998, Reyes was arrested for DUI and driving without a license, he pleaded guilty and was ordered to pay a fine.

Past arrests also include charges for peeping and possession of stolen property.

Though an illegal alien with a criminal record, Reyes was working for a landscaping business in Santa Ana at the time of his latest arrest.

Dave Gibson

The Examiner

May 19, 2010

Added: May. 20, 2010

New York, USA

Detective Oscar Sandino

NYPD Detective Oscar Sandino charged with demanding sex from women he arrested

A New York Police Department (NYPD) narcotics detective was charged Tuesday with preying on women he arrested - on police property.

The alleged attacks by Detective Oscar Sandino date to 2006 and could land the 13-year veteran behind bars for three years if he's convicted on federal charges.

His lawyer dismissed the accusations as "old news" and questioned the credibility of the women, one of whom has filed a lawsuit.

But federal prosecutors Pamela Chen and Licha Nyiendo said the evidence that Sandino is more perp than protector is "substantial and irrefutable."

"The persistent and repetitive nature of the defendant's misconduct demonstrates that he is a sexual predator," they wrote in court papers.

They say that in August 2006, when he was assigned to the Queens North Narcotics Bureau, he coerced a woman into having sex with him in exchange for help with her cousin's criminal case.

In February 2008, while arresting a woman and her boyfriend on drug charges, he took the woman into a bedroom and forced her to undress, the feds charge.

When he brought the woman to the 110th Precinct stationhouse for booking, Sandino warned she would lose her children unless she had sex with him, prosecutors say.

Sandino allegedly took the woman into the bathroom, ordered her to pull down her pants and molested her.

"Wow, you have an earring down there," Sandino said to the woman, according to a lawsuit she filed.

The victim reported Sandino to the Internal Affairs Bureau, and investigators gathered text messages, phone records and secretly taped conversations to corroborate the allegations.

In a third attack in September, Sandino allegedly took a handcuffed woman arrested for disorderly conduct into a room at Brooklyn Central Booking and made her bare her breasts.

Sandino, 37, was charged with civil rights violations and released on a $250,000 bond to be co-signed by his estranged wife, who lives in Arizona.

Defense lawyer Peter Brill claimed the Queens district attorney had passed on prosecuting Sandino because the second victim was not credible.

John Marzulli

New York Daily News

May 18, 2010

Added: May. 20, 2010

New Mexico, USA

Juan Gonzalez

Children, Youth and Families Department will report immigrant status of criminals

The state’s Children, Youth and Families Department will start reporting violent juvenile criminals who are foreign nationals to immigration authorities.

Governor Bill Richardson ordered the change after Juan Gonzalez, an illegal immigrant, was accused of molesting a 6-year-old girl at an Albuquerque fitness club earlier in May.

Gonzales has been in trouble for sex crimes twice in the past, before he turned 18. In both those cases, CYFD never told authorities Gonzales was in the country illegally.

Taryn Bianchin

KOB.com

May 18, 2010

See also:

Added: May. 20, 2010

New Mexico, USA

Man accused of molesting girl at gym faces judge

The man accused of molesting a young girl at a Midtown Albuquerque fitness club was in court on Thursday.

Twenty-year-old Juan Gonzalez, an illegal immigrant, appeared before a judge on sex assault charges.

Police say Gonzalez pinned a six-year-old girl against a wall at the Midtown Sports and Wellness near Carlisle and Menaul and began touching her sexually.

Police say Gonzalez told them he knew what he was doing was wrong, but said he has a problem.

Charlie Pabst

KOB.com

May 06, 2010

Added: May. 20, 2010

Pennsylvania, USA

Man accused of molesting 14-year-old girl is illegal alien

Bethlehem police said a 23-year-old man who allegedly had sex with a then 14-year-old girl is from Guatemala and illegally in the country. Ivan Antonio Alvarez-Lopez, who last lived in New Jersey, met the girl, who is now pregnant with his child, according to police, through a mutual friend in September. The two talked on the phone until allegedly meeting in December at the Comfort Suites in South Side Bethlehem.

Police allege the two met there four times and had unprotected sex. Alvarez-Lopez knew the girl was 14, police said, and she knew he was from Guatemala.

Alvarez-Lopez was charged with sex crimes and referred to Immigration Customs Enforcement agents. He was sent to Northampton County Prison in lieu of $150,000 bail.

JD Malone

Lehigh Valley Live

May 13, 2010

Added: May. 20, 2010

California, USA

Border Patrol Agents Capture Three Sex Offenders in One Day

Calexico – U.S. Border Patrol agents assigned to the El Centro Sector apprehended three illegal aliens Wednesday who are convicted sex offenders.

One of the men was apprehended in the morning by agents from the El Centro station. Record checks revealed the man had previously been convicted of assault to commit rape and sex with a minor.

The other two men were apprehended in the afternoon, along with four other illegal aliens, near the downtown Calexico port of entry. Record checks revealed that one of the men had a conviction for unlawful sexual intercourse with a minor and that the other man had been convicted of sexual assault of a child.

All three men will be held at the Imperial County Jail pending prosecution proceedings.

Tribune Weekly Chronicle

May 05, 2010

Added: May. 20, 2010

Virginia, USA

One man may be behind two recent Arlington attacks, police say

One man may be behind two recent Arlington attacks, police say Arlington police are looking for a man they say sexually assaulted a woman behind a restaurant on May 14.

A woman was walking behind a restaurant in the 2000 block of Wilson Boulevard around 10:50 pm when a man grabbed her from behind, police said in a Tuesday press release. He held her arm and sexually assaulted her with his other hand, according to police, then fled on foot after the woman fought back.

The suspect was described as a "white Hispanic male" who was about 5 ft. 7 in. tall with a medium build, police said. He was wearing a white chef's style jacket and dark pants.

The attack was similar to another one that took place on May 8 in the 1800 block of N. Scott St., police said.

Police ask anyone with information about these attacks to call Detective Robert Icolari at (703) 228-4240 or e-mail him. They can also call the county's tip line at (703) 228-4242 or Arlington County Crime Solvers at 866-411-TIPS (8477).

David P. Marino-Nachison

The Washington Post

May 19, 2010

Added: May. 19, 2010

Mexico / The United States

Mexican President Felipe Calderón will address the Congress of the United States on Thursday, May 20, 2010

Mexico's Calderon Needs to Listen, Not Just Lecture U.S.

Nine years have passed since a Mexican President last addressed the U.S. Congress. That was Vicente Fox, just days before 9/11, after which Al Qaeda's horrors all but erased Mexico from Washington's foreign policy radar. But, surprise, our southern neighbor's problems refused to go away. While we were fighting off an Iraqi insurgency, Mexico's drug war morphed into a ghastly narco-insurgency that threatens to spill over the Rio Grande. While we were dropping the ball on immigration reform, Mexico kept pouring undocumented workers into the U.S...

What's still missing is a real sense that Calderon takes seriously enough the only real long-term solution to Mexico's drug war: police reform. "Calderon has taken some positive steps to improve federal police," says Alberto Diaz-Cayeros, director of the U.S.-Mexico Studies Center at the University of California-San Diego. "But Mexico still doesn't have real investigative police forces." And in Mexico, where most cops moonlight for the cartels, the narcos seem more spooked by the prospect of more professional police than by the presence of more soldiers. Last month I interviewed the police director of Calderon's home state of Michoacan, who had just announced stricter recruitment criteria for cops. A week later her SUV was attacked by narco-hitmen with assault rifles and grenades. Miraculously, she survived, but her two bodyguards - who had watched the door during our interview - were killed.

Calderon also needs to prioritize another longer-lasting weapon: anti-poverty programs that give younger and poorer Mexicans economic opportunities beyond joining drug gangs. Mexicans in hard hit areas like Juarez are giving him an earful in that regard these days, and so should the U.S. - not just because it might blunt narco-recruiting, but because more social development efforts south of the border also mean fewer indocumentados crossing north of it. Immigration is as much foreign policy as it is domestic policy, and the U.S. has got to push both itself and Mexico's political class to do more to stanch the flow of illegals at the source, inside Mexico, instead of only at the border...

Given how feckless U.S. immigration reform efforts usually turn out to be, it seems all the more urgent that both sides do more to promote ways to keep Mexican workers in Mexico, like expanding microcredit programs. Those have proven a boon for small entrepreneurs in impoverished rural states like Oaxaca that are a major source of illegal migrants - and they'd be even more effective, Obama should remind Calderon, if Mexico didn't allow microlenders to charge interest rates that top an outrageous 70%, twice the world microfinance average...

That lack of meaningful competition, as well as an overreliance on the U.S market, is one reason the recession has hit Mexico's economy (which shrank about 7% last year) perhaps harder than any other in Latin America. And that doesn't bode well for the wars against drug traffickers and migrant smugglers. The most salient point Calderon will make to Congress is that the U.S. and Mexico are in this together. That means Washington needs to drop its insensitive disregard for problems south of the border - and Mexico City needs to drop its hypersensitive obsession with tossing blame for those headaches north of the border. If they do, they'll have something genuinely worthy to toast at the White House.

