Take a little off the top. Read more at CBC News…

Prostitutes allegedly offered at Calgary hair salon

A Calgary woman who police allege posed as a hair stylist to run a bawdy house faces several charges in one of two unrelated human trafficking cases in the city.

In September, vice-squad officers began watching a woman they say was advertising the erotic services of young Asian women on a free online classified ad service.

The probe led police to the Alternative Hair Design salon and to homes in Calgary, where prostitution and human trafficking were allegedly taking place.

A woman posing as a hair stylist at the salon allegedly made appointments for clients to meet prostitutes.

Police said undercover officers were offered services, including the chance to purchase two teenage Asian women for $5,000 each. Eventually, the two women, both originally from China, were sold to officers for $4,000 each, police said. The women were later found to be 25 and 41 years old.

“Human trafficking is a hugely profitable industry in the world,” said Supt. Roger Chaffin of the Calgary police. “In terms of the price for these particular girls — again it is a fairly rare investigation so I don’t know that this price, how common that price was — but it’s a shocking thing to see humans traded for money and for a relatively low amount of money.”

Some brothels are more legit than others, seems to me.  Be careful what you’re supporting with your consumer dollar.  Read more at The Express & Star…

Jail for woman who helped run brothel

A woman who helped run a brothel in the Black Country and kept three prostitutes in “an atmosphere of fear” has been jailed for 16 months.

The woman, aged 25, subjected the women to a “degrading ordeal” by making them work as prostitutes in Unett Street, Smethwick, Wolverhampton Crown Court heard. Mr John Attwood, prosecuting, said the woman teamed up with a fellow Romanian national who had also arrived in the country in December last year.

The three women, also Romanian, were only allowed outside when with the woman to ensure they did not escape. Police were alerted to the brothel by family of the girls in Romania and executed a search warrant on February 5.

The woman admitted two counts of causing or inciting prostitution for gain.

Mr Attwood said: “All three females, one of whom was 19 at the time of the offence, were found at the address in Smethwick when police arrived.

Read more at The Houston Chronicle…

5 named in prostitution ring with Houston link
By MARY FLOOD

Five men and women accused of forcing girls as young as 16 into a life of prostitution were arrested in Houston, federal and local authorities said today.

Children 16 and 17 became indentured sex slaves to people who beat them, held them at gunpoint and threatened to harm their families, said Houston U.S. Attorney Tim Johnson. He said one defendant tried to sell a minor to another pimp.

“It’s disturbing when events of this nature occur anywhere. But it’s particularly disturbing when they occur in our backyard,” Johnson said.

He said the girls were presumably separated from their families and lured by a promise that someone would take care of them. Adult women also worked as prostitutes for the ring, Johnson said.

The indictment included accusations of conspiracy, sex trafficking by force, sex trafficking of children and transporting minors across state lines were:

The long arm of the law catches up with some sex traffickers in California. Read more at KCOY.com…

5 sentenced for forcing women into prostitution

Five people who lured Guatemalan women to Los Angeles where they were beaten and forced into prostitution have been sentenced to federal prison terms of 30 to 40 years.

The ringleader, Gladys Vasquez-Valenzuela, got 40 years in prison Monday in U.S. District Court.

Her sister and two nieces got 30 years each. 1 of her niece’s boyfriends got 35 years.

The five were found guilty in February of dozens of counts, including conspiracy and sex trafficking by force and fraud.

The judge said the scheme forced girls as young as 13 to prostitute themselves. Some women saw as many as 30 men per day.

Read more at The Orange County Register…

12 arrested in prostitution raid in Garden Grove
Westminster police say this is largest, most public brothel operation they’ve seen recently in area.
By DEEPA BHARATH

Police on Friday arrested a 23-year-old Westminster man in connection with running a brothel, which officials say is the largest they have seen in the area.

Officers from the Orange County Human Trafficking Task Force searched the man’s home in Westminster and his place of business in Garden Grove, said Westminster police Lt. Derek Marsh.  Eleven women, all of them Vietnamese, suspected of prostitution were arrested at the location, he said. The names of the women are not being released because they are being treated as victims of human trafficking and sexual exploitation, Marsh said.

Police detectives were tipped off to the Garden Grove location by an advertisement for massage services in a Vietnamese newspaper, Marsh said.

“The location was actually a chiropractor’s office that offered massage services on the side,” he said.

Police are still looking into whether the chiropractor who owned the business was also part of the suspected brothel operation, Marsh said.

This is the most “egregious” operation he has seen in the Little Saigon area, he said.

“Usually these types of brothels are located in a strip mall,” he said. “But this one was in an area pretty open to the public. There is a supermarket there, a dentist’s office right next door. In fact, when we went there, the door to the dentist’s office was open and there was a young child sitting on a chair waiting to be seen.”

It is also unusual for police to find as many as 11 women, he said.

The Garden State catches up with a Sex Trafficking ring that evidently may have been running for two decades. Read more at MyFoxPhilly.com…

Sex Trafficking Ring Busted In N.J.

Investigators break up what they call a major sex trafficking ring that was up and running in New Jersey.

Police say thanks to ‘Operation Red Light,’ dozens of women are free from a life of sex slavery.

The New Jersey Attorney General Friday detailed the case which she calls “horrific.”

