It’s hard to get our minds around the tumble of horrifying details that emerged in Sharon Grigsby’s recent column about federal agents rescuing a 13-year-old girl being sold for sex in an Irving hotel.
First, the fact that this child was being held captive, under threat of her life, and forced into prositution in the shadow of DFW Airport is yet another jolt that the plague of human sex trafficking is pervasive, is happening all around us and is targeting children. We knew that, of course, but the reminder from the case Grigsby reported is stark and terrifying.
Second, despite the heroic and crucial law enforcement work that led to the shutdown of backpage.com, we still have to deal with websites devoted to selling children and adults.
In this case, the site used to traffick this child was something called cityxguide.com, which Grigsby notes allowed “‘promoters’ — more accurately, pimps and brothels — to post and pay for prostitution ads, which generally include photos of women partially or fully nude, along with intimate physical descriptions, a list of graphic sexual services and contact information.”
Even as that is deeply discouraging, there were also some important areas of hope in this story.
First, U.S. Attorney Erin Nealy Cox didn’t stop at indicting the men trafficking this child. She
went after Wilhan Martono, the site’s owner in a 28-count indictment.
It’s critical to harshly prosecute traffickers and those who facilitate trafficking because this evil is, in many ways, an economic crime that can be diminished by making the cost of getting caught too high.
Here’s another piece of very important news that we don’t want to be overlooked.
Nealy Cox made it clear that this young woman may be able to get restitution from Martono when this case is over and assuming he is convicted. There is no making up for the harm inflicted on her, but subjecting traffickers to financial restitution claims is an important tool in this fight. If traffickers come to realize they’ll be hounded to the ends of the earth by lawsuits laying claim to the assets they amassed from their crimes, they may just start to conclude that the potential cost of this crime is far larger than they previously bargained for.
Unfortunately, cash restitution is not offered enough to the victims of trafficking, who are exploited and then left broken and destitute when the trafficker has no more use for them. But we know that trafficking is lucrative, so it may also be a viable avenue to pursue these criminals.
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In Martono’s indictment, prosecutors detailed eight checking accounts and told the judge he has accumulated more than $21 million in illegal proceeds since 2018.
Should he be found guilty, we hope that money goes to the women and children his site exploited.
We hope restitution becomes common in cases like this. Even low-level traffickers can make enormous amounts of money. And with so many other crimes, going after the money is a key piece to rolling up criminal enterprise.
What’s more, trafficking victims are often fearful of cooperating with law enforcement, making prosecution more difficult. There are many complex reasons for that, from psychological trauma to emotional bonds victims have to their trafficker to fear of what will happen to them outside of the terrible life they are trapped in. If restitution were more common, more victims might be encouraged to turn on their traffickers.
The more often that happens, the more dangerous trafficking will become as a profession and the more, we pray, it will begin to be eradicated.
If Martono’s case is a bellwether for greater restitution to victims, it may mark the only good thing to come from the existence of his terrible, exploitative website.
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July 06, 2020 at 02:01PM
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A 13-year-old girl was sold for sex in Irving. She deserves her trafficker's money - The Dallas Morning News
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