Teen Girls' Stories of Sex Trafficking in U.S.
ABC NEWS: http://abcnews.go.com/Primetime/story?id=1596778&page=1
International Sex Trafficking
Is a Well-Known Problem, But It Happens Here as Well
Feb. 9, 2006 — - Fifteen-year-old
"Debbie" is the middle child in a close-knit Air Force family from
suburban Phoenix, and a straight-A student -- the last person most of us would
expect to be forced into the seamy world of sex trafficking.
But Debbie, which is not her real name, is one of thousands of young American
girls who authorities say have been abducted or lured from their normal lives
and made into sex slaves. While many Americans have heard of human trafficking
in other parts of the world -- Thailand, Cambodia, Latin America and eastern
Europe, for example -- few people know it happens here in the United States.
The FBI estimates that well over 100,000 children and young women are trafficked
in America today. They range in age from 9 to 19, with the average age being
11.
And many victims are no longer just runaways, or kids who've been abandoned.
Many of them are from what would be considered "good" families, who
are lured or coerced by clever predators, say experts.
"These predators are particularly adept at reading children, at reading
kids, and knowing what their vulnerabilities are," said FBI Deputy Assistant
Director, Chip Burrus, who started the Lost Innocence project, which specializes
in child- and teen-sex trafficking.
And, he said, these predators are going where the kids are.
"What you can see, time and time again, is that the predators will adapt
their means to whatever the young people are doing -- whether it's malls, whether
it's ski slopes, whether it's beaches," Burrus said. "Predators ...
are going to do everything in their power to try to convince young girls, young
boys, to come with them and enter this particular lifestyle."
Abducted From Her Own Driveway, Teen Says
Debbie's story is particularly chilling. One evening Debbie said she got a call
from a casual friend, Bianca, who asked to stop by Debbie's house. Wearing a
pair of Sponge Bob pajamas, Debbie went outside to meet Bianca, who drove up
in a Cadillac with two older men, Mark and Matthew. After a few minutes of visiting,
Bianca said they were going to leave.
"So I went and I started to go give her a hug," Debbie told "Primetime."
"And that's when she pushed me in the car."
As they sped away from her house, Debbie said that one of the men told Bianca
to tie her up and said he threatened to shoot Bianca if she didn't comply.
"She tied up my hands first, and then she put the tape over my mouth. And
she put tape over my eyes," Debbie said. "While she was putting tape
on me, Matthew told me if I screamed or acted stupid, he'd shoot me. So I just
stayed quiet."
Unbelievably, police say Debbie was kidnapped from her own driveway with her
mother, Kersti, right inside. Back home with her other kids, Kersti had no idea
Debbie wasn't there.
"I was in the house. I mean, it was a confusing night. I had all the kids
coming in and out. The last I knew she had come back in," Kersti said.
"It was just so weird that night. I mean, I normally check on all my kids,
and that night I didn't. I should have."
Debbie said her captors drove her around the streets of Phoenix for hours. Exhausted
and confused, she was finally taken to an apartment 25 miles from her home.
She said one of her captors put a gun to her head.
"He goes, 'If I was to shoot you right now, where would you want to be
shot -- in your head, in your back or in your chest?'" Debbie said. "And
then I hear him start messing with his gun. And he counted to three and then
he pulled the trigger. And then I was still alive. I opened my eyes, and I just
saw him laughing."
Debbie said she was then drugged by her captors and other men were brought into
the room, where she was gang raped.
"And then that's when I heard them say there was a middle-aged guy in the
living room that wanted to take advantage of a 15-year-old girl," she said.
"And then he goes, 'Bend her over. I want to see what I'm working with.'
And that's when he started to rape me. And I see more guys, four other guys
had come into the room. And they all had a turn. It was really scary."
A Lucrative Offer at the Mall
Debbie's indoctrination into the world of sex exploitation was particularly
brutal. More often, young girls are unwittingly lured in to unwilling prostitution
with promises of jobs, money, clothing and modeling.
That's what 19-year-old Miya said happened to her when she was working at a
Phoenix mall selling sunglasses. Miya was working three jobs -- 14 hours a day
-- to pay off her bills and save for college.
One day when she was working, she was approached by a young woman and a well-dressed
man. "He asked if it would be out of place if he said I was pretty,"
Miya said. "I was like, 'No.' I mean, it was a compliment."
The man was charming and had a flattering offer for Miya.
"He said that he was a model agent, [that] he was looking for new models
in the area," she said. "It's not like something I've been wanting
to do or anything, but, I mean, it was ... it seemed interesting."
