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Indigenous & Latina Women & Children's Human
Rights News from the Americas |
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Indigenous & Latina Women & Children's Human
Rights News from the Americas |
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Indigenous & Latina Women & Children's Human
Rights News from the Americas |
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Latin America |
| Women & Children
at Risk |
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Title: The Girls Next Door |
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| Publisher: (c)
2004 New York Times |
| Author: Peter
Landesman |
| Publish
Date: 2004-01-25 |
| URL:
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/01/25/magazine/25SEXTRAFFIC.html |
| (Photos accompany
original article) |
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The Girls Next Door
The house at 1212 1/2 West Front Street
in Plainfield, N.J., is a conventional midcentury home with slate-gray
siding, white trim and Victorian lines. When I stood in front of it on a
breezy day in October, I could hear the cries of children from the
playground of an elementary school around the corner. American flags
fluttered from porches and windows. The neighborhood is a leafy,
middle-class Anytown. The house is set back off the street, near two
convenience stores and a gift shop. On the door of Superior Supermarket
was pasted a sign issued by the Plainfield police: ''Safe neighborhoods
save lives.'' The store's manager, who refused to tell me his name, said
he never noticed anything unusual about the house, and never heard
anything. But David Miranda, the young man behind the counter of
Westside Convenience, told me he saw girls from the house roughly once a
week. ''They came in to buy candy and soda, then went back to the
house,'' he said. The same girls rarely came twice, and they were all
very young, Miranda said. They never asked for anything beyond what they
were purchasing; they certainly never asked for help. Cars drove up to
the house all day; nice cars, all kinds of cars. Dozens of men came and
went. ''But no one here knew what was really going on,'' Miranda said.
And no one ever asked.
On a tip, the Plainfield police raided the house in February 2002,
expecting to find illegal aliens working an underground brothel. What
the police found were four girls between the ages of 14 and 17. They
were all Mexican nationals without documentation. But they weren't
prostitutes; they were sex slaves. The distinction is important: these
girls weren't working for profit or a paycheck. They were captives to
the traffickers and keepers who controlled their every move. ''I
consider myself hardened,'' Mark J. Kelly, now a special agent with
Immigration and Customs Enforcement (the largest investigative arm of
the Department of Homeland Security), told me recently. ''I spent time
in the Marine Corps. But seeing some of the stuff I saw, then heard
about, from those girls was a difficult, eye-opening experience.''
The police found a squalid, land-based equivalent of a 19th-century
slave ship, with rancid, doorless bathrooms; bare, putrid mattresses;
and a stash of penicillin, ''morning after'' pills and misoprostol, an
antiulcer medication that can induce abortion. The girls were pale,
exhausted and malnourished.
It turned out that 1212 1/2 West Front Street was one of what
law-enforcement officials say are dozens of active stash houses and
apartments in the New York metropolitan area -- mirroring hundreds more
in other major cities like Los Angeles, Atlanta and Chicago -- where
under-age girls and young women from dozens of countries are trafficked
and held captive. Most of them -- whether they started out in Eastern
Europe or Latin America -- are taken to the United States through
Mexico. Some of them have been baited by promises of legitimate jobs and
a better life in America; many have been abducted; others have been
bought from or abandoned by their impoverished families.
Because of the porousness of the U.S.-Mexico border and the criminal
networks that traverse it, the towns and cities along that border have
become the main staging area in an illicit and barbaric industry, whose
''products'' are women and girls. On both sides of the border, they are
rented out for sex for as little as 15 minutes at a time, dozens of
times a day. Sometimes they are sold outright to other traffickers and
sex rings, victims and experts say. These sex slaves earn no money,
there is nothing voluntary about what they do and if they try to escape
they are often beaten and sometimes killed.
Last September, in a speech before the United Nations General Assembly,
President Bush named sex trafficking as ''a special evil,'' a
multibillion-dollar ''underground of brutality and lonely fear,'' a
global scourge alongside the AIDS epidemic. Influenced by a coalition of
religious organizations, the Bush administration has pushed
international action on the global sex trade. The president declared at
the U.N. that ''those who create these victims and profit from their
suffering must be severely punished'' and that ''those who patronize
this industry debase themselves and deepen the misery of others. And
governments that tolerate this trade are tolerating a form of slavery.''
Under the Trafficking Victims Protection Act of 2000 -- the first U.S.
law to recognize that people trafficked against their will are victims
of a crime, not illegal aliens -- the U.S. government rates other
countries' records on human trafficking and can apply economic sanctions
on those that aren't making efforts to improve them. Another piece of
legislation, the Protect Act, which Bush signed into law last year,
makes it a crime for any person to enter the U.S., or for any citizen to
travel abroad, for the purpose of sex tourism involving children. The
sentences are severe: up to 30 years' imprisonment for each offense.
The thrust of the president's U.N. speech and the scope of the laws
passed here to address the sex-trafficking epidemic might suggest that
this is a global problem but not particularly an American one. In
reality, little has been done to document sex trafficking in this
country. In dozens of interviews I conducted with former sex slaves,
madams, government and law-enforcement officials and anti-sex-trade
activists for more than four months in Eastern Europe, Mexico and the
United States, the details and breadth of this sordid trade in the U.S.
came to light.
In fact, the United States has become a major importer of sex slaves.
Last year, the C.I.A. estimated that between 18,000 and 20,000 people
are trafficked annually into the United States. The government has not
studied how many of these are victims of sex traffickers, but Kevin
Bales, president of Free the Slaves, America's largest anti-slavery
organization, says that the number is at least 10,000 a year. John
Miller, the State Department's director of the Office to Monitor and
Combat Trafficking in Persons, conceded: ''That figure could be low.
What we know is that the number is huge.'' Bales estimates that there
are 30,000 to 50,000 sex slaves in captivity in the United States at any
given time. Laura Lederer, a senior State Department adviser on
trafficking, told me, ''We're not finding victims in the United States
because we're not looking for them.''
ABDUCTION
In Eastern European capitals like Kiev and Moscow, dozens of
sex-trafficking rings advertise nanny positions in the United States in
local newspapers; others claim to be scouting for models and actresses.
In Chisinau, the capital of the former Soviet republic of Moldova -- the
poorest country in Europe and the one experts say is most heavily culled
by traffickers for young women -- I saw a billboard with a fresh-faced,
smiling young woman beckoning girls to waitress positions in Paris. But
of course there are no waitress positions and no ''Paris.'' Some of
these young women are actually tricked into paying their own travel
expenses -- typically around $3,000 -- as a down payment on what they
expect to be bright, prosperous futures, only to find themselves kept
prisoner in Mexico before being moved to the United States and sold into
sexual bondage there.
The Eastern European trafficking operations, from entrapment to
transport, tend to be well-oiled monoethnic machines. One notorious
Ukrainian ring, which has since been broken up, was run by Tetyana
Komisaruk and Serge Mezheritsky. One of their last transactions,
according to Daniel Saunders, an assistant U.S. attorney in Los Angeles,
took place in late June 2000 at the Hard Rock Cafe in Tijuana. Around
dinnertime, a buyer named Gordey Vinitsky walked in. He was followed
shortly after by Komisaruk's husband, Valery, who led Vinitsky out to
the parking lot and to a waiting van. Inside the van were six Ukrainian
women in their late teens and early 20's. They had been promised jobs as
models and baby sitters in the glamorous United States, and they
probably had no idea why they were sitting in a van in a backwater like
Tijuana in the early evening.
Vinitsky pointed into the van at two of the women and said he'd take
them for $10,000 each. Valery drove the young women to a gated villa 20
minutes away in Rosarito, a Mexican honky-tonk tourist trap in Baja
California. They were kept there until July 4, when they were delivered
to San Diego by boat and distributed to their buyers, including
Vinitsky, who claimed his two ''purchases.'' The Komisaruks, Mezheritsky
and Vinitsky were caught in May 2001 and are serving long sentences in
U.S. federal prison.
In October, I met Nicole, a young Russian woman who had been trafficked
into Mexico by a different network. ''I wanted to get out of Moscow, and
they told me the Mexican border was like a freeway,'' said Nicole, who
is now 25. We were sitting at a cafe on the Sunset Strip in Los Angeles,
and she was telling me the story of her narrow escape from sex slavery
-- she was taken by immigration officers when her traffickers were
trying to smuggle her over the border from Tijuana. She still seemed
fearful of being discovered by the trafficking ring and didn't want even
her initials to appear in print. (Nicole is a name she adopted after
coming to the U.S.)
Two years ago, afraid for her life after her boyfriend was gunned down
in Moscow in an organized-crime-related shootout, she found herself
across a cafe table in Moscow from a man named Alex, who explained how
he could save her by smuggling her into the U.S. Once she agreed, Nicole
said, Alex told her that if she didn't show up at the airport, '''I'll
find you and cut your head off.' Russians do not play around. In Moscow
you can get a bullet in your head just for fun.''
Donna M. Hughes, a professor of women's studies at the University of
Rhode Island and an expert on sex trafficking, says that prostitution
barely existed 12 years ago in the Soviet Union. ''It was suppressed by
political structures. All the women had jobs.'' But in the first years
after the collapse of Soviet Communism, poverty in the former Soviet
states soared. Young women -- many of them college-educated and married
-- became easy believers in Hollywood-generated images of swaying palm
trees in L.A. ''A few of them have an idea that prostitution might be
involved,'' Hughes says. ''But their idea of prostitution is 'Pretty
Woman,' which is one of the most popular films in Ukraine and Russia.
They're thinking, This may not be so bad.''
The girls' first contacts are usually with what appear to be legitimate
travel agencies. According to prosecutors, the Komisaruk/Mezheritsky
ring in Ukraine worked with two such agencies in Kiev, Art Life
International and Svit Tours. The helpful agents at Svit and Art Life
explained to the girls that the best way to get into the U.S. was
through Mexico, which they portrayed as a short walk or boat ride from
the American dream. Oblivious and full of hope, the girls get on planes
to Europe and then on to Mexico.
Every day, flights from Paris, London and Amsterdam arrive at Mexico
City's international airport carrying groups of these girls, sometimes
as many as seven at a time, according to two Mexico City immigration
officers I spoke with (and who asked to remain anonymous). One of them
told me that officials at the airport -- who cooperate with Mexico's
federal preventive police (P.F.P.) -- work with the traffickers and
''direct airlines to park at certain gates. Officials go to the
aircraft. They know the seat numbers. While passengers come off, they
take the girls to an office, where officials will 'process' them.''
Magdalena Carral, Mexico's commissioner of the National Institute of
Migration, the government agency that controls migration issues at all
airports, seaports and land entries into Mexico, told me: ''Everything
happens at the airport. We are giving a big fight to have better control
of the airport. Corruption does not leave tracks, and sometimes we
cannot track it. Six months ago we changed the three main officials at
the airport. But it's a daily fight. These networks are very powerful
and dangerous.''
But Mexico is not merely a way station en route to the U.S. for
third-country traffickers, like the Eastern European rings. It is also a
vast source of even younger and more cheaply acquired girls for sexual
servitude in the United States. While European traffickers tend to dupe
their victims into boarding one-way flights to Mexico to their own
captivity, Mexican traffickers rely on the charm and brute force of
''Los Lenones,'' tightly organized associations of pimps, according to
Roberto Caballero, an officer with the P.F.P. Although hundreds of
''popcorn traffickers'' -- individuals who take control of one or two
girls -- work the margins, Caballero said, at least 15 major trafficking
organizations and 120 associated factions tracked by the P.F.P. operate
as wholesalers: collecting human merchandise and taking orders from safe
houses and brothels in the major sex-trafficking hubs in New York, Los
Angeles, Atlanta and Chicago.
Like the Sicilian Mafia, Los Lenones are based on family hierarchies,
Caballero explained. The father controls the organization and the money,
while the sons and their male cousins hunt, kidnap and entrap victims.
The boys leave school at 12 and are given one or two girls their age to
rape and pimp out to begin their training, which emphasizes the arts of
kidnapping and seduction. Throughout the rural and suburban towns from
southern Mexico to the U.S. border, along what traffickers call the Via
Lactea, or Milky Way, the agents of Los Lenones troll the bus stations
and factories and school dances where under-age girls gather, work and
socialize. They first ply the girls like prospective lovers, buying them
meals and desserts, promising affection and then marriage. Then the men
describe rumors they've heard about America, about the promise of jobs
and schools. Sometimes the girls are easy prey. Most of them already
dream of El Norte. But the theater often ends as soon as the agent has
the girl alone, when he beats her, drugs her or simply forces her into a
waiting car.
The majority of Los Lenones -- 80 percent of them, Caballero says -- are
based in Tenancingo, a charmless suburb an hour's drive south of Mexico
City. Before I left Mexico City for Tenancingo in October, I was warned
by Mexican and U.S. officials that the traffickers there are protected
by the local police, and that the town is designed to discourage
outsiders, with mazelike streets and only two closely watched entrances.
The last time the federal police went there to investigate the
disappearance of a local girl, their vehicle was surrounded, and the
officers were intimidated into leaving. I traveled in a bulletproof
Suburban with well-armed federales and an Immigration and Customs
Enforcement agent.
On the way, we stopped at a gas station, where I met the parents of a
girl from Tenancingo who was reportedly abducted in August 2000. The
girl, Suri, is now 20. Her mother told me that there were witnesses who
saw her being forced into a car on the way home from work at a local
factory. No one called the police. Suri's mother recited the names of
daughters of a number of her friends who have also been taken:
''Minerva, Sylvia, Carmen,'' she said in a monotone, as if the list went
on and on.
Just two days earlier, her parents heard from Suri (they call her by her
nickname) for the first time since she disappeared. ''She's in Queens,
New York,'' the mother told me breathlessly. ''She said she was being
kept in a house watched by Colombians. She said they take her by car
every day to work in a brothel. I was crying on the phone, 'When are you
coming back, when are you coming back?' '' The mother looked at me
helplessly; the father stared blankly into the distance. Then the mother
sobered. ''My daughter said: 'I'm too far away. I don't know when I'm
coming back.''' Before she hung up, Suri told her mother: ''Don't cry.
I'll escape soon. And don't talk to anyone.''
Sex-trafficking victims widely believe that if they talk, they or
someone they love will be killed. And their fear is not unfounded, since
the tentacles of the trafficking rings reach back into the girls'
hometowns, and local law enforcement is often complicit in the sex
trade.
One officer in the P.F.P.'s anti-trafficking division told me that 10
high-level officials in the state of Sonora share a $200,000 weekly
payoff from traffickers, a gargantuan sum of money for Mexico. The
officer told me with a frozen smile that he was powerless to do anything
about it.
''Some officials are not only on the organization's payroll, they are
key players in the organization,'' an official at the U.S. Embassy in
Mexico City told me. ''Corruption is the most important reason these
networks are so successful.''
Nicolas Suarez, the P.F.P.'s coordinator of intelligence, sounded
fatalistic about corruption when I spoke to him in Mexico City in
September. ''We have that cancer, corruption,'' he told me with a shrug.
''But it exists in every country. In every house there is a devil.''
The U.S. Embassy official told me: ''Mexican officials see sex
trafficking as a U.S. problem. If there wasn't such a large demand, then
people -- trafficking victims and migrants alike -- wouldn't be going up
there.''
When I asked Magdalena Carral, the Mexican commissioner of migration,
about these accusations, she said that she didn't know anything about
Los Lenones or sex trafficking in Tenancingo. But she conceded: ''There
is an investigation against some officials accused of cooperating with
these trafficking networks nationwide. Sonora is one of those places.''
She added, ''We are determined not to allow any kind of corruption in
this administration, not the smallest kind.''
Gary Haugen, president of the International Justice Mission, an
organization based in Arlington, Va., that fights sexual exploitation in
South Asia and Southeast Asia, says: ''Sex trafficking isn't a poverty
issue but a law-enforcement issue. You can only carry out this trade at
significant levels with the cooperation of local law enforcement. In the
developing world the police are not seen as a solution for anything. You
don't run to the police; you run from the police.''
BREAKING THE GIRLS IN
Once the Mexican traffickers abduct or seduce the women and young girls,
it's not other men who first indoctrinate them into sexual slavery but
other women. The victims and officials I spoke to all emphasized this
fact as crucial to the trafficking rings' success. ''Women are the
principals,'' Caballero, the Mexican federal preventive police officer,
told me. ''The victims are put under the influence of the mothers, who
handle them and beat them. Then they give the girls to the men to beat
and rape into submission.'' Traffickers understand that because women
can more easily gain the trust of young girls, they can more easily
crush them. ''Men are the customers and controllers, but within most
trafficking organizations themselves, women are the operators,'' Haugen
says. ''Women are the ones who exert violent force and psychological
torture.''
This mirrors the tactics of the Eastern European rings. ''Mexican pimps
have learned a lot from European traffickers,'' said Claudia, a former
prostitute and madam in her late 40's, whom I met in Tepito, Mexico
City's vast and lethal ghetto. ''The Europeans not only gather girls but
put older women in the same houses,'' she told me. ''They get younger
and older women emotionally attached. They're transported together,
survive together.''
The traffickers' harvest is innocence. Before young women and girls are
taken to the United States, their captors want to obliterate their
sexual inexperience while preserving its appearance. For the Eastern
European girls, this ''preparation'' generally happens in Ensenada, a
seaside tourist town in Baja California, a region in Mexico settled by
Russian immigrants, or Tijuana, where Nicole, the Russian woman I met in
Los Angeles, was taken along with four other girls when she arrived in
Mexico. The young women are typically kept in locked-down, gated villas
in groups of 16 to 20. The girls are provided with all-American clothing
-- Levi's and baseball caps. They learn to say, ''U.S. citizen.'' They
are also sexually brutalized. Nicole told me that the day she arrived in
Tijuana, three of her traveling companions were ''tried out'' locally.
The education lasts for days and sometimes weeks.
For the Mexican girls abducted by Los Lenones, the process of breaking
them in often begins on Calle Santo Tomas, a filthy narrow street in La
Merced, a dangerous and raucous ghetto in Mexico City. Santo Tomas has
been a place for low-end prostitution since before Spain's conquest of
Mexico in the 16th century. But beginning in the early 90's, it became
an important training ground for under-age girls and young women on
their way into sexual bondage in the United States. When I first visited
Santo Tomas, in late September, I found 150 young women walking a
slow-motion parabola among 300 or 400 men. It was a balmy night, and the
air was heavy with the smell of barbecue and gasoline. Two dead dogs
were splayed over the curb just beyond where the girls struck casual
poses in stilettos and spray-on-tight neon vinyl and satin or skimpy
leopard-patterned outfits. Some of the girls looked as young as 12.
Their faces betrayed no emotion. Many wore pendants of the grim reaper
around their necks and made hissing sounds; this, I was told, was part
of a ritual to ward off bad energy. The men, who were there to rent or
just gaze, didn't speak. From the tables of a shabby cafe midblock,
other men -- also Mexicans, but more neatly dressed -- sat scrutinizing
the girls as at an auction. These were buyers and renters with an
interest in the youngest and best looking. They nodded to the girls they
wanted and then followed them past a guard in a Yankees baseball cap
through a tin doorway.
Inside, the girls braced the men before a statue of St. Jude, the patron
saint of lost causes, and patted them down for weapons. Then the girls
genuflected to the stone-faced saint and led the men to the back,
grabbing a condom and roll of toilet paper on the way. They pointed to a
block of ice in a tub in lieu of a urinal. Beyond a blue hallway the air
went sour, like old onions; there were 30 stalls curtained off by blue
fabric, every one in use. Fifteen minutes of straightforward intercourse
with the girl's clothes left on cost 50 pesos, or about $4.50. For $4.50
more, the dress was lifted. For another $4.50, the bra would be taken
off. Oral sex was $4.50; ''acrobatic positions'' were $1.80 each.
Despite the dozens of people and the various exertions in this room,
there were only the sounds of zippers and shoes. There was no human
noise at all.
Most of the girls on Santo Tomas would have sex with 20 to 30 men a day;
they would do this seven days a week usually for weeks but sometimes for
months before they were ''ready'' for the United States. If they
refused, they would be beaten and sometimes killed. They would be told
that if they tried to escape, one of their family members, who usually
had no idea where they were, would be beaten or killed. Working at the
brutalizing pace of 20 men per day, a girl could earn her captors as
much as $2,000 a week. In the U.S., that same girl could bring in
perhaps $30,000 per week.
In Europe, girls and women trafficked for the sex trade gain in value
the closer they get to their destinations. According to Iana Matei, who
operates Reaching Out, a Romanian rescue organization, a Romanian or
Moldovan girl can be sold to her first transporter -- who she may or may
not know has taken her captive -- for as little as $60, then for $500 to
the next. Eventually she can be sold for $2,500 to the organization that
will ultimately control and rent her for sex for tens of thousands of
dollars a week. (Though the Moldovan and Romanian organizations
typically smuggle girls to Western Europe and not the United States,
they are, Matei says, closely allied with Russian and Ukrainian networks
that do.)
Jonathan M. Winer, deputy assistant secretary of state for international
law enforcement in the Clinton administration, says, ''The girls are
worth a penny or a ruble in their home village, and suddenly they're
worth hundreds and thousands somewhere else.''
CROSSING THE BORDER
In November, I followed by helicopter the 12-foot-high sheet-metal fence
that represents the U.S.-Mexico boundary from Imperial Beach, Calif.,
south of San Diego, 14 miles across the gritty warrens and havoc of
Tijuana into the barren hills of Tecate. The fence drops off abruptly at
Colonia Nido de las Aguilas, a dry riverbed that straddles the border.
Four hundred square miles of bone-dry, barren hills stretch out on the
U.S. side. I hovered over the end of the fence with Lester McDaniel, a
special agent with Immigration and Customs Enforcement. On the U.S.
side, ''J-e-s-u-s'' was spelled out in rocks 10 feet high across a steep
hillside. A 15-foot white wooden cross rose from the peak. It is here
that thousands of girls and young women -- most of them Mexican and many
of them straight from Calle Santo Tomas -- are taken every year, mostly
between January and August, the dry season. Coyotes -- or smugglers --
subcontracted exclusively by sex traffickers sometimes trudge the girls
up to the cross and let them pray, then herd them into the hills
northward.
A few miles east, we picked up a deeply grooved trail at the fence and
followed it for miles into the hills until it plunged into a deep
isolated ravine called Cottonwood Canyon. A Ukrainian sex-trafficking
ring force-marches young women through here, McDaniel told me. In high
heels and seductive clothing, the young women trek 12 miles to Highway
94, where panel trucks sit waiting. McDaniel listed the perils:
rattlesnakes, dehydration and hypothermia. He failed to mention the
traffickers' bullets should the women try to escape.
