Decker 1

Amanda Rose Tiberius Decker

Readers-Harold Stone, Albert Fernandez
Thesis Prep

Toward Prosecution of Trafficking of Persons in Chicago

and Cook County
The Trafficking of Persons (commonly abbreviated as TIP in the legal
world) is a problem that many acknowledge, but few realize it exists here in
Chicago and the Greater Cook County area. Anytime organized crime
establishes itself within a community, they begin dabbling in the trade of the
Big Three: weapons, drugs, and people. The act of buying and selling
humans usually involves prostitution, and as a city with a long history of
organized crime, Chicago Police are used to dealing with prostitutes and the
people who help them sell sexual acts (referred to as pimps). In addition to
the people already in Cook County who are brought into this line of work,
there are also many young people who are taken advantage of after running
away from home. Pimps will approach these vulnerable youth and offer them
food and shelter in return for what ends up being sex work on the streets.
Cook County and the State of Illinois had previously treated these
cases in the traditional manner: arrest the sex workers one finds on their
beats and use intelligence from them to make bigger busts with their Vice
Squads. While the hope was to work up the food chain of workers and their
pimps, these arrests rarely led to any action against the heads of these
organized crime conglomerates. Instead, a culture of stigmatization arose

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surrounding the people forced to work as prostitutes. There are many

reasons for this, the least of them not being the blatant corruption that runs
through the very blood of what makes Chicago what it is. On top of this,
there has been a lack of understanding of the fact that these prostitutes are
the victims of many sex crimes, as someone who is being paid for sex cannot
legally consent.
Perhaps the largest blockade that advocates for these victims must
overcome is lack of legal precedent surrounding this issue. If the legal
system is to assume that prostitutes are all victims of sex crimes, then it
would make sense to start treating them as such and stop prosecuting them
for vice crimes. Many people dislike this approach, however, because they
see it as an issue of organized crime. When prosecutorial issues cross
jurisdictional boundaries, it can be hard to figure out which laws to use to
approach a new case. The goal of this paper is to describe and compile
several methods suggested by academia and the legal profession for
prosecuting human trafficking cases in Cook County, taking into account the
personhood of the victims involved while trying to hold the ringleaders of the
different organized crime groups accountable for their actions.
WHAT

IS

TRAFFICKING

IN

PERSONS (HUMAN/SEXUAL TRAFFICKING)?

The Victims of Trafficking and Violence Protection Act (TVPA), enacted

in 2000 by the United States, defines human trafficking as recruiting,
harboring, moving, or obtaining a person by force, fraud or coercion for the

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purposes of involuntary servitude, debt bondage, or sexual exploitation

(CCCOWI, 3). The UNs Protocol to Prevent, Suppress, and Punish Trafficking
in Persons uses very similar language to describe this issue, and several
other governments have adopted similar language in their legislature. This is
a global issue, as between one half million to two million people are
trafficked worldwide, and an estimated 9 billion dollars is made from this
trade. It is second in the most lucrative forms of business for organized crime
(the first is narcotics) (CCCOWI, 4).

VICTIMS:
Victims of trafficking are subjected to many different forms of brutality.
The two most common forms of trafficking in persons are for use in slave
labor and forced prostitution. Even though there is often a distinction made
between these two, it is usually a hazy one, as sexual abuse is frequently
used as a way to break the spirit of laborers. Many victims of sexual
trafficking are also sold for labor purposes as well (Loyola article, 4). Victims
are of all races, ages, and sexes, but 70% of these victims are female
(CCCOWI, 4). Often from rural and poorer areas, many of these victims are
from situations which marginalize them to begin with. They have faced
sexual abuse in their homes, or their family needs money to make ends
meet. More than half of these victims are under the age of 18 worldwide, and
between 14,500 to 17,500 of these victims are trafficked into the United
States yearly (Washington.edu, 1).

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The effect on these victims is massive, with many physical and mental
concerns that can last the rest of their lives, even if they manage to escape
from this life. They develop sleeping and eating disorders, sexually
transmitted infections, or chronic back, hearing, cardiovascular, or
respiratory issues from toiling endlessly in dangerous working conditions.
Emotionally, these victims face anxiety, fear, depression, guilt and shame
from what they are doing, culture shock, PTSD, and an unhealthy attachment
to the very person who is making them do these horrible things, also known
as traumatic bonding. In many cases, victims must be conditioned back into
society after escaping enslavement, since they cannot even do normal
everyday activities, such as getting dressed, without being told to do
so(Child Victims of Human Trafficking) .
There is no exact type of person who gets into the trafficking business.
There are many trafficking rings run by organized crime conglomerates, but
there are also many independently run fronts for people to be trafficked
through. Traffickers can be men of high regard within a victims home
community who take advantage of their political status to marry a victim of a
young age. In extreme cases, the perpetrators do this several times to
several wives. They can be wealthy businessmen with the right connections
to get a victim across borders and to their friends at home. Oftentimes,
legit businesses, like massage parlors, escort services, and strip clubs are
used as fronts for back alley deals (Loyola).

