Human Trafficking in Scioto -- Inquiring Minds Need to Know

It is evident Scioto County has an evil underbelly. Lifelong residents can attest to “Good Old Boy” politics and local political corruption while experiencing increased criminal activity on their streets and highways. Certain members of both the legal and the enforcement communities are believed to be involved in sex trafficking. Of course, they deny it; however, the Cincinnati Enquirer recently released a detailed report of the activity. The evidence is strong. Some charges have already been made and others are sure to follow.

Corruption – How Trafficking Occurs

“When you’re looking at our prison system, it’s literally a fish pool of vulnerabilities. Women with substance abuse disorder, people who don’t have any family support, homelessness – if you want to find a victim, all you have to do is go through the court transcripts … and offer them a way out.”

– Nicole Bell, who worked as a prostitute after being trafficked as a teen

Human Trafficking is defined in as a form of modern-day slavery where people profit from the control and exploitation of others. Sex trafficking is any commercial sex act that is compelled by force, fraud or coercion. Under federal law, any minor under the age of 18 induced into commercial sex is a victim of sex trafficking.

Labor trafficking is the recruitment, harboring, transportation, provision or obtaining of a person for labor or services, through the use of force, fraud or coercion for the purpose of subjection to involuntary servitude, debt bondage or slavery. Under Ohio law, Trafficking in Persons is a first-degree felony with a mandatory minimum of 10 years in prison.

Trafficking in persons for sex and labor is one of the most lucrative forms of organized crime. Human trafficking is a $150 billion industry globally. Contrary to some misconceptions, human trafficking crimes do not require any smuggling or movement of the victim.

Even if these victims of sexual abuse are not moved from place to place, local players use and abuse them. Trafficking victims are exploited in many ways: prostitution, debt bondage, forced or bonded labor, and contractual servitude.

Deception is used to target victims who often know the person recruiting them. Many times family members of victims serve as the recruiters, abusing trust in order to personally profit from the trafficking. Research shows that 46 per cent of trafficking victims know their recruiter.

Victims that are tricked by recruiters may be searching for a way to flee poverty, unemployment, or prosecution. Traffickers employ a variety of control tactics, including physical and emotional abuse, sexual assault, confiscation of identification and money, isolation from friends and family, and even renaming their victims.

However, no victims expect the exploitation that is to come at the hands of the recruiters and those further along the trafficking chain. Similarly to illicit trade in general, organized trafficking requires systematic corruption. Corruption is a constant companion to human trafficking and the suffering that it brings. Corruption is the lubricant that allows the wheel of human trafficking to adequately operate,

Pay-offs to police, courts and other public sector officials result in state institutions being willing to turn a blind eye to trafficking gangs or even to participate in them.

Besides, trafficking has low risks of detection, prosecution and arrest compared to other transnational crimes (crimes that have actual or potential effect across national borders and crimes that are intrastate but offend fundamental values of the international community.). While the legal controls are state-based, the crime groups are transnational which creates difficulties for law enforcement to combat effectively.

The mix of profit and impunity through easily “bought” protection from law enforcers and politicians has created a “high reward/low risk” scenario for human traffickers and their accomplices. The cycle is perfectly structured for easy control and tit-for-tat favors. The system is clandestine, state-sponsored sexual control.

Corruption in the trafficking in persons cycle:

• allows the crime to be invisible
• facilitates the impunity once cases of trafficking in persons are detected
• facilitates the execution of the crime, and
• can assure the re-victimization of trafficked victims

“Corruption is an insidious plague that has a wide range of corrosive effects on societies. It undermines democracy and the rule of law, leads to violations of human rights, distorts markets, erodes the quality of life and allows organized crime, terrorism and other threats to human security to flourish.”

Targets of Abuse

Sex trafficking is a form of modern slavery that thrives largely because its victims are dismissed as society’s castaways – hookers, addicts, the homeless – and because its signature act, prostitution, is often shrugged off as a victimless crime.

Dr. Sharon Cooper, founder and CEO of Developmental and Forensic Pediatrics, says, “Some of the biggest factors that lead vulnerable children to become vulnerable adults are poverty, homelessness, abuse at home, the foster system, and glamorization of the sex industry.” Runaway and homeless youths – male, female, and transgender – are at particularly high risk for becoming victims, though some trafficked youths continue living at home and attending school.