''If a girl tries to run, she's killed and becomes just one more woman
in the desert,'' says Marisa B. Ugarte, director of the Bilateral Safety
Corridor Coalition, a San Diego organization that coordinates rescue
efforts for trafficking victims on both sides of the border. ''But if
she keeps going north, she reaches the Gates of Hell.''
One girl who was trafficked back and forth across that border repeatedly
was Andrea. ''Andrea'' is just one name she was given by her traffickers
and clients; she doesn't know her real name. She was born in the United
States and sold or abandoned here -- at about 4 years old, she says --
by a woman who may have been her mother. (She is now in her early to
mid-20's; she doesn't know for sure.) She says that she spent
approximately the next 12 years as the captive of a sex-trafficking ring
that operated on both sides of the Mexican border. Because of the threat
of retribution from her former captors, who are believed to be still at
large, an organization that rescues and counsels trafficking victims and
former prostitutes arranged for me to meet Andrea in October at a secret
location in the United States.
In a series of excruciating conversations, Andrea explained to me how
the trafficking ring that kept her worked, moving young girls (and boys
too) back and forth over the border, selling nights and weekends with
them mostly to American men. She said that the ring imported -- both
through abduction and outright purchase -- toddlers, children and
teenagers into the U.S. from many countries.
''The border is very busy, lots of stuff moving back and forth,'' she
said. ''Say you needed to get some kids. This guy would offer a woman a
lot of money, and she'd take birth certificates from the U.S. -- from
Puerto Rican children or darker-skinned children -- and then she would
go into Mexico through Tijuana. Then she'd drive to Juarez'' -- across
the Mexican border from El Paso, Tex. -- ''and then they'd go shopping.
I was taken with them once. We went to this house that had a goat in the
front yard and came out with a 4-year-old boy.'' She remembers the boy
costing around $500 (she said that many poor parents were told that
their children would go to adoption agencies and on to better lives in
America). ''When we crossed the border at Juarez, all the border guards
wanted to see was a birth certificate for the dark-skinned kids.''
Andrea continued: ''There would be a truck waiting for us at the Mexico
border, and those trucks you don't want to ride in. Those trucks are
closed. They had spots where there would be transfers, the rest stops
and truck stops on the freeways in the U.S. One person would walk you
into the bathroom, and then another person would take you out of the
bathroom and take you to a different vehicle.''
Andrea told me she was transported to Juarez dozens of times. During one
visit, when she was about 7 years old, the trafficker took her to the
Radisson Casa Grande Hotel, where there was a john waiting in a room.
The john was an older American man, and he read Bible passages to her
before and after having sex with her. Andrea described other rooms she
remembered in other hotels in Mexico: the Howard Johnson in Leon, the
Crowne Plaza in Guadalajara. She remembers most of all the ceiling
patterns. ''When I was taken to Mexico, I knew things were going to be
different,'' she said. The ''customers'' were American businessmen.
''The men who went there had higher positions, had more to lose if they
were caught doing these things on the other side of the border. I was
told my purpose was to keep these men from abusing their own kids.''
Later she told me: ''The white kids you could beat but you couldn't
mark. But with Mexican kids you could do whatever you wanted. They're
untraceable. You lose nothing by killing them.''
Then she and the other children and teenagers in this cell were walked
back across the border to El Paso by the traffickers. ''The border
guards talked to you like, 'Did you have fun in Mexico?' And you
answered exactly what you were told, 'Yeah, I had fun.' 'Runners' moved
the harder-to-place kids, the darker or not-quite-as-well-behaved kids,
kids that hadn't been broken yet.''
Another trafficking victim I met, a young woman named Montserrat, was
taken to the United States from Veracruz, Mexico, six years ago, at age
13. (Montserrat is her nickname.) ''I was going to work in America,''
she told me. ''I wanted to go to school there, have an apartment and a
red Mercedes Benz.'' Montserrat's trafficker, who called himself
Alejandro, took her to Sonora, across the Mexican border from Douglas,
Ariz., where she joined a group of a dozen other teenage girls, all with
the same dream of a better life. They were from Chiapas, Guatemala,
Oaxaca -- everywhere, she said.
The group was marched 12 hours through the desert, just a few of the
thousands of Mexicans who bolted for America that night along the 2,000
miles of border. Cars were waiting at a fixed spot on the other side.
Alejandro directed her to a Nissan and drove her and a few others to a
house she said she thought was in Phoenix, the home of a white American
family. ''It looked like America,'' she told me. ''I ate chicken. The
family ignored me, watched TV. I thought the worst part was behind me.''
IN THE UNITED
STATES: HIDING IN PLAIN SIGHT
A week after Montserrat was taken across the border, she said, she and
half a dozen other girls were loaded into a windowless van. ''Alejandro
dropped off girls at gas stations as we drove, wherever there were
minimarkets,'' Montserrat told me. At each drop-off there was somebody
waiting. Sometimes a girl would be escorted to the bathroom, never to
return to the van. They drove 24 hours a day. ''As the girls were
leaving, being let out the back, all of them 14 or 15 years old, I felt
confident,'' Montserrat said. We were talking in Mexico City, where she
has been since she escaped from her trafficker four years ago. She's now
19, and shy with her body but direct with her gaze, which is flat and
unemotional. ''I didn't know the real reason they were disappearing,''
she said. ''They were going to a better life.''
Eventually, only Montserrat and one other girl remained. Outside, the
air had turned frigid, and there was snow on the ground. It was night
when the van stopped at a gas station. A man was waiting. Montserrat's
friend hopped out the back, gleeful. ''She said goodbye, I'll see you
tomorrow,'' Montserrat recalled. ''I never saw her again.''
After leaving the gas station, Alejandro drove Montserrat to an
apartment. A couple of weeks later he took her to a Dollarstore. ''He
bought me makeup,'' Montserrat told me. ''He chose a short dress and a
halter top, both black. I asked him why the clothes. He said it was for
a party the owner of the apartment was having. He bought me underwear.
Then I started to worry.'' When they arrived at the apartment, Alejandro
left, saying he was coming back. But another man appeared at the door.
''The man said he'd already paid and I had to do whatever he said,''
Montserrat said. ''When he said he already paid, I knew why I was there.
I was crushed.''
Montserrat said that she didn't leave that apartment for the next three
months, then for nine months after that, Alejandro regularly took her in
and out of the apartment for appointments with various johns.
Sex trafficking is one of the few human rights violations that rely on
exposure: victims have to be available, displayed, delivered and
returned. Girls were shuttled in open cars between the Plainfield, N.J.,
stash house and other locations in northern New Jersey like Elizabeth
and Union City. Suri told her mother that she was being driven in a
black town car -- just one of hundreds of black town cars traversing New
York City at any time -- from her stash house in Queens to places where
she was forced to have sex. A Russian ring drove women between various
Brooklyn apartments and strip clubs in New Jersey. Andrea named trading
hubs at highway rest stops in Deming, N.M.; Kingman, Ariz.; Boulder
City, Nev.; and Glendale, Calif. Glendale, Andrea said, was a fork in
the road; from there, vehicles went either north to San Jose or south
toward San Diego. The traffickers drugged them for travel, she said.
''When they fed you, you started falling asleep.''
In the past several months, I have visited a number of addresses where
trafficked girls and young women have reportedly ended up: besides the
house in Plainfield, N.J., there is a row house on 51st Avenue in the
Corona section of Queens, which has been identified to Mexican federal
preventive police by escaped trafficking victims. There is the apartment
at Barrington Plaza in the tony Westwood section of Los Angeles, one
place that some of the Komisaruk/Mezheritsky ring's trafficking victims
ended up, according to Daniel Saunders, the assistant U.S. attorney who
prosecuted the ring. And there's a house on Massachusetts Avenue in
Vista, Calif., a San Diego suburb, which was pointed out to me by a San
Diego sheriff. These places all have at least one thing in common: they
are camouflaged by their normal, middle-class surroundings.
''This is not narco-traffic secrecy,'' says Sharon B. Cohn, director of
anti-trafficking operations for the International Justice Mission.
''These are not people kidnapped and held for ransom, but women and
children sold every single day. If they're hidden, their keepers don't
make money.''
I.J.M.'s president, Gary Haugen, says: ''It's the easiest kind of crime
in the world to spot. Men look for it all day, every day.''
But border agents and local policemen usually don't know trafficking
when they see it. The operating assumption among American police
departments is that women who sell their bodies do so by choice, and
undocumented foreign women who sell their bodies are not only
prostitutes (that is, voluntary sex workers) but also trespassers on
U.S. soil. No Department of Justice attorney or police vice squad
officer I spoke with in Los Angeles -- one of the country's busiest
thoroughfares for forced sex traffic -- considers sex trafficking in the
U.S. a serious problem, or a priority. A teenage girl arrested on Sunset
Strip for solicitation, or a group of Russian sex workers arrested in a
brothel raid in the San Fernando Valley, are automatically heaped onto a
pile of workaday vice arrests.
The U.S. now offers 5,000 visas a year to trafficking victims to allow
them to apply for residency. And there's faint hope among
sex-trafficking experts that the Bush administration's recent proposal
on Mexican immigration, if enacted, could have some positive effect on
sex traffic into the U.S., by sheltering potential witnesses. ''If
illegal immigrants who have information about victims have a chance at
legal status in this country, they might feel secure enough to come
forward,'' says John Miller of the State Department. But ambiguities
still dominate on the front lines -- the borders and the streets of
urban America -- where sex trafficking will always look a lot like
prostitution.
''It's not a particularly complicated thing,'' says Sharon Cohn of
International Justice Mission. ''Sex trafficking gets thrown into issues
of intimacy and vice, but it's a major crime. It's purely profit and
pleasure, and greed and lust, and it's right under homicide.''
IMPRISONMENT AND SUBMISSION
The basement, Andrea said, held as many as 16 children and teenagers
of different ethnicities. She remembers that it was underneath a house
in an upper-middle-class neighborhood on the West Coast. Throughout much
of her captivity, this basement was where she was kept when she wasn't
working. ''There was lots of scrawling on the walls,'' she said. ''The
other kids drew stick figures, daisies, teddy bears. This Mexican boy
would draw a house with sunshine. We each had a mat.''
Andrea paused. ''But nothing happens to you in the basement,'' she
continued. ''You just had to worry about when the door opened.''
She explained: ''They would call you out of the basement, and you'd get
a bath and you'd get a dress, and if your dress was yellow you were
probably going to Disneyland.'' She said they used color coding to make
transactions safer for the traffickers and the clients. ''At Disneyland
there would be people doing drop-offs and pickups for kids. It's a big
open area full of kids, and nobody pays attention to nobody. They would
kind of quietly say, 'Go over to that person,' and you would just slip
your hand into theirs and say, 'I was looking for you, Daddy.' Then that
person would move off with one or two or three of us.''
Her account reminded me -- painfully -- of the legend of the Pied Piper
of Hamelin. In the story, a piper shows up and asks for 1,000 guilders
for ridding the town of a plague of rats. Playing his pipe, he lures all
the rats into the River Weser, where they drown. But Hamelin's mayor
refuses to pay him. The piper goes back into the streets and again
starts to play his music. This time ''all the little boys and girls,
with rosy cheeks and flaxen curls, and sparkling eyes and teeth like
pearls'' follow him out of town and into the hills. The piper leads the
children to a mountainside, where a portal opens. The children follow
him in, the cave closes and Hamelin's children -- all but one, too lame
to keep up -- are never seen again.
Montserrat said that she was moved around a lot and often didn't know
where she was. She recalled that she was in Detroit for two months
before she realized that she was in ''the city where cars are made,''
because the door to the apartment Alejandro kept her in was locked from
the outside. She says she was forced to service at least two men a
night, and sometimes more. She watched through the windows as
neighborhood children played outside. Emotionally, she slowly dissolved.
Later, Alejandro moved her to Portland, Ore., where once a week he
worked her out of a strip club. In all that time she had exactly one
night off; Alejandro took her to see ''Scary Movie 2.''
All the girls I spoke to said that their captors were both
psychologically and physically abusive. Andrea told me that she and the
other children she was held with were frequently beaten to keep them
off-balance and obedient. Sometimes they were videotaped while being
forced to have sex with adults or one another. Often, she said, she was
asked to play roles: the therapist's patient or the obedient daughter.
Her cell of sex traffickers offered three age ranges of sex partners --
toddler to age 4, 5 to 12 and teens -- as well as what she called a
''damage group.'' ''In the damage group they can hit you or do anything
they wanted,'' she explained. ''Though sex always hurts when you are
little, so it's always violent, everything was much more painful once
you were placed in the damage group.
''They'd get you hungry then to train you'' to have oral sex, she said.
''They'd put honey on a man. For the littlest kids, you had to learn not
to gag. And they would push things in you so you would open up better.
We learned responses. Like if they wanted us to be sultry or sexy or
scared. Most of them wanted you scared. When I got older I'd teach the
younger kids how to float away so things didn't hurt.''
Kevin Bales of Free the Slaves says: ''The physical path of a person
being trafficked includes stages of degradation of a person's mental
state. A victim gets deprived of food, gets hungry, a little dizzy and
sleep-deprived. She begins to break down; she can't think for herself.
Then take away her travel documents, and you've made her stateless. Then
layer on physical violence, and she begins to follow orders. Then add a
foreign culture and language, and she's trapped.''
Then add one more layer: a sex-trafficking victim's belief that her
family is being tracked as collateral for her body. All sex-trafficking
operations, whether Mexican, Ukrainian or Thai, are vast criminal
underworlds with roots and branches that reach back to the countries,
towns and neighborhoods of their victims.
''There's a vast misunderstanding of what coercion is, of how little it
takes to make someone a slave,'' Gary Haugen of International Justice
Mission said. ''The destruction of dignity and sense of self, these
girls' sense of resignation. . . . '' He didn't finish the sentence.
In Tijuana in November, I met with Mamacita, a Mexican
trafficking-victim-turned-madam, who used to oversee a stash house for
sex slaves in San Diego. Mamacita (who goes by a nickname) was full of
regret and worry. She left San Diego three years ago, but she says that
the trafficking ring, run by three violent Mexican brothers, is still in
operation. ''The girls can't leave,'' Mamacita said. ''They're always
being watched. They lock them into apartments. The fear is unbelievable.
They can't talk to anyone. They are always hungry, pale, always shaking
and cold. But they never complain. If they do, they'll be beaten or
killed.''
In Vista, Calif., I followed a pickup truck driven by a San Diego
sheriff's deputy named Rick Castro. We wound past a tidy suburban
downtown, a supermall and the usual hometown franchises. We stopped
alongside the San Luis Rey River, across the street from a Baptist
church, a strawberry farm and a municipal ballfield.
A neat subdivision and cycling path ran along the opposite bank. The San
Luis Rey was mostly dry, filled now with an impenetrable jungle of
15-foot-high bamboolike reeds. As Castro and I started down a well-worn
path into the thicket, he told me about the time he first heard about
this place, in October 2001. A local health care worker had heard rumors
about Mexican immigrants using the reeds for sex and came down to offer
condoms and advice. She found more than 400 men and 50 young women
between 12 and 15 dressed in tight clothing and high heels. There was a
separate group of a dozen girls no more than 11 or 12 wearing white
communion dresses. ''The girls huddled in a circle for protection,''
Castro told me, ''and had big eyes like terrified deer.''
I followed Castro into the riverbed, and only 50 yards from the road we
found a confounding warren of more than 30 roomlike caves carved into
the reeds. It was a sunny morning, but the light in there was refracted,
dreary and basementlike. The ground in each was a squalid nest of mud,
tamped leaves, condom wrappers, clumps of toilet paper and magazines.
Soiled underwear was strewn here and there, plastic garbage bags
jury-rigged through the reeds in lieu of walls. One of the caves'
inhabitants had hung old CD's on the tips of branches, like Christmas
ornaments. It looked vaguely like a recent massacre site. It was 8 in
the morning, but the girls could begin arriving any minute. Castro told
me how it works: the girls are dropped off at the ballfield, then herded
through a drainage sluice under the road into the riverbed. Vans shuttle
the men from a 7-Eleven a mile away. The girls are forced to turn 15
tricks in five hours in the mud. The johns pay $15 and get 10 minutes.
It is in nearly every respect a perfect extension of Calle Santo Tomas
in Mexico City. Except that this is what some of those girls are
training for.
If anything, the women I talked to said that the sex in the U.S. is even
rougher than what the girls face on Calle Santo Tomas. Rosario, a woman
I met in Mexico City, who had been trafficked to New York and held
captive for a number of years, said: ''In America we had 'special jobs.'
Oral sex, anal sex, often with many men. Sex is now more adventurous,
harder.'' She said that she believed younger foreign girls were in
demand in the U.S. because of an increased appetite for more aggressive,
dangerous sex. Traffickers need younger and younger girls, she
suggested, simply because they are more pliable. In Eastern Europe, too,
the typical age of sex-trafficking victims is plummeting; according to
Matei of Reaching Out, while most girls used to be in their late teens
and 20's, 13-year-olds are now far from unusual.
Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents at the Cyber Crimes Center in
Fairfax, Va., are finding that when it comes to sex, what was once
considered abnormal is now the norm. They are tracking a clear spike in
the demand for harder-core pornography on the Internet. ''We've become
desensitized by the soft stuff; now we need a harder and harder hit,''
says I.C.E. Special Agent Perry Woo. Cybernetworks like KaZaA and
Morpheus / through which you can download and trade images and videos --
have become the Mexican border of virtual sexual exploitation. I had
heard of one Web site that supposedly offered sex slaves for purchase to
individuals. The I.C.E. agents hadn't heard of it. Special Agent Don
Daufenbach, I.C.E.'s manager for undercover operations, brought it up on
a screen. A hush came over the room as the agents leaned forward,
clearly disturbed. ''That sure looks like the real thing,'' Daufenbach
said. There were streams of Web pages of thumbnail images of young women
of every ethnicity in obvious distress, bound, gagged, contorted. The
agents in the room pointed out probable injuries from torture.
Cyberauctions for some of the women were in progress; one had exceeded
$300,000. ''With new Internet technology,'' Woo said, ''pornography is
becoming more pervasive. With Web cams we're seeing more live
molestation of children.'' One of I.C.E.'s recent successes, Operation
Hamlet, broke up a ring of adults who traded images and videos of
themselves forcing sex on their own young children.
But the supply of cheap girls and young women to feed the global
appetite appears to be limitless. And it's possible that the crimes
committed against them in the U.S. cut deeper than elsewhere, precisely
because so many of them are snared by the glittery promise of an America
that turns out to be not their salvation but their place of destruction.
ENDGAME
Typically, a young trafficking victim in the U.S. lasts in the system
for two to four years. After that, Bales says: ''She may be killed in
the brothel. She may be dumped and deported. Probably least likely is
that she will take part in the prosecution of the people that enslaved
her.''
Who can expect a young woman trafficked into the U.S., trapped in a
foreign culture, perhaps unable to speak English, physically and
emotionally abused and perhaps drug-addicted, to ask for help from a
police officer, who more likely than not will look at her as a criminal
and an illegal alien? Even Andrea, who was born in the United States and
spoke English, says she never thought of escaping, ''because what's out
there? What's out there was scarier. We had customers who were police,
so you were not going to go talk to a cop. We had this customer from
Nevada who was a child psychologist, so you're not going to go talk to a
social worker. So who are you going to talk to?''
And if the girls are lucky enough to escape, there's often nowhere for
them to go. ''The families don't want them back,'' Sister Veronica, a
nun who helps run a rescue mission for trafficked prostitutes in an old
church in Mexico City, told me. ''They're shunned.''
When I first met her, Andrea told me: ''We're way too damaged to give
back. A lot of these children never wanted to see their parents again
after a while, because what do you tell your parents? What are you going
to say? You're no good.''
Peter Landesman is a contributing writer for the magazine. He last
wrote about illegal weapons trafficking.
|
LibertadLatina.org:
Additional facts about the sexual slavery of children in Latin
America
|
Globally, an estimated 2 million women and children are
enslaved by criminal traffickers in sexual slavery. |
| |
 Dr.
Cherif Bassiouni,
president of the International Human Rights Law Institute,
DePaul Law School, is the author of "A
Study of the
Trafficking of Women and Children for Sexual Exploitation in
the Americas" funded by U.S. AID and the OAS. Dr.
Bassiouni estimates that globally, 30,000 women and children
die annually from AIDS, torture and neglect related to being
enslaved human trafficking victims. This fact
qualifies trafficking as the World's number one human rights
issue according to Dr. Bassiouni, a legal scholar in
Nuremberg, the Yugoslav war & other aspects of crimes
against humanity law. |
| |
|
Sexual slavery is a death sentence for women &
children! |
|
|
|
Over
100,000 Latin American women and girls are
trafficked into sexual slavery each year. They are
kidnapped or entrapped (offered so-called "legitimate"
jobs overseas), and then they are trafficked & sold to
brothels around the World. Latina women and girl
children are literally enslaved by the thousands in
Japan, Holland, Spain, across Latin America and within
the U.S.
|
| |
|
Over 35,000 women are trafficked from Colombia each
year, bringing annual criminal profits of $500 million.
Over 5,000 Colombian women are enslaved in Holland alone. |
| |
|
An
in-depth CIA study from 1999 reports that 50,000
people are trafficked into the U.S. annually as slaves.
At least 1/3rd of those victims are Latina women and girls. |
| |
|
An
estimated 15,000 young Mexican girls are trafficked
into the United States each year, most are forced into sex
slavery. Some of them are as young as 8 years old. |
| |
|
A ten month study by Covenant House-Latin America,
announced in April, 2002, used 56 researchers to go
undercover to document the fact that thousands of Central
America's children are enslaved by well financed & highly
organized pedophile sex trafficking gangs. 12 year old
Central American girls are sold for $100-$200 each. |
| |
|
"Child
prostitution rings working in sex shops throughout
Colombia were raided in September 1998, freeing 370
minors aged 12-16. Twenty-nine adults were arrested. The
children where being held in slavery-like conditions,
were abused and forced into prostitution. At least 145
of the children where found in [the major city of]
Cartegena, a busy sex-tourist destination."
- Reuters, September 26, 1998
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Mexico
-- 2002 --
Child Kidnappings - "While the recent
kidnappings of children in California have horrified
Americans, an extraordinarily high rate of child
disappearances in Mexico has alarmed authorities and
citizens there. Child advocacy groups say as many as
135,000 children have been kidnapped in the past three
years. It is feared that many of the children are
being sold into the sex and pornography industries.
