Trafficking News Articles

SOUTH AFRICA: World Cup poses risks for out-of-school kids

JOHANNESBURG, 8 June 2010 (PlusNews) – As South African children look forward to a mid-year school holiday that will last longer than the usual winter break because of the FIFA World Cup, parents and caregivers are faced with the dilemma of how to keep them safe during the five weeks of festivities. 

“The length of the holiday is about the length of the December school holiday, but more parents are likely to be working at this time,” said Janet Prest Talbot of the Children’s Rights Centre, an NGO based in the port city of Durban. Children left to their own devices were at greater risk of abuse and sexual experimentation, she said. 

President Jacob Zuma has warned parents about an expected rise in child trafficking during the World Cup. “Children wandering alone in shopping malls and football stadiums will be vulnerable to people with evil intentions,” he said at the launch of a new Children’s Act, which came into effect in April and makes the trafficking of minors a crime. 

Government is gearing up to counter the potential threat with anti-human trafficking task teams in the host cities, but Prest Talbot described the risk of trafficking as “the tip of the iceberg”. “The biggest risk [of child abuse] is often on your doorstep – from neighbours or family members,” she told IRIN/PlusNews. 

Many South African children whose parents are unemployed or who have been orphaned rely on school feeding programmes for their main meal of the day, but the schemes will be suspended during the holiday. 

Joan van Niekerk, national coordinator of Childline South Africa, said that the money spent on printing glossy pamphlets about the dangers of human trafficking could have been better spent on ensuring children did not go hungry while schools were closed. “We are very worried, but not about trafficking or the safety of children at stadiums,” she said. 

“We’re worried about what’s happening to children in their homes. If children are hungry, they’re going to go out there looking for food.

 For more information and the full article, click here.

GIRL VICTIMS STAND UP TO CRAIGSLIST FOUNDER CRAIG NEWMARK

Dear Craig,

Although we have not met, we are certain you would not want what happened to us or to thousands of girls like us to ever happen again.

Craig, I am AK. In 2009, I met a man twice my age who pretended to be my boyfriend, and my life as an average girl — looking forward to college, doing my chores, and hanging out with my friends — ended. This “boyfriend” soon revealed he was a pimp. He put my picture on Craigslist, and I was sold for sex by the hour at truck stops and cheap motels, 10 hours with 10 different men every night. This became my life.

Men answered the Craigslist advertisements and paid to rape me. The $30,000 he pocketed each month was facilitated by Craigslist 300 times. I personally know of over 20 girls who were trafficked through Craigslist. Like me, they were taken from city to city, each time sold on a different Craigslist site — Philadelphia, Dallas, Milwaukee, Washington, D.C. My phone would ring, and soon men would line up in the parking lot. One Craigslist caller viciously brutalized me, threatening to dump my body in a river. Miraculously, I survived.

Craig, I am MC. I was first forced into prostitution when I was 11 years old by a 28-year-old man. I am not an exception. The man who trafficked me sold so many girls my age, his house was called “Daddy Day Care.” All day, other girls and I sat with our laptops, posting pictures and answering ads on Craigslist. He made $1,500 a night selling my body, dragging me to Los Angeles, Houston, Little Rock — and one trip to Las Vegas in the trunk of a car.

I am 17 now, and my childhood memories aren’t of my family, going to middle school, or dancing at the prom. They are of making my own arrangements on Craigslist to be sold for sex, and answering as many ads as possible for fear of beatings and ice water baths.

Craig, we write this letter so you will know from our personal experiences how Craigslist makes horrific acts like this so easy to carry out, and the men who arrange them very rich.

Craig, we know you oppose trafficking and exploitation. But right now, Craigslist is the choice of traffickers because it’s so well known and there are rarely consequences to using it for these illegal acts. We’ve heard that the Adult Services section of Craigslist brings in $36 million a year by charging for these ads. These profits are made at the expense of girls like us, who are lured, kidnapped, and forced to feed the increasing demand for child rape. New traffickers are putting up ads every day, because they know it’s less risky and more profitable to sell girls on Craigslist than to deal drugs.

Please, Craig, close down the Adult Services section. Saving even one child is worth it. It could have been us.