Tim Padgett

Time Magazine

May. 18, 2010

Added: May. 19, 2010

Texas, USA

Eugenio Alejandro

Man arrested for sexually assaulting 12-year-old in his home

A 51-year-old man was arrested Monday after police say he sexually assaulted a 12-year-old girl at his home. According to an arrest affidavit, the girl slept over at Eugenio Alejandro's house on the 200 block of E. Huebinger in Marion for a slumber party, when she woke up to him "penetrating her" with his hands.

"Oh sick!," exclaimed neighbor Gordon Dambow. "She's an innocent child, what could they do? A grown man, my goodness, picking on the innocent."

"A couple of nights in a row, there were a bunch of kids over," explained Cody Bodeau, who lives just across the street from Alejandro. "Every other night there were a bunch of kids and we were wondering why they were all there, and he'd be outside talking to them and hanging out with them."

Alejandro worked closely with children as a volunteer of the Marion Softball Pony League as an assistant coach. The League didn't want to talk to News 4 WOAI since they say they did not organize the slumber party, but say the allegations are a "complete shock".

"No one should ever harm a child," says resident Kathleen Beierly.

Marion is a town of a little more than a thousand residents, where many people know each other by name.

"It's bad because we're good people, and we love our children," added Beierly.

News 4 WOAI also did a background check of Eugenio Alejandro. Three years ago, he was arrested for domestic violence, and has also served time for a DUI, a DWI, and theft dating back almost 20 years.

He bonded out Tuesday, and still faces one count of aggravated sexual assault on a child, a first degree felony.

Janet Kwak

WOAI - San Antonio

April 15, 2010

Added: May. 19, 2010

Indiana, USA

Suspect sought in sex assault on 11-year-old

Indianapolis - An 11-year-old girl is recovering after a man assaulted her in a west side apartment building. It happened in the 3300 block of Heather Ridge Drive.

"My daughter will not be out," said one resident after hearing the news.

There's fear among parents living at Heather Ridge Apartments on the city's west side.

"There's no safe place anywhere, anymore," said Adam Bennett, a visitor.

Parents say this place seems even less safe after police say a man sexually assaulted an 11-year-old girl in an apartment building Thursday around 6:30 pm.

"Pretty scary situation, especially an 11-year-old, and this individual has a hand gun and basically points it to her head and sexually assaults her," said Lt. Jeff Duhamell, IMPD.

It happened inside a common area of the building where anyone could have come through.

"I heard about it on the radio and I immediately called my daughter and told her to be careful at the bus stop, to stand with the other girls. To not stand alone," said a worried mother.

Police say they're concerned, and that this is the type of crime where the suspect could strike again.

"He's probably done this before," said Lt. Duhamell. "We need to get this guy off the street right away."

Police say the man spoke in Spanish during the attack. Police describe their suspect as Hispanic, between the ages of 20 and 30, 5 feet, 8 inches tall and weighing about 160 pounds...

Police say a sketch of the suspect may be available in the next few days.

Anyone with information about this incident is urged to contact IMPD or Crime Stoppers at 262-TIPS.

WTHR

May 13, 20100

Added: May. 19, 2010

Florida, USA

Woman Escapes Attempted Kidnapping

Orlando police are searching for the man who tried to kidnap an 18-year-old woman while she was walking on a trail near the Mall at Millenia.

The woman told police she was walking along the trail near 4850 Millenia Blvd. around 8 p.m. Sunday when a Hispanic man grabbed her from behind and pulled her toward some bushes.

The victim was able to escape and suffered only minor scratches, police said...

Meanwhile, police are still searching for a man who raped a woman in front of Lake Eola in downtown Orlando early Friday morning.

WKMG

May 17, 2010

Added: May. 19, 2010

Southwest USA

U.S. Border Patrol Weekly Blotter: May 6 - 12, 2010

Excerpt

May 6, 2010 - Border Patrol agents arrested an illegal alien from Mexico near Sheffield, Texas. Records checks revealed the subject had a prior conviction for aggravated sexual assault of a child in the state of Tennessee, indecent liberties with a child in the state of North Carolina, and had been previously removed from the United States.

May 6, 2010 - Border Patrol agents arrested an illegal alien from Honduras near Gila Bend, Arizona. Records checks revealed the subject had a prior conviction for aggravated sexual assault of a child and had been previously removed from the United States.

U.S. Border Patrol

May 12, 2010

Added: May 17, 2010

Arizona, USA

Karley Saucedo

Suspects: Jose Luna Valenzuela (left), Oscar Grijalva and Sergio Castaneda

Police rescue Phoenix woman kidnapped during home invasion

A 22-year-old Phoenix woman who was kidnapped during a home invasion has been freed from her captors.

Police said the suspects were armed with handguns and demanded drugs and money when they forced their way into a home near 59th Avenue and Indian School Road on May 5. When they didn't get what they wanted, they took Karley Saucedo and an SUV and left.

Following a week of negotiations and surveillance, Phoenix police officers and detectives were able to free Saucedo from a home near Baseline Road and 47th Avenue.

Saucedo, who has the mental capacity of an 11- or 12-year-old, is back with her family. She reportedly was not injured.

Six people have been arrested on charges including kidnapping, extortion, armed robbery, aggravated assault and vehicle theft. They have been identified as Oscar Grijalva, 18; Sergio Castaneda, 17; Jose Luna-Valenzuela, 22; Hilda Gutierrez, 29; Carlos Aguilar, 28; and a 17-year-old boy, who was booked into Juvenile Corrections.

"This was a sophisticated group of naturalized citizens and illegal aliens who chose to prey on vulnerable victims for monetary gain," Phoenix police Detective James Holmes said.

Jennifer Thomas

Fox 11

May 14, 2010

See also:

Arizona, USA

Mayor Phil Gordon of Phoenix, Arizona speaks at Harvard University - Feb, 5, 2010

Photo: Matthew W. Hutchins

Phoenix mayor paints disturbing picture of immigrant experience

[Latino] Mayor Phil Gordon of Phoenix, speaking at Harvard Law School on February 5th, said that the steady flow of illegal immigrants into his city has created a crisis situation that is extremely dangerous for local law enforcement and a devastating drain on the city's budget. Although by statistical measures Phoenix is one of the safest cities in the United States, it has experienced a wave of kidnapping and violent crimes that have challenged its law enforcement capacity.

The problem, said Mayor Gordon, is the violent behavior of the "coyotes" involved in human trafficking operations across the nearby Mexican border and who regularly kidnap, torture, rape and kill those who do not comply with their extortion, sometimes forcing captives to dig their own graves while awaiting either freedom or death.

According to Gordon, over 20,000 people, including women and children, have been rescued by Phoenix police over the last three years from "drop houses" where dozens or even hundreds are held captive or even tortured, sometimes in the midst of ordinary suburban neighborhoods…

Gordon said that the fight against the coyotes' organized crime has forced the city to hire over 600 additional police officers, many to replace the 100 full-time officers assigned to federal task forces investigating violent criminals and 50 officers embedded undercover in federal operations. The cost to Phoenix of employing these 150 officers, over $15 million dollars a year, is not reimbursed by the federal government and threatens to force reductions in city services like libraries and after school programs…

Gordon expressed urgent concern about the state of immigration law in the United States. He believes that immediate action is necessary to reform immigration policy and assist burdened local police. "I couldn't and wouldn't stay silent any longer, not only because of the economic costs, but also because of the cost in human suffering."

Matthew W. Hutchins

The Harvard Law Record

Feb. 12, 2010

Added: May 17, 2010

Indiana, USA

Neighbors offer clues in sexual assault of girl, 11

Indianapolis Metro Police are searching for a predator who sexually assaulted an 11-year-old girl at gunpoint . It happened around 6:30 Thursday night at a west side apartment complex.

The little girl was treated at Riley Hospital for Children and released. Her father told 24-Hour News 8 she was able to give police a detailed description of the attack.

The little girl lives at the Heather Ridge Apartments located in the 3300 block of Heather Ridge Drive. The complex is filled with families with young children...

Police believe the attacker, driving a late-model, red, extended-cab Nissan pickup, asked the girl for directions. Police believe he then followed her inside the building's common area and attacked her.

Police have provided a picture of a truck like the one suspect was driving.

Neighbor Michelle Wells said she had seen the truck before, as had her sister.

A male resident named Nate nodded, saying he'd seen it too...

"They usually will do drive-bys and look around. And then when they see the opportunity, they'll act on it," said IMPD spokesman, Lt. Jeff Duhamell.

Police believe the suspect is a 20 to 30 year old Hispanic man who is 5'6" to 5'9" and 160 pounds. He was last seen wearing a red shirt with a white stripe, blue jeans, and work boots. He spoke to the little girl only in Spanish.

Police urge residents or anyone with any information to call Crime Stoppers at 262-TIPS.

Deanna Dewberry

WISH

May 14, 2010

Added: May 17, 2010

Texas, USA

Accused sexual assault suspect arrested in Temple park

Temple - A man wanted by authorities for an alleged sexual assault was arrested early Friday morning after he was located violating a park curfew.