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Even though there are a wide variety of ways for traffickers to peddle
their goods, it is necessary for them to have a network of people who are
willing to buy and sell. They see a demand, and they meet it with very little
fear of legal repercussions. By using several forms of manipulation,
traffickers are able to efficiently fulfill their supply needs and maintain
control over their victims. These people are smart, and they know what they
are doing. Methods of control include physical and sexual abuse, creating a
need for dependence by controlling the victims source of shelter and food,
threatening victims with deportation by controlling their identity documents,
threatening the victims family, and keeping them isolated from anyone who
might provide them with emotional or legal support. Traffickers are also able
to control victims by reminding them that the very act they are being forced
to do is illegal, making the victim feel helpless. Traffickers are able to thrive
not just because the system refuses to help victims, but because it is actively
working against them through institutional bias and antiquated laws.

MISCONCEPTIONS:
Part of what makes Human/Sexual Trafficking such a difficult issue to
deal with is that our culture has perpetrated many false myths about the
nature of the victims and the perpetrators of the crime. Ignorance
surrounding this crime helps traffickers by creating a shroud of uncertainty
around what is actually happening. It can also sometimes paint them as
philanthropists by empowering these victims and getting them out of

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bad situations. Whatever it is, these myths must be unraveled and discarded
before effective measures can be taken by the proper authorities. The
everyday person has a great effect on whether or not local government can
prosecute and also pass legislature to protect victims of trafficking through
how they vote and choose to spend their tax dollars.
Perhaps one of the biggest myths is that of locale. Many people in the
western world dismiss Human Trafficking, stating that it is only a Third
World issue and they cannot do anything about it. This view has many flaws.
First, human trafficking occurs in places that are central geographical hubs,
meaning that cities that are in the center of multiple highways, rivers, or
other means of transportation are prime environments for traffickers to
import and export their victims. Any place that is a tourist attraction with
several hotels, massage parlors, and other entertainment venues are also
key spots for sexual trafficking, since there are many private places for
rendezvous. These two qualities are not only found in places like Thailand
and Cambodia, which most Western people associate with trafficking, but
also here in the United States and other more fiscally developed countries.
Further, the victims of trafficking are found not only across borders, but also
within the States. Secondly, even if this were an issue that only happens in
other countries, many victims would still be trafficked to the United States
from other countries, making the U.S. morally responsible for what happens
as well because they would share in the responsibility. As a part of a world
that is in no way isolationist, the Western world should greatly care about the

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plights of others outside of our nations, and that includes victims of

trafficking.
Another way that people complicate the issue of Trafficking is by
equating it to smuggling. It is true that drugs, people, and weapons are
known collectively as the Trafficking Triad. However, one cannot view
human trafficking as similar to the other two legs of the triangle, since
transportation across geographical boundaries is required for all trafficking
except for human trafficking. When comparing how to deal with human
trafficking with how to deal with drug and weapon trafficking, it is pertinent
to understand that the victims have personhood and are not just a good,
even though they are viewed that way by traffickers. This changes the way
that law enforcement should deal with victims. They are not criminals or
even evidence; victims have the right to choose by themselves whether or
not to press charges and to help with the prosecutorial process.
Consent, defined as acquiescence as a result of reasoned deliberation
by people possessing the physical and mental capacity to do so, is also a
very important issue which many people blur the lines on when it comes to
Human Trafficking, especially sexual trafficking. There is a blatantly
misguided view that sex workers usually enter the sex trade with full
knowledge and consent to what they are doing and are expected to do. While
this might be true in extremely rare cases, when one looks past the surface
of the sex trade and takes time to learn individual stories, it becomes clear

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that most sex workers are coerced into the trade, which means that consent
is not possible.
Take for example the story of Maria. Maria had grown up in a
dysfunctional home; her mother was an addict and abandoned her in Mexico
with her 18 siblings when she decided to fly off to Chicago. Maria's
grandmother sent her to Chicago after her mother married a second time,
but she felt even more abandoned because of her parents' party lifestyle.
Her mother did not even have time to give her a gold bracelet for her 15th
birthday, the only present she had ever received, because the woman was
arguing with another mother down the street.
This situation led Maria to move out to her boyfriend's place the day
she turned 18. Marco had been joking with her since day one, Would you
have sex for money?, but she always responded with a sincere no. Things
changed, however, when it became clear that drug running would not make
them as much money as needed to pay bills.
And there he sat with her, at the foot of the bed, crying and
caressing. "I don't want you to do this either. But we need it." He
poured more Hennessey. He hugged her. He left the room. And
some indefinite time later there was the sound of a hand
meeting the other side of the door knob, and of the knob's turn;
and the door opened, and Maria, still drunk, still unable to get up,
rolled her head toward the door to see who it is, and the dark

