CHICAGO (AP) — Girls as young as 12 were lured into
prostitution — coerced with brutal beatings and death threats — as part of a
coordinated sex trafficking operation by Chicago gang members, authorities
alleged Wednesday in announcing a rare undercover investigation that relied on
wire taps.
The ongoing 18-month probe was conducted under
provisions of the Illinois Safe Children's Act, which was signed into law last
year. It allows wire taps and treats minors arrested for prostitution as
victims instead of criminals. While Illinois is not the first to have such
legislation, it is among the first states to rely on wire taps in a sex
trafficking investigation.
Nine people, all from the Chicago area, were
charged in the investigation and dozens of girls and young women have been
taken off the streets and placed with social service agencies, said Cook County
State's Attorney Anita Alvarez.
"This is a business for them," she said.
"It's a crisis that occurs in our very city. It's often hidden in plain
sight."
According to authorities, the girls and young women
were recruited from mostly public places — outside schools, from El trains or
malls — and forced to work. They were threatened with death or harm to their
families. One woman was cut on her face with a broken bottle so she would
become disfigured and others were forced into car trunks and driven around for
extended periods of time in a torture process called "trunking."
"It pulls at your heartstrings when such young
girls are exploited in such a fashion," said Chicago Police Superintendent
Garry McCarthy, whose agency cooperated on the investigation.
The alleged gang members — all charged with
involuntary sexual servitude of a minor, among other things — preyed on girls
and women who came from poverty, broken homes or had drug abuse problems,
authorities said. They used the streets and the Internet to set up the
transactions, with one girl earning up to $3,000 a day for the operation. Gang
members would sell the girls to other gangs — some of them loosely connected —
sometimes for a mere $100, Alvarez said.
"These girls make money, but they don't see
it," Alvarez said.
The operation, dubbed "Little Girl Lost,"
largely took place on the city's west and south sides. In street level
operations, Chicago police and Cook County Sheriff's Police arrested more than
50 customers and seized nearly 40 vehicles in the investigation.
Authorities used the court-ordered wire taps as
they would in drug trafficking cases: to listen in on cell and landline phone
conversations. Several conversations between the alleged gang members — laced
with profanity and detailed plans for beatings — are transcribed in court
documents.
Around two dozen states have laws on the books that
allow wire-taps in sex-trafficking cases, but it's unclear how many states have
used them, said Mary Ellison, a director of policy for the Polaris Project, a
Washington, D.C.-based non-profit group.
"It's a newer practice to use wire-tapping
laws," she said. "It's a very effective tool and we'd like to see it
more."
For one, it means that authorities don't have to
rely on the testimony of prostitutions against their pimps, Alvarez said. She
anticipated more arrests over the coming months.
At least 16,000 girls and women are involved in
Chicago's commercial sex trade on any given day, according to federal
authorities and experts.
Illinois' new law, which also increases penalties
for those charged and allows for seizure of vehicles, essentially
decriminalizes prostitution for minors, by literally removing "juvenile
prostitutes" from the criminal code. Minor girls are placed in child
protective services instead of the criminal system. A handful of states have
similar laws advocating for victims including New York, Washington and
Minnesota.
Authorities added, though, that there have been
some success stories because of the operation.
The girls recovered from the investigation — their
names weren't released publicly — have been getting counseling and several have
even been able to graduate, some of them from the eighth grade.
Copyright
2011 The Associated Press.