Rufino Hernandez-Ramirez, 23, of Temple, was stopped by officers around 1 a.m. at Miller Park, located at 1919 North 1st Street, for reportedly violating the park curfew.

The suspect reportedly provided a false name, however, after the officer properly identified Hernandez-Ramirez, it was discovered he had an outstanding warrant for Aggravated Sexual Assault of a Child.

The alleged assault occurred in June 2008 in Temple.

Hernandez-Ramirez was arrested and transported to the Bell County Jail.

He is charged with Failure to Identify Fugitive Intent Give False Information and Motion to Revoke Probation, along with his initial charge of Aggravated Sexual Assault of a Child.

KXXV

May 14, 2010

Added: May 17, 2010

California, USA

Kidnapping, Attempted Assault Reported In Woodland

The Woodland Police Department is searching for a suspect who allegedly kidnapped and attempted to rape a woman in Yolo County.

Authorities said the alleged victim said she was walking on West Street near Buckeye Street on Saturday morning when a man drove up in a newer-model black SUV and asked her for directions. As she spoke with him, he pulled out a gun and ordered the woman into the car, authorities said.

The victim said he drove her into a wooded area near Interstate 5 and County Road 98 and ordered her to remove her clothes. When she resisted, the man attempted to drag her from the car, authorities said, but the victim was able to break free and run to Interstate 5, where she flagged down a car and asked for help.

The victim was not seriously injured in the incident.

The suspect is described as a Hispanic male in his late 20s or early 30s. He is 5'4" to 5'6", weighs about 160 to 180 pounds, with short black hair and a thin mustache. He also reportedly had two silver caps on his front teeth.

Anyone with information about the crime is asked to call the Woodland Police Department at (530) 661-7800.

CBS 13

May 15, 2010

Added: May 17, 2010

Pennsylvania, USA

Men harass girls going to school in York City

York City Police are asking for the public’s help in identifying two men who have been harassing girls on their way to school.

Lt. Tim Utley, who supervises the detective bureau, said there have been three such incidents reported in the past several weeks. The girls were on their way to William Penn Senior High School and were in the area of the 500 block of South Duke Street when they were harassed, he said.

The two men are in a newer-model gray sedan, Utley said; they are Hispanic, in their 30s and, in the latest incident, were wearing black T-shirts and black hats.

Anyone with information on their identities is urged to call city police at 846-1234, or the department’s anonymous crime tip line, 849-2204.

Elizabeth Evans

York Dispatch

May 14, 2010

Added: May 13, 2010

The United States / The World

U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder

Attorney General Eric Holder Speaks at the National Conference on Human Trafficking

Arlington, Virginia - ...For today’s Justice Department, our work to pursue human trafficking investigations and prosecutions and to support those who serve and assist victims is not simply a top priority. It’s also a source of great pride. Much of this work is being led by our Civil Rights Division and its specialized Human Trafficking Prosecution Unit. Three years ago, this unit was established to consolidate expertise and to improve coordination between the many critical partners needed to bring traffickers to justice and to protect and empower victims.

In a short time, this unit has achieved remarkable success in increasing both the number and impact of human trafficking prosecutions. It has dismantled organized human trafficking networks operating in multiple jurisdictions and across international borders. And it has achieved justice for many, including undocumented migrants who’ve seen their hopes of a better life destroyed; documented guest workers who’ve been deceived, threatened and frightened into captivity; women and children who’ve been forced into prostitution; and young Americans who’ve been exploited in their own county by traffickers preying on their vulnerabilities. These are extraordinary accomplishments.

But our Human Trafficking Prosecution Unit isn’t working alone. It is supported and strengthened by our Child Exploitation and Obscenity Section, our Office of International Affairs, our Organized Crime and Racketeering Section, our Office of Justice Programs and its Office for Victims of Crime, as well as the FBI. In addition, the Executive Office of U.S. Attorneys and U.S. Attorneys’ Offices across the country are providing critical leadership in bringing human traffickers to justice. Later in this conference, you’ll be hearing from some of the Assistant U.S. Attorneys who were on the front lines of major human trafficking prosecutions...

Today, some of our most critical partnerships have been established beyond our nation’s borders. We’re working closely with authorities in other countries to extradite fugitive defendants, protect victims’ families, obtain evidence of criminal activity, and combat trafficking networks that operate across international lines. A leading example of this is our recent work with Mexico. The Departments of Justice and Homeland Security have collaborated closely with our Mexican counterparts on a bilateral enforcement initiative aimed at dismantling the trafficking networks that operate across our Southwest border. Although this initiative is in its early stages, it has already produced promising results for both countries – including measurable increases in the number of defendants apprehended, cases prosecuted and victims rescued.

The benefits of such international partnerships are clear. By working with our foreign allies, we’ve succeeded in liberating Jamaican tree-cutters from shacks in New Hampshire; Filipino workers from chain motels in South Dakota; Eastern European women from strip clubs in Detroit; Vietnamese garment workers from American Samoa; Peruvian factory workers – including children – from traffickers on Long Island; and young girls from Togo and Ghana – some just 10 years old – from toiling around the clock without pay in hair salons in New Jersey.

But despite these achievements, there is much more work to be done. Meeting the civil rights challenges of the 21st century will require us to identify new enforcement strategies, to forge new partnerships, and to provide more support for victim service providers. But we should all be encouraged that the global movement to end human trafficking has received unprecedented attention and resources, as well as unprecedented political support...

U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder

U.S. Department of Justice

2010 National Conference on Human Trafficking

May 3, 2010

See also:

Added: May 13, 2010

The United States

U.S. Secretary of Labor Hilda L. Solis

2010 DOJ National Conference on Human Trafficking - Remarks of Hilda Solis, U.S. Secretary of Labor

The TVPA Decade: Progress and Promise

...Thank you for the invitation to speak at this national conference on human trafficking - an issue I care deeply about.

I also want to thank Attorney General Eric Holder for his leadership on this issue.

Ten years after the passage of the Trafficking Victims Protection Act, we are even more committed to the conference's goal of disseminating best practices for prosecuting human trafficking and assisting victims.

The Department of Labor's commitment to fighting human trafficking comes from its long history of working to protect and assist vulnerable workers, some of whom may have been trafficked into forced labor.

As one of my priorities, the Department of Labor is engaged both domestically and internationally to better serve and protect vulnerable workers.

Labor trafficking puts women, children, and men in the most extreme forms of workplace exploitation.

It leads to situations where people are denied not only their wages, but their human rights.

Our efforts to ensure that workers are afforded all of their rights under the law include initiatives that help to combat human trafficking in all of its forms…

Trafficking victims are the most vulnerable workers in this country.

As a state senator in California, I learned first-hand how 72 Thai workers in my own district, worked for seven years in virtual slavery in a sweatshop with boarded up windows and fences covered with razor wire making garments until they were freed by law enforcement - and several hundred Latinos were not paid minimum wage or over-time.

As a member of Congress, I was involved in passing House Resolution condemning the murders of victims of human trafficking and labor abuse in Cuidad Juarez, Mexico.

These women worked in slave-like conditions and then brutally killed through no fault of their own.

These are the individuals whom we all have a duty to help and protect. This focus on protecting the most vulnerable workers in today's economy is why I have bolstered the enforcement staff in all of my agencies.

I have already added 250 investigators in the Wage and Hour Division alone.

And I'm not done yet!...

Violence in the workplace or trafficking for the sake of monetary gain is unconscionable.

No nation does or should get ahead at the peril of its workers.

U.S. Secretary of Labor Hilda L. Solis

2010 DOJ National Conference on Human Trafficking

May 3, 2010

See also:

Added: May 13, 2010

LibertadLatina Commentary

Chuck Goolsby

Giving Latin America its rightful place at the table in U.S. anti-trafficking efforts

The U.S. Department of Labor (DOL) has come a long way from 1995, when I first toured the DOL Women's Bureau, passed out my 1994 report (see below) and discussed the rampant workplace sexual exploitation of Latin American immigrant women with staff. No Spanish language staff was available for their recently opened hotline at that time.

Approximately 5 years ago, a DOL analyst told me that she used LibertadLatina as a source for her research into Latina workplace exploitation issues.

Around 7 years ago, I gave then Represen-tative Hilda Solis a LibertadLatina business card at a Congressional luncheon on human trafficking, where I also gave around 200 congressional staffers copies of the LibertadLatina newsletter.

At the May 3, 2010 session of the annual federal government Human Trafficking Conference, Attorney General Eric Holder and U.S. Labor Secretary Hilda Solis made some of the first official public pronouncements by U.S. Government officials acknowledging that a Latin American component to the global human trafficking crisis exists.

Although prosecutions, and work by State Department Trafficking in Persons director Ambassador Luis CdeBaca prior to his assuming his current post have touched upon the issue of Latin American victims, the U.S. Federal Government has yet to state a clear response to the fact that, as Ambassador CdeBaca noted in a December 2009 interview, some 60% of U.S. human trafficking victims come to the U.S. from Latin America. Most of those enslaved persons were trafficked over the U.S./ Mexican border.