Many victims do not report abuse for obvious reasons such as the fear of reprisals from those who enslaved them and the reality of the stigma associated with prostitutes as being unreliable witnesses.

They either do not see themselves as victims, or they may have a suspicion of authorities and a lack of awareness that (authorities) are in a position to help. Experts say trafficking victims often acquire a type of Stockholm Syndrome – where due to unequal power, they create a false emotional or psychological attachment to their controller.

“I was in search of a family, and they provided me with a sense of value, however messed up,” she says. “I saw them as the people who had saved me, when they were actually the people who were victimizing me the worst.”

-- Windie Lazenko, who at 13 fled what she describes as an abusive home life in California for what seemed like the safety of a friendly couple she had met through a local motorcycle gang

Unfortunately, typical rescues are muddied by erroneous criminalization, failed service provision, and re-victimization of human trafficking survivors, as well as the infrequent conviction of their offenders. federal prosecutions of those who trafficked children for sex dropped 26.7% over 2018.

One reason the crime can be so hard to prosecute is that the kind of work that victims do such as agricultural jobs, service jobs, or janitorial work is often perfectly legal by nature. This applies in particular to those who enter the U.S. legally on an H-2 visa.

The truth about Scioto County is that corruption in the form of trafficking has gone on for many, many years. Women and, yes, girls, have been persuaded to trade sexual favors for money, drugs, and lighter sentences by a cast of criminals posing as officials and officers in the halls of justice. Whether these men use the girls for labor, entertainment, or prostitution, they contribute to their eventual impairment or demise.

Many of these deviants in guarded positions claim to have helped young women with money and favor in their times of need, but those explanations are merely false alibis for covering their crimes and their neglect of duty. It must be understood that corruption is responsible for inequality, mistreatment, abuse, and even death.

Even though these officials may claim sexual activity occurred with a legal and consenting partner, the officials who engaged in the acts broke the rules, the law, and the public trust. Make no mistake, these positions require proper conduct, and improper conduct requires termination and legal charges. Indifference breeds continuation in a corrupt system.

Any so-called “secret-keeping” about trafficking is a hindrance to justice. Fellow lawyers, judges, court officers, enforcement officers, and others who are subject to hide any illegal activities are complicit. In addition, concealing evidence makes them look suspicious and also reduces public confidence. Of course, many who witnessed abuses will lie and swear they knew nothing about the ongoing corruption. Others will say they knew, but were unable to do anything about it. How many actually tried?

It's not like the community is unaware of the people who have plundered the network of abuse for personal gain. The public has long been waiting for some higher power to bring these offenders to justice.

The area has been racked by all of those involved in the opioid epidemic. Everyone is aware of the obvious players – the dealers, the pill mills, the addicts. But, the trade surely includes corrupt officials who profit from their interplay with pimps and prostitutes. A fuck here, a blow job there, and, of course, all the other benefits that come from a highly suspect, misguided consignment of legal control. The officials engaged use their positions to prey upon the marginalized women who need a few dollars for a fix, for reduced bail, for a place to stay, or even for a meal.

The victims of the corruption are here … they are female members – usually young and extremely vulnerable – of our communities. They likely live next door – in Portsmouth, Sciotoville, Wheelersburg, and in all the towns and villages of the county. Some of them have survived and have overcome the bondage they endured. Many of these survivors are still too frightened to expose their stories. Others are too damaged to rise above. They become the expendable carnage of a corrupt system that deals in human flesh – they are the abused women, the casualties of sex trafficking.

We understand everyone is innocent until proven guilty. Accusations can be false. Yet, how long have we seen and heard of the evil in the system? We talk with so many that say their names in disgust and pray for justice. At times, we even blame the victims. We sometimes think: “Well, drugs, criminals, whores. They deserve the consequences they receive.”

The truth is no man, woman or child should be forced, coerced or compelled to engage in sexual activity for the benefit of another person. Those who are marginalized such as addicts, prostitutes, prisoners, and homeless people must be protected from such abuse because they represent the most at risk to be manipulated and abused. If they are used within the confines of the system, then the system, itself, is corrupt. And, when the legal system is infected by unscrupulous people and aided by corrupt enforcement, that system is a blight to any community.

Read the Cincy Enquirer Report: https://www.usatoday.com/in-depth/news/investigations/2019/09/05/sex-trafficking-ohio-women-allege-probation-officer-abused-power/2219063001/