Pimps and child sex traffickers throughout the nation are looking over their shoulders.
On Monday, the FBI arrested 281 suspected pimps and rescued 168 sexually exploited children, including six in the Austin-San Antonio area, four in Houston and two in Dallas.
“Child sex traffickers create a living nightmare for their adolescent victims,” Leslie Caldwell, assistant attorney general for the Criminal Division of the Department of Justice, said in a statement.
“They use fear and force and treat children as commodities of sex to be sold again and again,” Caldwell said. “This operation puts traffickers behind bars and rescues kids from their nightmare so they can start reclaiming their childhood.”
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Caldwell was referring to Operation Cross Country, part of the Innocence Lost National Initiative.
Since its creation in 2003, the initiative has identified and rescued about 3,600 sexually exploited children, according to the FBI’s website. Moreover, there have been 1,450 convictions that resulted in lengthy sentences, including 14 life terms and the seizure of more than $3.1 million in assets.
For Texas officials, the latest success of Operation Cross Country is welcome news because the state has become a hub for human trafficking, particularly for child prostitution.
“Unfortunately there is a demand for underage sex, so they are recruiting kids,” Steve McCraw, director of the Texas Department of Public Safety, said in reference to gangs, cartels and other criminal organizations.
“In Texas, we have over 44,000 kids that go missing right now,” McCraw said in a recent interview.
“That’s a high-risk group they go after,” he said. “It is mainly girls, but there are also boys.”
Other state officials are also concerned about such crimes.
“Human trafficking is a tragic reality in our state,” House Speaker Joe Straus said after appointing a committee to examine the issue and then make recommendations to the Texas Legislature.
In recent sessions, the Legislature has passed legislation aimed at cracking down on pimps and human traffickers, as well as helping the victims and giving law enforcement agencies the resources to fight this type of crime.
State Rep. Senfronia Thompson, D-Houston, and State Sen. Leticia Van de Putte, D-San Antonio, for example, authored legislation that halted the prosecution of victimized children arrested for prostitution.
“We cleaned their record up and gave them a new lease on life,” Thompson said of her 2011 bill. “And in last year’s session of the Legislature, we stated that if we caught a person who has been using this as an enterprise, making money, we are going to take it from them.”
Thompson also praised Gov. Rick Perry, saying that “under his leadership Texas became the leading state in the United States in passing laws to protect victims of human trafficking.”
One of Perry’s most recent efforts was to help launch a statewide advertising campaign to combat human trafficking in the state.
The campaign consists of public service billboards in 15 Texas cities, public service announcements on radio and television smf advertisements on taxis and posters.
“This modern-day slave trade is an affront to basic human decency, a product of the very worst among us — criminals who prey on the hopes and dreams of others and subjugate them through the threat of violence or death,” Perry said.
State Rep. John Frullo, who served on the previous human trafficking panel and successfully authored legislation that gives law enforcement agencies the tools to go after online predators of children, said he is pleased the whole problem is getting the attention it deserves — also from criminals.
“If they look at it and say ‘This is not the business we should be in,’ I’ll be happy about that,” said Frullo, R-Lubbock. “When we first started, we were one of the pioneers in looking at human trafficking and that was our first step, to let people know about it.”
Educating the public is critical in attacking human trafficking, he said. And part of the solution is also going after the so-called ‘Johns,’ men who pay to have sex, particularly with minors.
“The media is doing a good job in that regard,” Frullo added. “In Lubbock, one of the TV stations was listing the people who were arrested for soliciting … they would put their picture and their name on the TV at the 10 o’clock news.”
Although the committee Straus appointed has yet to hold its first public hearing, the Legislature is expected to continue addressing the human trafficking issue when it is back in session in January.
McCraw, who has testified before several legislative panels, is counting on it.
“It is a serious problem that needs to be addressed,” McCraw said. “The type of crimes that are perpetrated on individuals trafficked, whether it is for forced sex or for forced labor, is a despicable crime and it is a hidden crime.
“It is increasingly more organized, it is more transitory, meaning that it can happen between cities,” McCraw added. “Criminals are recruiting kids from our cities, from our families, from our communities, from our schools and they are clearly doing it as part of a business model to make money.”