In addition, the United Nations affiliated International organization for Migration (IOM) in the Southern Cone region of South America estimates that Latin American human trafficking alone generates $16 billion dollars in annual revenues, amounting to an estimated 50% of global trafficking profits.

However we look at the situation, Latin America's crisis of modern day slavery cannot be minimized, nor can it be ignored.

We at LibertadLatina have persistently requested that the administration of U.S. President Barack Obama speak out publicly on this issue, especially to demand that Mexico apply the rule of law to the current nationwide environment of lawless impunity that allows mass gender atrocities to occur on an ongoing basis. That is a violent crime wave that has impacts throughout the United States.

The pronouncements by Ambassador CdeBaca in December of 2009, and the May 3, 2010 statements by Secretary Solis and Attorney General Holder represent a start towards achieving full federal accountability for U.S. responses to the human trafficking crisis that today damages Latin American women, children and men both in Latin America and across the U.S. and the rest of the world.

Keep up the good work!

We will proceed to view progress on this issue from the perspective of "trust, but verify."

The victims, and those at risk, await our serious and effective efforts to rescue and protect them today!

End impunity now!

Chuck Goolsby

LibertadLatina

May 12/13, 2010

1992-1994.

* Your tax dollars at work supporting a sexist federal contractor.

* Sexual harassment, quid-pro-quo sexual demands and sexual assault with impunity in the low-wage American workplace.

...The below case relation is completely factual. The events may seem startling for the average reader, but this case account tells a story that is happening every night in America in many office cleaning jobs, hotel jobs, restaurant and fast-food jobs, retail stores and other low-wage work places.

During… 1995, I presented detailed information about this… case and several equally serious episodes of the severe sexual harassment of Latina workers to… the… U.S. Department of Labor Women's Bureau's "Low Wage Worker's Conference" in Washington, DC, where the author passed out his 1994 report to Women's Bureau officials and conference participants...

While the U.S. Department of Labor Women's Bureau never responded to the author in regard to his 1994 report, the director of Women's Bureau who followed the 1994 incumbent, Ms. Ida Castro, did make public statements to the press in the late 1990's referring to DOL's recognition of the issue of the exploitation of immigrant women in low wage jobs.

Chuck Goolsby

1995

Chuck Goolsby

March, 1994

See also:

Added: May 13, 2010

USA / The World

A girl sits in a windowless garage where she was kept for two years. Purchased at the age of 10, she worked as much as 20 hours per day as domestic help.

Photo: U.S. State Department

Working To End Human Trafficking

"Modern slavery exists in communities and cultures spanning the globe." "Human trafficking has become big business – generating billions of dollars each year through the entrapment and exploitation of millions," said U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder on May 3rd, at the National Conference on Human Trafficking. "Almost every country in the world is affected, either as a source or destination for victims."

According to the U.S. Department of Justice, human trafficking is the fastest-growing crime in the world, and is second in financial scope only to the sale of illegal drugs. It occurs in every state in the U.S. and every country in the world. It is a global problem, and as such, it demands a global solution.

That is why the U.S. is "partnering with authorities in other countries to extradite fugitive defendants, protect victims' families, obtain evidence of criminal activity, and combat trafficking networks that operate across international lines," said Attorney General Holder.

"By working with our foreign allies, we've succeeded in liberating Jamaican tree-cutters from shacks in New Hampshire; Filipino workers from chain motels in South Dakota; Eastern European women from strip clubs in Detroit; Vietnamese garment workers from American Samoa; Peruvian factory workers – including children – from traffickers on Long Island; and young girls from Togo and Ghana from toiling around the clock without pay in hair salons in New Jersey," said Attorney General Holder.

" We . . . . know that modern slavery exists in communities and cultures spanning the globe," said Ambassador-at-large Luis CdeBaca director of the Office to Monitor and Combat Trafficking in Persons. "It is a fluid phenomenon, responding to market demands, vulnerabilities in laws, weak penalties, natural disasters, and economic instability.

"No country, including the United States, has attained a sophisticated or truly comprehensive response to this massive, ever-increasing, ever-changing crime. . . . Every country is still learning what trafficking is and what works in response to it . . . . The vast majority of people enslaved today around the world have yet to see any progress.

"We must devote ourselves to never again letting a generation go by without forward progress," said Ambassador CdeBaca. "Working toward a world without modern slavery is no doubt a bold proposition, but it is one that we must work toward."

Voice of America

May 13, 2010

Added: May 13, 2010

Mexico

Margaret Sekaggya, UN Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights defenders (right), with Bety Cariño - February 2010.

Llama ONU a gobierno mexicano a garantizar labor de las y los defensores de DH

“Deteriorada su situación”, condena asesinato de activistas en Oaxaca

La Organización de Naciones Unidas (ONU), a través de cuatro de sus Relatorías, expresó su preocupación por la deteriorada situación de las y los defensores de derechos humanos en México y condenó firmemente los recientes asesinatos de la defensora Beatriz Alberta Cariño Trujillo y del observador internacional Jyri Antero Jaakkola.

En un comunicado de prensa, difundido por la Oficina del Alto Comisionado de las Naciones Unidas para los Derechos Humanos, el organismo internacional advirtió que las y los defensores de derechos humanos “enfrentan graves amenazas contra sus vidas a consecuencia de su trabajo”.

El grupo de expertos y experta de la ONU hizo un llamado al gobierno mexicano para “tomar las medidas que sean necesarias para proteger el derecho a la vida y la seguridad de las y los defensores de los derechos humanos en el país contra todo tipo de violencia y acción arbitraria que se produzca como consecuencia del ejercicio legítimo de sus actividades.”

Exigen Investigación Pronto e Imparcial

Margaret Sekaggya, Relatora Especial sobre la situación de los Defensores de los Derechos Humanos, manifestó su “profunda preocupación” por el deterioro de la situación de las y los defensores de los derechos humanos en México, en especial las mujeres y las personas defensoras que trabajan en temas relacionados con las comunidades indígenas.

Además condenó los hechos ocurridos el 27 de abril en la zona triqui de San Juan Copala, en Oaxaca, cuando una misión de observación de los derechos humanos sufrió una emboscada por parte de paramilitares, lugar donde fue asesinada, Beatriz Alberta Cariño Trujillo, defensora y directora del Centro de Apoyo Comunitario Trabajando Unidos (CACTUS) y donde también murió Jyri Antero Jaakkola...

CIMAC Women's News Agency

May 12, 2010

See also:

Added: May 13, 2010

Mexico

Human rights defenders continue to pay with their lives in Mexico, warn UN experts

Geneva - A group of United Nations independent experts* warned about the deteriorating situation for human rights defenders in Mexico, strongly condemning the recent killing of human rights defender Ms. Beatriz Alberta (Bety) Cariño Trujillo and the international observer Mr. Tyri Antero Jaakkola in Oaxaca, south east Mexico.

“Defenders continue to face significant threats to their lives in Mexico as a result of their work,” said Margaret Sekaggya, UN Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights defenders. “We are deeply concerned about the deteriorating situation for human rights defenders in the country, including women and human rights defenders working on issues related to indigenous communities.”

On 27 April 2010, Bety Cariño and Tyri Antero Jaakkola were part of a mission to monitor human rights in Oaxaca when they were ambushed by paramilitaries and killed. Several other human rights defenders and journalists suffered injuries. Four other members of the mission, including two journalists of the magazine Contralínea, spent two days in a forest following the attack, before being rescued by the police on 30 April.

“The situation in Mexico is extremely complex and no-one could doubt the gravity of the challenges confronting the Government in its fight against the drug cartels” added Philip Alston, Special Rapporteur on extrajudicial, summary or arbitrary executions. “But there is no justification for failing to take strong steps when human rights defenders, journalists and others are killed. Human rights must not be permitted to be a casualty in the fight against drugs and crime.” ...

The United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights

May 12, 2010

Added: May 13, 2010

Mexico

Puebla state legislators work on drafting human trafficking law

Detallan legisladores apartados de la Ley de Trata de Personas

[Puebla -] Los representantes populares afinaron detalles y pactaron reunirse el próximo 18 de mayo para aportar mayores elementos en el sentido de los criterios de sanciones penales para la construcción de la Ley de Trata de Personas.

Dicha reunión contó con la asistencia de Diputados y personal de la Dirección Jurídica del órgano colegiado, quienes acordaron mantener 14 verbos en la iniciativa, como son: inducir, procurar, promover, reclutar, captar, conseguir, transportar, trasladar, recibir, entregar, entre los que destaca solicitar, facilitar, ofrecer y mantener...

Legislators Develop Details of New Human Trafficking Bill

[Puebla state -] Members of Congress have met to work out details of a new legislative proposal to address the problem of human trafficking. The working group has agreed to reconvene on May 18^th to further elaborate the criteria for criminal penalties.

The meeting which was attended by members of the Congressional Chamber of Deputies including specialists in criminal law. The group agreed to maintain language that address 14 terms are pertinent to the bill: induce, procure, promote, recruit, capture, obtain, transport, traffic, receive, deliver, solicit, facilitate, offer and maintain.