NPR's Gerry Hadden reports from Mexico City. (4:00)"
Listen
From
All Things Considered, National Public Radio. (Get
Real Player)
|
| |
|
Mexico
-
2002 --
20,000 Children Disappear Each Year
More than 20,000 Mexican families a year suffer the
disappearance of a young son or daughter, many of whom
are adopted illegally by families abroad or are victims
of sexual exploitation or even trafficking of human
organs, reports the National Disappeared Children
Confederation. The number of children who have gone
issing in the last six years, says the Confederation,
could reach 130,000, a number considered credible by
Oscar Moreno, the Attorney General Office's Special
Prosecutor against Trafficking in Minors, a post created
last year.
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LibertadLatina
News /
Noticias |
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Updated:
March 10, 2010
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Mexico
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Jean Succar Kuri (left) |
Exhortan Diputados a Reforzar Lucha Contra Explotación Infantil
Ciudad de México.- Un exhorto a las procuradurías de justicia de
los estados y del Distrito Federal hizo la Cámara de Diputados
para que redoblen sus esfuerzos en el combate a la explotación
sexual infantil, a la trata de personas, así como para que
capaciten constantemente a su personal…
Congressional Deputies Call for a
Redoubling of Efforts to Fight Human Trafficking
Mexico City – A recent debate in the Chamber of Deputies [lower
house of Congress] lead to a unanimous vote on a non-binding
resolution calling upon the nation’s federal and state
prosecutors to redouble their efforts to fight against the
sexual exploitation of children and human trafficking. The
legislators also asked that the Courts establish permanent
professional training on human trafficking law for their
employees.
The non-binding resolution also asks criminal justice entities
to coordinate with other government agencies with expertise in
human trafficking, such as the Special Prosecutor for Violent
Crimes Against Women and Human Trafficking
(FEVIMTRA).
The resolution specifically asks that prosecutors charge
defendants with trafficking crimes where such action is merited,
and that the punishment be commensurate with the crimes
committed.
National Action Party (PAN) deputy Rosi Orozco called upon the
authorities in charge of the Cancun Penitentiary to take
preventive measures to insure that [convicted millionaire child
pornographer] Jean Succar Kuri does not escape during his
upcoming transfer [from a maximum security prison in Mexico
state to the Cancun minimum security facility]. Deputy Orozco
also called for psychological studies to be performed and
re-education be carried before prisoners like Succar Kuri are
released back into society.
Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI) deputy Pedro Avila
Nevares asked that members of the Chamber put their political
divisions aside and work as one to defend the wellbeing of the
children of Mexico. PAN deputies Agustín Castilla Marroquín y
Guillermo Zavaleta Rojas declared that Mexico must have a “zero
tolerance policy for pedophiles, regardless of whether they are
wealthy, politically connected or are members of a religious
cult.”
Members of the Chamber agreed that recent child sexual
exploitation scandals such as those of Father Rafael Muñiz
Maciel, [child pornographer] Jean Surcar Kuri and the Casitas
del Sur case [in which a dozen or more children were trafficked
from a network of children’s shelters with possible links to
Succar Kuri’s sex trafficking network] should never be repeated
in our nation. “These are examples of behaviors that are indeed
embarrassing to all Mexicans.”
El Sol de México
March 05, 2010
Haiti, Bolivia
Haitian Children Rescued From Traffickers
Authorities in Bolivia have rescued 19 children and teenagers thought to have been kidnapped in Haiti by human trafficking gangs.
A state prosecutor says the children are now being looked after by the Bolivian government and a search is continuing for at least eight others.
The 19 children who are now being looked after in a safe house in Santa Cruz were in a party of 88 Haitians who entered Bolivia from Peru on tourist visas in January.
It is not clear when they left Haiti, but one report indicates they set off on their journey - which took them through the Dominican Republic, Panama and Peru - two days before the earthquake which devastated large parts of Haiti on January 12.
Prosecuting authorities in Bolivia suspect the children were being trafficked for sexual exploitation and three people have been arrested - two Haitians and a Bolivian.
ABC News
March 10, 2010
Mexico
Desarticulan banda de trata de personas en México
Una banda de trata de personas, incluyendo menores de edad, fue desarticulada en Puebla, centro de México, dijo la Procuraduría General de Justicia del Estado (PGJE).
La banda operaba en San Pedro Cholula, una población del estado de Puebla.
Agentes del Ministerio Público y Policía Ministerial de la entidad aseguraron a 11 integrantes de una célula delictiva, que operaba en el bar "Las Vías del Amor" .
Los detenidos fueron identificados como Salvador Anatolio Ramírez Cortés, de 60 años de edad, dueño del lugar; Salvador Ramírez Sosa, de 23
años, hijo del dueño, y Edna Ruth González, de 41 años, encargada del bar.
La PGJE dijo que además fueron arrestadas Carmen Cajica Rodríguez de 33 años, Javier Sánchez Morales, de 33 años; Leonel Mena Sánchez, de 30, y Héctor Manuel Becerra Fernández, de 56 años.
Human Trafficking Ring is Broken Up in Puebla
A human trafficking gang that included underage members has been disbanded in
the state of Puebla, according to the state Attorney General's office.
The gang operated in the town San Pedro Cholula, in Puebla.
Police agents from the Public Ministry and the Ministerial Police detained 11
subjects who ran the ring from the the bar "Las Vías del Amor" (the paths of
love).
Those arrested include Salvador Anatolio Ramírez Cortés, age 60, the bar's
owner, Salvador Ramírez Sosa, 23, the bar owner's son, and Edna Ruth González,
41, who was in charge of the bar.
The Attorney General's office also mentioned the arrests of: Carmen Cajica Rodríguez,
age 33; Javier Sánchez Morales, age 33; Leonel Mena Sánchez, age 30; and Héctor Manuel Becerra Fernández,
age 56.
United Press International (UPI)
March 08, 2010
Mexico
Buscan crear banco de datos sobre la trata de personas
La Junta de Coordinación Política de la Cámara de Diputados exhortó a la Comisión Intersecretarial para Prevenir y Sancionar la Trata de Personas (conformada por instituciones del gobierno federal) a integrar un acervo especializado que contenga un banco de información particular sobre la trata
de personas...
Congress Seeks to Create a National Human Trafficking
Database
The Political Coordinating Committee of the Chamber of Deputies (lower house of
Congress) has asked President Calder ón's
[recently formed] Inter-Agency Commission to Prevent and Punish Human
Trafficking (composed of federal agencies) to create a computerized human
trafficking database system.
The
Coordinating Committee also requested that the anti-trafficking
commission coordinate the development of the project with
experts in the field. The Chamber of Deputies would like to see
the project developed in a timely manner. The purpose of the
project is to utilize the collected data to assist in the
analysis of human trafficking with the objective of supporting
efforts to prevent and punish human trafficking, as well as
improve services for victims.
The National Institute of Statistics and
Geography (INEGI) says that each year between 16,000 and 20,000
children are sexually exploited in Mexico. The Special
Prosecutor's Office for Specialized Investigation of Organized
Crime (SEIDO) has detected 14 child sex trafficking networks
just in the state of Guerrero.
Roberto Garduño
La Jornada
March 06, 2010
Mexico
Preocupan a EU trata de personas, drogadicción y violencia aquí: Pascual
Zacatecas, Zac., 8 de marzo. El embajador de Estados Unidos en México, Carlos Pascual, aseguró que el gobierno de Washington está preocupado por tres problemas sociales relacionados con el narcotráfico y el crimen organizado que ocurren en este país:
La trata de personas, sobre todo de mujeres jóvenes y adolescentes; el alto porcentaje de “muchachos” que en muchas ciudades han desertado de sus escuelas hasta en 70 por ciento y luego caen en el uso de drogas, y en tercer lugar, la “batalla” que estos jóvenes libran todos los días “por el control de una esquina...
U.S. Ambassador to Mexico Expresses
Concern About Human Trafficking, Drug Addiction and Violence
During an event held in Zacatecas city in Zacatecas state to
celebrate International Women’s Day, U.S. Ambassador to Mexico
Carlos Pascual has expressed his concern about three social
problems with ties to narcotics trafficking and violence that
occur in Mexico.
The problems mentioned were: 1) Human trafficking, and
especially that which affects women and youth; 2) the high
levels of school dropouts - which reach up to 70% of students in
some regions – that drives youth drug addiction; and 3) the
street battles that these youth unleash every day in their
efforts “to control a street corner.”
Ambassador Pascual: “We can’t allow these youth to become the
model for the future. We have to find a way to rescue those who
have already fallen.”
The Ambassador added that is important that we support drug
rehabilitation programs for addicts, as well as job creation and
the taking back of public spaces.
Ambassador Pascual went on to note that “we are also
responsible, and therefore we are doing everything possible to
reduce the demand for drugs” in the U.S., by means of a federal
prevention and rehabilitation program funded at 5.6 billion
dollars.
Pascual said that the U.S. is doing what is possible to reduce
the flow of arms and dollars, which crime networks send to
Mexico from the U.S.
Ambassador
Pascual also discussed immigration reform, noting that the Obama
Administration will continue to seek to pass a comprehensive
immigration reform package that will benefit the more than 12
million Mexicans who reside in the U.S. He added that
understanding migration is a priority, because what it signifies
for the future of both sides of the border.
Alfredo Valadez Rodríguez
La Jornada
March 09, 2010
Costa Rica
United States Announces Initiatives in Costa Rica to Curtail Human Trafficking
The United Nations estimates that more than 250,000 people from Latin America are forced into labor as a result of human trafficking at any given time.
Though the extent of trafficking in Costa Rica is not known, the country has been recognized as both a feeder country and a destination for forced labor. A March, 2009 report issued by the United States said that Costa Rica fell short of the minimum standards for the elimination of trafficking.
Girls from Nicaragua, Dominican Republic, Guatemala, Colombia, Russia and Eastern Europe have been identified here as victims of forced prostitution. Officials are also aware of trafficking going the other way. According to the United States, Costa Rica needs to intensify efforts to investigate and prosecute trafficking offenses and improve data collection regarding trafficking crimes, among other changes.
To help Costa Rica meet minimum benchmarks, the United States government announced Monday that it would be backing two initiatives with a collective $350,000 grant.
“Make no mistake, human trafficking is a real example of modern-day slavery,” said U.S. Ambassador Anne Andrew. “That is why the United States Government is intent on supporting the fight against human trafficking.”
Part of the grant will go to Fundación Rahab to promote prevention as well as protection of adults and adolescents who are victims of trafficking. The other piece will go to the country's Judicial Investigation Police (OIJ) to improve investigation and response to forced labor.
“Trafficking of persons is a phenomenon that has no place in the 21st century; not in Costa Rica, not in the U.S. and not in our world,” Andrew continued. “It is our duty as human beings to fight against this evil.”
According to Andrew, Costa Rica has taken steps towards addressing the problem by changing some of its laws and improving the tools used to fight illicit trafficking. She said that traffickers frequently recruit people through fraudulent advertisements, promising legitimate jobs as models, hostesses, or work in the agricultural industry. When they accept, they find themselves trapped in jobs in a foreign country.
One way Public Security Minister Janina DelVecchio plans to confront the issue of trafficking is by “putting police where we have people” so that cases of forced labor are better detected.
Chrissie Long
Tico Times
March 09, 2010
California, USA
Illegal Immigrant Wanted on Sexual Molestation Charge Arrested Near Calexico
An illegal immigrant charged with sexually molesting a child in the Bay Area was arrested near Calexico after trying to sneak back in the United States from Mexico, authorities said Tuesday.
The man was arrested Sunday nine miles west of Calexico with four other immigrants who had entered the U.S. illegally, the Department of Homeland Security said. His name and age were not released.
A records check by federal officers showed that the man was wanted on an outstanding warrant in Marin County on a charge of a lewd and lascivious act with a child under 14, the department said.
The man was being held by the Imperial County Sheriff's Department pending extradition to Marin County, according to the department. The four others were processed and returned to Mexico.
Robert J. Lopez
Los Angeles Times
March 9, 2010
Mexico
 |
|
Ciudad Juarez |
Sin cubrir “una mínima” parte la sentencia de CoIDH por Campo Algodonero
Critica organización civil “política simulatoria”de autoridades
México.- En materia de justicia, el gobierno mexicano mantiene una "política simulatoria", que solo se vale de grandes "distractores" para impactar. Esa es la razón por la que hoy se publican en el Diario Oficial de la Federación, los párrafos ordenados por la Corte Interamericana de Derechos Humanos (CoIDH) sobre la sentencia del caso "Campo Algodonero"...
Mexico Has Not Complied With "Even the Minimum" of the
Inter-American Court's Sentence in the Juarez Cotton Fields Case
In matters of justice [for women], the government of Mexico uses a false front that relies upon large distractions to create public impact. This is the reason why today a statement ordered by the Inter-American Court of Human Rights (IACHR) in the 'Cotton Fields' case in Ciudad Juarez was published in the Official Gazette of the Federation.
Marisela Ortiz, the co-founder of the organization May Our Daughters Return Home
[Nuestras
Hijas de Regreso a Casa], told CIMAC News that the fact that the Mexican State has complied
with paragraph 15 of the Court's order, requiring the publication as a "recognition of the true history" of the case, does not mean that Mexico is actually bringing about justice in the case.
Ortiz went on to say that the Government wants to show that it is doing something, but to date,
'we haven't seen any actions by them that come from a true concern to see justice done in the case, because the Government lacks the political will to repair the damage that
has been done.'
The reality
from our point of view, Ortiz says, is that Mexico has not complied with even the minimum requirements of the sentence published by the International Court. The only thing that they have done is to meet with the three families who brought the case to the IACHR. The Cotton fields case involved 8 women who's tortured bodies were found in a cotton field in Ciudad Juarez in 2001. The families of three victims participated in the IACHR case.
A clear example of the lack of appropriate government response to the case involves the fact that the authorities have stopped the small payments that they were making to the three families who brought the case…
Now, more than ever, the government is using a false front in
addressing the issue of femicide in Ciudad Juarez. The
authorities have not taken into consideration the mothers of the
other mothers of femicide victims, and today, government
officials never mention anything about the femicide murders.
They have blame cases of femicide in Ciudad Juarez on the narco-traffickers.
Ortiz: “That is not a policy.”
Ortiz: “We will now have to be more vigilant in our demands that
the Mexican Government compy with the requirements of the
IACHR’s sentence.
In addition, we will continue in the struggle to bring justice
to all of the other femicide cases, until we oblige the Mexican
State to take responsibility for not guaranteeing safety for
women, providing reparations for victims and for the prevention
future crimes [as called for in the Court’s sentence]…
Ortiz declared that reparations for the damages done to the
victims is not about money, it is about justice, about a public
apology from the government, and later, it will be about seeing
results to efforts to provide a better quality of life those who
have been affected.
In commemoration of International Women’s Day, May Our Daughters
Come Home expressed the need to do away with the idea that
giving us a flower, of telling us that it is “beautiful to be a
woman” and giving hypocritical accolades to distinguished women
– is somehow the equivalent of their having an awareness of
gender equality and justice.
Women in
Cuidad Juarez continue to be murdered, and the machismo-driven
attitudes of the government continue to foment impunity.
Marisela
Ortiz:
|
“We dedicate this day to the women who have been the
victims, and we rededicate ourselves to the fight
against femicide.” |
Laura Romero Gómez
CIMAC Women's News Agency
March 08, 2010
The Americas
|
 |
|
Indigenous girls in Mexico - always
at risk from sex traffickers and a government that
does not care. |
LibertadLatina
Statement for International
Women's Day,
2010
Government and NGO
anti-trafficking efforts must be held accountable for
Taking
effective
action
March 8, 2010, International Women's Day,
represents
LibertadLatina's
9th anniversary. We wish all women and girls around the world
happiness and success on this day.
During the past year, we at
LibertadLatina have redoubled our
efforts to end gender oppression in the Americas. We thank our
readers for their many expressions of support.
We have presented the true facts about the severe oppression facing
Indigenous, African descendent and other Latina and Caribbean women and girls
today.
These are populations that remain severely under-represented in deliberations by those
with the power to act at the governmental and NGO level to stop
modern human slavery, and the many other forms of exploitation
and injustice faced by these women of color.
We do not exclude any group in the war against gender
oppression. With limited available resources, we have focused on
populations and on issues that have been neglected by the
mainstream ‘movement’ – and therefore need urgent attention.
We believe that our energies are best spent
by bringing focus to the
various forms of mass gender atrocity that are increasingly plaguing Mexico.
Mexico is the ‘bottleneck’ for mass migration from South and
Central America to the United States. Mexico’s long standing
traditions of severe machismo, political corruption, a tolerance
for impunity and the influence of billions of dollars in drug
cartel money has lead to women and children, and especially
those who are indigenous, being targeted for kidnapping, rape,
sex and labor trafficking and even murder. Taken together, these
cases add up to tens of thousands of
victims per year.
We have constantly insisted that the press, authors, academics
and government officials end the virtual embargo on discussion
of Latin America as one of the very top crisis areas globally
for human trafficking. In 2010 the exclusion of
Latina, Indigenous and Afro-Latina and Caribbean victim issues
from public policy discussion, planning and action is an
unacceptable fact in this movement.
Racial prejudices
and preferences within Latin America’s educated elites,
and similar traditions within the United States and Canada
appear to be the motivating factors that cause this movement to
avoid mention of Latin America and the Caribbean, where, by some
estimates, approximately 50% of global sex trafficking activity
takes place. We work continuously to provide the facts that will
empower people of conscience to break the glass
ceiling and provide ‘Little
Brown Maria in the Brothel’ – our metaphor for these
voiceless victims, an equal place at the table of decision
making and provision of services.
Their voices must be heard!
We believe that our work is setting an example,
and is a model to all of the many factions within the movement
against human trafficking and exploitation. Because the
movement, in it various forms (non governmental organizations,
national and local government – and international agency
organizations) has evolved largely
from an academic base, the approach to fighting human
trafficking has centered on many intellectually sound approaches –
including efforts to raise awareness, petition government, pass laws, empower law
enforcement and NGOs, give victims access, provide them shelter
and space for recovery, and reduce demand for prostitution.
These are all legitimate activities,
and yet human trafficking continues to expand exponentially, far
beyond the current capacity of our institutions to respond...
The disappointing example of Mexico’s
effort to pass human trafficking legislation, and President
Calderón’s two year effort to block and disable that important
law, shows that the anti-trafficking movement cannot simply rely
upon academic approaches to fighting trafficking that appear, on
their surface, to be effective.
We must hold the governments of the region responsible for
enacting and enforcing truly effective laws against human
trafficking. For that reason, we support the efforts of
those countries who are working
through the United Nations to insist upon a new, Global Plan of
Action to finally organize an effective global fight against human
trafficking.
Néstor Arbito Chica, Ecuador’s
Minister of Justice and Human Rights, has been an articulate
leader in this effort. Minister Arbito Chica:
"National and regional efforts are not
enough to cope with this global problem." "That’s why we call on
the U.N. to take action."
We will continue to report on the developing story of the growth
in impunity, and the movement to push back against that impunity.
Those who are at risk, and those who are enslaved and exploited
today, deserve our urgent attention, empathy, support and effective
direct action to defend them from a life of torture leading to
an early death.
We will continue to give that attention, and we will continue to
press for government accountability in response to well
advertised but as-yet ineffective actions to defend
and rescue women and girls who
face impunity without defense.
End impunity now!
Chuck Goolsby
LibertadLatina
March 8, 2010
Read the complete essay
Illinois, USA
|
 |
|
DePaul University College of Law research fellow
Jody Raphael presents her study of prostitution in
Chicago - in 2008.
Video:
WLS
TV |
‘Sex Trafficking’ Not Just a Problem Abroad
Juvenile Delinquency ‘We’ve got to punish men who are buying sex from children’
One of the first things Jody Raphael will tell you about child prostitution is this:
These children are not prostitutes. They're victims of abuse.
They're girls mostly, as young as 12, thousands of them, pimped out in hotels and apartments, often via the Internet, from the suburbs to the outskirts of Midway Airport and on down to Springfield, especially when all sorts gather for a legislative session.
The practice is officially known as sex trafficking, though the word "trafficking" often gets paired with "international" and conjures images of girls from foreign places.
The abuse of those girls – from Eastern Europe, Cambodia, Thailand – is what most often makes news and the plots of prime-time crime shows.
"International trafficking has excited a whole lot of interest," says Raphael, a research fellow at the DePaul University College of Law. "We've been trying to say for years: We have the same thing happening to girls born and bred in Chicago."
The plight of local girls got some publicity last week when Cook County State's Attorney Anita Alvarez testified at a U.S. Senate hearing on domestic trafficking. That hearing relied partly on Raphael's research, so on Friday I asked her to paint a picture of what goes on in Chicago.
Our girls, she said, are mostly poor, which means disproportionately African-American and Hispanic. Almost all were sexually abused before they entered the trade.
Some girls are "put out" by a mother or a brother as a way to make money for the family. Some run away from an abusive home, only to be preyed upon by "recruiters..."
Raphael works with various groups, including the Cook County Sheriff's Office and End Demand Illinois, a new campaign funded by Peter Buffett's NoVo Foundation.
Targeting the traffickers, she believes, won't solve the problem.
"You have to make it very expensive and unhappy for the customer," she said. "We've got to punish men who are buying sex from children. We have to stop normalizing it.
"That means going after the customer and making it clear that here in Chicago we're not going to put up with this."
Mary Schmich
The Chicago Tribune
Feb. 28, 2010
See also:
Domestic Sex Trafficking of Chicago Women and Girls
[PDF
file] [Overview]
Jody Raphael and Jessica Ashley
May, 2008
See also:
Studies Look at Prostitution in Chicago
[The linked article includes a
video report.]
WLS
May 07, 2008
Added: Mar. 7, 2010
Mexico
|
 |
|
Jean Succar Kuri (left) is escorted in a straight jacket by federal
agents
Photo:
Crónica |
PRD, PRI, PAN y PT unen fuerzas para que no se beneficie al pederasta Succar Kuri
“Esta Cámara no tolera a los malditos pedófilos; para ellos mano dura”, afirma Leticia Quezada
The Party of the Democratic Revolution, the Institutional
Revolutionary party, the National Action Party (PAN) and the Labor Party (PT)
Unite to Prevent Pedophile [Kingpin] Jean Succar Kuri From Benefiting From the
'System.'
Deputy Leticia Quezada:
"The Chamber of Deputies will not tolerate
these evil pedophile; throw the book at them."