Taken by the idea of modeling and making extra money, Miya agreed to meet the
couple that night at a local restaurant.
"They said they were on their way to California to go back to their office
and they were going to do some more photo shoots, and they wanted me to go along
with them," Miya said. "He said that I could probably make about a
thousand or more. ... He said I could try it for three days. ... And so I went
with them."
The next morning Miya was thrilled when the couple took her to have her hair,
makeup and nails done. At that point, she said she had no idea she was not being
made over for a photo shoot but for a much more insidious reason. Later, when
the couple began taking pictures, Miya said she became alarmed.
"They used just a cheap camera you can buy, the throwaway," she said.
"And they said once we get to California that we would be at a photo shoot,
and that they'd be using, uh, some really good equipment, they'd have makeup
artists and stuff like that."
Miya said she didn't know what happened to those pictures until later, when
she arrived in California with the couple. "He showed me a Web site that
he put them up on," she said. "And it was an escort service site."
Treated Like a Dog
After the horrifying gang rape, police say Debbie was trapped in one of Phoenix's
roughest neighborhoods. In a rundown, garbage-strewn apartment, her captors
were trying to break her down.
"They were asking me if I was hungry," she said. "I told them
no. That's when they put a dog biscuit in my mouth, trying to get me to eat
it."
After a sleepless night, Debbie was tossed back into the car and again driven
around Phoenix. She said they talked to her about prostitution, and that one
of the men forced her to have sex with him in the car and then later in a park.
The same man took her back to his apartment, and Debbie said, "I ended
up in the dog kennel."
Greg Scheffer, an officer with the Phoenix police department, said Debbie was
kept in a small dog crate for several days. Lying on her back in the tiny space,
her whole body went numb.
"She was subject to various abuses while in there," Scheffer said.
"This is all part of the breaking down period where [he] gains complete
control of this girl."
Unbeknownst to Debbie, police say her captors had put an ad on Craig's List
-- a national Web site better-known for helping people find apartments and roommates.
Shortly after the ad ran, men began arriving at the apartment at all hours of
the day and night demanding sex from her.
She said she had to comply. "I had no other choice," she said.
Debbie sais she was earning hundreds of dollars a night -- all of it, she said,
going to the pimp.
Scheffer said Debbie was forced to have sex with at least 50 men -- and that's
not counting the men who gang-raped her on a periodic basis.
Debbie had no idea who the men were. "I didn't know them," she said.
"But most of them were married, with kids. And every single one of them,
I asked them why they were coming to me if they had a wife at home. ... They
didn't have an answer. So, like, I felt so nasty."
For more than 40 days, police say Debbie remained captive, often beaten and
forced daily to have sex of the most degrading kind. During that time, she said
she did not try to escape because her captors had done what police say so many
pimps do -- threatened her and terrified her.
Debbie said that the pimps told her they would go after her family, and they
even threatened to throw battery acid on her 19-month-old niece.
"After they told me that, I didn't care what happened to me as long as
my family stayed alive," she said. "And that's pretty much what I
had in my head. Staying there to keep my family alive."
Making a Break for It
Miya says she endured her own brutal ordeal and was forced to work as a prostitute.
When she failed to come home from her job at the mall, Miya's family began desperately
searching for her -- they frantically called her cell phone and sent her text
messages, begging her to come home. They got no response.
Eventually, they filed a missing person report with the police, contacted the
media and plastered fliers and yellow ribbons all over town.
Meanwhile, Miya's boss at the mall called Dianne Martin to tell her he was afraid
that her daughter may have been abducted by the suspicious couple.
Miya's parents soon learned from police that more than approximately 30 other
girls had been approached by the same couple in that mall and in surrounding
areas -- the same couple, apparently, who were seen with Miya and who claimed
to be recruiting models. But in the end, Miya was the only girl who'd gone with
them.
Within days, Miya had been moved several times, farther from home, and she said
she was too scared to try to escape. "I mean, I was really far away from
my house, and I didn't know where to go," she said.
Ernie Allen, the director of the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children,
said that's not uncommon for kids lured into the sex trade.
"There are many of these kids who are seduced, thinking ... that they're
gonna have economic opportunities, that they're gonna be a model, that they're
gonna be in show business somehow," Allen said. "And then, later,
discover themselves in a situation in which they have no control, and they're,
they're slaves. So ... this is a problem that has many faces."
Miya was essentially on tour -- she said her pimp had also taken out ads on
the Internet, advertising where she would appear next. The fact that she was
kept off the streets made it almost impossible for police to track her down.