The forms used to commit human trafficking crimes were also discussed, and will be expressed as sections of the law related to: deprivation of the freedom, physical violence, moral violence, deceit, abuse authority, taking advantage of a situation of vulnerability, concession, and receipt of payments or benefits.

Puebla Hoy

May 12, 2010

Added: May 13, 2010

Arizona, USA

ICE: Salvadoran kids held in Phoenix

Phoenix - Federal authorities say they have rescued three Salvadoran children who were being held hostage by suspected human smugglers in the Phoenix metropolitan area.

Authorities believe the children's parents live in Washington, D.C., and paid $13,000 to have the children smuggled into the country.

They say the children - who range in age from 11 to 15 - arrived in Phoenix in late April and the smugglers refused to release them unless the parents paid an additional $6,500. Once that extra fee was paid, the smugglers then demanded another $7,000 and the parents called authorities.

Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents say the children were left at a business in west Phoenix and appeared to be in good health when they were rescued Tuesday. They say an investigation into the smuggling scheme is continuing.

The Associated Press

May 11th, 2010

Added: May 12, 2010

Costa Rica / Nicaragua

Couple Charged With Slavery Of Their Nicaraguan Domestic Employee

She was sixteen when she came to Costa Rica from her native Nicaragua with the promise of work. Yesterday, at the age of 22, the girl, now a woman, was rescued from being a domestic slave for the last six years.

The woman was identified by her last names Centeno Barrera, was brought to Costa Rica from her hometown of Matagalpa by a Nicaraguan couple living in Santo Domingo de Heredia, Costa Rica.

The couple, identified as Portobanco Torres (wife) and Medina Kraudy (husband) would keep their domestic employee/slave locked up in the house when they went out, work, shopping, etc.

The young woman didn't have any way of communication with the outside world until she was able to contact neighbors through the window of the house where she was kept in slavery.

The [Judicial Investigations Agency] (OIJ) took the call from neighbors seriously and began an investigation that resulted in a raid of the home on Monday.

Jorge Rojas, director of the OIJ, said the couple have been charged with "trata de personas" ([human] slavery).

"We raided the home and the young woman told us she had been held captive for the last six years", Rojas told the press.

Apparently, the young woman told authorities that she was never received pay for her services.

The couple have denied the accusations against them, saying it is all a lie made up by the young woman.

"The neighbors made a spectacle of the situation, we brought her here by land from Nicaragua to give her a better future. We paid half her salary to her, the other half sent to her mother in Nicaragua, here she has no family or documents, she is alone", said the employer.

"Several times we took her to the Parque de Diversiones [amusement park] so that she could play with my daughter, she never left the house alone because she didn't want to, the doors were always open to her. Many times when I came home from work I would find her sleeping, leaving her keys on the door, she was never locked up", the woman said.

The couple, after the arrest, were released on bail having to sign in at the local courthouse every two weeks and had to surrender their passport and not have any contact with the victim or her family.

This case is typical of many situations where Nicaraguans come to Costa Rica in search for work and find themselves in slave like conditions, though not to such extremes.

Many young Nicaraguan girls, some under age, make their way to Costa Rica with the consent and blessings of their families back home, in the hopes of better their (the family's) economic condition, as salaries and job opportunities in Costa Rica are much better than up north...

In past year Costa Rica has passed legislation giving domestic employees - both foreign and national - rights that include a decent workplace, work hours and pay.

Inside Costa Rica

May 11, 2010

Added: May 12, 2010

Louisiana, USA

Jose Moreno and Luis Nava,Gonzalo Cortes, Esdras Garcia (Left top to right bottom)

Four Mexican nationals charged with rape, murder of Louisiana woman

On Sunday, less than 24 hours after the lifeless body of Angela Laudun, 33, was discovered in a remote area, Lafourche Parish Sheriff’s Deputies arrested and charged four Mexican nationals with her rape and murder.

According to the sheriff’s office, around 2:00 a.m., Saturday, the woman voluntarily left a Galliano bar with the men, at which time they drove her to a nearby house. Apparently, Laudin became concerned for her safety and tried to leave, but the men held her down and took turns raping her.

At some point, during the ordeal, she was strangled to death.

The men, then allegedly placed the woman’s body in their SUV, eventually dumping her in a heavily wooded area. A few hours later, the body was discovered by a man doing some work on his property.

Gonzalo Portillo Cortes, 20; Esdras Sanchez Garcia, 21; Louis Nava, 28; and Jose Castille Mareno, 23, have all been charged with aggravated rape and first-degree murder.

All four suspects work for Quality Shipyard in Houma, La., and while their employer claims that the men presented valid documents prior to their employment, Immigration and Customs Enforcement has placed a hold on them.

The alleged assailants are Mexican nationals and their interrogations had to be conducted in Spanish. They are currently being held in the Lafourche Parish Detention Center.

Dave Gibson

The Examiner

May 11, 2010

Added: May 12, 2010

Maryland and Florida, USA

Jose Alexander Menjivar

DNA helps uncover suspected serial rapist

Evidence from 2003 city cold case led to four others

He almost disregarded the DNA evidence.

The elderly victim of the 2003 home invasion and sexual assault in Annapolis died three years ago.

Without her testimony at trial, David Cordle, chief investigator for the Anne Arundel County State's Attorney's Office, knew prosecutors could never secure a conviction.

But still, Cordle recalled, he knew the suspect's name; he had an un-served warrant in a file and a full DNA profile ready to be submitted to the FBI's Combined DNA Data Index System.

Maybe - just maybe, he thought - the evidence would help solve another rape case.

"I was this close to not entering the evidence," Cordle said last week, holding his right thumb and forefinger together. "I am sure glad I did."

Because he did, cold case investigators are now asking for the public's help in locating a suspected illegal immigrant they believe was behind five sexual assaults between February 2002 and December 2005 in Maryland and Florida.

With the evidence from the 2003 assault of an 81-year-old woman inside her Annapolis home, Cordle explained, police were able to crack another case in Annapolis as well as one in West Palm Beach, Fla., and another two in Orlando, Fla.

Jose Alexander "Alex" Menjivar, 37, formerly of 1033 Martha Court in Annapolis and 1649 Fairhill Drive in Edgewater, is charged by name in two of the assaults and wanted for questioning in the others, police said. Detectives with the Orange County Sheriff's Office in Florida also have a warrant for a "John Doe" with Menjivar's DNA.

William Johns, a civilian investigator with city police and the other half of the city's cold case squad, explained DNA linked Menjivar to four of the attacks - including both of those reported in Annapolis. A fifth rape in Orlando was committed in such a similar fashion that detectives believe the same man must be behind it as well.

"It's just simply amazing we got so many matches," Johns said last week after outlining some of the details behind the five rapes and illustrating Menjivar's alleged progression down the East Coast. He noted that without the DNA evidence police would never have been able to connect the crimes.

"You wonder how many more cases are sitting on shelves waiting to be solved," Johns said.

"It shows you in cold cases you can't assume or presume anything," Cordle said.

The five cases

According to cold case investigators, police believe Menjivar is behind five violent sexual assaults. The attacks occurred on:

Feb. 16, 2002: A 22-year-old woman was assaulted inside her home on Copley Court in Annapolis...

March 23, 2003: An 81-year-old woman was assaulted inside her home on Tiburon Court in Annapolis...

Nov. 27, 2004: A 29-year-old female cab driver was assaulted in Orlando...

Jan. 30, 2005: A female cab driver was assaulted in Orlando...

Dec. 16, 2005: A 30-year-old woman was assaulted outside a West Palm Beach nightclub...

Detective Nichole Addazio with the Palm Beach County Sheriff's Office said they have known the same man was behind their assault and at least one of the ones in Orange County since 2005, but they were surprised to hear their attacker had assaulted two more women in Annapolis. She said she had mixed emotions when she got the notification.

"I was horrified to learn there was another case, but I was elated to know we had a suspect," she said...

Menjivar is Hispanic, about 5 feet 8 inches tall and 150 pounds, with black hair and brown eyes. While in Maryland, he worked as a landscaper. Anyone with information about Menjivar, these attacks or any other attacks that may be related should contact Cordle or Johns at the Anne Arundel State's Attorney's Office at 410-222-1740.

Scott Daugherty

Hometown Annapolis

May 09, 2010

Added: May 12, 2010

Colorado, USA

Denver Police Search For Child Enticement Suspect

Denver police would like the help locating a suspect in a possible child enticement that happened on Tuesday.

Sonny Jackson with Denver police said a 14-year old girl was walking in the 1400 block of Ivy Street when she noticed a vehicle that she described as a dirty white van without windows. It had what appeared to be decorative ladders on the back.

"The driver called out to the victim, possibly trying to get her into the vehicle. She continued to walk and the suspect parked the van and continued attempting to contact her," Jackson said in a prepared statement.

The driver of the van was described as a clean-shaven Hispanic male about 5-foot-7 with a thin build wearing a white t-shirt and burgundy and black pants with black boots.

Anyone with information is asked to call Denver police at (720) 913-2000. Remain anonymous and call Crime Stoppers at (720) 913-STOP (7867).

