sex slavery bust 8/2006

Experts: Sex slaves are the girls next door
8/20/2006, 12:00 p.m. ET
By LARRY NEUMEISTER
The Associated Press

NEW YORK (AP) — Raids conducted last week on 20 Northeast brothels uncovered more than 70 suspected sex slaves, exposing a long-ignored national problem found in towns large and small, with immigrants and U.S. citizens alike as victims, experts say.

"It's a very overwhelming subject for a lot of people to recognize that there is slavery at this time in our country," said Carole Angel, staff attorney with the Immigrant Women Program of the women's rights advocacy group Legal Momentum in Washington. "It's hard for us as humans to contemplate what this means."

Jolene Smith, executive director of Free The Slaves, a Washington-based organization dedicated to ending slavery worldwide, agreed that the idea of 21st century slavery was foreign to most people.

Americans are conditioned to believe that slavery was a thing of the past," Smith said. "We have to reeducate ourselves about this reality."

According to Angel, victims such as prostitutes are often handcuffed and hauled off along with the traffickers who coerced them into the sex trade.

That was not the case Tuesday when federal and local law enforcement raided brothels disguised as massage parlors, health spas and acupuncture clinics in six states and Washington D.C., arresting 31 people on trafficking charges.

They took more than 70 sex workers to undisclosed locations for questioning, and to provide basic services such as health care and food. Authorities said it might take weeks to get the Korean immigrants to trust them enough to discuss their ordeal.

"Human traffickers profit by turning dreams into nightmares," said Michael Garcia, U.S. attorney in Manhattan, where the majority of the traffickers face prosecution. "These women sought a better life in America and found instead forced prostitution and misery."

Yet Angel said the raids should not give the impression that trafficking is limited to immigrants, who are often coaxed to come to America for legitimate jobs only to be forced to work in brothels, sweatshops and restaurants to pay off debts of up to $30,000 to their traffickers.

"There are so many faces on this," she said. "It happens in rural communities, big cities. It%