La Cámara de Diputados aprobó un exhorto al Poder Judicial para revertir la decisión del juez Alfonso Gabriel García Lanz de trasladar a una cárcel de Cancún al pederasta Jean Succar Kuri, y que en caso de cumplirse su cambio de prisión se ejerza una vigilancia especial para evitar que escape.
En la sesión de ayer, diputados de todos los partidos lamentaron que Succar Kuri, sentenciado por abuso a menores de edad en Cancún, Quintana Roo, sea enviado a una prisión de mínima seguridad, aun cuando fue catalogado en el proceso judicial como reo de alta peligrosidad.
En todos los tonos, legisladores de los partidos Revolucionario Institucional (PRI), Acción Nacional (PAN), de la Revolución Democrática (PRD) y del Trabajo (PT) reprocharon las facilidades que el juez García Lanz concede a Succar Kuri...
The Chamber of Deputies have passed a non-binding resolution that calls upon he
Judiciary to reverse a decision by Judge Alfonso Gabriel García Lanz that will
permit the transfer of [millionaire child pornographer] pedophile Jean Succar
Kuri to a minimum security prison in the city of Cancún. The resolution also
call for extreme vigilance to be used in the case that Succar Kuri is
transferred, so that he is not allowed to escape.
In a plenary session of the Chamber, all of Mexico’s political lamented the fact
that Succar Kuri, who was convicted and sentenced to prison for the sexual abuse
of children in Cancún, is scheduled to be transferred to a minimum security jail
when he had previously been categorized during the judicial process as a
dangerous prisoner. The Party of the Democratic
Revolution(PRD), the Institutional Revolutionary Party(PRI), the National Action
Party (PAN) and the Labor Party (PT) all denounced the special access that Judge
García Lanz is permitting Succar Kuri to have.
From the podium of the Chamber, PRI deputy Pedro Ávila Nevárez decried “the evil
intentions that this man [Succar Kuri] had against Mexican children. If
possible, the Army should pick this individual up, but don’t allow him to be
taken to Cancun as if he had just won a prize. Send him instead to the
Marias Islands or some other place that he can’t escape from!”
PAN deputy Guillermo Zavaleta stated that the crime committed by Succar Kuri
should be punished by the death sentence. “He doesn’t deserve to see even the
light of day tomorrow” stated Deputy Zavaleta from the podium. “Nonetheless, the
political system guarantees him that he will be allowed to live.”
PRD legislator Emilio Serrano also spoke, saying that the transfer of Succar
Kuri involves an attempt to allow his escape. “What can we say, now, to the
‘precious gover’ [a nickname used by Succar Kuri accomplice Kamel Nacif, heard
in secretly recorded phone calls, where he refers to Governor Mario Marín of
Puebla state by this term]? That he take Succar Kuri to Puebla, because he would
be protected there – a place where Miguel Ángel Yunes and Emilio Gamboa Patrón,
and other [wanted] men hide, men who are in the same business and have the same
tastes as Sucar Kuri?”
Labor Party deputy Gerardo Rodolfo Fernández stood to propose an end to the
sheltering of pedophiles. “Often special privileges are offered to those who are
rich and influential, those who have the protection of politicians, such as in
the case of this person, Jean Succar Kuri. That is what the cases of Succar
Kuri, Miguel Ángel Yunes and Emilio Gamboa have in common, that they are gravely
serious and related cases of impunity.
The Party of the Democratic Revolution’s spokesperson in the Chamber, Leticia
Quezada Contreras, upon voting for the resolution stated: “This Chamber will not
tolerate these perverted pedophiles who want to hide between the gaps in the
law. Throw the book at them!”
The Chamber also approved a
proposal by Labor party deputy César González Yáñez, that Deputy Rosi Orozco, in
her role as Chair of the newly created Special Commission to Fight Human
Trafficking, personally present the resolution to the Judiciary, and
specifically to Judge García Lanz.
Enrique Méndez and Roberto Garduño
Periódico La Jornada
March 05, 2010
[Note: In the above article,
Miguel Ángel Yunes, who until Feb. of 2010 was head of the federal Secretariat
of Public Security, and Emilio Gamboa, a legislator in the National Action
Party, are referred to as having ties to Kamel Nacif, a collaborator of Jean
Succar Kuri.
These ties are briefly described in several articles
posted on our
page dedicated to the Lydia Cacho case.
The below article from IPS also describes these
allegations. - LL]
See also:
Mexico
Ties Between Elites and Child Sex Rings "Beyond Imagination"
Mexico City - The complicity in Mexico between child sex rings and the political and business elites "goes beyond what we can even imagine," says activist Lydia Cacho, who faces death threats and was even thrown briefly into prison for revealing those ties in a book...
The number of Mexican politicians and businessmen involved in child pornography and sex rings "would shock us if we knew the real extent of the phenomenon," said Cacho.
In one of the illegally taped conversations broadcast Tuesday, which apparently date back to 2004, the governor of the state of Veracruz, Fidel Herrera of the Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI), and Emilio Gamboa, head of the party's bloc in the lower house of Congress, can be heard talking on friendly terms with textile mogul Kamel Nacif.
Nacif, a Mexican of Lebanese origin, who in the obscenity-laced conversation can
be heard asking Gamboa to block a gambling bill to be debated by Congress, is
suing Cacho for libel.
In her 2004 book "Los Demonios del Edén" (The Demons of Eden), Cacho - who is a
journalist and writer as well as the director of a women's shelter in Cancún -
links Nacif with Jean Succar, a Lebanese-born hotel owner who is in prison
facing charges of arranging pedophile parties in that Mexican resort town...
The two PRI politicians, Herrera and Gamboa, denied having any illegal ties with
Nacif, and said they did not even know Succar. From their point of view, the
airing of the tapped phone conversations was a low political blow aimed at their
party...
So far, no direct link between politicians or prominent businessmen and child porn or sex rings has been proven. But there are suspicions, which are fuelled by Nacif and his web of contacts.
Cacho, who has been under police protection since last year, when she began to receive death threats, was referred to in earlier leaked conversations, between Nacif and Mario Marín, governor of the state of Puebla, near the capital.
In the tapped conversations, Marín, a member of the PRI, can be heard telling Nacif that "I just gave a bump on the head to that old witch"
[Cacho].
The two men also discussed how they had the activist arrested and thrown into a cell with "nutcases and dykes (lesbians)," so that she would be raped - something that did not occur, because in the prison, "the prisoners themselves and the guards protected me," the writer said in an earlier conversation with IPS...
But when the news of her arrest broke, the rights watchdog Amnesty International, the World Organization Against Torture, the Inter-American Press Association and other international groups raised an outcry, and Cacho was released on bail.
After the scandal triggered by the leaked phone conversations in February, in
which the governor of Puebla and Nacif - who owns factories in that state - are
heard discussing actions to teach Cacho a lesson, the Supreme Court initiated an
investigation to determine whether or not Marín had engaged in criminal
activity.
[Note: Since this article was written in 2006, press
reports have revealed that Kamel Nacif's wife, who was then in a divorce
process, had secretly recorded her husband's conversations with politicians and
co-conspirators including Jean Succar Kuri. She anonymously released these tapes
to the press in 2006. - LL]
Diego Cevallos
Inter Press Service (IPS)
Sep. 13, 2006
Mexico
|
 |
|
National Action Party (PAN)
legislator
Guillermo Zavaleta
speaks from the podium in the Chamber of Deputies to
denounce judicial favoritism shown to child
porn kingpin Jean Succar Kuri |
La Cámara Baja Exige al Poder Judicial Combatir Eficazmente la Pederastia
El pleno de la Cámara de Diputados aprobó por unanimidad, un punto de acuerdo para exhortar al Poder Judicial, a la PGR y a las procuradurías de Justicia de todo el país a combatir con eficacia la pornografía infantil y el abuso sexual a menores.
Diputados de todas las fracciones parlamentarias coincidieron en que se trata de delitos cada vez con mayor incidencia en México.
La propuesta fue presentada por la legisladora panista Rosi Orozco...
Chamber of Deputies Passes Non-binding Resolution
Requesting That the Attorney General's Office and State Prosecutors Across
Mexico Effectively Combat Child Pornography and the Sexual Abuse of Children.
Daniel Blancas Madrigal
Crónica
March 05, 2010
See also:
Added: Mar. 7, 2010
Mexico
Avala Pleno de Diputados Punto de Acuerdo para que la SSP Evite Traslado de Succar Kuri
México, D. F. Palacio Legislativo.- El Pleno de la Cámara de Diputados aprobó un punto de acuerdo de urgente y obvia resolución para exhortar a la Secretaría de Seguridad Pública (SSP) para que a través de la Dirección General de Traslado de Reos y Seguridad Penitenciaria se tomen todas las medidas de seguridad necesarias para evitar el traslado de Jean Succar Kuri a una prisión de Cancún, Quintana Roo. Lo anterior porque es procesado por un delito sumamente ofensivo para la sociedad –pederastia y pornografía infantil- y se pretende trasladarlo del penal de máxima seguridad del Altiplano, de Almoloya de Juárez, al centro penitenciario municipal de Cancún, el cual ha sido catalogado como uno de los más inseguros del país...
Chamber of Deputies Passes Non-binding Resolution
Requesting that the Secretariat of Public Security Not Transfer [Millionaire
Child Pornographer] Jean Succar Kuri to a Minimum Security Jail in Cancún that
is known as one of the most insecure facilities in the nation.
See also:
Mexico
Víctimas Apelan Reubicación de Kuri
Victims Appeal
Succar Kuri’s Relocation to a Minimum Security Jail in Cancun
The city of Cancun in Quintana Roo state – The administrators of
the Cancun municipal jail have announced that Jean Succar Kuri,
who have been prosecuted for heading-up a child pornography ring
and engaging in child sexual exploitation, may be relocated from
a high security prison to this minimum security prison, as a
result of orders from the Second District Court in this city...
The
announcement of the return to prison in Cancun came four years
after the detention of writer and journalist Lydia Cacho, author
of book The Demons of Eden, which exposed the activities of a
pedophile ring.
Cacho, who was
arrested in Cancun in December 2005 and taken to Puebla state
under a criminal charge of defamation, considers that there is a
very high probability that, once in Cancun, Succar Kuri will use
his influence to live a comfortable life, and will escape and
exact revenge against his victims.
Cacho, “Succar Kuri promised
that he would return to Cancun to get revenge on girls who
denounced him and, of course, to take revenge on me."
Adriana Varillas Corresponsal
El Universal
Feb. 16, 2010
See
Also:
LibertadLatina
Special Section
Journalist / Activist
Lydia Cacho
is
Railroaded by the
Legal Process for
Exposing Child Sex
Networks In Mexico
Colorado, USA
Western Union to Pay $94 Million in Mexico Transfer Settlement
Denver – Western Union will pay $94 million to settle a legal battle with the state of Arizona over whether the company allowed its money transfers to be used to send proceeds from human trafficking and drug smuggling to Mexico, officials said Thursday.
The settlement includes $50 million that will help law enforcement operations in Texas, New Mexico, Arizona and California battle money laundering and the smuggling of immigrants, drugs and guns along the 2,000-mile border.
"Attacking the flow of illicit funds from the United States to smuggling cartels in Mexico is fundamental to our goal of crushing the cartels," Arizona Attorney General Terry Goddard said.
Joseph Cachey, Western Union's chief compliance officer, said the company has improved its monitoring of transfers and screening of agents.
As part of the settlement, Western Union will provide law enforcement officials with unprecedented access to records of wire transfers.
Los Angeles Times, The Associated Press
Feb. 12, 2010
Texas, USA
|
 |
|
Heriberto Zaragoza III |
Fugitive Arrested in Connection With Sexual Assault of a Child
Belton - Police arrested a man Thursday who had been a fugitive since 2007.
Heriberto Zaragoza III was charged with Sexual Assault of a Child in connection with incidents in the summer of 2007, involving a girl in her mid-teens.
The investigation led to a warrant being obtained in November of that year, but by then Zaragoza had disappeared. Police believed he had gone to Mexico.
The warrant remained active, however, and when detectives got word he might be returning to town, they watched for him and took him into custody.
Zaragoza is also charged with Failure to Identify Himself As a Fugitive With Intent to Give False Information...
Louis Ojeda
KXXV
March 05, 2010
New Mexico, USA
Adult Charged After Teen Found Pregnant
Las Cruces - A 23-year-old Las Cruces man has been indicted on child-sex charges after he allegedly impregnated a 14-year-old girl.
Austin Villado was indicted on eight felony child sex charges for having sex with the high school student at her home while the girl's mother was at work.
Court documents say the 14-year-old girl met Villado in September and they began
having sex within weeks. Less than a month later, she was pregnant...
The teenager broke up with the alleged gang member in December because he began dating someone else.
Villado was on probation for a burglary conviction at the time he was arrested so is not eligible for bond.
The Associated Press
March 01, 2010
Pennsylvania, USA
|
 |
|
Jose David Castillo |
Five in Montgomery County Charged in Drug, Prostitution Ring
Try as he might, alleged drug and prostitution ringleader Jose David Castillo
couldn't keep Montgomery County authorities and his own children in the dark.
Castillo, 36, gave it his best shot, though, cops say. He and his cohorts set up
a shrine with spiritual symbols - including the Santa Muerte, or angel of death
- to ward off law enforcement in the hope that investigators wouldn't notice the
two brothels and the cocaine-trafficking operation he ran in Norristown,
authorities said.
But when Montgomery County investigators finally entered his home on Green
Street with a search warrant last May, after a year of surveillance and
investigation, one detective had a question for his daughter: "What does your
father do for a living?"
"All I know is that he had a whorehouse," the girl answered, according to an
affidavit of probable cause. When detectives asked her what her father said
about the place, she answered: "Just rumors around town . . . My friends would
tell me that he was selling women," the affidavit said.
Castillo, known by his underlings as "Gordo," or "fat guy," and four other
defendants were charged yesterday with corrupt organizations, prostitution and
drug and related offenses.
The others charged were Victor Castillo (J.D. Castillo's brother) Alfredo
Hernandez Garcia, Louis Manuel Gonzalez-Sosa and Eduardo Lalo Guzman-Hernandez.
All are Mexican nationals in the country illegally. Castillo has been arrested
twice, once in California and once in Norristown, and has been deported twice to
Mexico...
One brothel and the house that served as base for the cocaine operation were
across the street from Gotwall's Elementary School, the affidavit said...
Three women who allegedly were working as prostitutes when the warrants were
served are in protective custody of the Department of Homeland Security and have
been cooperating with investigators.
"The women were brought to the United States illegally, and they were brought in
with promises of a better life, promises of employment," District Attorney Risa
Vetri Ferman said at a news conference. Instead, she said, they were forced into
prostitution "and physically beaten if they did not comply."
They were threatened with abandonment in the United States or, worse, "they
would be taken back to Mexico to be killed so they could not be able to share
this information with authorities," Ferman said.
Such women would work for Castillo for one week in Norristown while always being
watched by one of his men, according to the affidavit.
"The operation here was part of a circuit of prostitutes who were routinely
routed from Mexico to New York into New Jersey, Philadelphia and the Norristown
area," Ferman said...
Regina Medina
Philadelphia Daily News
March 5, 2010
Mexico
Piden Partidos Políticos Evitar Traslado de Succar Kuri a Cancún
México, DF.- Llaman partidos políticos en San Lázaro a la Secretaría de
Seguridad Pública (SSP) a que tome las medidas necesarias para evitar el
traslado del pedrastra Jean Succar Kuri a una prisión de Cancún, Quintana Roo,
al tiempo que exhortaron a procuradurías a redoblar esfuerzos contra la
explotación sexual.
Durante la sesión de la Cámara de Diputados de este jueves fue aprobada una
iniciativa para integrar un banco de datos sobre la trata de personas.
Al respecto, fue ampliamente criticada la decisión del juez Alfonso Gabriel
García Lanz, de trasladar de un penal de máxima seguridad del Estado de México,
a una cárcel de mínima seguridad, al pederasta Succar Kuri, quien fue catalogado
en el proceso judicial como un reo de alta peligrosidad.
Legislators Ask That Jean Succar Kuri Not Be Transferred
to Cancún
Mexico City - Legislators from across Mexico's political parties have asked the
Secretariat of Public Security (SSP) to take all necessary measures to avoid the
transfer of [millionaire child pornographer] Jean Succar Kuri to a jail in
Cancún, in Quintana Roo state. They also called for prosecutors to redouble
their efforts against sexual exploitation.
During the March 4th session of the Chamber of Deputies [lower house of
Congress], a bill was passed that will create a national
human trafficking database.
During the session, judge Alfonso Gabriel García Lanz was widely criticized for
his decision to allow child pornographer Succar Kuri to be transferred from a
maximum security prison in Mexico state to a minimum security jail in Cancún. A
pervious assessment of Succar Kuri during the judicial process had identified him
as a dangerous, high risk prisoner.
CIMAC Women's News Agency
March 05, 2010
Latin America, The United States
Hillary Clinton Urges Latin America to Fight Drug Corruption
Mexico City - Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton called for Latin America
to fight drug corruption in a regional swing that ended Friday in Guatemala,
days after that country's drug czar and national police chief were jailed on
suspicion of leading a police ring that stole cocaine from drug traffickers.
The arrests underscored Guatemala's vulnerability to traffickers, whose billions
of dollars in profits and bribes are undermining a fragile country still
recovering from years of military rule and civil war.
"Organized crime has infiltrated all aspects of the Guatemalan state, and now
rivals it in terms of power and influence," said Andrew Hudson, senior associate
at Human Rights First in New York.
Drug czar Nelly Bonilla was arrested Tuesday, along with Police Chief Baltazar
Gómez. They were accused of leading a criminal police gang that stole 1,500
pounds of cocaine.
They were the latest in a string of police officers alleged to have crumbled
before the lure of drug profits.
The previous national police chief was jailed in 2009on suspicion of stealing
$300,000 from drug traffickers. A previous drug czar, Adan Castillo, was caught
on tape accepting $25,000 from a Drug Enforcement Administration informant as
payment for overseeing narcotics shipments through Guatemala. He was invited to
a DEA meeting in 2005 and arrested when he arrived in Virginia.
Clinton has said that despite increased cooperation in the region against drug
traffickers, the Obama administration wants governments there to work harder to
confront corruption.
Upon arriving in Guatemala, she praised the arrests and called on officials to
"weed out corruption." Congress has authorized $1.6 billion for fighting drug
trafficking in Mexico, Central America, the Dominican Republic and Haiti under
the three-year Merida Initiative.
"We're going to be asking more of a lot of our friends,"
Clinton said earlier during a stop in Costa Rica. "A number of them are not
respecting democratic institutions. A number of them are not taking strong
enough stands against the erosion of the rule of law because of the pressure
from drug traffickers."
Guatemala has one of the highest rates of violent crime in the world. Drug
traffickers and gangs have revived insecurities in the impoverished people, who
are recovering from a 36-year civil war that killed 200,000 people, most of them
civilians.
A United Nations crime-fighting team, the International Commission Against
Impunity, spearheaded the investigation that led to the arrest of the police
officers. The team was created in 2007 to compensate for the inability of the
Guatemalan judicial system to solve crimes often found to be committed by
moonlighting members of the security forces.
[The above-described realities have important
implications for the ability of Latin American nations to organize any serious
effort to combat human trafficking. - LL]
Anne-Marie O'Connor
The Washington Post
March 6, 2010
See also:
Central America
Centroamérica: Territorio Común Para los Feminicidios
La escalada de homicidios de mujeres o femicidios cometidos en la región, ha
experimentado un preocupante aumento, según el estudio denominado "Femicidio en
Centroamérica", que se presentó a finales del año pasado en San José, Costa
Rica, en el marco de una reunión del Consejo de Ministras de la Mujer de
Centroamérica (COMMCA). Este documento comprende una investigación cuantitativa
y cualitativa sobre las manifestaciones extremas de la violencia contra las
mujeres.
Dicho estudio fue desarrollado en Guatemala, Honduras, El Salvador, Nicaragua,
Costa Rica, Panamá y República Dominicana por el Centro Feminista de Información
y Acción (CEFEMINA) con el apoyo del Consejo de Ministras de la Mujer de
Centroamérica (COMMCA), el Fondo de Desarrollo de las Naciones Unidas para la
Mujer (UNIFEM) y la Organización Canadiense de Cooperación Horizontes.
A pesar de que la preocupación por los femicidios es reciente el estudio pudo
cerciorarse de que, en realidad, el problema ya tiene décadas de estar enraizado
en la sociedad centroamericana.
Los hallazgos encontrados indican que este fenómeno se manifiesta en toda la
región y de manera particularmente alarmante en Guatemala, Honduras y El
Salvador. Así mismo, identifica los escenarios en que se producen los femicidios,
analizando algunos de ellos con estudios de caso...
Central America: Common Territory for Femicide
The number in homicides of women, or femicides, committed in the region has
experienced an alarming increase, according to the study “Femicido en
Controamerica” (Femicide in Central America) which presented its findings from
last year in San Jose, Costa Rica, at the meeting of the Consejo de Mujer de
Centroameria (Council of Women’s Ministries of Central America). The document is
comprised of a quantitative and qualitative investigation of the extreme
manifestations of violence against women.
The study was conducted in Guatemala, Honduras, El Salvador, Nicaragua, Costa
Rica, Panama and the Dominican Republic by the Centro Feminista de Información y
Acción de Centroamérica (Feminist Center of Information and Action in Central
America), el Fondo de Desarrollo de las Naciones Unidas para la Mujer (The UN
Development Fund for Women) and la Organización Canadiense de Cooperación
Horizontes (Horizon Organization for Cooperation of
Canada).
Although the concern for femicide is has grown in recent years, the study found
that in reality, the problem has been taking root for decades in Central
American society.
The findings indicate that this phenomenon has manifested itself in the entire
region and most alarmingly in Guatemala, Honduras and El Salvador. The study
identified the situation in which femicide is produced, analyzing some with case
studies...
The study also makes clear that in countries like El Salvador and Honduras, the
phenomenon of gangs is generating a greater number of murders of women when
compared with that produced by the couple and former partners.
The above includes deaths provoked by sexual exploitation, revenge between men
and mafias connected with prostitution. Femicides have taken place in the
street, public places, streams, beaches, vacant lots, among other places. The
majority of femicides are committed with guns and knives...
...El Salvador has seen a greater increase in female deaths than male deaths.
Murders of men have increased by 40% while femicides have increased by 111%.
In Guatemala, these figures are higher. Femicide is growing by 183% while
murders of men is growing by 100%... The principal people responsible for
femicides are significant others, ex-partners or other people within the family
like fathers, brothers, stepfathers or cohabitants. Gangs are also responsible
for many femicides.
