Sex Trafficking Case Study

Slavery generates $150 billion for traffickers each year. 78% of slavery victims today are in labor slavery. 22% of slavery victims today are in sex slavery. With three interstates passing through our state, Oklahoma has unknowingly become a primary trade route for transporting human sexual trafficking victims across the country. We’ve also become an unwanted destination for the business itself – and the business of sexual trafficking here is growing. In March 2012, police busted a sex trafficking ring in Tulsa, OK where motel rooms and apartments were used for the purpose of selling underage girls and young women for sex. Customers were given poker chips in exchange for cash. The chips were then given used as a way of silently notifying the
California leads in having the highest volume of sex trafficking. According to a study done in 2015, the top 20 highest volume cities include: Houston, El Paso, Los Angeles, Atlanta, Chicago, Charlotte, Miami, Las Vegas, New York, Long Island, New Orleans, Washington D.C., Philadelphia, Phoenix, Richmond, San Diego, San Francisco, St. Louis, Seattle, and Tampa. A 2009 podcast, “Inside the FBI,” details the account of a U.S. trafficking case. In it Neal Schiff interviews FBI Special Agent Tricia Whitehill. She was involved in a case where multiple members of the Vasquez-Valenzuela family were indicted for conspiracy, sex trafficking, and various immigrant offenses. The investigation all started in 2006 when the family’s taxi driver called in a tip to CAST, the Coalition to Abolish Slavery and Trafficking. He remained a source throughout the investigation. The family had brought in girls in their teens and early twenties from Guatemala to the U.S. The family targeted poor and uneducated girls, some of whom did not know their birthdays. The Vasquez-Valenzuela family lured the girls back to the U.S. by promising them jobs in the jewelry and restaurant industries. Once the girls were successfully smuggled, they were told they owed a debt that had to be paid by prostitution. If the girls didn’t say yes, they were threatened with violence and the death of their families. After the arrests of eight out of the nine offenders, one family member was left unaccounted for and went on the run. She was finally found hiding through the help of the general public. The leader of the family received the toughest sentence of 40 years in prison. While this case in which the traffickers were successfully apprehended, in many more instances this is not the case, even in the U.S. Trafficking in Oklahoma is a felony that carries a minimum of five years in prison if the