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Human trafficking in the form of sex slaves and unpaid workers is now recognized as a booming crime element in the Washington area.
Just in the past few months:
» A D.C. pimp pleaded guilty to human trafficking charges after selling his 12-year-old foster daughter for sex.
» In Montgomery County, a half-dozen pimps were arrested under Maryland's human trafficking statutes.
» Two men were arrested under the same law in Laurel after police determined they were prostituting a teenage girl and other women.
» A Maryland restaurant owner admitted to harboring and underpaying a dozen illegal immigrant workers.
New laws in Maryland and the District, along with federal prosecutions in both jurisdictions, have helped officials better understand the enormous scope of the crime in the Washington region.
But Virginia Rep. Frank Wolf and several Virginia activists are worried that without quick action, the commonwealth will fall behind.
"The fact that Maryland and D.C. are doing so well with their [human trafficking] task forces has made greater opportunity for human trafficking to come to Virginia," Wolf, R-Va., told The Washington Examiner.
Virginia has no state law against human trafficking, and its task force on the subject has been coordinated by community activist Jessica Johnson, not the federal government.
"Does this mean human trafficking doesn't happen in Virginia?" said Lisa Lynn Chapman, program coordinator for Fauquier Domestic Violence Services and a Virginia Human Trafficking Task Force member. "No, but it does mean we don't have documentation of people being trafficked in Virginia."
Federal prosecutors have the option of applying a federal statute to sex and labor trafficking cases. The problem, Johnson said, is that the U.S. Attorney's Office in Alexandria hasn't charged pimps and labor exploiters with human trafficking.
Earlier this year, a pimp who sold a 16-year-old girl for sex from Woodbridge hotel rooms was arrested on a variety of sex trafficking charges, but none of them was under the federal human trafficking law passed in 2000. Instead, the charges he pleaded guilty to were from a 100-year-old law forbidding the movement of children across state lines for sex. According to court documents, Marc Brickhouse beat his teenage prostitute when she asked to go home.
But in Maryland, a jury convicted Lloyd Mack Royal III of sex trafficking by force, fraud and coercion in March after learning how Royal beat and threatened minor girls into prostitution. The charge is one of several from the federal human trafficking statute.
Last week, activists expressed outrage that World Bank economist Anne Bakilana wasn't charged with human trafficking after admitting to not paying her domestic servant prevailing wages and threatening the servant with deportation if she quit her Falls Church job.
Bakilana has agreed to pay the servant $41,000 in back wages as part of her plea agreement, in which she admitted to lying to the FBI during the course of its investigation.
"Without human trafficking prosecutions, how can we educate the public about the existence of human trafficking in Virginia and how do we deter others from doing the same thing?" Johnson said.
Peter Carr, a spokesman for the U.S. Attorney's Office in Alexandria, said a Department of Justice unit that only works on human trafficking cases assisted the U.S. Attorney's Office in the Bakilana case. They jointly chose not to pursue trafficking charges.
Carr added that the office follows the federal principles of prosecution, which require "particular attention" to ensuring "fair and effective" prosecution.
Read more at the Washington Examiner: http://www.washingtonexaminer.com/local/Human-trafficking-booming-in-Washington-area-97183679.html#ixzz0sGlCMM1N
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