Louisiana child sex traffic worse than most admit

With support from the Tangipahoa Parish Sheriff’s Office, St. Tammany Parish Sheriff’s Office, Covington Police Department, Slidell Police Department, New Orleans Police Department, Orleans Parish Sheriff’s Office, Jefferson Parish Sheriff’s Office, Louisiana State Police, the Louisiana Department of Child and Family Services, and the Federal Bureau of Investigation, a task force operation headed by the United States Marshal Service last month resulted in the arrest of 18 alleged human traffickers and saw fourteen missing children return home to their families.

However, the problem of sex and labor traffic in Louisiana is far greater than most realize or are willing to admit.

Deputy U.S. Marshal Brian W. Fair told reporters their agency’s Missing Child Unit (MCU) routinely uncovers allegations of human sex trafficking of minors. The MCU works with the better-known operations unit, arresting violent fugitives and ensuring sex offenders comply with registration requirements.

“The recovery of these children is substantial. It shows the body of work this group does, on top of the daily work our U.S. Marshals task force is doing,” Fair said. “Kids go missing all the time. We think the mission is important.”

The 2021 task force operation launched on August 1 and concluded on September 30. Among the cases described by U.S. Marshals on October 19, investigators said they rescued a Louisiana teenager headed to Las Vegas hoping to rendezvous with an older man she met online. Police found her in Phoenix, Arizona. Investigators also located a 17-year-old girl and boy in Columbia, Mississippi, runaways from a group home.

“This was another example of what continuing law enforcement teamwork can accomplish,” U.S. Marshal Scott Illing told reporters in New Orleans this week. “We accomplished much of this work while dealing with the aftermath of Hurricane Ida in the New Orleans metro area.”

In a related operation, police arrested six unidentified adult fugitives wanted by the New Orleans Police Department in an operation the U.S. Marshals called “Return of the School Year” and “New Orleans Saints and Sinners 2021,” respectively. Those suspects face charges including the sexual battery of a 7-year-old boy, production of child porn with a 14-year-old girl, and aggravated rape and kidnapping charges that occurred in 1989.

From October 1, 2020, to September 30, 2021, the U.S. Marshals New Orleans Task Force recovered 43 missing or endangered children with a few categorized as family abductions. Sixteen children returned on their own, and efforts outside the task force rescued five others.

The U.S. Marshals Service led a similar operation last Spring. Between March 1 and June 30, the MCU-funded operation rescued or recovered 19 children. An additional 20 children were located and/or self-returned during this operation.

Late last year, a Beaumont task force charged 21 adult men in Louisiana and Texas with soliciting sex from minors.

In February, Louisiana State Police arrested three adults in Bunkie, Louisiana, accompanying a 15-year-old victim “sexually exploited and transported for human trafficking.”

In June, Jefferson Parish Sheriff’s Deputies investigated a report of an alleged kidnapping and found sex trafficking inside a La Quinta Inn motel room in the New Orleans suburb of Terrytown. Investigators charged two adults with forcing a 13-year-old girl into at least 10 prostitution dates at the motel.

Last Spring, the Louisiana Department of Children and Family Services (DCFS) released their annual report on victims of both sex and labor trafficking. According to DCFS, juveniles made up 58.6 percent of human trafficking victims reported through Louisiana’s social services agency in 2019, a 26 percent increase from 2018.

Although the report cited the Shreveport, Baton Rouge, and New Orleans areas as having the largest numbers, most parishes made the report. Of the 15 cases of human trafficking reported in Tangipahoa Parish, 12 victims were under age 17. Of the 9 victims in St. Tammany Parish, 8 were children. All 24 victims in Livingston Parish were under 17.

Statewide, the report counted 809 victims (87.3 percent) as victims of sex trafficking; 22 (2.4 percent) were labor trafficking victims; 34 (3.7 percent) were victims of both sexual and labor trafficking. For another 62 victims, investigators did not identify the trafficking type.

Regarding the problem, Governor John Bel Edwards said in July, “This is a vile industry and a vile practice. We need the best laws on the books so that we’re punishing these perpetrators appropriately, but also identifying, rescuing, and restoring the victims.”

Over the past four years, Louisiana has received close to $3 million in federal funds to aid efforts to combat human trafficking. That is where the funding for these task forces originates, but experts say our successes are minimal compared to the total problem.

DCFS and State Police are at the forefront of the trafficking battle, but according to the report, a lack of data in areas masks the true extent of the problem. “The scope of this is much larger than anybody in our country understands and believes,” DCFS Secretary Marketa Walters told reporters last March.

“If you look at the data, there are more slaves in the world today than at any time in history,” said George Mills, Trafficking Hope in Baton Rouge’s executive director. “But we don’t want to call it that.”

The Gingerbread House, a child advocacy center serving nine parishes in northwest Louisiana, estimated assisting in 30 suspected cases of homegrown trafficking each year. “Homegrown trafficking” is where parents, relatives, or other caregivers prostitute their own children for money to pay for rent, drugs, or other goods.

Covenant House, a homeless shelter in New Orleans, describes part of the problem on their website: “Since Covenant House began tracking sex trafficking cases in early 2016, dozens of women—some younger than 18—have reported falling victim to trafficking and sexual exploitation in clubs both in Louisiana and out of state. Of the 134 victims of sex trafficking, Covenant House provided services to in that period, 17 reported using private rooms or bathrooms in French Quarter strip clubs to have sex with customers. Authorities compiled evidence that pimps on Bourbon Street exploited women, recruited new sex trafficking victims, and more recently forced the women to rob customers, but the problem just continues to fester.”