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LibertadLatina.org
- In regard to the recent Peter Landsman article in
the New York Times Magazine - The Girls Next Door.
The
New York Times and its reporter Peter Landsman
deserve affirmation from the public for having
presented many uncomfortable truths about Mexico to
U.S. sex trafficking. Based upon our 20 years
of advocacy for Latin American and indigenous
victims in the United States, our view is that
criticisms by Jack Shafer of Slate.com of Peter
Landsman’s journalistic accuracy in this article are
not at all deserved. The Landesman article
accurately defined the nature of
Mexico
to
U.S. child
sex trafficking. Outrage directed at Peter
Landsman serves to bolster the expansion of the
criminal sex trafficking ‘industry.’
Peter
Landsman rightfully expresses surprise that his
‘dangerous’ four month research assignment has
resulted in an uproar from Internet journalists who
have latched onto this article in an effort to,
directly or indirectly, discredit the honest and
much needed efforts of news organizations to
research, validate and publicly expose child sex
trafficking.
To
the extent that the now raging debate surrounding
this article’s release does give the topic of child
sex trafficking wider exposure in the press, the
controversy is probably good in that it will likely
cause more public pressure to be applied to Congress
and to the government judicial entities that are
responsible for enforcing the law and saving
victims. To the extent that the critics of
Peter Landsman are successful, the increased public
skepticism regarding this issue will unfortunately
allow these crimes to continue as insufficient
resources are applied to the problem.
The
other positive result of the current debate is that
it forces American society to define sex trafficking
more clearly. Much of the criticism of Peter
Landsman article comes from the fact that
definitions of ‘child sex trafficking’ and related
issues are currently ambiguous. Vigorous
public debate should result in society’s
clarification of these issues and terms, allowing a
stronger, publicly supported and clearly understood
war against trafficking to come about.
This
debate also forces American society to address its
several double standards in the treatment of
children trapped by various forms of sexual
exploitation. The criticism of Peter
Landsman’s article rests in part on a sense of
incredulity. That sentiment draws from
assumptions that are fatally flawed, thus destroying
any conclusions built upon them.
These
assumptions include, importantly, the notion that
child sex trafficking networks and brothels are easy
to identify and would, if they exist, be rapidly and
effectively targeted for shutdown by the nation’s
local law enforcement agencies. The experience
of many NGO activists in the field, and the
experiences of immigrants in the
United States
generally support a conclusion that police support of
Latin American immigrant crime victims is
sub-standard at best, due to anti-immigrant
hostility, racism and sexism.
Additonally, Slate.com attacks Peter Landesman because
it finds to be preposterous the concept that child
rape camps can exist in San Diego, California.
We have spoken repeatedly with a first-person source
at the heart of organizing resistance to these child
rape camps, America's largest and most blatant case
of child kidnapping and forced child prostitution.
The San Diego rape camps have existed for over 10
years, and they continue to exist. In addition
to the many news articles from the traditional press
that have been written in regard to this crisis, at
least one local television station has filmed every
relevant detail regarding the rape of child
sex slaves at these camps.
A
detailed reading of the
LibertadLatina.org
web site will hopefully lead the educated
reader to the conclusion that a crisis of huge
proportion exists in terms of Latin American to
United States child and adult sex trafficking.
As described here below, somewhere between 60,000
and 135,000 children were subjected to stranger
abduction in Mexico during a recent 3 year period
(compare that figure to the recent, February 8, 2004
NBC Dateline declaration attributed to the
U.S. National Center for Missing and Exploited
Children, that 110 stranger abductions occur yearly
in the United States). Many of these children
are sold to sexual slave trafficking and pornography
rings. Others may be kidnapped and murdered
for their internal organs.
Someone in the
criminal world is making a 'profit' from the
exploitation of these tens of thousands of kidnapped
Mexican (and Central American) children! We
must respond to that fact with immediate action.
In
Canada, 90,000 indigenous (first nation's) women and
men are survivors of a forced boarding school system
that subjected many of them to rape and actual
physical torture with impunity during 100 years,
until the 1970's. Indigenous children faced a
less severe but almost identical system of rape with
impunity at U.S. Native boarding schools through the
late 1980's. Native and Latina women and girls
faced forced sterilizations by the hundreds of
thousands by unscrupulous doctors and officials.