"So the Internet for the pimps is a huge benefit for them, because it allows
them to make their money, do what they want to do with these juveniles or with
their prostitutes and have very little contact with the police," said Scheffer.
But then after six days, Miya said her captors slipped up. She said they decided
to put her out on some of the roughest streets in San Francisco to turn tricks.
For her, it was like a death sentence, and she finally worked up the nerve to
escape. At 5:30 one morning, she made a break for it.
"I waited till they were completely asleep. And I put my suitcase by the
door. And I was about to leave and ...sure enough, the phone rings," she
said.
Miya said she handed her captor his phone and then told him she was going to
go downstairs and smoke a cigarette. And then she ran for her life.
"And that was the last time I talked to him," she said. "I grabbed
my suitcase, and I ran to the elevator and I got outside and I started running
until I got as far away as I possibly could."
Reunited With Family
Miya said she was moved around so much at night, she didn't even know where
she was. After escaping, Miya finally felt safe enough to approach a truck driver,
who told her she was in Union City, Calif.
Miya called home and spoke to her grateful mother. "She told me she didn't
know what to do or where to go," Martin said.
Her stepfather contacted the police, who found Miya and took her to a police
station. "I was just so glad I was out of their reach," she said.
But before her journey was over, Miya had one more hurdle to overcome. Police
asked her to help catch the man she said lured her away from the mall -- which
would mean facing the man she said held her against her will and forced her
to perform degrading sexual acts.
Police tracked the man to a motel room. "They found out what room he was
in," Miya said. "He tried jumping out the window. And they caught
him."
For Debbie, who police said been held by her captors at gunpoint and kept in
a dog cage for more than 40 days, the chances of getting out alive seemed slim.
But then police investigating the case heard tips that she was being kept in
an apartment in the Phoenix area.
Police searched the apartment but didn't find Debbie.
But they were still suspicious. So on Nov. 8, police broke down the doors to
the same apartment and realized with a shock why they'd been unable to find
Debbie -- she was there, but she was tied up and crushed into a drawer under
a bed.
Debbie said she heard Officer James Perry calling her name but was too frightened
to answer. "I didn't know what to say; I was just lying under the bed,
stiff as a board, shaking," she said "And then he opens the middle
drawer, and he was like, 'Oh my God!'"
Trying to Regain Innocence
When Debbie was finally freed from the drawer, she was sobbing, and said she
gave the officer "the biggest hug in the world."
"I was so relieved!" she said. "And then that's when my ... I
was standing there, and my knees started ... they gave out."
While it seems unbelievable that these girls didn't try to escape earlier, experts
say it's not so uncommon.
"These are human beings who are owned by someone else, who lack the ability
to walk away, who lack the ability to make a decision in their own self-interest
to do something else," said Allen. "If that's not slavery, I don't
know what is."
Police arrested two people at the apartment, and Debbie was taken to a safe
house for children while her mother was called.
"I remember I got the call while I was driving to work," Kersti said.
"That was scary. I had to pull over. But, uh, it was just wild, it was.
I drove as fast as I legally could. I walked in and I saw her and we just flew
to each other."
Within hours, Debbie was safely home. "I was so happy," she said.
"I was so happy to see my mom. I was so happy to be home. I'm able to be
with my family. I don't know -- it's crazy."
The two officers who rescued Debbie were so touched by her strength and her
story that they visited her this Christmas and gave her a cross -- a token of
affection and protection.
"She is a very strong, amazing girl," said Scheffer. "We ran
into a few other girls that are like that. I don't know how they have the strength.
They are very brave."
The man Miya says lured her from the mall was charged with pimping and pandering
in connection with the 17-year-old with whom he was travelling. He has pleaded
not guilty.
As for the people accused of snatching Debbie, they are charged with kidnapping
and sexual assault. All have pleaded not guilty, except for one who awaits extradition
from Illinois.
Both girls are trying to go on with their lives. Miya still has three jobs --
she's even gone back to work at a mall. But she's determined now to do some
rescuing of her own. She's saving money to open an animal shelter.
Debbie has been joyfully reunited with her family, but they have put their house
up for sale. They've decided to leave Arizona and move to the Midwest, where
Debbie hopes she can find some of the innocence she lost one grim night in September.
Note: This report has been revised to clarify that the man Miya says lured her
into prostitution was charged with pimping and pandering only in connection
with the minor with whom he was traveling.
Copyright © 2007 ABC News Internet Ventures