CBS

May 11, 2010

Added: May 12, 2010

Nevada, USA

Reno Police Search for Attempted Abduction Suspect

Police need your help finding a man they say tried to abduct a teen girl near a Reno school Tuesday morning.

Police say around 8:20am, a 15-year-old girl was walking between buildings at the Coral Academy of Science on East Ninth Street when she was approached by a man. They spoke briefly before he grabbed her arm. Officers say the suspect then tried to pull her away but she screamed and eventually ran away.

The man ran west from the area.

The school was placed on lockdown for about two hours.

The suspect is described as Hispanic, about 21 years old, 5'10" with a thin build, shaved head and clean shaven face. He was wearing a black ‘hoodie' sweatshirt, brown Dickie pants and white shoes.

Police say the man has been seen in the general area before so he may live in the area.

The girl was not hurt.

If you have any information, you're asked to call Secret Witness at 322-4900. Your call will remain anonymous.

Channel 2 News

May 11, 2010

Added: May 11, 2010

Impunity!

Oaxaca, Mexico

Bety Cariño

Letter from the family of Bety Cariño, murdered by paramilitaries in Oaxaca

To our friends and brothers and sisters

To those who share the pain and anguish

To the public opinion, saddened and full of rage

The the indigenous peoples of Mexico and the world

To those whose solidarity envelops us with their deepest condolences

To all of you who, with you warmth, solidarity, presence, denouncements, you tell us and dictate the path that we have to and need to follow. To those whose hearts have suffered the pain of having a loved one taken from you, we want to tell you that the words don't exist to be able to express to you the rage that we feel, the impotence, the anguish, and the desperation of not being able to be with the person who was the compañera, the mother of two children, the leader, the friend, the sister, THE LOVE OF OUR LIFE when hate, brutality, and anger took her life because of the struggle that we undertook for fourteen years. To all of you and in the name of my children, thank you.

Once again, just like in 2006, [Oaxacan Governor] Ulises Ruiz Ortiz's terrorist, murderous, repressive State seeks to demonstrate its strength, impose its policies, and demonstrate its hatred of that which doesn't agree with it, that which can't be subordinated, that which doesn't give in, and that which is incorruptible, because it is born from below and full of life, because it is built with the brotherhood of those of us who have decided to work towards the construction of a different world, a more human world, where the Earth and the dreams we sow flower every day. Bety, or Beto as her father called her, or, as she was really called, Alberta Cariño Trujillo, has not died! Her word grows and gives voice to those who did not have one, and in being a sister to the women of Copala, of the Mixteca, and of the world, in being a woman, your determination as a sister in this autonomist struggle resists against the hatred, anger, and distain of the UBISORT paramilitaries who are lead by Rufino Juarez and Antonio Cruz...

Because you are the flower, and your seed is the fruit of the dignified path we must follow. We won't forget you. Omar, Ita, and I say to you, "Until the victory."

Prison for Ulises Ruiz, Evencio Martinez, Rufino Juarez, Anastasio Juarez, Antonio Cruz, and the authorities in La Sabana!

Death to Ulises' bad, repressive and murderous government!

We must break the siege in San Juan Copala!

Bety will never be silenced, not in death, nor with machine guns!

Land, Freedom, or Death!

With all our love,

Omarcito, Itandewi, and Omar Esparza

The Family of Bety Cariño

May 03, 2010

Added: May 11, 2010

North Carolina, USA

Reyna Isabel-Reyes Caballero makes his first court appearance

Man Suspected of Human Trafficking Appears in Court

Greensboro - Detectives are investigating whether a human trafficking arrest is a small part of a larger prostitution and trafficking ring.

Guilford County sheriff's deputies and Immigration and Customers Enforcement officers were shot at Friday while searching a home at 700 N. English St. where they believe a human trafficking victim was being held. Deputies charged Reyna Isabel-Reyes Caballero, 37, with assault with a deadly weapon with intent to kill.

Caballero, from Honduras, had his first court appearance Monday and said he fired because he though the people at the door were thieves.

"I was afraid," he said through an interpreter. "I thought they were thieves, burglars at the door. I have a family in Honduras with five children."

Caballero said he wants to be deported to Honduras, but he must first face the assault charge and possibly some human trafficking charges at the state level.

Betty Cauthen, who lives three houses down from the home raided on Friday night, said she thought the house was empty.

"That's just it. We never saw anything. Nobody come in, nobody come out. No groceries in. No mail being checked. No company," she said.

While searching the residence and conducting multiple interviews, deputies found a juvenile in the house they say was a victim of human trafficking. Deputies say she was removed from the home and is working with ICE through the investigation.

Sheeka Strickland

FOX8 News

May 10, 2010

Added: May 10, 2010

Impunity!

Mexico

On April 27, 2010, Mixtec Indigenous human rights leader Bety Cariño and a Finnish international observer, Jyri Antero Jaakkola, were murdered in Oaxaca state by paramilitary soldiers affiliated with the Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI), one of Mexico's three top political parties.

Members of the European Parliament, the Finnish Embassy, and the United Nations Human Rights Commissioner have demanded a full investigation.

Photo: Bety Cariño tragically killed in violent paramilitary attack in Oaxaca

Frontline - Protection of Human Rights Defenders

April 29, 2010

Beatriz Alberta Cariño Trujillo

México, DF - Trabajar por la paz y el respeto a los derechos humanos, ha colocado en riesgo a las defensoras y defensores de estos derechos, un caso extremo ocurrió el pasado 27 de abril cuando una caravana por la paz fue emboscada en el estado de Oaxaca, México y dos de sus integrantes fueron asesinados: Tyti Antero Jaakkola , observador internacional originario de Finlandia y Beatriz Alberta Cariño Trujillo, integrante de Centro de Apoyo Comunitario Trabajando Unidos (Cactus).

Beatriz Alberta fue una luchadora social que hizo de la defensa de la autonomía de los pueblos indígenas su motor en la vida, alentó a las comunidades mixtecas a luchar por su patrimonio cultural, por su identidad, sin sumisión y con dignidad.

Ese fue su andar por la sierra mixteca, al convocar a las mujeres triquis a tomar su papel protagónico en la historia de su pueblo, a mirar de frente y defender sus recursos naturales del saqueo de las grandes trasnacionales...

Erika Cervantes

CIMAC Women's News Agency

May 10, 2010

See also:

Mexico's State Of Impunity

When international human rights observers rounded a curve on a remote road in the southern Mexican state of Oaxaca, they found the way blocked by boulders. They decided going forward would be dangerous. But they didn’t know that going back would be deadly.

As the vans began to turn around, masked gunmen came down from the hills and opened fire on the vehicles. Some of the people scattered into the brush. Others got lucky and were freed by the assailants. Two were murdered, shot in the head — Bety Cariño of the Mexican rights group CACTUS (Center for Community Support Working Together) and Finnish human rights observer Jyri Jaakola.

The activists were traveling to the village of San Juan Copala in the Triqui indigenous region of Oaxaca. Local paramilitaries from a group called UBISORT, which is reportedly founded by Mexico’s ruling Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI), had surrounded and cut off the village. The caravan of journalists, state activists, and international human rights observers wanted to investigate the worsening situation in the village. They knew the risks but decided to undertake the mission because the lives of villagers were at stake, and they saw a dangerous precedent in standing by as an illegal armed group took an entire village hostage.

Killings are a common occurrence in the Triqui region for those who defend indigenous rights and resources. Scores of people have been assassinated, including two women from San Juan Copala's community radio station in 2008.

The leaders advised the state government of its intentions, but the state government provided no guarantees. Gabriela Jimenez, a member of the caravan who escaped, stated that the paramilitary captors bragged of having the governor's backing...

Human Rights and U.S. Indifference

The April 27 ambush shocked even a nation accustomed to violence in the news. Drug war tolls of 30 or more victims a day are standard fare in Mexico. But the calculated assault on a human rights mission crossed some invisible line. Members of the European Parliament, the Finnish Embassy, and the United Nations Human Rights Commissioner have demanded a full investigation. Demonstrating the arrogance characteristic of his rule, Governor Ruiz announced he would carry out an investigation — of the migration papers of the foreigners on the caravan.

Human rights violations in Mexico have been on the rise in the last few years, with a sixfold increase in complaints against the armed forces since it launched the drug war. Civilian deaths have increased in the context of drug war militarization. The nation faces a crisis of confidence in the government’s ability — or willingness — to provide even the most basic human security.

The U.S. State Department has ignored this crisis to justify its support for the failed drug war of President Felipe Calderón. Security aid to Mexico under the Merida Initiative required that a human rights report be presented to Congress showing progress in ending impunity for crimes committed by the armed forces, an end to torture, and progress in the Brad Will murder. The State Department delayed presenting the report until last year. When it finally submitted the report, it showed no progress.

Security aid to police and armed forces that violate human rights consistently empowers a system of violations. Human rights training by U.S. forces will make no difference whatsoever in that equation. The problem is obviously not a lack of training, but a lack of political will. As long as the same political forces that commit violations receive support and aid, they are encouraged to continue practices that damage society and destroy lives...