During the 1980's civil war in Guatemala, almost
every girl and woman of Mayan indigenous ethnicity
was raped, an outrage that also occurred to a lesser
degree in Peru and also in Chiapas, Mexico during
the Zapatista rebellion of the 1990's.
Against this backdrop of intentional sexual assault
en-mass targeting indigenous, indigenous mixed blood
(mestiza) and other poor Latin American women and
girls, now comes forth the well-funded sex
trafficker. Once again, the same demographic
group is being targeted. Especially within the
Southwest region of the United States, impunity in
the sexual exploitation of indigenous and Latin
American children, youth and adults reigns.
The convergence of impunity in the Southwest is a
critical issue that deserves our collective
attention.
During past periods of our history, poor indigenous,
Latin American, African descended and other racially
targeted groups who faced sexual assault en-mass in
the United States, faced ridicule, disbelief and
rejection from the society at large. Now yet
another holocaust targeting indigenous and other
poor Mexican and Central American girl and boy
children is taking place. When brave reporters
like Peter Landesman dare to expose publicly, for
the first time in terms of really placing the
spotlight on Latina American to U.S. trafficking,
nay-sayers latch onto the article in an attempt to
discredit both the author and the message.
"Thanks to the landmark
January 25, 2004 article on Mexico to U.S. child sex
slave trafficking by New York Times reporter
Peter Landesman, the public now has, more than
ever before, a clear view into a sordid, complex and
lucrative criminal world. That hidden world
consists of a well-organized system designed for
wholesale child kidnapping, brutal child gang-rape
as training for prostitution in Mexico and then the
smuggling-of these 'disposable' child sex slaves
into the United States. During their time in
the U.S., these children will be subjected to a life
sentence of daily forced rape, beatings and death.
This ugly fate faces literally thousands of Latin
American girls and boys each year who are forced
into sex slavery in every region of the United
States."
"The 5, 7, 10, 13 and 16 year old
'Marias' of the United States face exploitation and
impunity from sexual predators in their homes,
in their neighborhoods, in their schools, in their
after-school (and full-time) jobs, and for some,
while being enslaved in the brothel. Each one of
them deserves as much attention from this
nation's law enforcement, judicial officers and
advocacy organizations as (the equally deserving and
tragic cases of) Polly Klass, Megan Kanca and Carlie
Brucia.
The fact that cases as horrendous as
those of these three girls occur every day in the
United States in silence, targeted against
indigenous and Latin American girls and boys by the
thousands, should rightly shock the public, the
NCMEC and every agency with responsibility for
protecting our children."
From:
LibertadLatina
calls upon the NCMEC and government to provide equal
protection under law for Latin American and
indigenous children facing community and commercial
sexual exploitation with impunity.
February
9, 2004
LibertadLatina.org
documents to true dimensions of the child and adult
sex trafficking crisis and its complex
interrelationships with community based exploitation
both in Latina America and in the U.S. The 400
plus articles, research papers and essays available
here resoundingly affirm the work of Peter Landesman
of the New York Times. While Peter Landesman's
article may not have reached the pristine standards
of journalistic 'purity' demanded by Jack Shafer of
Slate.com, that article merits an "A+" rating by us.
We say: "Keep up the great work, Peter Landesman."
- Chuck Goolsby
LibertadLatina.org
February 23/24, 2004
We will provide additional
periodic commentary in response to this
ongoing debate, as time permits. In the
meantime, please see the below links to the many
resources on this web site that validate in detail
the work of Peter Landesman.
February
23, 2004 - Mexican Government Reacts:
"Los Lenones" Child Sex Trafficking Ring Broken Up by
Police in Mexico, New York Gang was described
in recent New York Times Article.
|
Latina Child Sex
Slavery in San Diego, California
"Child
rape camps" exist with impunity on U.S. soil!
Our special section on the San
Diego Crisis
describes one of the largest known child and youth
sex trafficking cases in the United States to
date.
In one of several
related cases, hundreds of Mexican girls between
7 and 18 were kidnapped or subjected to false
romantic entrapment by organized criminal sex
trafficking gangs. Victims were then
brought to San Diego County, California.