Sincerely,

AK & MC
Survivors of Craigslist Sex Trafficking

For access to the original article, click here 

PORNLAND, OREGON: CHILD PROSTITUTION IN PORTLAND, OREGON

By: Dan Rather

May 18, 2010

Child prostitution has become a national problem in this country. Yes, I know that you have trouble believing that. You don’t want to believe it, so you tend not to.

“Widespread sex trafficking in children?”, you may be saying to yourself. “Sure, it happens overseas in places like Thailand and Moldova, and while there may be some of it here there’s not that much of it in our country.”

Based on a months long investigation and some reportorial digging, I’m here to tell you that you are wrong. We all are. We’re in denial.

In covering news for more than 60 years, I’d like to think that few stories shock me anymore. But this is one of them. We ran across it late last year and the more we dug, the more disturbing it became.

Eighty-year-old men paying a premium to violate teenage girls, sometimes supplied by former drug gangs now into child sex trafficking big time? You’ve got to be kidding. Nope. That’s happening and a lot more along the same lines.

The business is booming. One of the worst areas for it runs along lines running roughly from Seattle to Portland, to San Francisco and Los Angeles, to Las Vegas. But no place in the country is immune.

To pick just one example among many, Portland, Oregon is without doubt one of the nation’s treasures. It has been voted one of the best places to live and work. But according to police, the city and its outlying communities has become a hub for the sexual exploitation of children. In a recent nationwide sting by Federal, state and local law enforcement agencies, Portland ranked second in the country for the number of rescued child prostitutes. And according to Doug Justus, the workhorse sergeant in charge of Portland’s tiny Vice Detail, many of the children caught up in this are middle class kids from the area.

The girls, sometimes as young as 12, often 13-16, are lured by a “front man” in his mid-to-late teens. He becomes her “boyfriend,” taking her to dinner, buying her nice things, sometimes meeting her parents. The girl eventually moves in with him. Then he says they need money to continue being together. First, she’s enticed to sleep with his friends to pay the rent. Soon she’s turning tricks for what police say is an endless supply of older men willing to pay top money for sex with very young girls. Other times convincing the young adolescent girls to sell themselves happens very quickly.

“It is an out-of-control problem. It’s unbelievable,” say Justus. “I’ve only done this vice-squad job for three years. I’ve been a cop for 29. If you had told me three years ago that a 14-year-old girl would go to a food court, meet a guy, and three hours later be selling herself, I’d a said, no frigging way. It happens every single day, every day.”

It is a very lucrative business, according to Justus. “An average pimp with one kid will make between $800 and $l,000 a day. That’s seven days a week, 30 days a month,” he said. And the pimps usually have a stable of young girls. No wonder so many criminals in the drug trade have turned to it which they have in droves. There’s less chance of being caught, less chance of being prosecuted if caught, lighter sentences — if any — if convicted.

There is, and has been for a long time, a national “War on Drugs.” There isn’t one on child prostitution and what amounts to a slave trade. Only feeble efforts at best.

Justus is frustrated that the Portland police have only two full-time vice investigators, compared to dozens of drug investigators.

“I’m not a politician. I’m just a cop. But if I’m a criminal and I got busted for drugs and I had a regional (drug) task force over here. And there’s another task force over there, and there, and then I know there’s only two vice investigators in the city of Portland, let me think. I think I’ll sell women because what are the chances of me being caught?”

The story we’ve prepared is not about prostitution per se. This is about child abuse. This is also about statutory rape and compelling prostitution among the young. All are difficult to prove. A major reason, according to police, is that it’s extremely difficult to convince a young girl to testify against their pimps and “johns”. They are afraid.

Sgt. Justus told us the story of a 16-year-old girl whom he convinced to “roll” on her pimp. But before she could testify against him she disappeared — and her pimp walked free. Justus has spent the last year looking for her and fears she’s dead.

How many children are being peddled on the streets of Portland and in other cities and towns, to say nothing of the Internet (Justus and other law enforcement people say Craigslist, along with other Internet sites, are major factors in the spread of child prostitution)? Hard to know about the real numbers. The most conservative estimates are that at least 100,000 American children are being victimized. Many experts say they believe it’s closer to 300,000 or more.

Whatever the number, it is a national outrage and disgrace. And the problem is growing, not diminishing.