“This is a case about human trafficking which, put simply, is modern-day slavery,” said NJ Attorney General Anne Milgram. “It is a heartbreaking case in which the freedom and the dignity of many women, women between the ages of 17 and 43, was taken away.”

A 47-year-old man known as ‘Prince’ is accused of human trafficking, racketeering, laundering hundreds of thousands of dollars among other charges.

According to authorities, the women were lured to Jersey City by Brown and forced into a life of drug addiction and prostitution.

Officials say the man kept the women enslaved through various methods.

“Once they were forced into his stable of prostitutes, they were subjected to beatings, to isolation from others, into corrosion. They were locked inside apartments,” said Milgram. “A daily quota which varied woman by woman but ranged about between $500 and $1000 a day. We’ve charged that they were beaten or they were denied entry into the house or they were refused the drugs they had become addicted to.”

Authorities say Brown ran the ring for nearly two decades.

Read the whole story at YNetNews.com…

State plans survey on prostitution
by Yael Branovsky

The Knesset Committee on the Status of Women discussed the Social Affairs, Health and Education ministries plan to eradicate prostitution in Israel and to rehabilitate victims of sexual assault.

Social Affairs Minister Isaac Herzog told the committee that his ministry allotted hundreds of thousands of shekels in favor of a special survey on the extent of prostitution in Israel.

According to the Toda’a Institute for the research of prostitution and sex trafficking, which is a member of the international Coalition Against the Trafficking of Women, 20,000 women and men is Israel prostitute themselves. Some 5,000 of them are teenagers and children.

The committee also discussed the funding needed for its programs. Both programs were budgeted in 2007, but the transfer of the funds had been delayed, and they are held in trust by the Treasury. A Finance Ministry representative present at the meeting said that so far, no timetable has been set for a budgetary transfer.

Read more at The Star in Malaysia…

Tricked by sex syndicates
By SHAHANAAZ HABIB and RASHVINJEET S. BEDI

Reports of young foreigners being lured by syndicates that traffic them into prostitution are a matter of great concern, and the authorities are set on stemming the tide with the Anti-Trafficking in Persons Act.

Soon, when you board a flight to Malaysia from China, Nepal, India, Indonesia, Thailand or other South-East Asian countries, don’t be surprised if you are handed a multi-lingual pamphlet asking “Are you being trafficked?”

The pamphlet in 10 languages has a brief checklist meant for those coming into Malaysia for work. It asks if they have an official letter offering the job, if they know the address where they are going to work and stay, the nature of the job offered and whether the agent wanted them to be secretive about their new job.

It also asks if they have detailed information on the recruiting agency that hired them, if they have advice from their respective embassies before coming, and if they know where to get assistance in the country they are going to (i.e Malaysia).

An emergency hotline number is included in the pamphlet, which is part of the Women, Family and Community Development Ministry’s efforts to get those heading here for work to think and to be better prepared in case of a worst-case scenario.

“We hope it will also be distributed at the immigration and other entry points to the country,” says the Department of Women’s Development director-general Datuk Dr Noorul Ainur Mohd Nur.

She says a number of people from these countries come over because they have been promised jobs only to find themselves in the hands of syndicates that traffick them into prostitution and other gains.

Unesco estimates that there are 250,000 prostitutes or (to use the politically correct term) sex workers in Malaysia.

Read the whole story at The Mirror…

Prostitute fears over London 2012 Olympics

Police officers have gone undercover to tackle sex trafficking in the areas of London staging the 2012 Olympic games.

The Met Police clubs and vice unit is spending £600,000 on the operation to rescue young women sold into prostitution.

Police believe there will be a huge rise in the number of Eastern Europeans trafficked into the five boroughs ahead of the games. Det Chief Supt Richard Martin said: “Our priority is making sure the victims are rescued.”

Read the whole story at The New York Times…

On Speedboats, Legal Again, Albania’s Illicit Sex Trade Could Flare
By DAN BILEFSKY

It was only after her trafficker sealed her mouth with electrical tape, drugged her and threatened to kill her family that the childlike woman, now 27, says she realized that the man she had planned to marry had seduced her with a terrible lie.

Her journey at age 18 from an Albanian village to a London brothel, where she said she spent five years working as a prostitute, began with a gold engagement ring, the promise of a better life abroad and — like many before her — a speedboat trip to Italy under the cover of night.

So many women, men and children had been trafficked abroad to work as prostitutes, forced laborers or beggars that the Albanian government three years ago barred all Albanian citizens from using speedboats, the favored transportation used by traffickers to get people out of the country.

This drastic measure, coupled with stricter border controls and revenge killings of traffickers by victims’ families, had a significant effect, reducing trafficking by more than half and all but ending Albania’s role as a major transit point for people trafficked to Western Europe from eastern and southern parts of the Continent, say experts who follow trafficking.

But the ban prompted loud protests from fishermen and people in the tourism industry, and in May it was reversed. Law enforcement and human rights officials are concerned that as a result, human trafficking may explode anew — at an especially difficult time.

The financial crisis, many experts said, could increase human trafficking around the world. A United States State Department report in June warned of the potential risk, saying that the crisis is causing “a shrinking demand for labor and a growing supply of workers willing to take ever greater risks for economic opportunities.”

The story continues at The New York Times