California Teen Who Pimped Out Younger Girls Gets 13 years

Marc Benjamin of The Sacramento Bee writes:

An 18-year-old Hanford woman was sentenced to 13 years in prison for her role in the pimping and human trafficking of younger girls.

Hanford police detectives arrested Jelinajane Bedrijo Almario in May 2016. Though a juvenile, she was tried as an adult for human trafficking, sending threatening emails to a family member of at least one of the girls and making terrorist threats.

The following is by Dr. John A. King

Please read the entire article; it is eye-opening.

A case we are involved with, spanning the last 9 months, includes dozens of female recruiters targeting hundreds of others through social media and recruiting parties. We know of one circle of people responsible for the abuse/trafficking of nearly 3000 girls and boys, many of them underage. When this group holds their parties on national holidays, the recruiters go into overdrive needing to supply hundreds of guests with young people to for sex. Not all ‘guests’ need their services as many bring their own ‘party favours’ to share and trade out for the evening. I know these numbers sound outrageous to people many don’t believe they could be true, they are. They have all we received them from the recruiters who are now in protective custody waiting to testify against the individuals involved.

To read the testimonies of the recruiters is horrific. Stories of their own abused laced with guilt-ridden confessions of trafficking others. Accounts of forced group sex and bestiality. Forced pornography and a range of other activities I don’t I feel comfortable writing about in a public document.

People often ask us how they can make a difference:

1) Share this post with your social media contacts.

2)  Support us as we run seminars around the country raising awareness with community groups, first responders and college students. You support is tax deductible.

3) Organise an event with Give Them A Voice Foundation in your area.

4) Attending a viewing or hold a screening of the multi-award winning documentary Stopping Traffic.

Everything counts and everything helps.

Dr John A. King

Study: Most abductions happen when a child is going to or leaving school

TAMPA, Fla. (WFLA) — Do your children know what to do if they are approached by someone without a parent around? News Channel 8 looked into where children are the most at risk, and what you should conversations parents and children should be having.

According to a study done by the National Center for Missing & Exploited Children, attempted abductions happen most often when a child is going to and from school, or school related activities.

St. Pete Police Officer Mark Williams says typically the abductor is not a stranger.

“More often than not, we find it is individuals that are abducted, are abducted by someone they know, so we want to make sure they understand there is a need to be aware of anyone and everyone who comes up to you and offers you something,“ he said.

Officer Williams suggests parents and children have a code word, something anyone picking up your child would know, so the child knows it is safe to go with them. If the person doesn’t know it, the child should get away, fast.

“The child should definitely turn and walk away, and we hope that if children are out they are with a partner or with a buddy. that is the main way we can keep our kids safe.”  said Officer Williams.

By Amanda Ciavarri

Congressman Jim Sensenbrenner Introduces the CyberTipline Modernization Act

WASHINGTON, D.C. – Today, Congressman Jim Sensenbrenner introduced a bill aimed at reforming the CyberTipline Reporting Requirements. The bill will provide much needed updates to better reflect the current operations of the CyberTipline and the process of sending, receiving, and handling the millions of reports expected each year.

The CyberTipline was first launched in 1998 by the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children (NCMEC).  The CyberTipline provides the public and the technology industry with the ability to report online (and via toll-free telephone) instances of child sexual exploitation including child pornography, online enticement of children for sexual acts, child sex tourism, and child sex trafficking. The initial statute was last updated in 2008.

The CyberTipline Modernization Act will continue the initial work of the NCMEC by adding updated provisions to ensure the protection and safety of reports citing suspected exploitation. This common sense bill makes clear the requirements NCMEC and providers must follow in order to ensure these crucial protections are not needlessly subjected to outdated government regulations.

Congressman Sensenbrenner: “The modernization of this bill would be a significant step forward in the fight to reduce the sexual exploitation of children online. It’s imperative we improve safety standards so we can be actively engaged in preventing the victimization of children and efficiently process and investigate all reports of child sexual abuse.”

Residential Child Abduction Cases

Child abduction stirs significant fear among people throughout the United States. And, this emotionally charged crime can overwhelm law enforcement agencies quickly, particularly those with limited resources.