Based on our investigation, we’ve prepared an hour long program on this problem. We’ve spoken with parents who never dreamed their young daughter would be caught up in underage prostitution but was. We’ve also interviewed several girls who lived to tell about their experiences of being sold. Tuesday night at 8pm Eastern time on HDNet, via satellite and cable.

For access to the original article, follow this link

JERSEY CITY PIMP SENTENCED FOR 18 YEARS  FOR HUMAN TRAFFICKING, PROSTITUTION RING

By: Jeff Pillets

A Jersey City pimp known as Prince received an 18-year prison sentence Wednesday for leading a prostitution ring built on human trafficking, sex slavery and illegal drug use, state officials said.

For more than two decades, Allen “Prince” Brown lured women into the sex trades with a mix of narcotics and coercion, authorities said. The houses of prostitution he established in Jersey City were “stables” of strung-out women, who were often locked into rooms and stripped of keys, cellphones and all forms of identity.

Brown, who in April pleaded guilty to racketeering and extortion, ran his operation with scores of women he had brought from Camden, Philadelphia, Atlantic City and other communities.

“Allen Brown exploited vulnerable young women, imprisoning them in a life of prostitution and narcotics addiction,” said Paula Dow, New Jersey’s attorney general. “Now it is his turn to face prison, where he will not be able to harm any more women.”

For access to the original article, follow this link 

BARNABA INSTITUTE LEADS PETITION AGAINST RAPPER PERFORMING SONG, WHICH GLORIFIES HUMAN TRAFFICKING AND SEXUAL EXPLOITATION OF WOMEN

The Palladium
261 Main St.
Worcester, MA 01608
Attn: Gina Migliozzi

May 14, 2010
General Manager

  
Dear Ms. Migliozzi,

It has been brought to our attention that Rapper Necro will be performing at The Palladium on May 21-
22. We ask that you prohibit Necro from performing his song titled “Human Trafficking King is White
Slavery II.”

On Wikipedia, Necro is quoted saying: “‘White Slavery’ was about the white slave trade. I was telling a
true story.” However, we strongly feel that the story Necro is telling does nothing to raise awareness
about sex trafficking and its horrors, but rather glorifies and promotes it.

‘White Slavery’ includes disturbing lyrics such as:
“Woman need to be loved, injected with needles and drugs subjected to torture and kidnapped they
need to succumb, it’s proven, I feed em dog food, they prefer human, make ‘em savagely beat each
other bloody for my amusement”

There is an estimated 200,000 American girls at risk of sex trafficking in the United States every year.
The National Center for Missing and Exploited Children estimates that the average age of entry into
prostitution in the US is ages 11-14. The trafficking of youth and young women in our country is a
brutal reality that should not be glorified or made light of. The recent trafficking charge against the
pimp who sold a 16 year-old to Lawrence Taylor is a prime example of this.

While Necro is protected under Free Speech for writing this song, we ask that you prohibit Necro from
performing “White Slavery” or any other song that glorifies violence against women, in their
performance this May. We also urge you to become a corporate leader by prohibiting glorification of
violence against women in all performances at your venue.

 Thank you for your time and consideration into this matter.

 Sincerely,

 Frank N. Barnaba, President, The Barnaba Institute

Alexis Taylor Litos, Executive Director, The Barnaba InstituteCarol Smolenski, Executive Director, ECPAT-USA
Donna M. Hughes, Professor & Carlson Endowed Chair in Women’s Studies, University of RhodeIsland
Melanie Shapiro, Co-Founder, Citizens Against Trafficking
Claudia Barlow, Board Chair, MiraMed
Kristyn Komarnicki, Editor, PRISM Magazine, The Sider Center on Ministry and Public Policy
Michelle Wallace, Finding Cadence
Robert P. George, McCormick Professor of Jurisprudence and Director of James Madison Program
in Americal Ideals and Institutions, Princeton University
Sonya Poydras, Service Coordinator – Transitional School Services, Perspectives Corporation
Jennifer Thompson, Producer, Vinegar Hill Picture Works
Jeffrey J. Barrows, D.O., M.A (Bioethics) Health Consultant, Human Trafficking, Founder & Executive
Director, Gracehaven
Eleanor McNally
Chong Kim, Survivor of human trafficking/child sex exploitation
Virginia Holmstrom, Executive Director, American Baptist Women’s Ministries
Katherine Green, Media Spokesperson, Trafficking Hope
Margaret Brooks, Chair and Professor of Economics, Bridgewater State College
Susan G. Maiocchi, American Baptist Women’s Ministries of Rhode Island
Linda Caswell, Founder, All Things New, Inc.
Peggy Sakow, Temple Committee Against Human Trafficking, Montreal, Quebec
Janelle Potts, Director of the New Community Program, The Salvation Army of Easton Corps
Deena Graves, Executive Director, Traffick911
Change.org petition letter with over 520 signatures as of 12pm, 5/14/10
(www.change.org/actions/view/insist_that_the_palladium_prohibit_necro_from_playing_human_trafficking_song)