...Illegal practices connection with organized crime such as arms proliferation,
mafias, international trafficking networks are also responsible for femicides.
The study only intended to analyze figures from past years. Although there have
been advances in causes to help end femicide like the passing of the Law Against
Femicide or the Law Against Human Trafficking in Guatemala- the figures keep
climbing. The increase in violence against women is due to structural
deficiencies that the State must reform to stop these crimes from continuing.
Mario Cordero
La Hora
Jan. 19, 2010
New Jerey, USA
Police, Feds Investigate Human Trafficking in [Trenton]
Trenton - City police and federal agents have been investigating human
trafficking in Trenton's Latino community since late last year, top police
officials said yesterday.
Young women from Guatemala and Mexico have been brought into the city to be used
in an illegal network of bars and social clubs as part of a trade that is
spiking in urban areas across the county, said Police Director Irving Bradley
Jr.
Bradley said the department and its federal partners are building a strong case
against the traffickers and sex-club operators, both of whom may have
connections to Latino street gangs.
"We don't want to do a Band-Aid approach," Bradley said. "We want to shut them
down permanently."
The investigation began when an informant spoke up about high drink prices last
fall, Special Operations commander Capt. Michael Flaherty said.
"We got a complaint that one of the bars was charging $20 for a beer," he said.
"We found that when you paid $20 for a drink, you also got the company of a
person."
From there, police followed the nexus of alcohol, money, and sex through the
South and East Wards, Bradley said. They found violence was sometimes added to
the mix...
The clubs' customers are Latino men, many of them separated from their families
and some in the U.S. illegally. The combination of their immigration status and
cash income makes them tempting targets for both johns and robbers, police say,
as well as potentially being unwilling to report a crime.
The women, who may provide dancing, sexual favors, or simple companionship, are
often deceived by the traffickers.
NJ.com
March 06, 2010
Maryland, USA
|
 |
|
Arash Koraganie Ghulam Abbas |
Montgomery County Police Accuse Six of Human Trafficking, Prostitution
More than a dozen women are ready to testify against a Germantown man accused of
luring them into prostitution, police say.
Arash Koraganie Ghulam Abbas, 31, was arrested Feb. 26 at his home in the 17800
block of Cormorant Lane and charged with four counts each of human trafficking
and running a prostitution business, said Montgomery County Police Department
Cpl. Dan Fitzgerald.
Abbas was one of six arrested in a recent Montgomery County Police investigation
into people being forced into labor or sexual exploitation, also known as human
trafficking.
The investigation led to the disruption of three such trafficking operations in
Montgomery County, authorities said.
"These pimps, what they do, is put these girls in a world they don't know,"
Fitzgerald said.
Fitzgerald said the women who worked as prostitutes for Abbas answered
advertisements on Web sites like craigslist.org and backpage.com for quick
money.
"With the economy the way it is, he was posting things like, ‘Who needs a sugar
daddy?'" Fitzgerald said.
The other five arrested, according to Montgomery County Police, were:
- Deangelo A. Bynum, 24, of Washington, D.C. He was charged with solicitation of
a minor for prostitution after being arrested in Gaithersburg by an undercover
officer posing as young girl, police said. Bynum had attempted to recruit the
girl on facebook.com, requesting photos and money before she could work for him,
police said.
- Rodney Hubert, 34, of New York. He was charged with human trafficking of a
15-year-old female for prostitution. The teen was advertised on craigslist.com
after she arrived in Maryland from New York.
- Christy Elmes, 23, of the Bronx, N.Y. She was charged with human trafficking,
sexual abuse of a minor and second-degree child abuse.
- Katherine Mateo, 19, of the Bronx, N.Y. She was charged with human
trafficking, sexual abuse of a minor and second-degree child abuse.
- Tomika Powell, 21, of Montgomery, Ala. She was charged with human trafficking,
sexual abuse of a minor and second-degree child abuse. Powell was also wanted
for desertion from the U.S. Army, police said...
Andre L. Taylor
The Gazette
March 2, 2010
Mexico
Demandarán Mujeres Indígenas de Guerrero Recursos y Servicios
Más de 800 mujeres indígenas del estado de Guerrero se reunirán este sábado 6 de
marzo en la comunidad de Xalatzala, municipio de Tlapa y el domingo 7 de marzo
en la comunidad de Tejocote, municipio de Malinaltepec, para marchar después a
Tlapa con el objetivo de demandar el cese al hostigamiento a mujeres líderes y
de organizaciones defensoras de los derechos humanos y laborales.
Las manifestantes demandarán el diseño de políticas públicas de acuerdo con las
necesidades de las mujeres indígenas de la entidad.
La marcha forma parte de los actos por el Día Internacional de la Mujer,
organizados por la Unión Regional de Mujeres de la Montaña “Francisca Reyes
Castellanos”, presidida por Jacqueline Balbuena Ramírez, la Unión Nacional
deMujeres Mexicanas y la Unión Regional de la Montaña.
Indigenous Women From Guerrero Demand Resources and
Services
More than 800 Indigenous women from Guerrero state will gather on Saturday,
March 6th in the community of Xalatzala, in Tlapa municipality, and on March 7th
in Tejocote, Malinaltepec municipality, to be followed by a march to Tlapa. The
event is a protest that will demand an end to the harassment of women leaders of
human and labor rights organizations in the region. The women will also demand
that public policies be developed that address the needs of Indigenous women in
the region. The march is being held as part of International Women's Day
activities, and is being organized by the Francisca Reyes Castellanos Regional
Union of Women of la Montaña - headed by Jacqueline Balbuena Ramírez, The
National Union of Mexican Women and the Regional Union of la Montaña.
CIMAC Women's News Agency
March 5, 2010
California, USA
|
 |
|
Barstow Mayor Joseph Dennis Gomez Jr. explains his
legal problems to the Barstow City Council. He is
charged with willfully touching the intimate parts
of a woman against her will for purposes of "sexual
arousal, sexual gratification and sexual abuse." |
Barstow Mayor Charged With Sexual Battery
Barstow - Barstow Mayor Joseph Dennis Gomez Jr. has been charged with sexual
battery for allegedly assaulting a police officer's wife at a December party.
Gomez was charged Monday with a misdemeanor that involved touching the woman
against her will. The San Bernardino County district attorney's office says he
faces up to six months in jail and a $2,000 fine if convicted.
Gomez allegedly assaulted the woman on Dec. 18 but investigators have not
released details of the incident.
Gomez hasn't been arrested. His arraignment is scheduled for April.
At a City Council meeting earlier this month, Gomez said the allegation was
false and he intended to
fight it.
The Associated Press
Feb. 23, 2010
Mexico
|
 |
|
Imprisoned child pornographer Jean Succar Kuri
photo-graphed with one of his 200 child victims (Now older, the victim
was interviewed for a documentary on the repression
of journalist Lydia Cacho by associates of Succar
Kuri.) |
Piden operativo para evitar fuga de Jean Succar Kuri
México.- Por unanimidad el pleno de la Cámara de Diputados exhortó a las procuradurías General de la República y General de Justicia del Estado de Quintana Roo a implementar un operativo de seguridad para evitar la fuga del pederasta Jean Succar Kuri, cuando éste sea trasladado al centro penitenciario de Cancún.
La Cámara de Diputados también solicitó la intervención de la Secretaría de Seguridad Pública, para que a través de la dirección general de traslados de reos y seguridad penitenciaria adopte las medidas necesarias para impedir que el pederasta pudiera ser liberado durante el viaje a la prisión local…
Lower Chamber of Congress Unanimously Calls for Special Security
Measures to Prevent Child Pornographer Jean Succar Kuri's Escape from Prison
Mexico City - The Chamber of Deputies (lower house) of Congress has unanimously passed a non-binding resolution that requests that the Attorney General of the state of Quintana Roo mount a security operation to insure that convicted millionaire child pornographer Jean Succar Kuri does not escape during his upcoming transfer from a maximum security prison to a minimum security jail in Cancún.
The Chamber of Deputies also requested the intervention of the federal Secretary of Public Security, through its directorate for prisoner transfers and security, asking that they take all possible precautions to prevent any escape attempt by Succar Kuri.
The vote on the non-binding resolution was held with a sense of urgency and obvious determination. It was supported by all political parties. The resolution was presented by National Action Party (PAN) congressional deputy Rosi Orozco, who is Chair of the newly formed Special Commission to Fight Human Trafficking in the Chamber of Deputies.
The resolution also calls upon federal agencies and state governments to redouble their efforts to eradicate and prevent child sexual exploitation, and asks that they find and prosecute more cases like that of pedophile Jean Succar Kuri.
From the Chamber of Deputies all of Mexico's political parties attacked pedophilia and stood in favor of defending the rights of Mexican children.
Nonetheless, Emilio Serrano, a deputy from the Party of the Democratic Revolution (PRD) asked the Chamber why they were 'tearing their clothes
up' about this issue, given that the same institution, Congress, had previously protected pedophiles and human rights violators. He recalled the case of Puebla state governor Mario Marín, and his collusion with millionaire businessman Kamel Nacif, who himself is linked to Succar Kuri.
[See the below link to the Lydia Cacho case for
additional context to this statement. - LL]
Mónica Romero
W Radio
March 04, 2010
See
Also:
LibertadLatina
Special Section
Journalist / Activist
Lydia Cacho
is
Railroaded by the
Legal Process for
Exposing Child Sex
Networks In Mexico
Mexico
 |
|
New Alliance Party deputy Elsa María Martínez Peña |
Impulsarán cambios culturales para resolver cultura machista
Comité del Centro de Estudios para el Adelanto de las Mujeres
México, DF.- Diputadas integrantes del Comité del Centro de Estudios para el Adelanto de las Mujeres y la Equidad de Género (CCEAMEG), coincidieron en la necesidad de crear nuevas estrategias de desarrollo en favor de las mujeres del país, y en particular de las indígenas y rurales.
Durante la instalación del Comité, las legisladoras convinieron en impulsar la igualdad tanto en las diferentes instituciones de gobierno, como en las políticas públicas y en los distintos ámbitos de la sociedad...
Congressional Leaders Push for Social Changes to Resolve
the Problem of Mexico's Culture of Machismo
Congress creates a committee, and the Center for Studies for the Advancement of Women
Women congressional deputies from several political parties, who are members of the newly created Committee for the Center for Studies for the Advancement of Women and Gender Equality (CCEAMEG), are in agreement that new, pro-women development strategies must be created in Mexico, and these efforts must focus in particular on the problems of Indigenous and rural women.
During the Committee's inaugural ceremony, women legislators convened to promote gender equality both within government institutions and among the many sectors of society.
In response to the constant expansion of poverty that affects women, the inequality and the lack of access to basic needs such as education, healthcare and development, among other forms of discrimination which women endure in Mexico, the LIX (59th) Legislature of the Chamber of Deputies has created the CCEAMEG Center.
The Center will be the first of its kind in Latin America. It is founded on the principles declared at the Fourth World Conference on Women, held in Beijing, China in 1995. The Beijing Declaration requires all of the world's governments to implement mechanisms to guarantee solutions to gender inequality.
New Alliance Party deputy Elsa María Martínez Peña stated that the work of the Committee and the Center should contribute to consolidating a gender based perspective in regard to the legislative process. It should involve a scientific, analystical and political vision about the interrelationships of women and men that proposes to eliminate the causes of gender oppression.
Labor Party deputy Jaime Cárdenas García added that the problem of a culture of machismo in Mexico cannot be resolved through laws alone. "Changes in our culture and our economic model must also take place."
CEAMEG director Maria de los Ángeles Corte Ríos said that on March 10, 2010, the Chamber of Deputies with present a forum, "Advances and Setbacks in Human Rights for Women."
Gladis Torres Ruiz
CIMAC Women's News Agency
March 03, 2010
The United States
|
 |
|
Convicted child rapist Jeremias Chagala-Mil
|
Why Are So Many Children Falling Prey to Criminal Aliens?
In April 2009, in a Charlottesville, VA courtroom, Circuit Judge Edward L. Hogshire sentenced Jeremias Chagala-Mil for the repeated rape of a local middle-school girl. Last November, he pleaded guilty to the crime, and admitted that he had sex with her many times.
In April 2008, the girl’s mother discovered what he was doing with her daughter and reported him to police. Since his arrest, he has expressed his desire to marry the 7th grader.
The 32-year-old Mexican national has continued to defend his actions to police, by maintaining that his behavior would not be a crime, and actually quite common throughout his own country.
Charlottesville Deputy Commonwealth’s Attorney Claude Worrell said of Chagala-Mil: “He said this young girl, who was 12 at the time, looked like she was sexually mature to him. He said in Mexico, any girl who looks sexually mature is fair game to have sex with.”
While Hogshire sentenced Chagala-Mil to 30 years in prison, he suspended all but six of those years. After completing his prison sentence, he will be deported back to Mexico.
Unfortunately, the claims that Chagala-Mil makes about Mexico are true.
Another example of this attitude can be found in Mexican national Diego Lopez-Mendez, who pled guilty in 2006 to sexually assaulting a 10 year old West Virginia girl. Through an interpreter, he told the court: "In the pueblo where I grew up girls are usually married by 13 years old….I was unaware of the nature of the offense or that it was a bad crime."
The crime of kidnapping a woman for the purpose of rape and marriage against her will, or "rapto" as it is known in Mexico is actually seen as a minor crime and rarely prosecuted.
...A Mexican legislator actually even called the practice "romantic."
While rape is a serious crime in the United States, many Mexican nationals cannot understand why they are prosecuted on this side of the border. Often, a small payment of $10 to $20 to the victim's family will settle the matter back in Mexico.
Of course, it is also common for all charges to be dropped against the accused rapist, if he offers to marry his victim in front of the judge, even if the girl refuses, the court acknowledges that he has made the offer.
But perhaps, the most troubling and telling reason behind the growing epidemic of child molestation at the hands of Mexican illegal aliens, is the fact the age of sexual consent throughout much of Mexico is 12...
In addition to Mexico City, the age of consent is 12 years old in 19 Mexican states...
Dave Gibson
The Examiner
March 03, 2010
See also:
In Mexico, an Unpunished Crime
Rape Victims Face
Widespread Cultural Bias in Pursuit of Justice
...Mexico is struggling to modernize
its justice system, but when it comes to punishing sexual
violence against women, surprisingly little has changed in a
century. In many parts of Mexico, the penalty for stealing a cow
is harsher than the punishment for rape.
Although the law calls for tough
penalties for rape -up to 20 years in prison- only rarely is there
an investigation into even the most barbaric of sexual violence.
Women's groups estimate that perhaps 1 percent of rapes are ever
punished...
...In the country that made the term
"machismo" famous, where women were given the right to vote only
in 1953, women's rights advocates said rape and other violence
against women are still not treated as serious crimes. And they
said police, prosecutors and judges often show indifference or
hostility toward women who claim rape...
"In 90 percent of the cases of rape, the Mexican police blame
the women," ... "In the few cases where they know the man is
guilty, they let him 'fix' it with money." ...
...A "machismo culture," instilled
through what is learned in the home, school and church, has
allowed many men to "believe they are superior and dominant, and
that women are an object." ...That mind-set has contributed to
making many men-including policemen, prosecutors, judges and
others in positions of authority-believe that sexual violence
against women is no big deal.
...A review of criminal laws in all
31 Mexican states showed that many states require that if a
12-year-old girl wants to accuse an adult man of statutory rape,
she must first prove she is "chaste and pure." Nineteen of the
states require that statutory rape charges be dropped if the
rapist agrees to marry his victim...
In the southern state of Oaxaca last
summer, the one-year-old, government-funded Oaxacan Women's
Institute persuaded the legislature to pass heavy criminal
penalties against a practice known as "rapto." Laws in most
Mexican states define rapto as a case where a man kidnaps a
woman not for ransom, but with the intent of marrying her or to
satisfy his "erotic sexual desire." The new law championed by
the women's group established penalties of at least 10 years in
prison.
But in March, the state legislature
reversed itself and again made the practice a minor infraction.
A key legislator -a man- argued for the reduction, calling the
practice harmless and "romantic."
Human rights groups disagree. They
say it is not charming for a man to spot a woman he fancies
sitting in a park, pick her up and carry her away to have sex
with her. Yet to this day, that is still how some women meet
their husbands. The attorney general's office said there have
been 137 criminal complaints of rapto in the state of Puebla
since January 2000.
Mary Jordan,
The Washington Post
June 30, 2002
See also:
Central America and Mexico
María de Jesús Silva, Jackeline's mother
Trata de blancas en
Centroamérica
For non-governmental
organizations, the child kidnapping and sex trafficking case of
11-year-old Jackeline Jirón Silva fom Nicaragua is emblematic,
as the case shows clearly how the third most profitable criminal
enterprise in the world operates.
...Jackeline has been forced to work in brothels all over
Central America. Her pimps now have her in Tapachula, in
Chiapas state [near Mexico's southern border with Guatemala].
María de Jesús Silva [Jackeline's mother, who searched all over
Central America and southern Mexico for her daughter]: "I saw
things that I never imagined existed... The brothels are full of
children, sold by traffickers and abandoned by their parents. I
saw them prostitute themselves and wished that any one of them
would have been my daughter. I settled for caressing the hair of
these girls, and I imagined that in the 'next' brothel, I was
going to find my daughter. Everything that I have suffered
through is nothing compared to what my girl is going through."
...According to Ana Salvadó, executive director for Mexico,
Latin America and the Caribbean for
Save the Children:
"the panorama for childhood in Latin America is growing more
bleak over time, and child trafficking is growing rapidly in
each of these countries..."
…Save the Children has identified the border region between
Guatemala and Mexico as being the largest hot spot for the
commercial sexual exploitation of children in the entire world.
Ana Salvadó: "It is a bottleneck, because many children attempt
to migrate from Central [and South] America to the United
States, and they never get past [southern] Mexico…
…A study by the international organization
ECPAT… made public
ithree weeks ago in Guatemala City, reveals that over
21,000 Central Americans, mostly children,
are prostituted in 1,552 bars and brothels in Tapachula, Mexico…
Traffickers sell these child victims to Tapachula's pimps for
$200 each.
More that 50% of these children are from [indigenous]
Guatemala. The rest are Salvadorans, Hondurans and
Nicaraguans. They range in age from eight
to fourteen-years-old.
...In 2006, the
International Labor
Organization conducted a survey of adult attitudes in
Mexico, Central America and South America, where it is quite
easy [for men] to engage in sexual relations with children.
|
Some 65% of respondents stated
that they don't see any problem, and they don't feel any
sort of conflict or fear in regard to having sex with
boy and girl children, and "they don't feel that there
is anything wrong with doing it." |
...Mexico has been converted into a paradise for pimps and a
living hell for thousands of Central American girl children like
Jackeline Jirón Silva, whose captors have prostituted her during
the past 32 months. It is known that during half of that time,
Jackeline has been held in the southern Mexican state of
Chiapas.
Ana Lilia Pérez
Revista Contralínea
Oct. 22, 2007
California, USA
Sacramento Man Facing 15 Child Molest Felonies Involving Girlfriend's Daughters
Sacramento - Bail has been set at $5 million for a Sacramento man accused of multiple acts of sexual assault against the daughters of his girlfriend, say police.
Omar Alejandro Valdivia Mendoza, 29, was booked into Sacramento Main Jail Monday evening on 15 felonies accusing him of oral copulation; and violence, force or duress during the commission of sexual conduct, rape and lewd acts.
Sacramento police served an arrest warrant on Mendoza Monday. Sgt. Norm Leong said detectives began an investigation late last year when the alleged crimes were reported. The first report was made after Valdivia Mendoza was no longer living with his girlfriend, Leong said.
The molestations had begun when the victims were 9 and 10 years old and had been going on for several years, according to the investigation. Valdivia
Mendoza's first court appearance was scheduled for Wednesday, March 3, in
Sacramento County Superior Court.
KXTV
March 02, 2010
Massachusetts, USA
|
 |
|
Gian Carlos Mirabel |
Police: Child Rape Caught On Videotape
Lowell Bus Driver Faces Charges
The abuse of a Lowell student at the hands of her bus driver was caught on videotape, police said.
Gian Carlos Mirabel, 22, of Lawrence, was arrested late Sunday night and arraigned on two counts of forcible child rape.
An employee of the North Reading Transportation Bus Co. was reviewing security footage of a bus that was involved in a minor accident on Feb. 25. While reviewing the footage, the employee observed suspicious activity between the defendant and a student on the bus, officials said.
"The time that (the driver) was stating that the accidents happened, there was a student on the bus and this child should have been at school," North Reading Transportation President John McCarthy said. "There was enough questions to what was going on that we couldn't answer..."
The victim, in 7th grade at the time, first met the defendant in the spring of 2009 when he was assigned to bus route, police said. In the fall of 2009, when the victim was in the 8th grade, the defendant allegedly began to ask the victim to remain on the bus after he dropped the other students off.
The victim told police that she did not want to be on the bus with the defendant and he physically prevented her from leaving the bus at least once. Officials said Mirabel told the victim not to tell anyone about the alleged encounters...
TheBostonChannel.com
March 02, 2010
California, USA
San Jose State Police Investigate Groping Attacks
San Jose - Authorities in the South Bay Wednesday night were investigating three separate incidents of sexual battery that happened within about two hours of each other near San Jose State University earlier in the day, a police spokesman said.
San Jose police Officer Jermaine Thomas said it appears all three victims are females who attend the university.
The first incident happened shortly after 9 a.m. at North Eighth and St. James streets.
"The subject approached the victim from behind, hugged her and touched her inappropriately," Thomas said.
He said similar incidents happened at about 11:05 a.m. at East San Carlos and South 12th streets and at 11:13 a.m. in the 400 block of East San Fernando Street.
The suspect in all the incidents was described as a Hispanic man, 20 to 30 years old and 5 feet 8 inches tall. He is clean-shaven with short hair and was wearing a black jacket.
Authorities issued a warning Wednesday for women on or near the campus to watch out for the groping suspect. Officers said sexual battery is a serious offense and they were determined to find the man responsible.
KTVU
March 03,2010
Florida,
USA, Guatemala
|
 |
|
Chief Assistant U.S. Attorney Doug Molloy |
Immokalee Man Accused of Using Teens as Sex Slaves
Investigators call it one of the worst cases of sex slavery in Southwest Florida.
Francisco Domingo is charged with human trafficking. But court documents detail horrible accounts of what happened to a 16-year-old girl behind closed doors.
