Child sex traffickers lured boy to filthy trailer to serve as sex slave promising video games, puppy

Adam Walser

7:32 AM, Jan 27, 2020

ST. PETERSBURG, Fla. — Accused child sex traffickers lured two teen boys to St. Petersburg using video games, online apps and even the promise of a puppy, the I-Team uncovered in new details of the

horrific case that made headlines

last year after the state’s top prosecutor revealed the victim “was moved into a filthy trailer and used as a sex slave for nearly a year.”

Police said the men used video games and online apps, including Omegle, Roblox and Discord to find and communicate with their victims.

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A 2016 study funded by the U.S. Department of Justice estimates 36 percent of child sex trafficking victims are boys.

Neighbors at the mobile home park told the I-Team they met and saw the first victim, a 16-year-old Marion County boy, with his accused traffickers but never suspected he “was forced to serve as their own personal sex slave” — the accusations in a probable cause affidavit obtained by the I-Team.

The boy first met accused traffickers Mark Dennis and Andrew Clements at their April 2017 wedding. Police say he was brought to the wedding by a family friend, Eleanor McGlamory, who is also charged with conspiracy in the case.

Court records show Dennis and Clements immediately started texting the boy using Discord, a free video and texting app, and picked him up at his home 140 miles away just three weeks later.

Police say the men disabled the boy’s cell phone, so he couldn’t be tracked and then gave him a new name, birth date and back story.

Mark Dennis, Andrew Clements, Curtis Gruwell and Michael Schwartz all lived in the trailer with the boy at Silver Lake Mobile Home Park. Two other men, Michael Blasdel and J.R. Gauthier, regularly visited the trailer, according to police reports.

All six men currently face charges of conspiracy to commit human trafficking, among other charges.

Investigators said Dennis, Clements, Blasdel and Gauthier repeatedly raped the boy for nearly a year.

But neighbors at the trailer park told the I-Team they didn’t suspect anything unusual was going on inside the trailer until police announced the charges in early 2019.

Nobody reported seeing anything

The trailer was just feet away from the mobile home park’s garbage containers where residents of the 600-unit complex dump their trash.

“As many times as I went to the garbage can — cause they live across from the garbage can — I never heard anything, never seen anything out of order,” said neighbor Allene Dixon. “They would ride by in the golf cart and wave.”

Neighbor Mary Homerding told

I-Team Investigator Adam Walser

she didn’t suspect anything was amiss when she saw the first victim.

“The kid was polite. He seemed happy,” said Homerding, who told the I-Team she saw the first victim only once, riding in a golf cart with Clements. “He introduced him as his adopted son and the boy agreed.”

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When she didn’t see the boy again, Homerding said she figured the adoption didn’t work out.

Homerding said neighbors didn’t suspect the men because they were well liked in the community.

“They put on a good front,” said Homerding. “They were always polite. They joked around.”

Groover-Skipper said it’s not uncommon that neighbors didn’t noticed a child sex trafficking victim was living in their midst.

“People are so busy that they go about their life and they don’t always look at clues or look at signs that something could be wrong,” said Groover-Skipper. “It’s so under the radar most of the time that the majority of the world has no clue that this type of thing is going on.”

Abigale Ackerman said she met the first victim when the men brought the boy to a Pasco County pagan festival in early 2018.

“I asked him if there was anything going on. It seemed like he was really depressed,” said Ackerman.

She told the I-Team Dennis offered to pay her $2,000 to make the boy a fantasy costume, but the deal never happened.

“They wanted me to make him a blue and white husky suit for his birthday,” said Ackerman, who revealed the men also showered the boy with other gifts. “(They gave him) expensive things like game consoles, a full blooded husky puppy that they bought him.”

The police reported finding that husky in the trailer after the boys were rescued.

Groover-Skipper said the gifts are all part of the grooming process traffickers use on victims.

“Even though there may not be physical chains around a victim, around a person, they have mental and emotional chains around a person,” said Groover-Skipper.

Whips, masks and text messages

Police also reported finding whips, leather masks and bondage tools inside the trailer.

According to police reports, Mark Dennis called himself “Grand Master” and referred to the other men and the boy as his “pups” during bondage rituals. The entire group referred themselves as the boy’s “family circle,” police said.

Groover-Skipper said traffickers know how to prey on victims’ deep-rooted need to belong and be part of a family.

But police recovered text messages showing the boy was unhappy

“I’m stressed to high hell,” the boy texted nearly a year into captivity. “I don’t want sex all the time.”

