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Fight against sex-trafficking draws prosecutors to Waikiki

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ASSOCIATED PRESS

Hotel guests relaxed at the Sheraton Waikiki on Wednesday while inside, prosecutors from around the U.S., Canada, Palau and several Asian countries met at a summit on sex trafficking in Honolulu. The prosecutors are calling the scourge of sex trafficking a form of modern-day slavery that touches every state in the nation, and they’re working to draw connections between active investigations around the globe.

Prosecutors from around the world say the fight against sex trafficking is moving online as traffickers use popular websites to advertise sexual services.

They talked Friday about how they can crack down on the problem at an international sex trafficking summit in Waikiki that drew prosecutors from Asia, the U.S. and Canada.

The challenges each nation faces are similar, and victims are often unwilling to cooperate with investigators because they’ve endured a history of abuse, said Jackie Lacey, Los Angeles County’s district attorney.

“Most of this is underground,” Lacey said. “It’s not like in the ’80s and ’90s where women were on the street. It’s all done by social media, cellphones, emails, text messages.”

Michael Ramos, president of the National District Attorneys Association, said he plans to push for legislation in the United States to make it illegal to use websites to solicit illegal sex and to hold internet companies accountable for sex trafficking that occurs on their platforms.

“There should be some place that says you need to do a better job with the content that’s on your promotional site,” Ramos said. “It’s just so easy right now … Instead of having prostitutes out on the corner like they used to in a red light district, now they just go online, they hit a button, and it’s like ordering a pizza.”

Other law enforcement officers, such as Honolulu Prosecutor Keith Kaneshiro, said websites that allow sex ads have helped officers catch traffickers by identifying locations where there’s a problem.

Sonia Paquet, a Canadian prosecutor, talked about how prostitution is illegal but there’s little enforcement. She said online reviews of establishments are out in the open, and she pulled up one on her phone.

“If we go on the internet site, we see the girls naked,” she said. “They are from everywhere around the world.”

Prosecutors from Canada, China, Japan, Palau, the Philippines, South Korea, Taiwan and Thailand attended the summit. American prosecutors attended from more than a dozen states including Arkansas, California, Hawaii, Illinois, Kansas, Louisiana, Massachusetts, Nebraska, New York, Nevada, Oregon, Virginia, Washington and Washington, D.C.

One response to “Fight against sex-trafficking draws prosecutors to Waikiki”

  1. Sandybeach says:

    Sex and human labor trafficking are crimes against humanity as defined by the United Nation. We have hundreds of illegally trafficked fishermen in the Hawaii long line fleet. And the government will not make the changes required to stop this abhorrent situation. Sex trafficking means actively working against the “pimps” that are the profiteers. These crimes have silent victims. Victims that are afraid to speak out for fear of harm or even death. Work on this matter. It is an international problem.

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