NEW YORK—The “silent crime” of human trafficking, and especially child sex trafficking, is getting a tiny bit louder.
Three bills aimed at curbing human trafficking quietly passed the House in mid-July. Thirteen others passed in May. The bills range from the allocation of funding toward prevention, to closing a loophole in the justice system about distributing images of child pornography.
“The reason they call trafficking a silent crime, is because you have shame and embarrassment on the child’s side, and then you have threats and coercion on the perpetrator’s side,” said Jan Edwards, founder and CEO of Paving the Way, a nonprofit aimed at preventing child trafficking.
The crime is so hidden that a reliable estimate of the prevalence of child sex trafficking in the United States doesn’t exist. Estimates vary wildly from tens of thousands to hundreds of thousands of cases per year.
However, the reported cases and convictions provide a grim enough picture.
Last month, a Texas man was sentenced to life imprisonment for harboring and trafficking a 14-year-old and a 15-year-old girl for commercial sex, according to Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE).
Martavious Keys, 34, placed commercial sex ads on Backpage.com, the most commonly used website for sex trafficking. Keys negotiated with “clients” via text messages pretending to be the girls, who worked out of his home or various hotels in the Dallas area, according to ICE.
Keys sexually assaulted and physically assaulted both girls during the ordeal and threatened them with harm if they did not continue to engage in commercial sex acts. The girls were forced to engage in up to 16 sex acts per day.
Also last month, two Texas men were sentenced to 20 years in prison for sexually exploiting a 12-year-old girl, according to ICE.
Terrell Kinchen, 20, and Troy Applin Jr., 23, lured the girl to Kinchen’s apartment, where they forced her to engage in sexual activities with them while they took videos and later posted them on Snapchat and Facebook.
Again in June, a 22-year-old Minnesota man was sentenced to 36 years in prison for sex trafficking three minor girls and for producing and receiving child pornography of two minor girls, according to ICE.
Deuvontay Charles, 22, trafficked two 14-year-olds and a 17-year-old. He promised the 17-year-old quick money and posted her as an “escort” on Backpage.com while operating out of a local hotel.