SURVIVOR IMPACT STATEMENT

I’m a survivor of human trafficking and exploitation. I have experienced
the harm that these forms of violence inflict on those of us who have been sexually exploited. I was
trafficked in the mid 90’s from Dallas, TX to NV and eventually escaped in the late 90’s. To this day, I
am still haunted by flashbacks regarding certain smells, as well as cold floors which numbed my bare
feet. Many times, panic ensues when I find myself in a line of women; it resurrects the nightmares of
all the humiliating inspection line ups I had to endure. We were constantly paraded before a potential
client; their lustful eyes examining and perusing us before we became final choices for each predatory
customer. Since my ethnicity was Korean, a prejudice “John” demanded that I dress as a Japanese
prostitute. My vulnerability was made complete when I was taught to speak broken English, fulfilling
the racist image of my exoticism. Although, I was one of the few that spoke and understood English,
my required masquerade as a foreigner brought more money to the Trafficker through harboring of
immigrants.

Most of us were incarcerated in basements, underneath casinos and in abandoned warehouses.
Our desperate cries for help were silenced by the walls, which separated us from the rest of the world.
The Trafficker, knowing full well that I was an American, forced me to work both the Escort and the
Trafficking. If I refused or didn’t comply, I was taken underground and sentenced to various methods
of punishment. After hours of interrogation, I was giving permission to return to do what I did best;
being a slave and deluding myself into thinking that this was my life.

I was involved in trafficking for more than six month to two years. I compare that time to being
held hostage in a timeless existence where my mind engaged itself in disassociation with my soul. This
mental state was the only way in which I could keep any sanity. Repeatedly, I witnessed beating, rape
and torture of innocent women and girls. At times, my tears of hopelessness would drown me into a
pathos of my own execution. Most of the time we were transported by warehouse trucks or vans with
drivers who were not naïve to our purpose, and well informed of our identity. After months of these
transports for trafficking our self-images had been reduced to cattle being loaded on a cattle car.
Money were exchanged on these cross-country trips which kept us silent and our existence a secret.
There were times that the warehouse truck would stop, the tail gate door forced opened, and then a
few of us were summoned out.

As you can see these are a few examples of the tortures we had to go through; we don’t need
humiliating lyrics to remind us of the pain. Please, I ask as a survivor of Modern Day slavery do not
allow Necro to play such music at the Palladium. I understand the “freedom of speech”, but what
about my speech? What about the children who are used for slavery, where children are starved to
death and their parts to be sold across country? What about the silent victims that weren’t able to
make it out alive? I’m speaking on behalf of all the victims and survivors past and present, will you
hear our voices too?

 Update: A petition has also been drafted to remove this album from Best Buy and other retail chains.

TEEN SOLD AS SEX SLAVE ON CRAIGSLIST: EXPERTS SAY 100,000 CHILDREN IN THE U.S. ARE SOLD FOR SEX EVERYDAY

By: KTLA News

 May 11, 2010

But it was at a neighborhood Safeway store in northern California where the sex slave problem became a terrible reality for one family. In 2008 Vicki Zito’s daughter was abducted there, then forced into unthinkable acts.

Vicki’s daughter was a 17-year old high school senior at the time, but developmentally disabled. She had asked her mom if she could go down to the store with a friend.

“And so we said yeah, okay, go grab a soda,” Vicki recalls. “How innocent is that? And it’s the one decision that I’ll regret for the rest of my life,” Vicki says, tears welling up in her eyes.