The victim was brought to Immokalee illegally in 2008 from Guatemala. Investigators say the girl was held against her will and Domingo was taking the money she made in the farm fields.
Court documents go on to state that on several occasions, Domingo took pictures and videos of the 16-year-old victim having sex with several men against her will.
The victim said that would happen several times a week.
"Human trafficking or slavery - it doesn't get more serious because the people who bring the slaves over know exactly what slaves are getting into. This is a high priority of our office, the Unites States, the Department of Justice and the FBI," said Chief Assistant U.S. Attorney Doug Molloy.
Domingo will be back in court next week for a bond hearing and officials we spoke to say more charges may be filed.
Stacey Deffenbaugh
WBBH
March 03, 2010
Mexico
 |
|
Deputy Rosi Orozco |
Es peligroso trasladar a Succar Kuri al penal de Cancún, advierten diputados
La Comisión Especial de Lucha Contra la Trata de Personas de la Cámara de Diputados presentará este jueves un punto de acuerdo ante el pleno legislativo, con la finalidad de exhortar al juez federal Gabriel García Lanz “para que entienda” que tener al pederasta Jean Succar Kuri, El Johnny, en el penal municipal de Cancún, Quintana Roo “es sumamente peligroso”, no sólo porque podría fugarse, sino “fundamentalmente porque las niñas, niños y jóvenes que fueron sus víctimas recibirían un golpe emocional y sicológico terrible, irreparable, al saber que su victimario estaría otra vez tan cerca de ellos”.
La diputada federal y presidenta de esa comisión, Rosi Orozco, buscó este miércoles a La Jornada para informar, directamente, que “esta comisión especial que presido ha decidido de último minuto presentar un punto de acuerdo, exhortando al juez (García Lanz) para que reconsidere su decisión”.
También “exhortaremos a la Secretaría de Seguridad Pública (SSP) federal para que si ya no queda otra cosa más que trasladar a esta persona a Cancún, las autoridades garanticen que no se fugue durante o después del traslado, y que cuiden que (Succar) no atente contra la seguridad de sus víctimas”.
Congressional Leaders: Transferring Imprisoned Millionaire
Child Pornographer Jean Succar Kuri to Cancun is Dangerous
On Thursday, March 4, 2010, the
Special Commission
to Fight Human Trafficking of the Chamber of Deputies in Congress will present a
non-binding resolution before the Chamber, with the objective of calling upon
federal magistrate
Gabriel García Lanz "so that he will understand" that the
pending transfer of Jean Succar Kuri, "El Johnny," from a maximum security
prison to a minimum security jail in Cancún is "an extremely dangerous move." It
is a danger not only because of the risk that Succar Kuri may flee [he is a
millionaire based in Cancún], but because his transfer will subject the [200]
children and underage youth in Cancún who were his victims to an irreparable
psychological blow from knowing that their victimizer has been moved back to
Cancún.
Deputy Rosi Orozco, Chair of the Commission, noted that the resolution also asks
that the head of the federal security secretariat assure that, in the case that Succar
Kuri is transferred, he is not allowed to escape during the transfer process.
Alfredo Méndez
Periódico La Jornada
March 4, 2010
Nicaragua
Nicaraguan University Students Rescued from Potential Human Trafficking Scenario
Free for Life International, a U.S. anti-trafficking organization, met last week with Nicaragua's new Ministry of Families Director Marcia Ramirez Mercado to discussed the issue of human trafficking in Nicaragua. Director Mercado stated at that time that Nicaragua is stepping up their efforts in the fight against human trafficking. Evidence of this fact appeared two days later when a couple was arrested in Managua for attempting to sex traffic several University students from Nicaragua into Guatemala and Mexico. The girls, primarily minors, were lured with the promise of appearing in several of Latin America's most prominent magazines.
Director Marcia Ramirez Mercado has recently been appointed Ministry of Families Director in Nicaragua. In this position a key part of her duties will include the oversight of governmental efforts against human trafficking in Nicaragua. Colette and Dr. Daniel Bercu, founders of Free for Life International, along with directors of Nicoya & Friends Mission were honored to meet with her last week to talk about their work concerning human trafficking. The discussion included the future placement of minor victims into the shelter, efforts the Nicaraguan government is making in the fight against trafficking, and a potential collaboration concerning awareness and victim services with Free for Life International.
Free for Life International, a Tennessee based 501c3 nonprofit organization, has made it their mission to partner with those around the world in the rescue, restoration and reintegration of trafficking survivors. Nicoya and Friends Mission, a shelter for minor age trafficking victims in Nicaragua, is one of these shelters. They are one of the only designated shelters in Nicaragua set up for minor sex trafficking victims and are providing a place of love and restoration for these young women....
Press Release
Free for Life International
March 2, 2010
Texas, USA, Mexico
|
 |
|
Gerardo Salazar - was wanted by the FBI for the sex trafficking of
children |
Accused Cantina Sex Ring Operator Arrested in Mexico
A nearly five-year run from justice is over for the alleged leader of a depraved sex-trafficking ring accused of using beatings, threats and rape to force young immigrant women into slavery in Houston, according to Mexican authorities who captured him.
Gerardo “El Gallo” Salazar, whose nickname is Spanish for The Rooster, was snared in his hometown in the tiny state of Tlaxcala, outside Mexico City.
He was apparently first arrested on counterfeiting charges, but later confessed to being wanted in Houston, according to a news release Monday from Mexico's federal attorney general's office. He also tried to offer Mexican agents a bribe of a house and car not to extradite him, the statement continued.
Salazar, 45, was known to not only hoodwink his victims with lies of love, but mark them as his property with a tattoo of a rooster.
He would later strike them with belts, wooden spoons and cables, according to a federal indictment on file in Houston. In one beating described in the document, he ordered a teenager to get on her knees and beg for forgiveness for defying him.
Pending his positive identification and other hurdles, Salazar will likely be subject to a request for extradition to Houston to face charges including sexual assault of a child and sex trafficking.
“I never thought they'd catch the guy,” said Sgt. Michael Barnett, of the Texas Alcoholic Beverage Commission, which was part of the team that broke up the ring that forced victims to work as prostitutes from the back of Houston bars...
Salazar is accused of running a gang that specialized in using fancy trucks and full wallets to romance small-town women and teenagers in Mexico, then lure them to the United States as girlfriends...
During the day, Salazar and his fellow gangsters kept them locked in apartments and homes, authorities say, and at night, they were taken to Houston cantinas and sold over and over to customers, sometimes for as little as $5.
They were beaten into submission, according to an affidavit filed in court by FBI agent Maritza Conde-Vazquez, and captors knew to keep the bruises in places that would not show.
Among the many allegations against Salazar is an instance in which he told a teenager she had to earn at least $3,000 a week and that if she ever thought about leaving him he would kill her parents back in Mexico...
Dane Schiller
Houston Chronicle
March 2, 2010
Added: Mar. 3, 2010
Mexico
Vigilen a Esos Jueces
Las y los legisladores expusieron dos casos ejemplares que nos permiten entender lo que en realidad sucede en los juzgados de este país
Las y los diputados del PRD, PAN y PT, se pronunciaron en el Congreso para solicitar una supervisión detallada de las actuaciones de jueces que estén a cargo de casos de pornografía y explotación sexual de menores de edad. Llamó la atención el silencio del PRI y del Verde. Está claro que éste es un tema que indigna y enoja a cualquiera que sea incapaz de disfrutar con los abusos de infantes. Justo por eso resulta vital recordar que México ha avanzado en este tema y debe seguir haciéndolo. Las y los legisladores expusieron dos casos ejemplares que nos permiten entender lo que en realidad sucede en los juzgados de este país.
Watch Those Judges
Members of Congress have proposed a closer look at two cases that allow us to understand exactly what goes on in our nation's courtrooms.
Congressional deputies from the Party of the Democratic Revolution (PRD), the National Action Party (PAN) and the Labor Party (PT) have called for a detailed review of the actions of judges in two cases involving child pornography and the sexual exploitation of children. The absence of the Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI) and the Ecological Green Party (Verde) in this announcement was notable.
It is clear that these topics outrage all who are incapable of abusing children. For that very fact it is important to note that Mexico is making progress in regard to this issues, and it should continue its efforts to change.
The criminal case against Father Rafael Muñiz demonstrated how the public prosecutor's office in Veracruz state engaged in a mediocre effort to formulate charges against the priest. Later, a federal judge asked the Veracruz court to improve its legal arguments. But the local court ignored the law and allowed Father Muñiz to be freed on bail. Two days after his recent release from jail, he was making crosses from ashes to celebrate his freedom.
Although the truth is that Father Muñiz is only free on bond and his case is being reviewed, he is enjoying the fruits of a judicial decision that has resulted from ignorance, fumbling and pressure from the Archdiocese of Veracruz. Judge Martín has taken no specialized training in child sexual exploitation. He therefore continues to make judicial decisions as if this were the year 2000, when Mexico didn't have the precise legal instruments and judicial arguments that exist today, which permit serious sentences to be handed down.
In the case of [millionaire accused child pornographer] Jean Succar Kuri, the self-confessed "pedophile of Cancun," he was never charged with child sex trafficking, because he was extradited from the United States on charges of child pornography and the corruption of minors. It has been six years since Succar Kuri was arrested in Arizona. His many attorneys, despite not having done a spectacular job in defending him, have won a victory recently in the fact that Succar Kuri will be transferred from a [maximum security] federal prison to a local [minimum security] jail in his home town city of Cancún. According to authorities, Succar Kuri was one of the planners of a prisoner escape by 103 inmates in 2006.
The magistrate in the case made it clear that federal prosecutors had a responsibility to submit a request for revocation of the judicial order that will send Kuri to a local jail in Cancún, and instead, the prosecutors had submitted an appeal of the judge's order. This is equivalent to saying that a given person went to the hospital for a kidney translation and was offered a liver transplant. As yet we don't know if the prosecutor in this case made an intentional error. It is incompre-hensible that such an error could occur
when this case is being scrutinized by the U.S. Justice Department, which
had extradited Succar Kuri under an agreement that President Calderón's government would bring him to justice.
Succar Kuri will arrive in Cancún this week. His return to this city will be watched by many.
Judge Martin is also being closely watched. This week we will find out whether Father Muñiz received special treatment. It is clear that there is an urgent need in Mexico to train judges and prosecutors on the law as it applies to sex trafficking cases.
To feel outrage at these developments is essential, but it is not a sufficient response. Only through professional training and oversight of the judiciary will we be able to eliminate the ignorant excuses and the faulty interpretations of the law that allow corruption into the process.
The message that we send out to the millions of boys and girls who are exploited each year must be clear: child pornography is a crime, and the judiciary will protect children.
Lydia Cacho
www.LydiaCacho.net
March 01, 2010
See
Also:
LibertadLatina
Special Section
Journalist / Activist
Lydia Cacho
is
Railroaded by the
Legal Process for
Exposing Child Sex
Networks In Mexico
Jamaica
Chief Justice Says Jamaica Dealing With Human Trafficking
Kingston - Jamaica's Chief Justice, Hon. Zaila McCalla O.J., has commended efforts being made by stakeholders, at various levels of the society, to combat human trafficking in Jamaica.
Speaking at a two-day workshop hosted by the Ministry of Health at the Mona Visitors' Lodge and Conference Centre, University of the West Indies (UWI),
St. Andrew, Mrs. McCalla cited the efforts and input of the legislature, judiciary, security forces, human rights activists, women's groups and faith-based organizations.
She alluded to a "fairly recent disclosure" in a human trafficking report prepared by the United States State Department, which lists Jamaica at an "unacceptable"' Tier 2 level on its watch list.
She pointed out that this signaled that it is felt by the authorities there, that Jamaica has not fully complied fully with the minimum standards. She said that, on the contrary, Jamaica had made "significant efforts" to deal with the problem.
Citing that the existing laws in any country to punish perpetrators of the crime is necessary for the cultivation of a social conscience in that society, the Chief Justice highlighted the Trafficking in Persons (Prevention, Suppression and Punishment) Act, legislated in 2007, as a direct effort to stamp out human trafficking.
"So far, the courts have been working to ensure that the objectives of the Act are complied with, and we will continue to do so in an effort to prevent and stamp out this style of criminal activity. The existence of legislation in Jamaica to confront the problem is a significant step on which we should continue to build," she stated...
South Florida Caribbean News
March 2, 2010
South Carolina,
USA
14-year-old Girl Was State's First Human Trafficking Case
Columbia - ...Tucked away in a trailer park just a few miles outside the Columbia city limits was the center of South Carolina's first human trafficking case.
Inside was a child, smuggled into the US, then trafficked to a pimp and forced to service dozens of men a day in the Midlands.
"I told my agents, I said, 'We're going to treat this little girl like she's our daughter and we're going to hunt this little girl down and get her out of this trailer,'" said Ken Burkhart, an agent from Immigration and Customs Enforcement.
Burkhart got a call from Mexican authorities in February 2007 about a 14-year-old runaway who called her sister in Mexico for help and gave a vague description of the trailer on Sharpe Road.
ICE agents put the trailer under surveillance. On Feb. 27, 2007, the agents moved in.
"Wasn't really seeing anything and with a minor being involved, I didn't want to wait much longer, so we made the decision to simply knock on the door. When I knocked on the door the 14-year-old answered the door," said Burkhart. "I was shocked. I didn't expect that, I expected anybody else but my girl to answer that door."
Unaware of who was inside, Burkhart knew he had to act fast.
"I told her we had been in contact with her sister and shook her hand and just gently led her right out of the door and I had several agents, along with officers from the Richland County Sheriff's Office who assisted, and just kind of passed her right over to those agents," said Burkhart.
It took days, Burkhart says, before the girl agents called "AR" could trust them.
"They have been trained not to trust law enforcement, that we're the bad guys, that we're really not there to help them, so initially AR would tell me that everything was fine, she was okay; she was in no danger," said Burkhart.
When she opened up, AR told investigators she was smuggled in from Mexico in July 2006 by Jesus Perez-Laguna.
Perez-Laguna ran a sex trafficking ring in Charlotte where he pimped AR and several other girls out around the area for several weeks, pocketing the money the girls made.
AR told investigators she was then traded out to Guatalupe Reyes-Rivera, also known as Mama Martina, who lived in Columbia.
"She actually liked her because she didn't beat her like the man in Charlotte did," said Burkhart.
AR told investigators a third pimp, Ciro Bustos-Rosales, pimped her out at Columbia's Mauldin Village Apartments on Mauldin Avenue, a few miles away from Columbia College. The girl was forced to have sex with dozens of men a day...
Both Perez-Laguna and Bostos-Rosales pleaded guilty in 2007. Perez-Laguna is serving a 14-year sentence, Bostos-Rosales is serving five-and-a-half years.
The penalties for trafficking carry up to life in federal prison, and in some cases, qualifies for the death penalty.
WIS News 10
March 1, 2010
Added: Mar. 2, 2010
Mexico, The United States
|
|
|
Gerardo Salazar - was wanted by the FBI for the sex trafficking of
children |
Mexico Arrests Sex-traffic Suspect Wanted by FBI
Mexico City - Federal police in central Mexico have captured a man wanted by the FBI for allegedly trafficking women and minors for prostitution in the United States.
The Attorney General's Office says police acting on an anonymous tip captured Mexican suspect Gerardo Salazar on a highway in the central state of Tlaxcala.
The office says Salazar is being held for attempted bribery and possible extradition to face the U.S. charges. It said in a statement Monday that when police stopped Salazar, he offered them a house and a car to let him go.
The FBI alleges Gerardo Salazar used beatings, threats and deception to force Mexican women and girls to work as prostitutes in the Houston, Texas, area in 2004 and 2005.
The Associated Press
March 01, 2010
Arizona,
USA
|
 |
|
Santana Batiz-Aceves |
'Chandler Rapist' Suspect Admits Attacking Young Girls
A 39-year-old Valley man who authorities say stalked and raped six young girls in Chandler agreed Monday to a prison sentence of 168½ years as part of a plea agreement.
Santana Batiz-Aceves, dubbed the "Chandler Rapist," was charged with 47 counts, including child molestation, sexual conduct with a minor, kidnapping, aggravated assault and burglary. Police say he attacked girls from June 2006 to November 2007.
Batiz-Aceves pleaded guilty to 12 counts, including attempted sexual conduct with a minor and molestation. Sentencing is scheduled for April 2 before Maricopa County Superior Court Judge Kristin Hoffman.
The case left the city on edge for two years and received significant media attention. On April 9, Judge Theresa A. Sanders denied Batiz-Aceves' request to have the trial moved out of Maricopa County...
Originally from Sinaloa, Mexico, Batiz-Aceves began living in the United States illegally in 1988 and lived in Sacramento for nearly 16 years, where he worked for a construction company.
Three of the victims were students at Andersen Junior High School, police said.
In all but one of the cases, police believe, the rapist followed the victims for weeks, targeting single-parent homes.
In the incidents, the rapist studied the parent's routine, developed a quick escape route and then struck, police said.
Megan Boehnke
The Arizona Republic
March 1, 2010
Texas,
USA
Fake Doctor Gets 68 Years In Prison
Dallas - A jury in Dallas has ordered 68 years in prison for a man convicted of sexual assault in an attack on a 12-year-old girl as he pretended to be a doctor.
Jesus Garza testified Monday, during the penalty phase, that the girl and her mother had lied about the allegations.
Prosecutors say the woman in June took her daughter, who has a skin condition, to Garza's Grand Prairie apartment for an examination. Garza allegedly had claimed he had a clinic that was being painted.
The mother says she could not see what the 64-year-old Garza was doing because he covered the girl, whose name was not made public as a sexual assault victim, was doing to her.
Three adult women testified that they also were molested by Garza when they sought treatment from him.
The Associated Press
Feb. 16, 2010
California,
USA
Daycare Provider Stops Attempted Kidnapping
Parents are on edge in Lompoc, after a man reportedly tried to kidnap a 2-year-old from Ryon Park, Friday morning.
According to police, the man allegedly grabbed the child and tried to leave the park.
A day-care provider was able to free the child from the suspected abductor, who is described as a 40 to 50 year-old Hispanic male.
Witnesses say the man spoke Spanish and broken English. At the time of the crime, he was wearing a dark blue windbreaker, with a pink and yellow logo on the front.
The subject was last seen leaving to park towards Ocean Ave.
Anyone with information about the crime is asked to call the Lompoc Police Department.
Christina Heller
KEYT
March 1, 2010
0
North Carolina,
USA
|
 |
|
Cruz Luis Antonio Cruz |
Man Arrested For Having Sex With Minor Over 8-year Period
The Henderson County Sheriff’s Office arrested a man for having sex with a girl for 8 years since she was only 10 years old.
Luis Antonio Cruz, 42, of Howard Gap Road in Hendersonville was charged with four counts of second-degree rape, two counts of attempted second-degree sex offense, indecent liberties with a child and one count of felony child abuse, all of which are felonies.
“Mr. Cruz was identified by our 287(g) unit as being in the country legally, but not a citizen,” Sheriff Rick Davis said. “Persons in this category, after completion of a sentence, are deported as an aggravated felon and returned to their country of origin.”
Cruz was processed at the Henderson County Detention Center where he was placed under a $280,000 secured bond.
Blueridgenow.com
Feb. 27, 2010
Added:
March 1, 2010
An activist's letter speaks the truth from the front lines of
the battle to save children from impunity
Mexico
Breaking Chains Update...lots of action....almost more than we can handle.
Lots of action but it is taking its toll……
In the last 2 weeks we have successfully rescued 2 new daughters both of whom have extraordinary testimonies…I will share Monica’s in a bit. We also through the US Dept. Of Homeland Security successfully shut down a child porn site that had more than 500 videos involving hardcore acts with children many of whom have yet to reach 5 years of age.
I don’t think you can understand until you have seen this stuff the depth of evil that exists in mankind and while the acts are one thing what is causing me what may be more pain than I can handle is the faces of these children during the acts. I keep seeing them over and over in my mind. I find myself now at times in the middle of the day and night just stopping and crying. I can handle a lot as most of my work keeps me in the midst of hell but the enemy may have found the way to take me out of this battle.
On top of that we have identified 3 different middle schools in Baja California where girls yet to reach 16 years of age and many of whom are only 12 are willingly selling themselves not out of force but for money to buy things like cell phones, chips and soda, and the latest fashions. Many of the clients are Americans who either live here or come down specificially seeking these children.
Through an ongoing operation in the red zones of Tijuana we have also identified 42 minors who are being prostituted blatantly with seemingly no repercussion from law enforcement…yeah they do go in and arrest them from time to time but the next day they are back on the streets. It is a helpless feeling to see all this and only be able to act on a miniscule fraction.
We have been waiting for help from Mexico City for a long time now and are pretty much resigning ourselves that it is not coming. It is not like they don’t have other things to do…this country is in the midst of a full blown war that makes Iraq look like a playground. There are armed groups attacking each other daily and many of the attacks are happening in the middle of civilians and even in the middle of town squares. The numbers are staggering and it seems like the daily reports of multiple homicides at the hands of AK 47’s and AR 15’s are just another story. The US has shut down the consulate in Monterrey where the Zetas and Gulf Cartel have engaged in a full blown war.
In the middle of all this I often find myself asking God…where are you?????? I know He is here as my faith has not been completely stolen but those little 3 and 5 year old faces from the videos sure bring legitimacy to the question...
Now would be a good time to pray brothers and sisters…it is a season of almost unbearable pain. We need you now more than ever…we need your prayers, we need your financial support and we need more people to get off their butts and start doing something. There is a war going on …a war which is reaching a level of evil most of you cannot fathom or at least that you choose not to. I don’t have that luxury I have been called to fight for these kids and the images of those tiny faces is a double edged sword…it makes me want to quit and at the same time won’t let me.
In Christ
Steven T. Cass
Breaking Chains Ministry
Feb. 28, 2010
Steven - be strong!
We support your important efforts to save children!
Keep up the great work, hard as it may be. Those who are
defenseless depend upon your tireless efforts to stand tall in the face of
impunity.
-
Chuck Goolsby
LibertadLatina
March 1, 2010
Video of Mexican Interior Secretary
Fernando Gómez Mont's presentation at the Feb. 23rd and 24th, 2010
congressional Forum for Analysis and Discussion in Regard to
Criminal Law to Control Human Trafficking.
[Ten minutes - In
Spanish]
Deputy Rosi Orozco
On YouTube.com
Feb. 26, 2010
See also:
LibertadLatina
Commentary
|
 |
|
Chuck Goolsby |
Lead, Follow or Get Out of the Way!