Even more alarming, kidnappers sometimes remove children from inside their homes, rousing the anxiety of families, communities, and nations. The disturbing reality is that children are not necessarily safe in their residence.

1 However, the infrequency and sensationalism surrounding these crimes may have led to incorrect assumptions by the public and even law enforcement agencies about this unique type of kidnapping.

2 Recently, the FBI’s Behavioral Analysis Unit–3 (BAU–3), which addresses crimes against children, analyzed 32 cases of residential child abduction, “the abduction of a child from the interior of a residence by a nonparental offender who did not have legitimate or permissible access to the residence at the time of the offense.”

3 The findings offer insight to law enforcement officers who handle these cases and initially must consider all potential scenarios, including those involving an intruder. BAU–3’s analysis may help agencies narrow the focus and scope of their investigations.

4 Observations and Findings
Members of the law enforcement community may assume that offenders carefully plan residential child abductions because of the high level of risk. On the contrary, BAU–3’s analysis determined that most perpetrators were unorganized during the crime. For example, many failed to prepare for the kidnapping, and most did not consider forensics while in the home. These findings indicate that such abductions may be more impulsive than planned. When overlaid with the high frequency of sexual motivation, they further suggest that offenders act to immediately satisfy their desires.

Investigators instinctively may have questions about residential child abductions. For instance, with many options available to offenders wanting to take a child, why would they choose to enter an occupied residence—often at night—to do so, considering the risk? Also, how do these kidnappings initially go undetected, thereby resulting in the perpetrator’s success?

Various factors may influence an offender’s decision making process and lead to the successful removal of a child from a residence.

Compared with adults, children are weak, vulnerable, and easier to physically control.

Offenders possessing poor social and interpersonal skills may find a sleeping child easy to mentally and emotionally manipulate.

Guardianship becomes compromised when adults living in the home are asleep or absent.

Recent substance abuse by perpetrators lowers their inhibition of trespassing in an occupied dwelling.

An offender may feel comfortable entering and navigating residences as a result of committing prior burglaries.

Offenses:

Most offenders studied by BAU–3 covertly entered an unsecure residence through the front door. Seventy percent of these incidents occurred between midnight and 8:00 a.m. Nearly three-quarters of victims were asleep, and most offered little to no resistance. In most cases, other children—typically siblings—occupied the same room as the victim at the time of abduction. In half of the cases, the other children detected the perpetrator.

A dog was present in over one-third of the incidents. Surprisingly, in most cases, the animal did not alert anyone of the intruder. One offender reported walking past sleeping dogs.

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Project Safe Childhood Fact Sheet - Department of Justice

PROJECT SAFE CHILDHOOD

Project Safe Childhood is the Department of Justice initiative launched in 2006 to combat the proliferation of technology-facilitated crimes involving the sexual exploitation of children.  The threat of sexual predators soliciting children for physical sexual contact is well-known and serious.  The danger of perpetrators who produce, distribute and possess child pornography is equally dramatic and disturbing.  There is often an international dimension to these crimes – for example, some offenders travel to victimize children outside of the United States or view live video streams (in addition to recorded still and video images) of children being abused in foreign countries.

The department is committed to the safety and well-being of every child and has placed a high priority on combating sexual exploitation of minors.  Through a network of federal, state, local and tribal law enforcement agencies and advocacy organizations, Project Safe Childhood attempts to protect children by investigating and prosecuting offenders involved in child sexual exploitation.

The department expanded Project Safe Childhood in May 2011 to encompass all federal crimes involving the sexual exploitation of a minor, including sex trafficking of a minor and crimes against children committed in Indian country. Failure to register as a sex offender offenses now also fall within the ambit of Project Safe Childhood.

Project Safe Childhood is implemented through partnerships with numerous stakeholders,  including: U.S. Attorneys’ Offices (USAOs) and the Executive Office for U.S. Attorneys; the Child Exploitation and Obscenity Section (CEOS) of the Justice Department’s Criminal Division, Internet Crimes Against Children (ICAC) task forces; federal law enforcement partners, including the FBI, the U.S. Postal Inspection Service (USPIS), Homeland Security Investigations (HSI), U.S. Secret Service and the U.S. Marshals Service (USMS); advocacy organizations such as the National Institute of Justice; and state, local, tribal and military law enforcement officials.