Vicki’s daughter was abducted by a man who sold her for sex by posting ads for ‘erotic services’ on the web site Craigslist. She was enslaved for seven days in motels around the Bay Area.

At home, Vicki prayed. “Once the sun went down it was unbearable,” Vicki says, sobbing quietly. “I’m sorry, but it was. It was horrible. I would just stand at the window, watching, waiting, wanting so badly for her to come home.”

After a week, Vicki got a late-night call from authorities. “They told me they’d found my daughter. And that she was alive. And in that brief moment of , ‘Oh my god my daughter’s alive, she’s okay,’ it was followed with ‘But I’m sorry to tell you… Are you sitting down?’”

Authorities told Vicki that her daughter had been sold for sex, over and over again.

“It was more than I could bear,” Vicki says. “That’s when I learned about sex trafficking, what it was, and what it meant that my daughter had been enduring for the past seven days.”

Ultimately her abductor, 25 year-old Rishi Sanwal, was arrested and convicted. He’s serving a 12 year sentence for sex trafficking.

About Sanwal, Zito says, “I don’t waste a lot of time on him. Do I believe in hell? Yes I believe in hell. Do I hope some day he burns in it? That’s harsh…but yes. Because he can do his time in prison, but he’ll never be able to undo what he did to my daughter.”

Vicki also has a few choice words for Craigslist, the web site that posted Sanwal’s ads for ‘erotic services.’

“Pull the plug. Now. Pull the plug,” Zito says. “Do you have to have the erotic section of your web site to be profitable? Or in order to stay in business? Because if that’s what it takes for you to stay in business? You shouldn’t be in business.”

Zito thinks some major changes need to be made regarding online postings. “It’s absolutely unacceptable that you have a spot on your web site where somebody can go, and at the click of a button, buy another human being for sex.”

The Zito family’s story has come to the attention of California Against Slavery, a non-profit group actively lobbying to strengthen anti-sex slave laws in California. Its executive director Daphne Phung says the Zitos’ family tragedy serves as a cautionary tale.

“The Zitos’ story shows that no child is safe from human trafficking, that it can happen to any of us,” Phung says. “Vicki is a caring mom, her daughter comes from a caring family, and it happened to them,” Phung points out. “No child is safe from human trafficking.”

And according to Phung, the problem is getting worse across the country. “Now, they’re going down in age from 18, 16, 14, now we have girls started being recruited as prostitutes at the age of 11, 12 13.”

As a result, today Vicki Zito is on a mission to speak out so that no other family will have to endure the horror that her family, and her daughter, have faced.

“The reason I speak out is that 95 percent of the girls that are victims of this crime, exactly like my daughter was, have no home, no mom, no family, nobody that’s looking for them,” Zito says.

“If just one other life is spared, if just one other life is able to heal and recover and move on from this, then all of my efforts will be worth it.”

For more about the efforts of California Against Slavery to strengthen California’s anti-human trafficking laws, and its signature-gathering petition efforts for a statewide ballot initiative, go to http://www.californiaagainstslavery.org/.

Copyright © 2010, KTLA-TV, Los Angeles

  For access to the original article, follow the link 

NEW YORK TIMES REPORTS, “SEX ADS SEEN ADDING REVENUE TO CRAIGSLIST”

By: Brad Stone  

April 25, 2010

Craigslist, one of the most popular Web sites in the United States, is on track to increase its revenue 22 percent this year, largely from its controversial sex advertisements. That financial success is reviving scrutiny from law-enforcement officials who say the ads are still being used for illegal ends.

The ads, many of which blatantly advertise prostitution, are expected to bring $36 million this year, according to a new projection of Craigslist’s income. That is three times the revenue in last year’s projection.

Law-enforcement officials have been fighting a mostly losing battle to get Craigslist to rein in the sex ads. At the same time, officials of organizations that oppose human trafficking say the site remains the biggest online hub for selling women against their will.

Last week, in the latest example, the Federal Bureau of Investigation arrested 14 members of the Gambino crime family on charges of, among other things, selling the sexual services of girls ages 15 to 19 on Craigslist.

