Three Things to Know About Human Trafficking

Photo Courtesy of FBI

Masses of people are flooding in and out Cleveland this summer with the NBA championship and the Republic National Convention. The flocks of people bring excitement but also the concern that there could be human sex traffickers and victims amidst the bustle. To raise awareness, the Cleveland VAMC Social Work Professional Development Committee held Not For Sale: Probing the Depths of Human Trafficking symposium June 24. Amongst the speakers were Brian Vigneaux, former FBI agent and senior investigator with Cuyahoga Country Prosecutor's Office, and Theresa Flores, a local human trafficking survivor and founder of Save Our Adolescents from Prostitution (S.O.A.P.).  Here are three things you should know about human trafficking.

1. Human trafficking takes places everywhere — even suburban neighborhoods and schools.

“I was trafficked out of my own suburban home for years,” Flores recalls. After being raped by a classmate and manipulated by his older brothers, she was forced into sex trafficking every night. After her parents fell asleep, the traffickers would take her from her relatively safe neighborhood and return her in the morning. “If my parents would have checked my bed at night, I wouldn’t be where I am today,” she explains.  The traffickers began taking her out of school during the day but no one noticed the warning signs. “I was exhausted from sleeping two hours each night and my grades dropped to C’s, D’s and F’s,” she remembers. All she needed was an adult to see the red flags, but no one did.

2. Traffickers do not have to be strangers.

Often times disguised as boyfriends, traffickers lure in victims through romantic connections and flattery.  Flores was conned into human trafficking by her freshman-year crush. “All it took was three words from him, ‘I like you,’ ” Flores states. The prevalence of social media in younger generations today has made it increasingly easier for traffickers to target young girls today by flirting with them online. “Kids have so many friends on social media, they assume, ‘Oh, I must know him,” she explains.

3. Most prostitutes are victims.

On backpage.com, local prostitutes post daily advertisements to offer their services, but these girls are often the victims of human sex trafficking. “Pimps want to give the impression that the girls are acting independently, but I personally have never seen a case where a girl is just earning her way through college,” Vigneaux says. In reality, these young women, most of whom are underage, are compelled by traffickers to use prostitution to avoid abuse, protect their family or feed a drug addiction. “It’s a constant manipulation, and they never get the money” Vigneaux adds.

CIFF: '1971' Offers Inside Look at Historic Heist

1971 uses filmed re-enactments to help tell the tale (photo courtesy of 1971).

Living in a time when a government contractor can steal 1.7 million documents from a computer and fly to Hong Kong with them, what happened in Media, Pennsylvania, on March 8, 1971, shows just how different our world has become in the past 44 years. 

As Muhammad Ali and Joe Frazier squared off for the "Fight of the Century" on that night in 1971, a crew of eight people broke into a small, suburban Philadelphia FBI office and made off with every document stored there. The file-folder-in-suitcase heist seems startlingly analog in these days of digital data. Even more surprising is how what started as an act of government disruption ended up revealing evidence of the FBI's far-reaching practices of spying on and intimidating U.S. citizens. 

Those who broke into the building that night were never caught and their identities remained a mystery for more than four decades. Johanna Hamilton's film 1971, a documentary that includes re-enactments and news footage from the time, tells the story with efficiency and style. It is fascinating not only because of how unbelievable this corner of U.S. history seems today, but because — for the first time — those responsible for the break-in step out from the shadows to tell what happened in their own words. 

The film works as both a dissection of a heist and a portrait of the people behind it. When you find out who they are and the reasons why they risked so much, the story becomes all the more engaging. 

1971 screens again at 12:20 p.m. on March 20 at Tower City Cinemas and at 2:15 p.m. on March 21 at the Akron Art Museum. For more information and a full Cleveland International Film Festival schedule, visit clevelandfilm.org.

FBI raids Cuyahoga County offices

The FBI and IRS raided the offices of county commissioner Jimmy Dimora, county auditor Frank Russo and county engineer Robert Klaiber Jr. this morning as part of what an FBI spokesperson called a "long-term investigation" of "public corruption."

Federal agents conducted raids on the third and fourth floors of the county administration building, where the county commissioners, administrator, and auditor offices are located. Dimora's offices were searched, according to a county staffer. Agents also searched Russo's first floor offices. Not raided were the offices of the two other county commissioners, Peter Lawson Jones and Tim Hagan, according to their staff.

FBI agents were also searching the engineer's office on the Superior Viaduct.

Scott Wilson of the FBI, on the scene at the county building, would not say how long the investigation has been going on. However, IRS spokesperson Phil Okonek said the statute of limitations for tax evasion is 6 years.

The agents served at least 10 search warrants, also raiding businesses and residences, including Dimora's home, according to cleveland.com.

—Erick Trickey and Andy Netzel

(Caption: An FBI agent stands guard inside county auditor Frank Russo's office on the first floor of the county building this morning.)

For more about recent county government controversies, see Michael D. Roberts' July My Town, "Rage Machine," and Erick Trickey's June report on the Ameritrust Tower, "Tower Play."