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outline of a silhouetted stranger entered the room and shut the

door behind him(Sex Trafficking In Chicago: Victimless Crimes
& Their Victims - Gapers Block Mechanics | Chicago).
Soon after this, it became clear to Maria that she was not the only girl
he had conned into this situation. He had even had a child with another
woman. Marco was systematically conning young women into paying his bills
for him, and they weren't seeing any of that money.
The same concept applies to forced labor, since one must also usually
consent to terms of employment. It is also important to note that individuals
under the age of 18 are not able to consent sexually in most Western
countries countries (special cases apply, but international statues place the
age of consent at 18), and oftentimes need special permission to consent to
labor.
Another misconception that is directly related to consent is whether or
not the victim seeks out help for their situation; that is, if someone is really a
victim of Human Trafficking, they would immediately try and get assistance
from anyone they could, especially law enforcement.
This is entirely false. There are many reasons why a victim of any
crime would not go to the police or anyone else, and many of these apply to
victims of human trafficking, along with a few others. For one, it might simply
just be too dangerous for the victim to seek help. Many victims are
dependent on their traffickers for safe housing and food. If they told anyone,

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they might face not only the possible loss of these things, but also additional
physical and sexual abuse. Their families, as previously stated, might also be
harmed. On top of the normal necessities of life, many victims are addicted
to drugs, whether by their own volition or through forcibly being
injected/coerced to take them. Many traffickers do not need literal chains to
hold their victims captive; drugs serve as an invisible chain, guaranteeing
that their victims will never stray far for fear of losing their next fix or
because they physically cannot move. Even if the victim wants to get clean,
it is hard enough to do it in a rehab center. Detoxing on their own in the
streets is almost certain death.
Stockholm Syndrome is also something that occurs pretty frequently in
victims of sexual trafficking. Many victims, especially young girls, are told
that their trafficker is their only friend. Oftentimes the trafficker will place
themselves as a love interest or a parental figure, telling the victim that if
they truly love their trafficker, they will do anything for them. This emotional
bond is something that many victims seek out, having never, or very briefly,
experienced it before in its real form. Victims of human trafficking have very
little reason to trust the world before their ordeal, and even without the
symptoms of Stockholm Syndrome, it is little wonder why they do not trust
anyone to help them out of their situation.

HUMAN TRAFFICKING

IN

CHICAGO

AND

GREATER COOK COUNTY:

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Chicago and the greater Cook County area fit almost too perfectly into
the geographical description of an ideal trafficking port. The city lies in the
center of I94, I294, I290, I55, and I90, interstates that span not only across
the Midwest Region, but in some cases, across the country. Chicagoland also
has two major international airports and lies at the interchange between the
Mississippi River and The Great Lakes System. These facts make it an ideal
place for traffickers to pick up unaware young people and offer them jobs.
Many traffickers hang out at Greyhound bus stations in downtown and near
95th, preying on runaways from other cities who stop at Chicago when they
run out of money. The location of Chicago also makes it an ideal place for the
import and export of victims. In 2003, The New York Times declared that
Chicago was fast becoming the national hub of human trafficking, and the
National Human Trafficking Resource Center shows Chicago as having the
fifth highest call volume for reports of trafficking. In metropolitan Chicago,
16,000 to 25,000 women and girls are involved in prostitution annually. One
third of these women first get involved in prostitution by the age of 15 years.
Sixty-two percent began by the age of 18 years(CCCOWI).
Rosemont, a western-area of Chicagoland right next to OHare Airport,
is home to scores of hotels, ranging from high end Hyatts to low-end Motels
6. Some of these hotels are home to many conventions throughout the year,
and therefore the west-side of Chicagoland attracts many regular and
business tourists every day. This industry has led directly to the increase of
many massage parlors and gentlemans clubs in not only the western

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suburbs, but also many neighborhoods within the City itself. Olivia Howard, a
survivor of the sexual trafficking industry in Chicago, describes her
experiences working through these legit fronts firsthand:
Legit escort services, strip clubs are fronts. As a young girl, I
was recruited right here in Chicago. Some of the things and the
dynamics in my household contributed to a lot of things that
were lacking. One of the reasons, I think, picking up a Reader ad
from the night life in Chicago, I found an advertisement that
stated, Young women, would you like a career to become
independent? Dancing is just for you so I, you know, ride the L
down to Rush Street. I tell them that Im 16 years. Well, they
hired me. They could care less if I knew how to dance. It was
what I learned to do in the back rooms. And that just started a
spiral of my life of being a prostituted woman. From there, I went
to escort service, massage parlors. And eventually, I picked up a
drug addiction. I was an IV drug user for 19 years and wound up
on the streets (CCCOWI).