The company that provided the revenue projection, the Advanced Interactive Media Group, has been preparing such analyses since 2003. Followers of Craigslist consider AIM’s work to be the most comprehensive estimates of the fiercely private company’s finances. The estimate was calculated based on the number of sex ads counted on Craigslist over the month of February and the fees for posting such ads — $10 initially and $5 for repeat postings.

James Buckmaster, Craigslist’s chief executive, said in an e-mail message that the site would not confirm the figures because it is private and does not discuss its finances. Of the sex ads, he wrote, “Of the thousands of U.S. venues that carry adult service ads, including venues operated by some of the largest and best known companies in the U.S., Craigslist has done the best and most responsible job of combating child exploitation and human trafficking.”

Mr. Buckmaster was referring to alternative newspapers, phone directories and sex Web sites that carry ads for prostitution, although authorities say that Craigslist is the largest place for such ads.

Craigslist, based in San Francisco, had seemed to put the conflict over its sex ads to rest. Attorneys general in 40 states, including New Jersey, Illinois and Connecticut, investigated the company for facilitating criminal activity, after a wave of publicity about prostitution and violent crimes linked to the site.

Although Craigslist has continually argued that it is legally protected by the Communications Decency Act against liability for what its users post — an analysis that judges and legal experts generally agree with — it promised last May to begin manually monitoring these posts for illegal activity.

But it also decided to stop committing to donate the profits from sex ads to charity, saying it would make no further comment on how that money would be used.

In a private letter sent to Craigslist’s lawyer on Thursday, Richard Blumenthal, attorney general of Connecticut, complained about the continued presence of prostitution ads on the site and asked what additional steps Craigslist was taking to keep such solicitations off the site.

He also asked the company to reveal precisely how much money those ads generate, and criticized the company’s announcement last May that it would no longer commit to donate those profits to charity.

“I believe Craigslist acted irresponsibly when it unilaterally decided to keep the profits from these posts,” Mr. Blumenthal wrote in the letter, a copy of which was obtained by The New York Times.

In the e-mail message, Mr. Buckmaster said, “Misuse of Craigslist for criminal purposes is utterly unacceptable, and Craigslist will continue to work with its partners in law enforcement and at nongovernmental organizations until it is eliminated.”

He declined to say whether the company was continuing to donate revenue from sex ads to charity, but he said the company was continuing to develop its charitable initiatives.

The company has two charitable organizations; one, the nine-year-old Craigslist Foundation, which received $648,000 in contributions in 2008, according to public documents, does not make any donations. It “connects people and organizations to the resources they need to strengthen communities,” according to its Web site.

There is also a newer organization, the Craigslist Charitable Fund, which was capitalized in 2008 with $2.7 million by Craigslist, according to public documents. But little else is known about it, and Mr. Buckmaster declined to comment further on the organization or say whether say whether that was the money from the sex ads.

Meanwhile, staff members for Illinois’s attorney general, Lisa Madigan, have counted more than 200,000 sex ads since late 2008 posted to Craigslist in Chicago alone — which they estimate have generated $1.7 million for the company. Officials in Illinois and Connecticut, as well as South Carolina, are leading the effort to get the site to improve its monitoring of sex ads.

Cara Smith, Ms. Madigan’s deputy chief of staff, said Craigslist’s manual review of the ads had had a minimal impact. “Certainly the manual monitoring has tempered the photos posted along with the ads, but I think there’s no question that the site continues to facilitate prostitution,” she said.

The AIM Group, which sells research on the advertising market to newspapers and Web sites, conducts its annual Craigslist study by tabulating all the posts to Craigslist in 39 major United States cities over a 30-day period, and then extrapolating to reach a final revenue figure.

This year, the study showed Craigslist on track to bring in $122 million in 2010, a 22 percent increase over its projected revenue last year. Though the site is largely free, it does charge people to post job listings in 19 major United States cities, and real estate listings in New York City, in addition to sex listings in all 438 markets in the United States. Revenue in those other categories remained largely unchanged since last year, according to AIM.

The increase in revenue from sex ads to $36.3 million for the year, according to AIM, was largely caused by Craigslist’s decision last May to double the rate for these ads in all of its American markets to $10.

The windfall from sex ads has touched a raw nerve with groups that oppose human trafficking, who are typically heated in their discussion of the company.