One of his abusers replied, “Which is such a shame when such a tight group of people who love you have come into your life.”

In 2018, police reported the men met a new victim online — a 17-year-old Louisiana boy they convinced to come live with them.

Eleanor McGlamory and Curtis Gruwell drove about 10 hours to pick the boy up in the woods near his rural Louisiana home in the dead of night, court records show.

Three days later, Louisiana police found the boy's online messages and alerted St. Petersburg Police, who found the missing Louisiana boy and the Marion County boy and rescued them from the trailer.

All seven suspects are currently behind bars awaiting trial, which is set for early May.

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The Florida Attorney General's Office says Blasdel, Gruwell and Gauthier have entered plea agreements and have agreed to testify at the trial.

The Florida Department of Children and Families says it's important to manage your child's use of multimedia by setting ground rules, explaining safety rules, keeping the computer in a common room and monitoring online activity.

For information on the agency's resources, visit

https://www.myflfamilies.com/service-programs/child-welfare/caregivers/multimedia.shtml

The National Center for Missing and Exploited Children has age appropriate information for children and their parents to learn how to protect themselves online and avoid becoming a victim.

You can find information by visiting:

https://www.missingkids.org/netsmartz/home

If you believe you are a victim of Human Trafficking or suspect an adult is a victim of human trafficking, please visit the

National Human Trafficking Hotline,

or call them at 1-888-3737-888. If you suspect a child is a victim, please call the

Florida Abuse Hotline

at 1-800-96-ABUSE

Boys — the silent victims of sex trafficking

More than 1 million children, according to the International Labour Organization, are exploited each year in the commercial sex trade. IndyStar columnist Tim Swarens, through the support of a Society of Professional Journalists fellowship, spent more than a year investigating a lucrative business where children are abused with low risk to buyers or traffickers, despite tougher laws and heightened international awareness of the scourge. Google, Eli Lilly and Co., and Indiana Wesleyan University provided additional support for this project.

This is the fourth of 10 columns in the EXPLOITED series, which explores the cultural and economic forces that contribute to commercial sexual exploitation.

SAN DIEGO, Calif. — The silence nearly killed Tom Jones.

As a child, Jones was raped, abused and sold to men for sex. The brutality ended when he was 15. But, like many male victims, Jones didn’t seek help, didn’t tell anyone about the trauma he had suffered.

Instead, he buried his pain and shame deep inside, carrying the burden alone and in silence for another 15 years.

Silence did not equal acceptance. “I’m lucky, because I shouldn’t be here,” Jones says. “I put a lot of focus and energy into taking my own life.”

Two suicide attempts failed. And Jones says he was preparing for a third attempt when he decided finally to reach out for help.

Even then, years after the exploitation ended, it was difficult for Jones to acknowledge what he had suffered. “I was very ashamed to talk to a therapist who I knew cared about me,” he says.

“Key informants pointed out their belief that law enforcement has very little understanding of (commercially exploited) boys. For example, when filing human trafficking reports, they would often ask: ‘Why couldn’t he get away? He’s a boy.’ One informant said she was forced to explain to law enforcement professionals before filing a report that boys and young men can be bought and sold just like girls.”

— “And Boys Too,” ECPAT-USA, 2013 report.

Tom Jones’ tortuous journey — from male child trafficking victim to adult survivor — is far more common than is often acknowledged by anti-trafficking organizations, law enforcement and the news media.

“Boys hear that it only happens to girls,” Steven Procopio, clinical director of MaleSurvivor, a network of therapists and survivors,says. “This is seen as a gender-biased, gender-specific issue.”

The United Nations’ International Labour Organization reinforced that mindset in September when it released updated estimates on the number of human trafficking victims worldwide. The ILO reported that of the 4.8 million people forced to work in the sex trade in 2016, virtually all were girls and women.

As I reported on this series, some nonprofit leaders involved in the fight against trafficking in the U.S. delivered the same message. Boys, they told me, are rarely the victims of commercial exploitation.

“It makes me very angry,” Jerome Elam, a male survivor who is CEO of the Trafficking in America Task Force, said. “The UN and others are not acknowledging the problem. They’re just not getting it in terms of the sex trafficking of males.”

Multiple studies support Elam and Procopio’s contention that boys are exploited far more often than is commonly understood.

In 2016, a Department of Justice-commissioned study, Youth Involvement in the Sex Trade, found that boys make up about 36% of children caught up in the U.S. sex industry (about 60% are female and less than 5% are transgender males and females).

In 2008, researchers from the John Jay School of Criminal Justice reported that boys account for about 45% of child trafficking victims in New York City.