It is no secret that Chicago has a long and sordid history with organized
crime. While the mobsters might not look like Al Capone and shoot guns
taken from violin cases, organized crime is still an extremely prevalent issue
in Chicago. As mentioned before, many gangs operate within the Trafficking
Triad, and Chicagoland gangs are no exceptions. Since gentlemens clubs
and other venues are heavily monitored by police downtown, gangs have
moved their services to the western and southern suburbs where there is
more demand. A recent police sting conducted in Franklin Park out of Lido

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Motel on Manheim Road uncovered a $100,000 drug and weapon trafficking

ring operating within the entire Chicagoland area. Manheim Road is a wellknown prostitution strip, frequented by tourists and locals who pick up a sex
worker and take them to any of a number of hotels found within half a mile of
Lido Motel. Over 100 people were arrested in this sting, and connections
were found by undercover female police officers between the traffickers in
Lido and the people in charge of the women standing on the strip.
Another way many victims in this area get into sex trafficking is
because they faced sexual abuse in their homes as children. Marelyn Garcia
is a woman who fell in love with a man in a Chicago night club who would
later pimp her out to fund his drug addiction. She had been sexually abused
for seven years as a child, and, in an interview with The Juvenile Justice
Exchange, she said that made her choice to go into sex work that much
easier. I had already lost my virginity and had been exposed to things, she
said, Now I was getting paid for it, so why not? (JJE). Many people who are
trafficked in Chicagoland are homeless, and many are homeless LGBTQIA
youth who need some way to make ends meet (HTS.net).
One source of so much growth in this industry is the internet. Johns
now have the ability to browse a large variety of trafficking victims and
promote better and more efficient rendezvous with the traffickers. Within
Chicagoland, one is way more likely to be able to call for a prostitute by
looking at an ad on Craigslist in the casual encounters/escort section then

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they are to try and drive around and pick up a prostitute. People are also
able to watch a large amount of people, many of them underage, do
anything they want to pay the right amount for in cam rooms. These sites
are often set up by people running houses where these youth live, like a
brothel but all online. With this ease of access and anonymity, trafficking has
increased dramatically within the past five years in the Chicagoland area. It
also makes it that much harder for law enforcement officials to track the
leaders of these trafficking rings, especially since technology is developing
so fast, and the traffickers always seem to be two steps ahead of the law.

DIFFICULTIES

OF

PROSECUTING TRAFFICKING

IN

PERSONS

IN

COOK

COUNTY
On top of defining Trafficking, The Victims of Trafficking and Violence
Protection Act included ways to protect victims, prosecute offenders, and to
try and prevent future trafficking by requiring restitution for all victims from
their offenders and protecting all non-citizen victims from deportation by
offering them refugee status within our country to be determined after their
trial has gone through. This legislation resulted in the creation of a new
section within the Justice Departments Civil Rights Division, formed in 2007,
which was designed specifically to combat Trafficking by swift prosecution.
They then raised the budget of this department to 5.3 million dollars.
While the federal prosecution of TIP is a key component of combating
the crime (much like federal prosecution of any crime), the Justice

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Department cannot possibly investigate and then prosecute every crime

within US borders. Therefore, responsibility for the bulk of cases falls upon
state and local municipalities to effectively adapt their laws and enforcement
policies to the new law of the land. Large sums of money and other resources
were pooled and then distributed to many local agencies, and the DOJ even
created The Model State Anti-Trafficking Criminal Statute. While a good first
step forward in creating a baseline standard for the definition of various
forms of Trafficking in Persons within legislation, it was too confusing for
many states to actually implement within their already present state laws.
Many private and public human trafficking advocacy groups then created
their own legal templates for these states to follow, many of which have in
fact been used in the 49 states that have since passed their own Anti-Human
Trafficking laws.

WHY ARE THESE LAWS NOT WORKING?

To understand why, despite the seemingly large legal response
implemented by these states, Human Trafficking is still as prevalent as it is
within Cook County, it seems pertinent to focus the scope of this discussion
somewhat and look specifically at laws passed by Illinois and the localities
within the state. The Illinois Trafficking of Persons and Involuntary Servitude
Act (ITPIS), passed in 2006, was a good first step in attempting to tackle this
issue within the state, and it was lauded as one of the most aggressive laws
against Trafficking in Persons at the time. It was designed specifically as a

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tool for the Attorney General to be able to go after traffickers while still
protecting the trafficking victims by allowing the Department of Human
Services to offer any help they might need. However, according to End
Demand Illinois, which is an organization designed specifically to draw
attention to those who buy sex, this law has only been used 29 times against
presumed traffickers since its enactment. Some say that this statute needs
to be made more effective, as too many people are getting away with these
horrible crimes. This is not as easy as it seems.

A LACK

OF

PRECEDENT:

The first thing that many prosecutors say is their biggest problem is
that there is not very much precedent for using the new law in Illinois. ITPIS
has only been on the books for eight years, and with only 29 cases
associated with it since 2006, not many guidelines exist for prosecution
teams to seek out a case they know for sure will hold up in a court and win.
Prosecution teams can also not base new cases off of old laws because they
contradict with ITPIS, and would fail to strengthen the new law. Because the
old laws criminalize the actions of the sex workers, everyone else was
allowed to exploit these victims with little to no repercussions (see
Institutional Bias). The State Attorneys Office cannot afford to prosecute
cases they do not know are probably going to win, especially since the
Recession.