“Craigslist has not given any indication that they are outraged and disturbed that their site is the primary way children are bought in the country,” said Rachel Lloyd, executive director of Girls Educational and Mentoring Services, which provides assistance to sexually exploited and trafficked women. “All they have done is made cosmetic changes.”

Craigslist’s reliance on the Communications Decency Act has also angered law-enforcement officials, who complain that the law could not have been drafted with this particular example in mind. But the company has repeatedly won rulings in cases brought against it, including one in 2008 over discriminatory housing ads. A federal appeals court said Craigslist was an online service provider, not a publisher, and so was protected by federal law.

Questions about where that revenue is going are sure to arise from this latest financial analysis of Craigslist. In an accompanying report, the AIM Group estimated Craigslist’s expenses at under $50 million, though it acknowledged that this particular calculation involved “educated guesses.” The analysis took into account estimates of salaries, server and bandwidth costs, and the lawyer fees associated with Craigslist’s continuing legal battle with a minority shareholder, eBay.

Even if the numbers are slightly off, that leaves a lot of room for big profits. Mr. Buckmaster and Mr. Newmark own a majority of the company’s shares and by all accounts do not live flashy lifestyles.

This article has been revised to reflect the following correction:

Correction: May 3, 2010

An article last Monday about a controversy surrounding sex ads on Craigslist, the online classified ad company, misstated the financing source of a new charitable initiative at the company and also rendered incorrectly part of its name. The new charity is the Craigslist Charitable Fund (not Trust), and it was started in 2008 with a $2.7 million contribution from Craigslist, not from the company’s founder, Craig Newmark, and chief executive, James Buckmaster. (Mr. Newmark and Mr. Buckmaster, the two largest shareholders in Craigslist, are the two directors of the charity.)

For access to the original article follow this link 

SELLING CHILDREN IN AMERICA PART II

By: Conchita Sarnoff

February 4, 2010

At long last a step in the right direction! With the heart wrenching crisis in Haiti reaching its apex and human atrocities being plastered across every television screen and front page daily, abducting those vulnerable and defenseless Haitian children was a very dumb idea. Yet again, maybe not… And not for the reasons you think.

After four years of grueling investigative research at great personal cost I am now just beginning to see the light. Across movie screens, television sets, new and traditional media the issue of sex slavery or child trafficking as it is most commonly referred to, is finally out in the open and beginning to pick up speed. Most recently, the U.S. Congress agreed to address the issue.

Last week during an off the record meeting at The Hill, I was assured that child trafficking in America is a subject worthy of an audience. The downside of course is that politically it is very much a hot potato with obvious long-term repercussions for anyone who takes it on.

Until our government is well and ready to honestly tackle the issues of: immigration, child pornography on the Internet, Internet security, national security, child prostitution, homeland and border patrol, Mexican drug cartels, money laundering, law enforcement, the administration of T and U Visas, training and recruiting, education and everything in between, Congress cannot have a transparent dialogue that will lead to the creation of valuable laws that protect, prevent, and stringently prosecute. Today there exist only two. “The Mann Act of 1910″ and the “Trafficking Victims Protection Act” (TVPA) of 2000. Both Acts in need of serious revision.

The Miami Herald finally exposed only a week ago, the story of a 2008 raid where agents arrested a ring of child traffickers operating out of a tony West Palm Beach neighborhood. Why did it take so long? Maybe it was economics driven by fear. The thought of real estate prices plummeting even further south in the area probably hit the panic button at the local government level.

For over a year I have been calling Maria Villafana’s office the Assistant U.S. Attorney, to give her inside information about a number of active “stash houses” in the area (brothels where they prostitute trafficked children). No response. I had acquired this information while interviewing one of the convicted traffickers arrested during that raid. He wants to negotiate his sentence and was ready to sing.

A few weeks after Ms. Villafana did not return my calls I turned the list over to an undercover agent working on a similar case. Luckily, at the insistence of my friend and colleague Renee Morrison, The Palm Beach Post finally broke the story.

At school I was taught that “every cloud has a silver lining”. Today, I’m praying that on the backs of those most unfortunate Haitian children the light might have begun to shine. It is time for our Government to move forward and help right this terrible wrong. Because in the long run the children who are trafficked, the government who stays silent and the predators who abuse the children will all pay the same price.

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