READ THE  PROJECT SAFE CHILDHOOD FACT SHEET

Make a CyberTipline Report (NCMEC)

In March 1998, using hardware, software, and programming assistance donated by Sun MicroSystems, NCMEC launched the CyberTipline® to further NCMEC’s mission of helping to prevent and diminish the sexual exploitation of children. The CyberTipline provides the public and electronic service providers (ESPs) with the ability to report online (and via toll-free telephone) instances of online enticement of children for sexual acts, extra-familial child sexual molestation, child pornography, child sex tourism, child sex trafficking, unsolicited obscene materials sent to a child, misleading domain names, and misleading words or digital images on the Internet. NCMEC continuously reviews CyberTipline reports to ensure that reports of children who may be in imminent danger get first priority. After NCMEC’s review is completed, all information in a CyberTipline report is made available to law enforcement.

In furtherance of NCMEC’s mission, the CyberTipline allows NCMEC to engage with the Internet industry on voluntary initiatives to help reduce the proliferation of child sexual abuse images online. NCMEC uses the information submitted to the CyberTipline to create and tailor NCMEC’s safety and prevention publications that are provided to educators, parents and the public to help to prevent future victimization.

More than 12.7 million reports of suspected child sexual exploitation have been made to the CyberTipline between 1998 and June 2016.

Members of the public are encouraged to report information regarding possible child sexual exploitation to the CyberTipline.

21 arrested across Columbus in online child predator sting

COLUMBUS, Ga. — An undercover sting to root out child predators ended early Monday morning with a total 21 men behind bars.

Operation Hidden Guardian is an initiative by state and local investigators to use fake social media and phone app profiles operated by officers to root out predators.

Columbus Police Department Chief Ricky Boren says all 21 suspects agreed to travel to or around Columbus to meet who they thought were underage kids for sex.

Boren’s release says the operation first initiated when the GBI’s Child Exploitation and Computer Crimes Unit (CEACC) and the Georgia Internet Crimes Against Children Task Force (ICAC) first contacted local law enforcement back in August to organize a sting.

Hidden Guardian started on November 9 and over the course of the investigation, more than 600 messages were exchanged between undercover officers and online profiles.  The release says around 400 of the exchanges were initiated by predators seeking a child and steering conversations towards sexual topics. The release says at times the adults exposed the “minor” to obscene, pornographic images or asked the “child” to take nude photos.

Over the past five days, the 21 suspects who either lived in Columbus or traveled to the area for sex with a minor were arrested.

Boren says the suspects range from 22 to 55 with all kinds of professions — from a local car wash attendant to a school custodian all the way from North Carolina.

“There is no profile, there is no standard child predator,” says Debbie Garner, the commander of the Georgia ICAC.

Garner says it’s not uncommon for such predators to have inappropriate encounters with children in their past, even if they have no prior convictions.

“Most often they admit to prior sexual contact with children in the past. As the commander of the task force, that’s very important to me. It tells me we are actually arresting the people who are preying on children and so that these operations really do work,” she says.

“You know there was one person who basically admitted that they had been thinking about touching children and that they felt as though that would have happened in the future. They were almost happy that they were caught.”

Garner suggests parents utilize resources like NetSmartz.Org, an site operated by the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children. The site features tips to keep children’s information safe and signs to watch out for to avoid predators. NetSmartz.Org even has videos from survivors who tell their terrifying encounters with online predators.

Some of the tips include not talking to anyone you don’t know in real life, even if their profile age seems similar to your own.

“It may look like they are a 16-year-old boy or a 16-year-old girl and that’s not actually who they are. you know a lot of times kids will say well they’re a kid too and they’ll accept their friend request,” Garner says. “All they have to do, all a child predator has to do is get one kid to accept their friend request and then the other kids see that they’re friends with them, and then they accept their friend request, so it’s things like that we try to teach kids.”

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