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With all of this pressure, the SA will usually choose to charge traffickers
using statues they know will hold up in court. Such charges include
promoting prostitution, fraud, rape, and kidnapping. These cases require
much less evidence for prima facie case, and prosecutors are usually much
more likely to get an indictment from a Grand Jury Trial. The average citizen
on a Grand Jury is not only much less likely to know the evidence for a case
of Human Trafficking if presented with it, but a typical prosecutorial team is
usually not going to know what evidence to present to the jury to begin with.
Not knowing what evidence to use is oftentimes a self-perpetuating
problem, as it is usually lawyers from the State Attorney's Office who sit
down with police teams and develop new policy for how to collect evidence
based off of what will help them win a case in court. This way, cops do not
end up destroying evidence or tampering with a possible crime scene.
However, the SA has been extremely reluctant to actually sit down and make
this policy when they have a backlog of other cases to deal with. Therefore,
cops do not collect evidence that would help a lawyer prosecute these cases
in an effective manner, which further increases the hesitance of law
enforcement agencies to develop policies (because it is seen as not cost
effective), and therefore the cycle repeats itself over and over.

A QUESTION

OF JURISDICTION:

In our current world, it is oftentimes hard for law enforcement agencies

and other legal entities to decipher whose jurisdiction many crimes fall

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under. Crimes committed involving Trafficking in Persons are perhaps some

of the hardest cases to untangle when it comes to jurisdiction because they
often involve the transportation of victims across not only state lines, but
also national borders. This places these cases in the possible jurisdiction of
local and state authorities, but also possibly FBI jurisdiction. On top of this,
whenever people are smuggled into the United States illegally, Immigration
Services would normally be expected to also step in. These types of cases
are large in scale, but often individual cases contain characteristics unique to
the city or county they take place in. When multiple agencies become
involved, the system gets clogged up, and a speedy resolution to these
cases in courts becomes impossible without the proper agency to investigate
the initial crime.
With all of these complications in mind, the Illinois State Attorneys
Office usually chooses to not prosecute TIP cases, passing them on instead to
the US Attorneys Office and all other federal agencies for investigation and
prosecution. It is not surprising that the SA does this; after all, cases of this
scale are usually prosecuted on a federal level, as federal agencies normally
have more funding and other resources to complete a more thorough
investigation. It is actually a pretty normal assumption to make for an SA.
However, as mentioned earlier, the DOJ is extremely overwrought with TIP
cases. This means that a large number of TIP cases get buried under a pile of
other cases. Time is of an extreme essence with cases involving these
victims, as the risk of injury and death is so high, and the leads for these

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cases disappear fairly quickly, so acting on good intelligence is something

that should be done as soon as possible.

INSTITUTIONAL BIAS:
New legislation is an amazing step forward in the process of
prosecuting Trafficking in Persons cases, but it is far from all that is needed. A
law that is in place but is not enforced is pretty much an ineffectual piece of
paper. The activities of every day police forces in response to these laws do
not show an overall institutional change in attitude towards the victims of
these crimes. In the year 2014 alone, approximately 1,620 arrests for the
charge of prostitution have been made in Chicago Police Jurisdiction alone
(Chicago Police Department ClearMap Crime Summary; statistics taken on
December 30, 2014 at 11:45 pm). This number has only increased from 917
arrests and 381 convictions in 2005, a year before ITPIS was passed, which
seems counter-intuitive in a state that is supposed to be cracking down on
traffickers and not victims of these crimes. Customers of the sex trade are
not arrested anywhere near as often as sex-workers themselves, and they
are unable to receive more than a misdemeanor charge for their crimes. Sexworkers are subject to having their charges increased to a felony, however.
One reason for the disparity in these numbers is that no real policy or
check-list for probable cause in prostitution cases exists. This means that
not only do police in Chicago have no idea what a victim actually might look
like, they are actually trained to look at possible sex-workers with a

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suspicious eye. Police will often bring in sex workers on other charges, such
as possession of contraband and trespassing. This type of treatment of
potential sex workers teaches police forces to classify sex workers as
criminals instead of victims, and these charges quickly rack up on a victims
record, making it harder for them to get new jobs so that they can get out of
their situation, as businesses are usually prejudiced against hiring felons.
While Illinois state law protects victims of trafficking, ITPIS is
contradicted by several other state statues, the most obvious of which is 720
ILCS 5/11-14-A. This law criminalizes Prostitution, defined as Any person who
performs, offers or agrees to perform any act of sexual penetration (as
defined in Section 12-12 of this Code) for any money, property, token, object,
or article or anything of value, or any touching or fondling of the sex organs
of one person by another person for the purposes of sexual arousal or
gratification. While this is one of many statues involving the sex trade, it is
one of the harshest in its penalties against sex workers, and it only affects
sex workers, not their customers or their pimps. With antiquated laws still on
the books, it is no wonder that law enforcement still treats victims of sexual
trafficking as criminals as opposed to the people who hurt them, who usually
get away with these crimes with little to no fear of charges being brought
against them.
On top of this, there is an overall resistance amongst law enforcement
officials to change their policies based off of what they consider to be

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political whims. Police see themselves as the best people to determine

policy because of their constant exposure to the front lines of crime and the
risks they take being out in the field. Therefore, they see the changing of
decades old policy as contrary to good police work and are much less likely
to pursue these crimes. When they do choose to pursue these crimes, their
failure to implement any sort of new policy that might exist or to create new
enforcement policies results in a lack of usable evidence by prosecutors, and
an overall failure for the community itself to change their view on the issue
of prostitution.