Mexican Interior Secretary
Fernando Gómez Mont's presentation at the
congressional Forum for Analysis and
Discussion in Regard to Criminal Law to Control Human
Trafficking has been widely quoted in the Mexican press. We have posted
some of those articles here (see below).
The video of Secretary Mont's discourse shows that he is
passionate about the idea of raising awareness about human
trafficking. He states: "Making [trafficking] visible is the
first step towards liberation."
Secretary Mont believes that the solution to human trafficking
in Mexico will come from raising awareness about trafficking and
from understanding the fact that machismo, its resulting family
violence and extreme poverty are the dynamics that push at-risk
children and youth into the hands of exploiters.
During
Secretary Mont's talk he expresses his strongly held belief that
federalizing the nation's criminal anti-trafficking laws is, in
effect, throwing good money after bad. In his view, the source
of the problem is not those who criminal statutes would target, but the fundamental social ills that drive the
problem.
The Secretary's views have an element of wisdom in them. We
believe, however, that his approach is far too conservative. An
estimated 500,000 victims of human trafficking exist in Mexico
(according to veteran activist Teresa Ulloa of the Coalition
Against Trafficking in Women - Latin American and Caribbean
branch -
CATW-LAC).
|
A note about the figures quoted to
describe the number of child sexual exploitation victims in
Mexico...
Widely quoted 'official' figures state
that between 16,000 and 20,000 underage victims of sex
trafficking exist in Mexico.
We believe that, if the United States acknowledges that 200,000
to 300,000 underage children and youth are caught-up in the
commercial sexual exploitation of children - CSEC, at any one
time, based on a population of 310 million, (a figure of between
.00064 and .00096 percent of the population), then the
equivalent numbers for Mexico would be between 68,000 and
102,000 child and youth victims of CSEC for its estimated 107
million in population.
Given Mexico's vastly greater level of poverty, legalization of
adult prostitution, and given that southern Mexico alone is
known to be the largest zone in the world for CSEC, with 10,000
children
being prostituted just
in the city of Tapachula (according to
International Organization for Migration figures), then the
total number of underage children and youth caught-up in
prostitution in Mexico is most likely not anywhere near the
16,000 to 20,000 figure that was first released in a particular
research study from more than five years ago and continues to be
so widely used.
|
Regardless of what the actual figures are, they include a very
large number of victims.
While officials such as Secretary Mont philosophize about
disabling anti-trafficking law enforcement and rescue and
restoration efforts, while instead relying upon arriving at some far-off day
when Mexican society raises its awareness and empathy for
victims (and that is Mont's policy proposal as stated during the recent
trafficking law forum), tens of
thousands of victims who are being kidnapped, raped, enslaved
and sold to the highest bidder need our help. They need our urgent
intervention. As a result of their enslavement, they typically
live for only a few years, according to experts.
The reality is that the tragic plight of victims can and must be
prevented. Those who have already been victimized must be
rescued and restored to dignity.
That is not too much to ask from a Mexico that calls
itself a member of civilized society.
Mexico exists at the very top of world-wide statistics on the
enslavement of human beings. Save the Children recognizes the
southern border region of Mexico as being the largest zone for
the commercial sexual exploitation of children on Planet Earth.
Colombian and Mexican drug cartels, Japanese Yakuza mafias and
the Russian Mob are all 'feeding upon' (kidnapping, raping, and
exporting) many of the thousands of Central and South
American migrant women who cross into Mexico. They also prey
upon thousands of young
Mexican
girls and women (and especially those who are Indigenous), who
remain unprotected by the otherwise modern state of Mexico,
where Roman Empire era feudal traditions of exploiting the poor and the
Indigenous as slaves are honored and defended by the wealthy
elites who profit from such barbarism.
Within this social environment, the more extreme forms of modern
slavery are not seen as being outrageous by the average citizen.
These forms of brutal exploitation have been used continuously
in Mexico for 500 years.
We reiterate our view, as expressed in our Feb. 26th and 27th
2010 commentary about Secretary Mont.
Interior Secretary Mont has presided over the two year delay in
implementing the provisions of the nation's first
anti-trafficking law, the Law to Prevent, and Punish Human
Trafficking, passed by Congress in 2007.
-
The regulations required to enable the law were left
unpublished by the Interior Secretary for 11 months after
the law was passed.
-
When the regulation were published, they were weak, and left
out a role for the nation's leading anti-trafficking agency,
the Special Prosecutor for Violent Crimes Against Women and
Human Trafficking in the Attorney General's office (FEVIMTRA).
-
The regulations failed to target organized crime.
-
The Inter-Agency Commission to Fight Human Trafficking,
called for in the law, was only stood-up in late 2009, two
years after the law's passage, and only after repeated
agitation by members of Congress demanding that President
Calderón act to create the Commission.
-
Today, the National Program to Fight Human Trafficking, also
called for in the 2007 law, has yet to be created by the
Calderón administration.
-
In early February of 2010, Senator Irma Martínez Manríquez
stated that the 2007 anti-trafficking law and its
long-sought regulations were a 'dead letter' due to the
power of impunity that has contaminated the political
process.
All of the delaying tactics that were used to thwart the will
and intent of Congress in passing the 2007 anti-trafficking law
originated in the PAN administration of President Felipe
Calderón. All aspects of the 2007 law that called for
regulations, commissions and programs were the responsibility of
Interior Secretary Mont to implement. That job was never
performed, and
the 2007 law is now accurately referred to as a "dead letter" by
members of Congress.
Those of us in the world community who actively support the use
of criminal sanctions to suppress and ultimately defeat the
multi-billion dollar power of human trafficking networks must
support the political and non governmental organization leaders
in Mexico who are working to create a breakthrough, to end the
impasse which the traditionalist forces in the PAN political
machine have thrown-up as a gauntlet to defeat effective
anti-trafficking legislation.
Interior Secretary Mont's vision for the future, which involves
continuing on a course of complete inaction on the law
enforcement front, must be rejected as a capitulation to the
status quo, and as a nod to the traffickers.
While "Little Brown Maria in the Brothel" - our metaphor for the
voiceless victims, suffers yet another day chained to a bed in
Tijuana, Acapulco, Matamoros, Ciudad Juárez, Mexico City,
Tlaxcala, Tapachula and
Cancun, the entire law enforcement infrastructure of Mexico sits
by and does virtually nothing to stop this mass gender atrocity
from happening.
That is a completely unacceptable state of affairs for a Mexico
that is a member of the world community, and that is a signatory
to international protocols that fight human trafficking and that
defend women
and children's human rights.
We once again call upon U.S. Ambassador at Large Luis CdeBaca,
director of the Trafficking in Persons office at the State
Department, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, and President
Barack Obama to stand-up and speak out with the moral authority
of the United States in support of the forces of change in
Mexico.
Political leaders and non governmental organizations around the
world also have a responsibility to speak-up, and to let the
government of President Felipe Calderón know that the fact that
his ruling party
(finally)
supported presenting a
forum on trafficking, and the holding of a few press conferences, is not enough of a
policy turn-around to be convincing.
The PAN must take strong action to aggressively combat the
explosive growth in human slavery in Mexico in accordance with
international standards. Those at risk, and those who are today
victims, await your effective response to their emergency,
President Calderón.
Enacting a 'general' federal law that is enforceable in all of
Mexico's states would be a good fist step to show the world that
sincere and honest voices against modern day slavery do exist in
Congress, and are willing to draw a line in the sand on this
issue.
As for Secretary Mont, we suggest, kind sir, that you consider
the age-old entrepreneurial adage, and either "lead, follow, or
get out of the way" of progress.
No more delays!
There is no time to waste!
End impunity now!
-
Chuck Goolsby
LibertadLatina
March 1, 2010
See Also:
Mexico
Víctimas del tráfico de personas, 5
millones de mujeres y niñas en América Latina
De esa cifra, más de 500 mil
casos ocurren en México, señalan especialistas.
Five million victims of Human Trafficking
Exist in Latin America
Saltillo, Coahuila state - Teresa Ulloa Ziaurriz,
the director of the Coalition Against Trafficking in Women's
Latin American / Caribbean regional office, announced this past
Monday that more than five million women and girls are currently
victims of human trafficking in Latin America and the Caribbean.
During a forum on successful treatment approaches
for trafficking victims held by the Women's Institute of
Coahuila, Ulloa Ziaurriz stated that 500,000 of these cases
exist in Mexico, where women and girls are trafficked for sexual
exploitation, pornography and the illegal harvesting of human
organs.
Ulloa Ziaurriz said that human trafficking is the
second largest criminal industry in the world today, a fact that
has given rise to the existence of a very large number of
trafficking networks who operate with the complicity of both
[corrupt] government officials and business owners.
Mexico is a country of origin, transit and also
destination for trafficked persons. Of 500,000 victims in
Mexico, 87% are subjected to commercial sexual exploitation.
Ulloa Ziaurriz pointed out that locally in
Coahuila state, the nation's human trafficking problem shows up
in the form of child prostitution in cities such as Ciudad Acuña
as well as other population centers along Mexico's border with
the United States.
- Notimex / La Jornada Online
Mexico City
Dec. 12, 2007
See also:
Mexico: Más de un millón de menores se
prostituyen en el centro del país: especialista
Expert: More than one million minors are
sexually exploited in Central Mexico
Tlaxcala city, in Tlaxcala state - Around 1.5
million people in the central region of Mexico are engaged in
prostitution, and some 75% of them are between 12 and 13 years
of age, reported Teresa Ulloa, director of the Regional
Coalition Against Trafficking in Women and Girls in Latin
America and the Caribbean...
La Jornada de Oriente
Sep. 26, 200
[Note: The figure of 75% of 1.5 million indicates that 1.1
million girls between the ages of 12 and 13 at any given time
engage in prostitution in central Mexico alone. -
LL]
Video interview with National Action
Party deputy Rosi Orozco, and film of the first meeting of the
Special Commission to Fight Human Trafficking of the Chamber of
Deputies in Congress.
[Three minutes -
In Spanish]
Deputy Rosi Orozco
On YouTube.com
Feb. 11, 2010
Mexico
|
 |
|
An Indigenous Mexican woman worker:
Her poster says:
"Nobody should be beaten and threatened with a
weapon. Enough - Love yourself - Hope - Justice"
More photos
From a Bandana Project against the
sexual harassment of farm worker and Maquilla worker
women - Event in Oaxaca, Mexico |
"Entrar bajo su propio riesgo", estudio en Ontario, Canadá
Temor al despido, desalienta denuncia de trabajadoras migrantes
México, DF. - Cientos de mujeres mexicanas empleadas en el Programa de
Trabajadores Agrícolas Temporales México-Canadá (PTAT), además de enfrentar
condiciones de inseguridad en el trabajo, y la falta de acceso a los servicios
de salud, sufren violencia, sobre todo sexual, que no denuncian por temor a ser
despedidas...
"Enter at Your Own Risk" - A Study From Ontario, Canada
Fear of Being Fired Discourages Women Migrant Workers from Reporting Rape and Other Abuses
Mexico City - Hundreds of Mexican women who are participating in the Mexico-Canada Temporary Agricultural Worker's Program (PTAT)
face harsh working conditions in Canada. In addition to job insecurity and a lack of access to health services, these women suffer violence, and above all sexual assault, which they don't report for fear of losing their jobs.
Thee were the conclusions reached by Canadian sociologist Dr. Jenna L. Hennebry in her 2008 to 2009 research study of labor conditions for migrant workers in Ontario province, titled, Enter at Your Own Risk: Mexican Migrant Agricultural Workers in Canada. Dr. Hennebry recently presented
the results of her investigation at the Institute for Social Investigation at the Autonomous National University of Mexico (UNAM).
Dr. Hennebry based her work on interviews with 600 migrants. Some ninety percent of Canadian agricultural migrant workers come from Mexico, 7% are from Jamaica, and the remaining three percent are from Guatemala and Honduras. Migrant workers average 7 years on the job in Canada.
Of the 5,000 Mexican workers in the PTAT program, 400 are women...
...Canadian [farm managers] subject these workers to violence, and above all, to sexual assault. However, male migrant coworkers are the most frequent perpetrators of rape against women workers.
Many Canadian farm operators believe that migrant women workers are easier to control
than men. In the PTAT program, farm managers can select the sex of the workers that they desire to work on their farms.
Women interviewed for the study stated that "If they [sexual assault victims] call the police, those authorities will take action. The problem is that they fear loosing their jobs if they speak up."
According to Adela Rico Arreola, a 43-year-old Mexican migrant worker, women women who report rape face a risk of loosing their jobs not only from their Canadian employer, but from the Mexico.
Rico Arreola: "If you complain to a Mexican Consul in Canada about having been raped, he will tell you: 'Put up with it if you want to work. Because there are many people in line in Mexico waiting to come here.'"
If migrants complain about sexual assault to the Mexican Secretariat of Labor and Social Forecasting, which is the government agency that arranges employment for workers in the PTAT program, their response is: "Well, you won't be going back [to
Canada]."
Full English Translation
Guadalupe Cruz Jaimes
CIMAC Noticias
Feb. 23, 2010
See also:
Rural Women Making
Change in Puebla: Sexual exploitation and harassment from the
countryside to the maquilas
...Sexual harassment is all too familiar for migrant farm women
in Ontario. In a RWMC workshop in Leamington last summer,
Eulalia, a Mexican agricultural worker in the Temporary Low
Skilled Workers Program explained “…we will continue to be
living those kinds of things with the employer, who is not
focused on the work, in the work we produce, but instead if you
have a good ass, if you have a pretty face or whatever you can
offer him of your body so that he can be happy and that is not
right.” After Eulalia’s powerful testimony more women started to
open up about their experiences of harassment and discrimination
at work.
The conversations even continued after the workshop was over. It
was then when Barbara, from the Seasonal Agricultural Workers
Program, privately confessed that she saw no other resort than
to quit her job at the greenhouse to avoid the constant sexual
harassment on the part of a supervisor. However quitting means
loosing the right to work for another employer in Canada and
having to return to Mexico. There is much shame, anger and fear
among migrant women who experience various forms of sexual
harassment that according to the Ontario Human Rights Code does
not have to be sexual in nature but that also includes gender
discrimination.
Rural Women Making Change along with El Centro de Apoyo al
Trabajador [1] and Justicia for Migrant Workers partnered to be
part of the Bananda Project’s mission this year. In mid-April an
educational and arts based workshop was held in Puebla for men
and women workers in the maquila auto-parts industry. The
workshop provided a space to talk about the situation of farm
worker women, to share RWMC’s research on the topic and to
expand on local context of the maquila sector in Puebla...
Evelyn Encalada Grez - RWMC
Migration Project Researcher
May, 2009
Giumarra Vineyards Sued by EEOC for Sexual Harassment and Retaliation Against Farm Workers
Farm Workers Fired for Assisting Teenage Female Employee Who Was Being Sexually Harassed in the Vineyards, Federal Agency Charges
Indigenous Mexican workers were retaliated
against
Los Angeles - Giumarra Vineyards Corporation, one of the largest growers of table grapes in the nation, violated federal law by subjecting a teenage female farm worker to sexual harassment, the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) charged in a lawsuit announced today. Further, the EEOC said, the company retaliated against a class of other farm workers who came to her aid at its Edison, California facility. All of the victims identified in the lawsuit are indigenous Indians from Mexico, a minority among the Mexican farm worker community.
According to the EEOC’s suit (EEOC v. Giumarra Vineyards Corporation, et al, Case No. 1:09-cv-02255), filed in U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of California, the young female worker was subjected to sexual advances, sexually inappropriate touching and abusive and offensive sexual comments about the male sex organ by a male co-worker.
The EEOC further alleged that after witnessing the sexual harassment, a class of farm workers came to the aid of the teenage female victim and complained to Giumarra Vineyards. However, just one day after reporting and complaining about the sexual harassment, the teenage victim and the class of farm workers were summarily discharged in retaliation for their opposition to the sexual harassment.
“What happened to this vulnerable young girl was intolerable and illegal,” said EEOC Acting Chairman Stuart J. Ishimaru. “And what this employer did to others who simply came to her defense was outrageous. Whenever workers alert their superiors about unlawful discrimination in the workplace, employers should act immediately to end the illegal mistreatment. If they don’t – if employers won’t protect their own workers from illegal harassment and instead retaliate against the whistle-blowers – then the EEOC will make sure they face the legal consequences.”
...
U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC)
Jan. 13, 2010
Haiti
|
 |
|
Haitian Minister of Women's Affairs Marjorie Michel
is received by OAS Secretary General
José Miguel Insulza
More Photos
Photo: OAS |
OEA reafirma su compromiso con las mujeres de Haití
En el marco del Año Interamericano de la Mujer, la Organización de los Estados Americanos (OEA) y la Comisión Interamericana de Mujeres (CIM) realizaron hoy una sesión especial para recibir a la ministra de la Condición Femenina y los Derechos de la Mujer de Haití, Marjorie Michel, en la que la Organización reafirmó su compromiso con las mujeres y niñas haitianas...
Según datos del gobierno haitiano, en el último tiempo ha crecido la violencia contra las mujeres en los campamentos, ha habido un aumento en las violaciones y la prostitución es en muchas ocasiones el único medio para obtener comida.
En tanto, la Presidenta de la CIM, Wanda Jones, agradeció al Secretario General su pronta reacción después del terremoto, “comprometiendo a la OEA, llevando sus recursos y gestionando el de otras organizaciones para la reconstrucción de Haití”...
OAS Reaffirms its Commitment to Women in Haiti
The Organization of American States (OAS) and the Inter-American Commission of Women (CIM) today held a special session in the framework of the Inter-American Year of Women at OAS headquarters in Washington, DC, to welcome Marjorie Michel, Haiti’s Minister of Women's Affairs....
According to information from the Haitian government, violence against women has grown in the camps, there has been a rise in rapes, and prostitution is often the sole means of obtaining food...
CIM President Wanda Jones thanked the Secretary General for his quick response after the January 12 earthquake, “committing the OAS, taking its resources and working with other organizations for the reconstruction of Haiti...”
The Organization of American States (OAS)
Feb. 26, 2010
The Americas
OEA inaugura el Año Interamericano de la Mujer
La Organización de los Estados Americanos (OEA) inauguró hoy el Año Interamericano de la Mujer con una mesa redonda presidida por el Secretario General de la Organización de los Estados Americanos (OEA), José Miguel Insulza, y la Presidenta de la Comisión Interamericana de Mujeres (CIM), Wanda Jones, en la sede principal del organismo en Washington, DC.
El Secretario General reconoció “el orgullo que tiene la OEA de iniciar oficialmente el Año Interamericano de la Mujer con la presencia de un grupo tan distinguido que representa las luchas, los logros y los obstáculos que enfrentan las mujeres de nuestro continente en su trayecto a la representación y la incidencia política”.
“Aún hay obstáculos que vencer, estereotipos que eliminar, injusticias que corregir, marcos jurídicos que modernizar y aplicar, lenguajes sexistas que eliminar. Las mujeres políticas del Hemisferio y la OEA emprenderán un nuevo camino de colaboración para eliminar las dificultades que persisten en la lucha por los derechos y la igualdad de las mujeres. Cuentan ustedes con la OEA para lograrlo”, finalizó.
Por su parte, la Presidenta de la CIM aseguró que, a pesar de los avances en materia de igualdad en todo el continente, aún existen problemas. “Sabemos que el acceso real al poder y a la toma de decisiones en este país y en muchos otros es limitado. Si bien la mayoría de los países aquí representados han firmado los convenios que permiten que la mujer acceda al poder, seguimos enfrentadas a obstáculos en todos los ámbitos”...
OAS Inaugurates Inter-American Year of Women
The Organization of American States (OAS) today inaugurated the Inter-American Year of Women with a round table presided by OAS Secretary General José Miguel Insulza and the President of the Inter-American Commission of Women (CIM), Wanda Jones, at OAS headquarters in Washington, DC.
The Secretary General noted “the pride the OAS has in officially beginning the Inter-American Year of Women with the presence of so distinguished a group that represents the battles, the achievements and obstacles that women in our continent face in their trajectory toward political representation and influence.”
“There are still obstacles to overcome, stereotypes to eliminate, injustices to correct, judicial frameworks to modernize and implement, sexist language to eliminate. Political women of the Hemisphere and the OAS will undertake a new road of collaboration to eliminate the difficulties that persist in the fight for the rights and equality of women. You can count on the OAS for support,” he concluded.
For her part, the President of the CIM asserted that despite the progress achieved throughout the continent on the subject of equality, certain problems persist. “We know that access to real power and decision making in this country and in many others is limited. While a majority of countries represented here have signed agreements that allow women access to power, we continue to face obstacles in all spheres.”
...
The Organization of American States (OAS)
Feb. 25, 2010
The Americas
Ministros de justicia de las Américas adoptan nuevas medidas para fortalecer la cooperación jurídica en la región
Las más altas autoridades de las Américas en materia de Justicia, convocadas por la Organización de los Estados Americanos (OEA), concluyeron hoy su reunión en Brasilia con la adopción de una serie de conclusiones y recomendaciones encaminadas a fortalecer la efectividad, eficiencia y agilidad en la acción conjunta de los Estados para prevenir, perseguir y combatir la criminalidad en la región...
Los temas de la agenda incluyeron medidas concretas para fortalecer la cooperación jurídica y judicial en las Américas; promoción de herramientas para fortalecer la asistencia mutua en materia penal y de extradición; medidas contra el delito cibernético; asistencia y protección a victimas y testigos; políticas penitenciarias y carcelarias y cooperación hemisférica en materia de investigación forense, la lucha contra de la trata de personas y en pro del derecho de la familia y la niñez...
Ministers of Justice of the Americas Adopt New Measures to Strengthen Legal Cooperation in the Region
The highest authorities of the Americas in matters of Justice, brought together by the Organization of American States (OAS), concluded today their meeting in Brasilia with the adoption of a series of conclusions and recommendations aimed at strengthening effectiveness, efficiency and flow in the joint action of States to prevent, prosecute and fight crime in the region...
Subjects on the agenda included concrete measures to strengthen legal and judicial cooperation in the Americas; the promotion of tools to strengthen mutual assistance in penal and extradition matters; measures against cybercrime; assistance and protection to victims and witnesses; prison and penitentiary policy and hemispheric cooperation on matters of forensic investigation, the fight against human trafficking and support for family and child’s rights...
Organization of American States (OAS)
Feb. 26, 2010
Texas,
USA
|
 |
|
Texas Attorney General Greg Abbott |
New Texas Task Force Will Tackle Human Trafficking
Dallas - A new state task force will take an aggressive stand against human traffickers, who have turned Texas into a hub for international and domestic forced labor and prostitution rings, Texas Attorney General Greg Abbott said Tuesday in Dallas.