Laura Carlsen

Huffington Post

May 08, 2010

See also:

Added: May 10, 2010

Mexico

Oaxaca Caravan Attack: The Militarization And Para-militarization Of Mexico

On April 27, gunmen opened fire on an international aid caravan that was bringing food, clothing, medicine, and teachers to the autonomous municipality of San Juan Copala, Oaxaca. The attack left two dead: Oaxacan indigenous leader and media organizer Alberta "Bety" Cariño and a Finnish observer, Jyri Antero Jaakkola. Gunfire injured three other Oaxacans during the attack.

The attack was the latest in a series of assassinations in a region where shootouts are a frequent occurrence. While the attack on the caravan attracted international media attention, the other murders (at least 23 since 2007) were lost in the wave of violence that has gripped Mexico. Ever since President Felipe Calderon deployed 40,000 soldiers to fight the US-funded war on drugs, all violent murders in Mexico are automatically chalked up to the drug war in the media and in the government's official numbers. Drug war violence provides a too-convenient cover for the political violence that also pervades Mexico.

The violence in the Triqui region is the direct result of government machinations aimed at dividing the indigenous people who live there. “The political organizations are dividing us,” says San Juan Copala spokesman Jorge Albino. “When we form organizations, the political parties come and they offer to make one of us a leader, or they offer us a position. And some of us wind up identifying with a political party and we kill each other as a result.”

The government has good reason to want to weaken the Triquis through division: the Triquis have historically put up some of the fiercest resistance to the colonial (and later neo-colonial) project in Mexico. For this reason, their territory is particularly rich in natural resources. John Gibler writes in his book Mexico Unconquered: "As a result of their armed defense, the Triqui region today is a green oasis in the midst of the eroded Mixteca region where centuries of clear-cutting and goat herding have decimated the land." ...

The Oaxacan government has denied all responsibility for the attack. Instead, it is attempting to blame the caravan organizers. "Whoever organized this caravan will have to answer for it, whoever invited these people ... without taking precautions, because I think these people did not know what the situation and problems in the area were," Oaxaca state Interior Secretary Evencio Martinez told the AP. "They (the caravan members) will have to answer, too, for having accepted the invitation."

However, sociologist Victor Raul Martinez Vasquez argues, "I believe that it was a deliberate act on the part of the government, with the idea to teach them a lesson and to dissuade those foreigners who want to help this town that is under siege, where they've closed the road to the community, they've cut the electricity. [The town] is running out of food." ...

Kristin Bricker

My Word Is My Weapon

May 6, 2010

Added: May 10, 2010

Mexico

Keegan Smith: My friend Bety Cariño was killed by Mexican Paramilitaries in Oaxaca

A good friend of mine Bety Cariño... who I lived and worked with in Mexico was killed in southern Mexico by paramilitaries. The paramilitaries acted with the support of the State and National government to eliminate opposition to their plans and their way of thinking. Bety was one of the most charismatic and caring people I have come across in my 27 years. She has 2 young children and hundreds of friends who have been touched by her passion and courage. She was the leader of the organization CATCUS which supported local indigenous communities and in securing projects for small business and agriculture initiatives. Together with the organization she informed about women and children's rights to basic services. She also informed about the dangers of transgenic crops and pesticides and the damage caused by massive mining and damming projects which are proposed for Oaxaca.

Bety participated in various movements and forums in Mexico and Central America and traveled to Europe to increase awareness about the situation in Mexico and particularly the situation Oaxaca. Bety went to every length to make people feel welcome and had amazing power in her spirit to overcome personal loss and illness for the sake of her beliefs. This infectious passion will outlive her many lifetimes over.

This is one of many horrible crimes committed everyday in order to maintain the flow of capital, and the power it holds, in the hands of the few. While I am no longer inclined say eye for an eye and I don't want vengeance for the pain this act has caused. The world needs very profound changes. This is not a call to arms but to reflect and change our minds. Our physical world is a reflection of our thoughts...

Keegan Smith

My Word Is My Weapon

April 28, 2010

See also - Video:

Discurso de Bety Cariño en la conferencia de la organización Frontline - dedicados a defender a los y las Defensores de los derechos humanos

Speech by Bety Cariño during the 2010 annual conference of the organization Frontline - Protection of Human Rights Defenders in Dublin, Ireland.

(In Spanish)

Frontline - Dublin Conference 2010

On YouTube.com

Dec. 03, 2009

See also - Video:

Discurso de Bety Cariño. Kolectivo Azul. Embajada de Canadá.

Speech by Bety Cariño during a protest against multinational mining company exploitation of Indigenous lands in Oaxaca state. Held at the Canadian Embassy in Mexico City - 2009.

(In Spanish)

Tecuán News

On YouTube.com

Dec. 03, 2009

See also - Video:

Declaración de una de los sobrevivientesdel ataque a la carvana San Juan Copala.

News conference by Gabriela, a survivor of the ambush and murder of Bety Cariño and Jyri Jaakola.

(In Spanish)

Camaradaappo

On YouTube.com

April 28, 2010

A collection of (currently) 29 news articles on the crisis of impunity facing women in the Triqui tribal region of Mexico - from the CIMAC women's news agency.

(In Spanish)

Added: May 10, 2010

Texas, USA

Children Kidnapped for Sex Trafficking

Rio Grande Valley - Four young children could have ended up as sex trafficking victims. Instead they're now back with their families in Mexico.

They were kidnapped. Suspected smugglers tried to bring them to the Valley. The children were all under six.

San Juan Police Chief Juan Gonzalez says... human traffickers want children under 10.

"These children have been raped repeatedly more than 30 times a day. The more use they get out of a child, the more profit," he tells us. "They are using these children. The younger the better for the human trafficker."

Gonzalez trains officers around the country to recognize signs of sex trafficking.

Two women from San Juan and Edinburg tried to bring four children across the bridge illegally. A customs officer suspected the women were going to sell the kids. The children ranged in age from less than a year to six years old. The women told officers the kids belonged to them. They even had fake U.S. birth certificates.

An alert customs officer didn't believe their story.

“Officers are being trained to recognize force, fraud and coercion," the San Juan police chief says.

Gonzalez says if the suspected smugglers [had gotten] away with their crime, the children would [have lived] through unimaginable horror.

"They’re utilizing them in bars and nightclubs, [and] even for individuals who are requesting them, to abuse them," he tells us.

Or traffickers might sell the children to pornographers.

"Traffickers seek young children, because they can abuse them for a longer period of time," Gonzalez explains. "This kind of crime is a money maker."

He adds, "Human trafficking [has become] more profitable [than drug smuggling, human smuggling and arms] trafficking."

Human trafficking is hard to detect and harder to prosecute.

Gonzalez says children trafficked into this country are often taken to brothels. He says there are probably brothels around the Valley [that] investigators haven't found yet.

...Officers will usually find human trafficking when they respond to a [noise violation or a runaway case].

Farrah Fazal

KRGV

May 8, 2010

Added: May.10, 2010

Kidnapped

Arizona, USA

Karley Rivera Saucedo

Woman kidnapped during home invasion earlier this week still missing

Phoenix - Police are asking for the public's to help find a woman who was kidnapped during a home invasion earlier this week.

According to Detective James Holmes of the Phoenix Police Department, Karley Rivera Saucedo was taken after four suspects broke into her home at about 3 a.m. on Wednesday, May 5.

Saucedo, 22, has the mental capacity of an 11- or 12-year-old.

Holmes said the suspects, Hispanic males who range in from 17 to 30, forced their way into the home near 59th Avenue and Indian School Road, which Saucedo shares with her 17-year-old sister and a baby.

The suspects were armed with handguns, police said, and demanded drugs and money. When they didn't get what they wanted, the four men took Saucedo and left.

They also stole a gray 2007 Chevy HHR. That vehicle was later recovered, but there's been no sign of Saucedo or the four suspects.

The descriptions of the suspects are limited.

The first is a 17-year-old Hispanic male who is 5 feet 6 inches tall. He has black spiked hair.

The second is an 18- or 19-year old Hispanic male. He's also 5 feet 6 inches tall, weighs about 140 pounds and has short black hair.

The third is an Hispanic male between 25 and 30 years old. He is 5 feet 6 inches tall, weighs 150 pounds and has acne scars.

The fourth is an Hispanic male who is 6 feet tall, weighing about 200 pounds. He has light skin, a skinny face and a chubby body.

Anyone with information about Saucedo or what happened the morning of May 5 is asked to call the Phoenix Police Department at 602-261-6151 or Silent Witness at either 480-WITNESS or 480-TESTIGO.

Catherine Holland

azfamily.com

May 7, 2010

Added: May 10, 2010

Texas, USA - Mexico

Angel Rojas

Texas Girl Who Was Focus Of Amber Alert May Be In Mexico

Austin - Karen Anastacio, 13, for whom Austin police issued an Amber Alert last week, is probably in Mexico with the 25-year-old man who abducted her from her middle school, authorities say.

The Amber Alert was canceled over the weekend.

Anastacio was last seen at around 8 a.m. Thursday getting into either a brown 1997 GMC Jimmy SUV with Texas license 84TFL4 at Bedichek Middle School in Austin.