VICTIM STATEMENTS
In most legal cases, the victim's statement and testimony in court are
very important factors to a successful trial. The first hand account of what
the victim was subjected to is the best way to garner sympathy from a jury
and convince them to choose a guilty verdict. This makes it imperative that a
prosecutor is able to interview the victim and work with them before the trial
to prepare them for what they are going to experience.
This process becomes nearly impossible in TIP cases. Many victims are
extremely uncooperative, sometimes to the point of being belligerent. Either
they refuse to cooperate because they do not see the system as on their
side, or they are scared of any possible repercussions from testifying in
court. This is what many prosecutors cite as the hardest part of prosecuting

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TIP cases. Many victims agree at first to testify, but then later recant in court
because they are scared of the process:
One case we had a victim-witness who did not
want to cooperate at all. She cooperated to give
her initial disclosure and we were able to get
her stabilized in services; however, she was revictimized at least twice following that, which
you know made her even more fragile, and I
dont think that she would have been able to be
on the stand or to be even under direct
examination; it was a judgment call that a plea
was best in order to do that (Farrell et al.)
On top of this, juries are also not inclined to look favorably upon victim
testimony:
Another case we have, we have a good
witness-victim; shes got some issues with
possibly her testimony and we have a
kidnapping charge where the door was locked,
but theres no lock on the door. Why did she
feel she couldnt leave? And explaining that to
juries. So here at this point we look at can she
explain that adequately or do we use an expert
and what other corroborative evidence do we
have to support that? Were always looking for
corroborative evidence, so that were taking
the burden off of her((Farrell et al.)
All of these situations make it very difficult for prosecutors to collect viable
victim testimony for Trafficking in Person's cases.

POSSIBLE LEGAL RESPONSES: RECOMMENDATIONS

SYSTEM

FOR

FIXING THE

Even though the outcome seems dim for these victims, there are
success stories of survivors who made it out of this lifestyle and are now

Decker 23

helping others. Take, for example, the story of Brenda Myers-Powell. Brenda
remembers being sexually abused from the age of four. Men would come into
her house on the west side of Chicago and make her take her underwear off
for them in exchange for candy. When she was fifteen, she was a single
mother of two and lived with her grandmother. She recalls looking out the
front window of her house and asking her grandmother what the women on
the street corner were doing. When she found out that they were doing what
Brenda had been doing from a very young age, but were getting paid for it,
she decided that she might as well make money to pay her mounting bills.
"'Rent was about $110 a month, and I made so much money that I was able
to pay the rent, buy groceries, and buy my children good Easter clothes,' she
said. 'I even bought my baby a big ol' bunny rabbit'(Life after 25 Years of
Prostitution Tribunedigital-Chicagotribune).
What she did not bank upon, however, was being kidnapped and
dragged to Indiana by two men, who forced her to work at bus stops. When
she was finally able to escape, she was unable to return to anything besides
sex work because of her position in life, and this required that she find a
pimp for protection. She stayed in the profession for 29 years before seeking
help. She realized that this life had to end after being dragged out the side
door by a client who wanted his money back, her bloody body barely
surviving the trip down several blocks of a west side street.

Decker 24

Since then, Brenda has advocated endlessly for sex workers, trying to
prevent young girls from entering the trade and helping those already
victimized to find their way out. Along with Stephanie Daniels-Wilson,
another survivor, she has started an organization called The Dreamcatcher
Foundation. This group not only provides necessities for sex workers, such as
bus passes, cell phones, and housing for some, but they also provide a
consistent place for these victims to gather and talk about their struggles as
a family over dinner.
Brenda and Stephanie strongly believe that it is necessary to change
not only the attitudes of these victims towards themselves, but also the way
society treats them. '"These traffickers and pimps, they know what they're
doing, such as the manipulation, the brainwashing,' she said. 'They make the
girls believe that the only way the girl can be successful is through (the
pimp's) direction. Otherwise, the girls are worthless and they have no value.'
Without changing the thinking, she said the women even those counseled
during jail stays find their way back to the streets (Life after 25 Years of
Prostitution Tribunedigital-Chicagotribune). In order to stop this cycle, the
following steps must be followed.