The Texas Human Trafficking Prevention Task Force will coordinate, fortify and expand law enforcement tools to prosecute traffickers and help better identify victims of "modern-day slavery," he said.
"We are not going to be defeated by human trafficking," Abbott said. "It is a horrific crime that affects far too many people."
Abbott spoke about the task force, which held its first meeting last month, at the Texas Summit on the Trafficking and Exploitation of Children, organized by Children at Risk...
While Texas already has several task forces related to human trafficking that are funded by the U.S. Justice Department, the new task force will connect investigations and intelligence throughout the state, officials said...
Major destination
Texas is considered a major destination for victims of domestic and international human trafficking. In 2008, 38 percent of all calls to the National Human Trafficking Resource Center hot line were dialed in Texas, according to statistics...
Victims' rights workers have called for more safe houses and increased public awareness. A common misperception is that victims are always forced into the sex trade. But, advocates say, more than half are forced into other types of labor, so clues about their situation are often ignored...
Rep. Paula Pierson, D-Arlington, who attended the conference, said abuse, particularly of women and children, has gone on for "years and years."
"We can't just bury our heads in the sand and pretend it does not go on," she said. "We have to take a stand and stop it."
Alex Branch
Star-Telegram
Feb. 23, 2010
Added: Feb. 27, 2010
Chile
 |
|
Chile's President Michelle Bachelet |
Chile earthquake kills 78 and triggers tsunami
A massive earthquake has hit the coast of Chile, killing dozens of people, flattening buildings and triggering a tsunami.
The 8.8-magnitude quake, the country’s largest in 25 years, shook the capital Santiago for a minute and half at 3:34am (6:34am GMT) today.
A tsunami warning has been extended across 53 countries, including most of Central and South America and as far as Australia, Hawaii and Antarctica.
The wave has already caused serious damage to the sparsely populated Juan Fernandez islands, off the Santiago coast, and is now travelling across the ocean at several hundred km per hour.
The death toll in Chile has reached 78 and is still rising according to President Michelle Bachelet, who has declared a “state of catastrophe” in the country.
Calling for calm from an emergency response centre, the outgoing president said: “We have had a huge earthquake, with some aftershocks.
“Despite this, the system is functioning. People should remain calm. We’re doing everything we can with all the forces we have. Any information we will share immediately.”
The Associate Press / TVN
Feb. 27, 2010
Mexico
Climate Migration in Latin America: A Future ‘Flood of Refugees’ to the North?
‘Hotspot’ case study: Mexico
With a confluence of climate and non-climate drivers, the ubiquitous presence of land degradation, and an irregular geographical population and land distribution, Mexico stands out as an exemplary potential hotspot for environmentally-induced migration in Latin America.
Its adjacency to the United States has in part facilitated international
migration as a viable coping strategy.... There has been a growing out-migration of environmentally induced migrants from the arid northern region, already estimated by the mid 1990s at 900,000 per year. When Washington decides to include environmentally motivated migration as a factor in its migratory policy, it might first address it in regards to Mexico, due to the latter’s status as the largest immigration feeder country into the United States. This may set a precedent for how the issue is approached in the rest of the Western hemisphere.
...The Mexican government’s unequal response in terms of hurricane relief may also have played a part in accelerating out-migration. Indeed, while authorities responded quickly and effectively to Hurricane Wilma that hit the Maya Riviera and its tourist attractions in October 2005, they provided practically no assistance to the impoverished victims of Hurricane Stan, which devastated
[Mayan majority] Chiapas less than a month later...
...Environmentally-induced migrants, and in particular those abruptly uprooted
from their homes due to sudden natural disasters, are “at greater risk of sexual
exploitation, human trafficking and sexual and gender-based violence” than
settled populations...
...Climate change will also certainly induce greater female out-migration. [In
Environmentally induced migration and displacement: a 21st Century Challenge, a
report by the Council of Europe’s Parliamentary Assembly, Tina] Acketoft reports that “while lone women migrants will face similar challenges to their male counterparts in finding employment, affordable housing, and accessing social services, they are in addition more likely to face difficulties due to gender-based discrimination.” This holds especially true in Latin America, where patriarchalism is still strongly prevalent.
Research Fellow
Alexandra Deprez
Council on Hemispheric Affairs
Feb. 26, 2010
See Also:
LibertadLatina
Special Section
About the impact of natural disasters on
women and children's human rights in the Americas
Added: Feb. 27, 2010
Mexico
Proponen sanción para el consumidor final y explotador sexual
Al concluir foro sobre Legislación Penal en Materia de Trata
Attendees at Congressional Anti-Trafficking Conference Proposed Penalizing Exploiters and Consumers
[English translation to follow]
México, DF.- La falta de homogeneidad legislativa penal, para castigar el delito de trata, tanto a nivel federal como estatal, profundiza el riesgo de mayor impunidad. A pesar de que en 25 estados del país tienen contemplado ese delito, esas diferencias hacen que desde la Ley se abra la puerta a la impunidad, coincidieron las y los participantes del Foro de Análisis sobre la Legislación Penal en Materia de Trata de Personas...
Para Rodolfo Casillas, especialista en el tema y maestro en historia por El Colegio de México, los estados que ya modificaron sus códigos penales apelaron a una gran diversidad de elementos lo que da como resultado una variedad en las conductas sancionables, en los medios comisivos, en los fines y en consecuencia en el régimen de sanciones...
México forma parte de la Convención de las Naciones Unidas contra la Delincuencia Organizada Transnacional (Convención de Palermo) y de sus tres protocolos: Protocolo para prevenir, reprimir y sancionar la trata de personas, especialmente mujeres y niñas; Protocolo contra el tráfico ilícito de migrantes por tierra, mar y aire; y el Protocolo contra la fabricación y el tráfico ilícitos de armas de fuego, sus piezas y componentes y municiones.
Casillas, señaló que pareciera que al ser México país de origen tránsito y destino de flujos internacionales de personas, mercancías y productos prohibidos, fuera justificante para que sociedad e instituciones podamos presentar excusas por el actuar contradictorio, ineficiente e insatisfactorio al aplicar políticas públicas de corto alcance.
Varias y varios de los ponentes coincidieron en que esta heterogeneidad en los marcos jurídicos ha permitido que los tratantes queden libres y que la impunidad se imponga ante el sufrimiento y el dolor de las víctimas, además de que crea desconfianza en las instituciones y en consecuencia, la falta de denuncia.
Sara Irene Herrerías Guerra, titular de la Fiscalía para los Delitos de Violencia contra la Mujer y Trata de Personas de la Procuraduria General de la República (PGR), externó que es necesario un marco jurídico que permita trabajar en los aspectos de atención a víctimas, políticas públicas y persecución de delitos.
“Hay algunos problemas como el de acreditar el tipo penal no sólo en la cuestión de la ley para prevenir, sino los tipos penales específicos. Se tiene que hacer un análisis jurídico que, “nos permita que no se recalifiquen las conductas delictivas, que se dé menos espacio a la corrupción y que en general todos los actores estemos en un mismo sentido combatiendo este delito”...
Gladis Torres Ruiz
CIMAC Noticias
Feb. 25, 2010
Added: Feb. 26, 2010
Mexico
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Congressional Deputy Rosi Orozco, Chair of the anti trafficking commission in
the Chamber of Deputies, and Mexico's Interior Secretary,
Fernando Gómez Mont
Photo: Octavio Hoyos - Milenio Online / From:
Víctimas de trata, entre 16 mil y 20 mil menores
- "Some 16 to 20 thousand minors are victims of human trafficking"
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Gómez Mont deja ver su rechazo a federalizar el
delito de trata de personas
Una panista pidió acciones inmediatas
que el funcionario ignoró
A pesar de que especialistas y legisladores demostraron con cifras el efecto de la trata de personas en el país, el secretario de Gobernación, Fernando Gómez Mont, aseguró que antes de pensar en federalizar el delito “hay que visibilizar la tragedia”...
Invitado a participar en el foro de análisis sobre la legislación penal contra la trata de personas, Gómez Mont afirmó que ese delito tiene su origen en el machismo, la pobreza y la violencia familiar, y se construye sobre lo más débil de los seres humanos...
Interior Secretary Mont Lays Bare His Opposition to
Federalizing Mexico's Anti-Trafficking Legislation
Secretary Mont ignores PAN Congressional Deputy Rosi
Orozco's Call For Immediate Actions To Help Victims
During the
Feb. 23rd and 24th, 2010 congressionally
sponsored Forum for Analysis and Discussion in Regard to
Criminal Law to Control Human Trafficking, Mexico’s
Interior
Secretary, Fernando Gómez Mont, cautioned that, before
consideration is given to the idea of passing federalized human
trafficking crime legislation, “we must visualize this tragedy.”
The Fifth
Inspector General of the National Human Rights Commission (CNDH),
Fernando Batista, lamented that only 25 of 31 states in Mexico
have passed legislation enacting criminal statues to address
human trafficking. Batista noted that because of legal
deficiencies in the existing state laws, only 1.7 percent of
those who are responsible for trafficking crimes are exposed to
the risk of prosecution. An even smaller percentage face a risk
of being sentenced to prison if they are convicted.
Batista said
that this stands in stark contrast with the fact that the sexual
exploitation of adults and children is the third most profitable
criminal enterprise in the world, after drug and arms
trafficking.
National
Action Party (PAN) deputy Rosi Orozco, Chair of the Special
Commission to Fight Human Trafficking, recently formed in the
Chamber of Deputies [lower House], declared that although a
national anti-trafficking law has been in effect in Mexico since
[late] 2007, “only one person has been sent to prison for
trafficking offenses.”
Interior
Secretary Mont, who was invited to appear at the anti
trafficking forum, acknowledged that human trafficking in Mexico
has its origins in machismo, poverty and family violence. He
added that trafficking builds itself upon the backs of the most
vulnerable.
Among the
solutions that were presented at the forum was the idea of
federalizing anti-trafficking law, to resolve the problem of
inconsistency that plagues existing state criminal laws to
control trafficking. In response to this proposal, Interior
Secretary Mont expressed his opposition to the idea. He
suggested that alternatives should be considered, such as
involving educational, law enforcement and social service
institutions in an effort to “detect the spaces in which this
monstrous activity exists.”
Deputy
Orozco proposed that, at present, at the very least, the federal
government should open an emergency telephone hotline where
kidnapped children and their families can call to seek help or
file a complaint. Secretary Mont had no response to this
proposal.
During the
forum Deputy Orozco also stated that the sexual exploitation of
women and children is the third most profitable illicit business
for organized crime globally. She noted that in Mexico, government
officials are involved in human trafficking activities. Deputy
Orozco: “This crime involves the worst forms of slavery that
have existed in the history of humanity.”
Deputy
Orozco said that, according to national and international
research reports, an estimated 16,000 to 20,000 minors are
subjected to [commercial] sexual exploitation of children [CSEC].
Within that group, 80% of the victims are children between the
ages of 10 and 14.
Enrique Méndez and Roberto Garduño
La Jornada
Feb. 24, 2010
See also:
Mexico
Agónico avance contra trata de personas: Segob
Ciudad de México.- El secretario de Gobernación, Fernando Gómez
Mont, reconoció que es agónica la lentitud con la que se avanza en la
consolidación de una política que combata y evite la trata de personas, por lo
que se requiere de mecanismos de prevención y no de acción ante este problema.
Al participar en el foro "Análisis y Discusión sobre la
Legislación Penal en Materia de Trata de Personas", advirtió que los cimientos
de esta "nueva esclavitud" son problemas con la violencia intrafamiliar,
machismo y pobreza extrema.
"Son factores de los cuales surge este proceso, y que nos debe
llevar a plantearnos una verdadera prevención de estos fenómenos; no podemos
dejar de pelear por estas causas", apuntó...
Interior Secretary Mont: Progress Against Human
Trafficking is Agonizingly Slow
Fernando Gómez Mont, Mexico's Interior Secretary, spoke during the recent Forum for Analysis and Discussion in Regard to Criminal Law to Control Human Trafficking, hosted by the newly formed Special Commission for the Fight Against Human Trafficking of the House of Deputies in Congress. Secretary Mont said that he recognizes that
[the government of] Mexico is organizing itself to fight human trafficking at an agonizingly slow pace. He offered his viewpoint,
that efforts to combat trafficking should focus on creating prevention mechanisms, and not increased 'action' [law enforcement efforts]. The Secretary added that the roots of this problem in Mexican society involve the dynamics of family violence, machismo and extreme poverty.
Secretary Mont: "These are the factors that are the root of the surge in trafficking. For that reason, he said, we must develop a truly effective approach to prevention. We cannot stop fighting to resolve these aspects of the problem."
Secretary Mont continued by proposing that the educational and social service systems should be involved in the attack on these evils, and they should be used to detect the spaces in society where these monstrous activities exist.
All of us, declared the Secretary, should work to find the path out of this crisis in the most rational manner possible. We need to recognize that structural problems [in our society] must be addressed.
Mont: "The slow pace of the of consolidating the political will [to address this problem] is agonizing, but it is possible for us to visualize that at some point our society will reach an awakening, a point when we become aware of our conscience. At that point, empathy [for the victims] will take effect.
National Action Party (PAN) Deputy Rosi Orozco, Chair of the Special Commission, declared that the impact of improved laws, better equipment, specially trained law enforcement and sensitized and aware prosecutors will amount to nothing if the judges who are responsible for sentencing those who are convicted of these crimes do not use the correct criteria, to avoid impunity in these cases.
Deputy Orozco added that an estimated 16,000 to 20,000 children, [mostly] between the ages of 10 and 14, have fallen prey to human trafficking networks in Mexico.
Gabriel Xantomila
El Sol de México
Feb. 24, 2010
See also:
LibertadLatina
Commentary
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Chuck Goolsby |
A First Step Towards Real Government
Reform on Trafficking
This week's
Forum for Analysis and Discussion in Regard to Criminal Law to
Control Human Trafficking, hosted by the newly formed Special
Commission for the Fight Against Human Trafficking of the House
of Deputies in Congress, and held on February 23rd and 24th, 2010, was a
landmark event. It was a first, important step to turning
around the hidden policy of blocking anti-trafficking law
enforcement, prevention and victim aid efforts that had been the
explicit, yet unstated policy of the
National Action Party (PAN)
administration of President Felipe Calderón.
LibertadLatina
has documented the complex history of how President Calderón
intentionally dragged his feet for close to a year after
Congress passed the 2007 anti-trafficking law, the nation's
first. Specifically, the Interior Department, headed by
Secretary Fernando Gomez Mont, simply refused to publish the
regulations that create federal agency policies and operating
procedures. This failure to publish the needed regulations
effectively blocked implementation of the trafficking law.
When regulations to enable the law were finally published in
February of 2009 after being drafted by the Interior Department,
they were criticized by anti-trafficking specialists as being
weak and ineffective.
Beyond that one year delay, the first meeting of the federal
inter-agency
coordinating
commission called for in the 2007 law did
not take place until two years after the law was
first passed. That first meeting only took place after members
of Congress agitated to force President Calderón (and Interior
Secretary Mont) to finally create the commission.
Currently, a Sense of the Senate Resolution has been presented
for consideration by that body. The non-binding resolution
demands that President Calderón create the National Program to
Fight Human Trafficking, which the recently
stood-up inter-agency commission will manage.
So it is not surprising to hear that Interior Secretary Mont, during his
presentation at the Congressional Forum on Trafficking, actively
rejected the idea of legislating to federalize the
nation's lagging anti-trafficking efforts.
In effect, he is saying that he rejects the one
legislative path that would allow a federally enforceable law to
apply homogeneous criminal penalties across all of Mexico. Given
the fact that the current law (which is trumped by state laws)
is acknowledged as being completely ineffective, the proposal to
federalize anti-trafficking efforts appears to be a reasonable solution.
Secretary Mont also stated during the anti-trafficking forum
that he believes that legislative efforts should focus on
prevention, and that nothing else should be done by government
to strengthen the law to address punishment and attention to the
needs of the victims.
In response to a proposal presented at this week's forum by Deputy Orozco, suggesting
that the federal government take immediate, short term action at
the federal level by at the very least opening a national
emergency hotline for trafficking victims and their families,
Secretary Mont (who was also sitting on the panel), reacted by
saying... nothing.
This week's shameful call to inaction by Interior Secretary Mont,
who is obviously a powerful member of President Calderón's
Cabinet, is consistent with the
Secretary's past efforts to drag-out the creation of
federal regulations to enable the 2007 law, a situation that
only changed after Congress sent four stern warnings to President
Calderon over 11 months, demanding that he act.
Another voice against taking action to stop human trafficking in
Mexico has been long time PAN party official and National
Immigration Institute director Cecilia Romero, who stated during
a June, 2009
press interview with El Universal, a
major Mexico City daily paper, that human trafficking is
"inevitable," and that, "the existence of the smuggling of
migrants, human trafficking, pedophile networks, and the
kidnappings and violence that affect thousands of migrants are
only
evils of
mankind" that Mexico cannot eradicate.
Behind some of these more conservative voices who are pushing for
the status quo of inaction to be maintained in regard to
eliminating human trafficking is the most conservative faction
of the PAN,
El Yunque (the Anvil), an
openly misogynist, anti-Semitic and anti-Protestant radical
secret society (who have used murder to accomplish their goals
in decades past), whose influence on the PAN is well-known in
Mexico.
We welcome the apparent change in direction of mainstream PAN policies that have
recently put several of the party's members, including Deputy Rosi Orozco,
Deputy Agustín Castilla
Marroquín and Senator Guillermo
Tamborrel Suárez into the spotlight as articulate
voices for change
in Mexico's approach to tackling human trafficking.
Please keep up your important work!
We recognize that the United
States, through the State Department's Trafficking in Persons
Office headed by Ambassador at Large Luis CdeBaca, is likely
playing an influential role in accomplishing this change in PAN
party thinking.
At the same time, the PAN's conservative
factions, who have, obviously, fought to reject any effective
action to enable anti-trafficking efforts for years, remain
active voices in this debate.
There is, apparently, a political tug-of-war going on within the
PAN regarding how to address the issue of human trafficking.
The world must therefore keep up the pressure on Mexico's government to
act to fight trafficking. We must also support the efforts of the many members of
Congress who want to turn the ship of state around and deal with
the crisis of mass gender atrocity which is today plaguing Mexico.
One underage victim who testified at the forum put the issue
well. She said, "I want to ask all of you, as authorities and members of society, to do everything, even the impossible, to rescue the victims. Open your ears to hear the screams of the victims for help. I understand the pain that these girls feel, and believe me, no girl dreams of being a prostitute."
...
There is no time to waste!
End impunity now!
-
Chuck Goolsby
LibertadLatina
Feb. 26/27, 2010
See also:
Mexico, The United States
Modern Day Slavery in Mexico and the
United States
...[U.S. State Department Trafficking in
Persons office director] Ambassador C. de Baca believes that
focusing on eradicating human trafficking could improve
U.S.-Mexican efforts to combat other forms of transnational
crime. According to C. de Baca, human trafficking “appears
to be an area where the [Mexican government] is prepared to
cooperate with [the U.S.].” C. de Baca and others are
hopeful that the exchange of information on human
trafficking cases will build relationships between Mexican
and U.S. officials that might help further combat the drug
war...
Megan McAdams
Council on Hemispheric Affairs (COHA)
Dec. 21, 2009
See also:
Added:
June 28, 2009
Mexico
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Cecilia Romero, head of Mexico's
national immigration service, says that sex
tourism and pedophile networks are "inevitable."
"El
turismo sexual es inevitable"
- Cecilia Romero del Instituto Nacional de
Migración de México
Photo:
El Universal |
LibertadLatina
Commentary
President Calderón, the Human Rights Crisis at Mexico's
Southern Border is Unacceptable
Our current series of articles covering the human rights
emergency facing women and girl migrants at Mexico's
southern border responds directly to the recent comments of
Cecilia Romero, head of Mexico's national immigration
service (the National Institute for Migration - INM).
Director Romero stated in a press
interview with El Universal, a major Mexico City daily
paper, that human trafficking is "inevitable", and that,
"the existence of the smuggling of migrants, human
trafficking, pedophile networks, and the kidnappings and
violence that affect thousands of migrants are only
"evils of
mankind" that Mexico cannot eradicate.
We strongly disagree with Director Romero and
others in the leadership of Mexico's National Action Party,
who habitually dismiss critical women's rights issues,
including the femicide murders in Ciudad Juarez, as being
the inevitable, and 'normal' results of male human behavior.
Nothing could be further from the truth.
The citizens of Mexico, Mexico's Congress and
the international community need to hold the government of
President Felipe Calderón accountable for his allowing
unending mass gender atrocities to occur on Mexico's
southern border with Guatemala and Belize.
In this hell-on-earth, an estimated 450 to
600 migrant women are sexually assaulted each day, according
to the International Organization for Migration. Police
response is almost non-existent. At times, police are
complicit in this criminal violence.
Mexico's southern border is also the largest
zone on earth for the commercial sexual exploitation of
children (CSEC), according to Save the Children.
As Father
Luis Nieto states in an article about Salvadoran mothers who
must come to Mexico's border to grieve for their raped and
murdered daughters, "We cannot keep
quiet, we cannot be complicit in this."
We strongly agree with that sentiment.
Silence is also violence.
The federal government of Mexico is not
ignorant of this ongoing catastrophe. The United Nations,
the International Organization for Migration, Save the
Children, elements of the Catholic Church, the National
Human Rights Commission (CNDH) and many members of Congress
have, for the last several years, demanded action to end
these atrocities.
Although INM director Cecilia Romero promised
in February of 2007 that she would "entirely
eliminate this terrible situation,"
no visible action has been taken to do so as of June of
2009, 16 months after Romero made that promise.
With the current economic slowdown and the
expansion of global criminal sex trafficking operations, the
rapes, kidnappings and sexual enslave-ment of innocent
migrants on that border is increasing with no end in sight.
As the United States Congress prepares to
send over $400 million dollars in largely military aid to
Mexico as part of the Merida Initiative to combat the drug
cartels, we insist that human rights conditions be placed on
those and other U.S. foreign aid funds that are headed to
Mexico.
Mexico must close down the mass rape,
kidnapping, murder and child sex trafficking gauntlet that
exists with total impunity on its southern border.
We also want to see the estimated 4,000
mostly Mayan indigenous children kidnapped from this region
and sold to brothels in Tokyo, and also the uncounted
thousands of other indigenous child victims who have been
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