She had told a teacher's aide she didn't feel well and would likely be going home.

Police think Angel Rojas Ambrocio was driving the brown and silver SUV.

They said they believe he previously committed a violent felony against the girl.

Anastacio is 5-foot-2, weights about 115 pounds and has black hair and brown eyes.

When she was last seen she was wearing a black shirt, black pants and carrying a pink backpack.

Ambrocio is 5-foot-3, weighs 135 pounds and has black hair and brown eyes.

Police are asking anyone with information about the missing girl to call 911.

KWTX

May 10, 2010

See also:

Runaway suspect charged with sex crime

Amber Alert suspect fled with 13-year-old

Austin - The 25-year-old man accused of abducting a 13-year-old Austin girl Thursday morning is now charged with aggravated sexual assault of a child, a first-degree felony.

Officials issued the Amber Alert Thursday morning after police said Karen Anastacio was last seen at 8:07 a.m. Thursday with suspect Angel Rojas, 25. Police said they fear he may be headed to the border to leave the country, and court documents indicate information pointed to Cuernavaca, Mexico.

The two were in a relationship police said was illegal, and authorities filed charges Friday against Rojas - a family acquaintance. In those documents, police said they developed information Rojas was going to be taking the victim to Mexico.

"We have reason to believe that she is in immediate danger," said Austin Police Department Cmdr. Julie O'Brien Thursday. "We're asking for the public's help in locating Karen."

Austin police said a teacher's aide saw Karen getting into a brown 1997 GMC Jimmy SUV across the street from Bedichek Middle School in South Austin with Rojas at the wheel. License plate number: 84TFL4

School Principal Dan Diehl said the incident happened just before the start of the school day across the street from the campus near the intersection of Bill Hughes Road and Thelma Drive.

Karen was walking to school with a group of other students when she said she felt ill, Diehl said. He said shortly after, the suspect arrived at that location, where Karen got in his car.

Karen is a 5-foot-2-inch tall Hispanic female and weighs approximately 115 pounds. She has black hair and brown eyes and was last seen wearing a black shirt and black pants, carrying a pink backpack.

Angel Rojas is described as a Hispanic male, weighing approximately 135 pounds. He is 5 feet 3 inches tall and has black hair and brown eyes. Rojas may also use the following names: Juan Alberto Espinoza-Ambrocio and/or Eduardo Lopez.

Anyone with information on the whereabouts of the victim or suspect is urged to call 911 immediately.

Police said Thursday Karen's family was taking action in filing a criminal charge against Rojas for allegedly committing a violent felony offense against Karen, something officials said may be the motivator for Rojas to flee not only the area but also the country.

Police said they are working with various law enforcement agencies throughout the state and with border agents as well, but they are also asking for all eyes to be on the lookout.

KXAN

May 07, 2010

Added: May 10, 2010

The Dominican Republic

Desmantelan en Dominicana red de pornografía infantil

Un estadounidense y tres dominicanas que tenían organizado una red de pornografía infantil fueron detenido por las autoridades que confiscaron equipos de filmación y una pequeña cantidad de droga.

Las pesquisas permitieron conocer que el estadounidense Williams Bonaparte tenía contratadas a las tres mujeres para que reclutaran adolescentes y a cambio de sumas de dinero filmarlas en actos sexuales, dice la información circuladas por la policía.

El grupo operaba desde hacía meses en la provincia de Puerto Plata (Norte) y las filmaciones se centraban en menores y adolescentes del sexo femenino, según los detalles del parte.

Las actividades fueron interrumpidas por una redada policial en el apartamento en el que residía el extranjero, en el cual se ocuparon cámaras de filmación y fotográficas, un reproductor de casetes, equipos de iluminación, decenas de discos compactos con material pornográfico y una pequeña cantidad de marihuana.

El año pasado la policía dominicana desmanteló una organización similar que se especializaba en filmaciones pornográficas a adolescentes y jóvenes haitianas, anexa a una red de prostitución que operaba desde un apartamento en una céntrica calle de esta capital.

Authorities break-up child pornography ring

A U.S. citizen and three Dominicans have been arrested in the Dominican Republic for having organized a child pornography ring. The suspects were caught with film equipment, still cameras, film reproducing equipment, and drugs.

According to police, American citizen Williams Bonaparte had contracted with three women to recruit adolescent girls, who were offered money to be filmed performing sexual acts.

Previously, police has dismantled a similar child pornography ring that had targeted Haitian girls.

Prensa Latina

May 07, 2010

Added: May 10, 2010

Washington, DC - USA

Luis CdeBaca - Ambassador-at-Large, Office To Monitor and Combat Trafficking in Persons - U.S. State Department

Trafficking Victims Protection Act: Progress and Promise

...In the mid-1990s, then-First Lady Hillary Rodham Clinton became interested and focused on this issue through her work with women and children. At the time, the most visible form of trafficking was women and girls from the former Soviet Union. There were duped by false advertisements for work in Western Europe only to find themselves trapped in brothels and strip clubs. The image of the blonde, beautiful, and vulnerable victim, reminiscent of anachronistic approaches to this problem back in the 1800s, garnered worldwide attention, but also demonstrated the weaknesses of that old legal regime. In the meantime, cases in the United States still involved men, women, and children--United States citizens and foreigners alike--in both sex and labor trafficking.

It became clear that a holistic approach was needed, one that focused more on the exploitation than merely on the movement of people for immoral purposes. Then-First Lady Clinton, along with Attorney General Janet Reno and Secretary of State Madeline Albright, were instrumental in bringing this issue to the attention of policymakers in Washington. Out of it was borne the Trafficking Victims Protection Act of 2000 (TVPA).

The TVPA emboldened states to pursue and enact legislation to combat trafficking at the state level. In fact, the successes of the TVPA and effectiveness of state law is clearly shown in a recent case, Ramos v. Texas where the legal pitfalls exemplified in the Shackney case were bridged. In fact, the Ramos case recognized that the threat of deportation is indeed coercion and a factor in determining a victim of trafficking in persons, even if the victim walked out through the front door rather than escaping through the window or in the middle of the night. The Ramos case is a prime example of what we can achieve through solid legislation and implementation of federal and state-level laws...

The TVPA helps us... with important new tools that stands for the proposition that ignorance is not an excuse. The strip club owner who looks the other way as so-called talent agents enslave women: that’s not a bystander; that’s an accomplice. The landlord who turns a blind eye and collects rent from "massage parlors" where foreign women are held for forced prostitution: that’s not rent; that’s complicity. So too for the grower who is comfortable with farm labor contractors using force and threats to harvest the crops as long as they get picked on time. To those who have turned a willfully blind eye to the exploitation in front of them, the updated law puts down a marker: whether you partake or profit, you're accountable. Period...

The promise we seek to fulfill will be bolstered by what has now been coined as the fourth "p" – partnerships. We must strive toward better coordination with our interagency partners within our "whole of government" approach, but also partners from unlikely or untapped resources...

Through partnership, we must secure the safe place of refuge the President referred to; we must "lead by example" as we are known and expected to do; and we must allow every victim to realize his or her God-given potential. The United States has made historic progress on this issue, still in its modern infancy. We must devote ourselves to never again letting a generation go by without forward progress. Bursts of activity, and successes, in the early 1900s, the 1930s, and the early 1980s were allowed to fall dormant. We must not allow that to happen again. We can, and we must, get it right this time. Working toward a world without modern slavery is no doubt a bold proposition, but it is one that we must work toward. Thank you again for having me here this morning and for all you do to fulfill the promise of freedom in America.

Luis CdeBaca

Ambassador-at-Large, Office To Monitor and Combat Trafficking in Persons

May 3, 2010

July 12, 2001

Report on the Trafficking of Persons from Central America to the United States

June 17th, 2001 - Queen of England Honors Casa Alianaza Director Bruce Harris

June 4, 2001

AN SOS FOR THE OAS - Why are you not protecting the region's children???
By Bruce Harris

Tuesday, May 23, 2001

Friday, May 4, 2001

`The National Center for Missing and Exploited Children (NCMEC)`

Casa Alianza - Guatemala:

12 files missing after break in

From: Casa Alianza http://www.casa-alianza.org

The Dark Tourists Newsweek report

April 5, 2001

Casa Alianza's Guatemala Office ransacked

July 12, 2001

Report on the Trafficking of Persons from Central America to the United States

June 17th, 2001 - Queen of England Honors Casa Alianaza Director Bruce Harris

June 4, 2001

AN SOS FOR THE OAS - Why are you not protecting the region's children??? By Bruce Harris

Tuesday, May 23, 2001

Friday, May 4, 2001

The National Center for Missing and Exploited Children (NCMEC)

Casa Alianza - Guatemala:

12 files missing after break in

From: Casa Alianza http://www.casa-alianza.org

The Dark Tourists Newsweek report

April 5, 2001

Casa Alianza's Guatemala Office ransacked

AN SOS FOR THE OAS - Why are you not protecting the region's children???
By Bruce Harris

`The National Center for Missing and Exploited Children (NCMEC)`