TRAINING FIRST RESPONDERS:

All of the sources collected for this paper place proper training for first
responders to crime scenes and potential victims as an extremely necessary
solution to the overall problem of Trafficking in Persons in any area, not just

Decker 25

Cook County. Any person who is likely to come into contact with a victim or
situation that might involve trafficking should be properly trained to
recognize these situations, knowing the laws associated with TIP, and
administering proper relief to any victims they encounter. Similar training
related to child/spousal abuse is already mandatory for many professions.
These first responders include hospitals, health clinics, EMTs, police officers,
911 operators, probation officers, and all prosecutors.
In 2007, a task force from the Intersystem Assessment of Prostitution
was working on developing a protocol to help emergency room workers
identify victims of sexual trafficking and assist them in any way possible.
They were going to pilot this program in John H. Stroger Jr. Hospital, however
no reports on the result of this pilot program were found at the time of
writing this paper.
Police departments, EMS teams, fire fighters, and many other first
responder teams in the county should work on incorporating strict protocols
for the screening of trafficking victims into their normal routines. They should
be trained so that they know upon first instinct who to refer such cases to,
and to immediately consider any case involving a person under the age of 18
in the sex trade as a victim of sexual trafficking. Furthermore, all witness and
other service providers on the county level that work with victims during this
process should be trained to know the ins and outs of the Predator
Accountability Act, which allows victims of TIP to gain monetary recompense

Decker 26

for the abuse perpetrated against them by their traffickers. This makes
gaining a profit from trafficking more difficult for the criminals involved, thus
injuring the industry.
Finally, all judges, while not technically first responders, should receive
the same training as first responders, the laws relevant to TIP, the impact of
TIP, and the rights of the victims involved. This will hopefully encourage
them to use the First Offender Probation Act in cases involving first time
felony prostitution offenders, which allows them to instead be recommended
to probation with services. This process makes their rehabilitation back into
society a much easier feat and allows them to get the help they really need
while still potentially working with prosecution teams. Trust is earned with
these victims, and giving them a little bit of it will reward the State Attorney's
office with potential new witnesses that are more likely to cooperate with a
system they might have previously seen as against them.

COOPERATION WITHIN LAW ENFORCEMENT:

While law enforcement is the most successful agent in identifying TIP
cases, they need to be diverse in the divisions that they utilize to go after
these cases. While the creation of specific divisions within law enforcement
to deal with trafficking is an important first step, the inclusion of other
divisions such as narcotics teams, state police, and beat cops helps to
guarantee that all levels of enforcement are on the lookout for trafficking
cases. For example, a narcotics team might get a good tip on organized

Decker 27

crime in an area, and as stated before, drugs and people are often trafficked
together. By sharing this information amongst divisions in law enforcement,
it is possible for these teams to do joint stings and kill two birds with one
stone, as the saying goes.
It is somewhat possible to imagine divisions within the same
jurisdiction working together. However, many would say that interjurisidictional cooperation is an impossibility. Traffickers are well aware of this
difficulty, and it is possible that they use it to their advantage when they
operate, moving across jurisdictions as they work. Thus, it is key that
agencies in different geographical areas and agencies holding jurisdiction in
the same area learn to cooperate with each other. This can be done by heads
of these different agencies meeting together and drawing dividing lines for
efficiencies sake and, much like divisions within the same agency, sharing
intelligence that they garner freely:
Through improved coordination, agencies
holding jurisdiction in the same area can
coordinate their efforts to focus on specific
domains of human trafficking. For instance, in
New York, the police and the District Attorney
generally handle cases involving U.S. citizen,
while the U.S. Attorney and ICE agents often
focus on foreign national cases, because
foreign nationals can often receive better
services in the federal system. The Innocence
Lost Task Force (FBI) generally focuses on
domestic sex trafficking of minors. Similar
models of case allocation were described in
other counties as well(Inzano).

Decker 28

On top of this, public awareness of TIP and the victims of it will help garner
public support to help these victims. This will put pressure on these agencies
and their leaders to cooperate because politicians will want public support
for reelection.

INTEGRATION

OF

SERVICE

AND

SUPPORT AGENCIES:

Another major component to fixing issues with prosecution of TIP in

Cook County according to many sources is using service providers
throughout the enforcement process; that is, providing victims of trafficking
with the correct social workers and other mental/legal help that they need
from when they first are identified as a victim to however long after their
trafficker is in prison for their crimes. The first step to this process is to make
sure that the proper agencies exist within the system. This means funding
needs to be provided for these specialized social services, such as crisis
intervention, emergency housing, and trauma counseling. This also means
creating

ways for victims to be effectively referred to these services from

health care professionals.

Providing a system of support to victims has been identified as one of
the most useful ways to guarantee that they stick around throughout the
course of a trial and cooperate with investigations:
If their needs, such as protection, legal
assistance, and housing, are met right away,
they are more likely to feel secure in leaving
their captors. Something as simple as providing
phone cards to victims and allowing them to

Decker 29

get in touch with any family members has

increased the likelihood that the victim
receives the appropriate services, and is more
willing to participate in prosecuting their
victimizers (Inzano).
Service providers are also key allies to have when it comes to the gathering
of effective intelligence on the organizations that their clientele are trafficked
by. Service providers are much more likely to garner the trust of confidential
informants, who rarely work with law enforcement, and therefore they gain a
closer look into the tightly-knit world of organized crime.
There are several models in existence for implementing a cooperative
relationship between law enforcement and service providers:
In Maricopa County service providers have
begun using a social work model of teaming
cases. This model, based upon the way in
which hospitals sometimes handle individual
cases, involves presenting a case to a
multidisciplinary team of law enforcement,
service providers, and prosecutors (Inzano).