Over a 10 year period
these girls were raped by hundreds of men per
day in more than 2 dozen home based and
agricultural camp based brothels. Minor girls
resisting this slavery were brutally beaten.
Some enslaved girls may have been murdered.
These international
criminal child sex slavery networks
continue to exist and operate with impunity
despite the important efforts of San Diego,
California and federal law enforcement agencies
to stop them.
And...
-
February 9, 2004 -
National Center for Missing and Exploited
Children (NCMEC)
Announces dramatic increases in reports of child
exploitation - Up 750 percent during the last 5
years.
LibertadLatina
calls upon the NCMEC and government to provide
equal protection under law for Latin American
and indigenous children facing community and
commercial sexual exploitation with impunity.
-
LibertadLatina.org's
2003
Slavery Report
-
U.S. President
George W. Bush proposes landmark immigration
reform -
January 7, 2004
-
Complete text of
President Bush's radio speech
"...Some [undocumented workers] have
risked their lives in dangerous desert border
crossings, or entrusted their lives to the
brutal rings of heartless human smugglers.
Workers who seek only to earn a living end up in
the shadows of American life -- fearful, often
abused and exploited. When they are victimized
by crime, they are afraid to call the police, or
seek recourse in the legal system."
-
January 25, 2004 -
New
York Times
prints major story on the Mexico to U.S. sex
trafficking of Latina and European women &
girls. -
As [San Diego County deputy sheriff Rick] 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 [the Latina medical doctor
referred to as 'Patricia' in the El Universal
Article below] 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.'' [Obviously, these
girls were virgins waiting to be raped for the
first time by men willing to pay the 'extra'
price to rape them].
-
More about the
more than ten years of an unbelievable nightmare
in Diego, California's child rape camps: January
11, 2004, El Universal Newspaper, Mexico City,
Mexico..."The first time I went to the
[child rape] camps I didn't vomit only because I
had an empty stomach. It was truly
grotesque and unimaginable," recalls Patricia,
our fictitious name for a medical doctor who
works with government supplied resources, and
who for the last five years has been in contact
with the Salazar brothers, working to prevent
HIV/AIDS and other venereal diseases in these
exploited minor girls.
..."When I came here, in one hour I counted
that one little girl had been with 35 men, one
after the other. (Patricia - a Latina
physician)
"A lot of money
is involved in this business, thousands and
thousands of dollars. I have seen myself
how U.S. Immigration & Naturalization Service
(INS, now I.C.E) agents have sex with these
minor girls for free, in exchange for
protection. These agents even enter the
houses of prostitution in uniform. May a
lightning-bolt split me in half if I am lying!"
(Patricia - a Latina physician)
[Note: The facts
about INS agent involvement with the sexual
exploitation of trafficked underage girls in the
San Diego child rape camps was described in the
landmark January, 2003 article on the subject in
Mexico's El Universal (the Universal) newspaper
online. This article was translated by
Chuck Goolsby, leading to its distribution among
federal officials in Washington, DC. It is
hoped that any (formerly INS, now I.C.E.) agents
involved have been brought to justice for their
involvement the 'camps.' See:
The Sex Trafficking of Children in San Diego
County, California.]
Some of these
girls are later murdered by their sexual slave
masters (pimps):
"The deaths in Carlsbad
At another location similar to Los Carrizales,
in [the San Diego neighborhood of] Carlsbad,
during the last two years the bodies of minor
Mexican girls, with signs of torture and abuse,
have begun to appear, San Diego deputy sheriff
Rick Castro tells us.
Nobody knows who these murder victims are.
Nobody even claims their bodies because it is
presumed that they are undocumented. They
could be girls trafficked by the Salazar
brothers. Castro assures us that he knows
nothing about the case of the murder of
[hundreds of] women and girls in Cuidad Juarez
[Juarez City], Mexico, but given the common
pattern of the abuse of victims in both cases,
the modus operandi appear to be similar."
-
United States Department of Justice - National
Victim Assistance Academy:
Most minorities have
developed a sharp sense for detecting
condescension, manipulation, and insincerity.
There is no substitute for compassion as the
foundation, and sincerity as its expression, for
carrying out victim services equally and fairly.
Although it is not possible to feel the same
compassion for all victims, providers have the
responsibility to provide the same compassionate
service to every victim. Compassionate and
sincere advocacy knows no borders.