In 2013, an ECPAT-USA report concluded that the “scope of (the commercial sexual exploitation of boys) is vastly under reported.” The researchers also cited the need to better identify male victims, to raise awareness about the harm caused by commercial exploitation and to provide more services designed specifically for boys.

But years later, little progress has been made either in identifying or providing help for male victims.

The result is that tens of thousands of boys and men continue to suffer in silence. And like other victims of sexual abuse, they’re at greater risk of depression, suicide and chronic diseases. They’re more likely to abuse drugs and alcohol. More likely to land in prison.

Relationships also suffer, with spouses and children frustrated and perplexed by their loved one’s bouts of depression, random anger and emotional numbness.

“They haven’t told even their families what they’ve been through,” Jones says.

“We were met with more resistance because we are helping boys. But we owe it to the world to see that boys are provided with the care they need.”

— Chris Smith, co-founder (with his wife, Anna) of Restore One, a North Carolina-based nonprofit providing treatment for trafficked boys.

Why do boys continue to be overlooked in efforts to combat trafficking? Male survivors and their advocates have strong opinions about the answers.

“We live in a culture where men are perpetrators and women are victims, and there are no gray areas,” Procopio of MaleSurvivor said. “There’s a lot sexism involved with this issue.”

Boys don’t fit the popular script of who is and isn’t a victim of trafficking. Liam Neeson didn’t bust through doors in the Taken movies to rescue his son. Journalists seldom write heartbreaking stories about 15-year-old boys sold on Backpage.

And even in 2018, Procopio notes, a dangerous myth persists that an adolescent boy who is exploited by an adult is somehow “lucky” to get the sex that every young male supposedly craves. In reality, male victims of commercial exploitation and sexual abuse suffer the same types of trauma as females. Their pain is just as devastating. There’s nothing lucky about it.

Elam points to another misconception that pushes boys into silence: The fear that the abused will become an abuser. Although it’s true that sexual abuse victims are at increased risk of harming others, a strong majority do not perpetuate the crime. Still, an unfair stigma that they pose a danger to children is often attached to male survivors.

All of which makes it harder for boys and men to break the silence.

“We’re not inclined to come out and say we were raped as children because we’re afraid we’ll be ridiculed,” Elam says.

The reluctance to speak up is understandable, but it carries damaging consequences. Victims feel even more isolated. Government agencies and nonprofits are reluctant to provide services for an invisible population. Police, teachers and others in regular contact with youth don’t receive training in how to identify and help male victims.

In many ways, it’s a repeat of how female victims were treated a decade ago. Although we still have far to go, we’ve thankfully come a long way in better identifying, assisting and accepting girls exploited in the sex trade. But we’re failing our boys.

Procopio and others say another form of bias — discrimination against gay and transgender males — also helps explain why boys aren’t acknowledged as victims and offered help. “There’s a lot of homophobia. But this issue is not about sexual orientation,” Procopio says. “Trafficking is about power and control.”

Gay and transgender youth are more likely to become trafficking victims, according to the Polaris Project, in part because family conflicts push many of them to run away from home. Once on the streets, runaway kids, no matter their gender or sexual orientation, are highly vulnerable to exploitation. Gay and transgender youth also are at significantly higher risk of physical violence than others working in the sex trade.

Yet, according to the 2016 Youth in the Sex Trade study and other research, most male child trafficking victims aren’t gay. The majority are heterosexual boys manipulated or forced into having sex with men. As a consequence, Procopio notes, it’s common for straight male victims to question their sexual orientation long after the abuse ends.

In Southern California, Tom Jones, after surviving what he calls his era of silence, now pours his energy into reaching other men struggling with the aftermath of trafficking and abuse.

Jones leads a loose network of male survivors who are at various points on the path to healing. He encourages the men to enter counseling, but many aren’t ready for that step. In fact, he’s met only about a third of the network’s members face to face. Many of the survivors are not yet ready to engage in anything more threatening than sending and receiving text messages.

One man, despite years of interaction with Jones, won’t acknowledge that he suffered the abuse he describes. “He says it happened to a friend,” Jones says.

For many victims, the shame and guilt are still buried too deep to speak the truth, to shatter the silence that holds so many men as emotional prisoners.

But Jones, Elam and others keep speaking out on victims’ behalf, keeps shouting the message that boys are exploited in the sex trade far more often than many want to admit.

Picture - © Tim Swarens/IndyStar A child plays in an Ayoreo village on the edge of Santa Cruz de la Sierra, Bolivia.