This same team also noted that using a model where one agency took a lead
on the case based on their expertise and having other agencies act more as
subcommittees was also an effective model. Whatever way it is organized,
almost all counties across the United States that chose to implement a
cooperative model between service agencies, such as the YMCA, which finds
housing for victims, and law enforcement officials, saw an increase in the
effectiveness of these teams in actually bringing the criminals involved to
justice while protecting the victims involved, thereby respecting their

Decker 30

personhood. Ideally, federal agencies, such as the FBI, would also get
involved in these teams, as stated in the previous section.

COMMUNITY PARTNERSHIPS:
Another useful tool that law enforcement agencies can use to gather
evidence for prosecuting Trafficking in Persons, especially sexual trafficking,
is developing ties within the community with different businesses. If law
enforcement contacts the owner of a local strip mall which might be home to
a massage parlor serving as a front for a trafficking ring, they are likely to be
able to get inside of that suspicious business and gather evidence to take
down the larger organization (see: Lido Motel). According to one prosecutor,
9 out of 10 times, these business owners want to help evict or close down
businesses associated with human trafficking, helping to break the cycle of
demand (Inzano). Another way to utilize members of the community around
Chicagoland is to make everyday people aware of what trafficking looks like.
For instance, the Mondragon case involved a trafficker taking a group of
minor girls to get birth control injections at the pharmacy. Potentially, if
pharmacy workers were trained to recognize signs of human trafficking, law
enforcement may have been able to identify this case earlier (Inzano).
There are also ways in which law enforcement agencies can get
involved with the websites providing places for potential traffickers to post
ads for their clientele. Sites such as CraigsList are a necessary ally to have in
the battle against trafficking, and it is necessary for both police and

Decker 31

prosecutors to understand how these websites work and to what extent to

which these networks can be used by criminals. Collaborative measures can
be implemented with these sites, and the data collected from them via
subpoena can make or break certain cases if people on both sides know how
that evidence should be collected and compiled.

CONCLUSION: CREATING SURVIVORS STOPS MORE VICTIMS

Maria was given a ticket out of this lifestyle when Marco was locked up
for a parole violation, even though it did not seem like good news at the
time. She had no idea what she was going to do for money now that her
pimp was gone. Her friend and her set up an escort business for themselves,
and while she found a consistent hook up for money through this, she began
to wonder why she ever started living this way. After talking to several of her
friends and finding out that they, too, where beginning to think this, she
enrolled in a G.E.D. program. It was there that she found out about the
Dreamcatcher Foundation in Englewood.
Maria was extremely hesitant to go to this place, since she had heard
one of the founders worked with the police, but she eventually went with one
of her friends from the G.E.D. program. Here, at the corner of 68th and
Ashland, she found a place where women could gather and tell their stories.
Maria was still scared to get too involved with the people at the Foundation,
but all that changed the day Brenda and Stephanie found a gun on her when
she visited the center.

Decker 32

Brenda sat her down and told her the story of how she escaped
prostitution. She made very clear to Maria that what she was doing was a
danger to her life and the ones around her whom she loved. Finally, Brenda
told Maria that she cared about her, a fact which shocked Maria. It was
through this relationship that Maria was able to escape from that lifestyle
and earn her G.E.D. She plans on becoming a nurse and works evenings at a
home for the elderly. Most importantly, she still attends meetings at the
Dreamcatcher Foundation, breathing hope into the lives of other survivors,
much like Brenda did for her.
Brenda stresses the fact that she works days with the Cook County
Sheriffs Department, doing ride-alongs on prostitution arrests. She speaks to
young girls about alternatives to what they are currently doing, and this
connection between this service provider and local law enforcement has
helped both parties reach out to over 1500 women and girls and rescue 70
survivors out of sexual trafficking.
Now, imagine the impact that law enforcement could have if they
partnered with every social service provider in the county and Greater
Chicagoland. Thousands of victims could be turned into survivors, who would
then be able to help pull other victims out of the chains of Human Trafficking.
Additionally, if everyone took the time to educate themselves on the subject
of Trafficking in Persons by reading the sources provided on sites such as
TheDreamcatcherFoundation.org, they would be able to properly join the

Decker 33

fight against this crime. On top of this, if prosecutors worked with survivors
and social service providers to give them justice, the amount of victims
would greatly decrease, and these survivors would be able to get justice and
restitution for the crimes that occurred to them. However, both of these
scenarios require work and communication, something that is not easy. It is
necessary, neigh, imperative that law enforcement officials fix the flaws in
the system in a timely manner and develop policy in partnership with these
organizations. Otherwise, this city will loose millions more to this crime, and
a whole generation will be scarred not only by the end results Trafficking in
Persons, but also by victim shaming, ignorance, laziness, and corruption.