The plight of
undocumented residents or illegal aliens, for
example, involves complex issues of personal
prejudices and international politics...
... There is an
epidemic of sexual assaults committed, for
example, upon undocumented Latinas. Their
immigration status, however, does not mean that
they should receive less protection under
America's criminal laws or less right to victim
services"...
From:
The United States
Department of Justice - 1999
The 1999 National Victim
Assistance Academy
-
Chuck Goolsby, coordinator of
LibertadLatina.org
speaks out and advocates for
Latina women & girl's human rights at a
Washington, DC -
December 18, 2003
Conference on sex trafficking in the Latin
American & Caribbean region.
...The ongoing
crisis of the San Diego, California child rape
camps was a major focus of the information
presented [by Chuck Goolsby] to the assembled
officials from the U.S. Department of Justice,
DOJ's Worker Exploitation Task Force, the U.S.
Department of Homeland Security, the
Organization of American States, the Society for
International Development and many local and
national academics and officials from many
non-governmental organizations.
-
A Washington, DC-
Latina Social Worker and Community Center
Director's Letter
- 1999 - "Over the
past two years, I have been observing a systemic
pattern of violence committed against girls and
young women in our community. This violence
involves the sexual abuse/ assault against girls
as young as 10 years old... ...There
have been incidents of date rape, gang rape,
abductions, drugging, threats with firearms,
etc. The incidents are just as you
described in
your
[Mr. Goolsby's NCMEC]
letter
and have been met with the
same level of indifference and dismissal of
legal (never mind moral) responsibility on the
part of civil institutions -- the police
department, public schools, etc."
-
From: Chuck Goolsby's 1999
letter to the
National Center for Missing and Exploited
Children (NCMEC):
The next year, 1998, I [Chuck Goolsby]
again approached the Gaithersburg City
[Maryland] Police Force to report that the same
adult man was now sexually involved with this
now 12 year old girl. The officer who I
spoke with at the city's police station stated
to me that "We can't just pick him up, he might
sue the city." I demanded to know from
this officer whether there were laws against
pedophilia and statutory rape in Maryland or
were there not! I had to assert myself in
the face of this apathy and disinterest, to the
apparent approval of the female clerk working at
the city's police station, where this
conversation took place. [This sexual
assailant was later put on trial without the
Maryland State's Attorneys office for Montgomery
County ever having advised the mother or victim
of the trial date. He was given 6 months
in jail and was then deported from the U.S.]
-
Coalition Against Trafficking in Women (CATW)
Comparative Study -
Until recently, trafficking of women in the
United States was rarely acknowledged. It was
not until Russian and Ukrainian women began to
be trafficked to the United States in the early
1990s that governmental agencies and many NGOs
began to recognize the problem. As many critics,
including us, have pointed out, Latin American
and Asian women were trafficked into the United
States for many years prior to the influx of
Russian traffickers and trafficked women. The
fact that it took blond and blue-eyed victims to
draw governmental and public attention to
trafficking in the United States gives, at
least, the appearance of racism.
-
In New York
State, the legal age of consent is seventeen
years, and a person as young as sixteen can be
in a pornographic film or magazine. However,
Rachel Lloyd stressed that the girls she works
with are much younger. Both Lloyd and Breault of
the Paul and Lisa Program agree that the average
entering age of prostitutes has decreased from
fourteen to thirteen or even twelve years of age
in recent years. Also, many girls physically
mature between the ages of twelve to thirteen
and are prime candidates for the sex trade.
According to Laura Italiano, reporting on the
scene in East New York, Brooklyn, "the youngest
girls are so popular, their customers cause
traffic jams." A twenty-year-old veteran
prostitute in the area estimated that half of
the girls in the renowned child prostitute
tracks in East New York and Long Island City,
Queens are between the ages of thirteen to
fifteen. NYPD Detectives Jim Held and Kevin
Mannion also believe that the average age of
street prostitutes in New York is only fourteen
or fifteen. Since the average age for
starting out is between twelve and thirteen,
there are youth that start even younger. Lloyd
reported that she has worked with girls who are
now fourteen to fifteen-years-old but started
selling sex when they were only eleven or
twelve.
-
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.
-
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.
-
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