When dreams come true it's a funny thing. It's something you've hoped and dreamed of for years and when the day comes to live it out it becomes a little unreal. Or at least that's what I'm experiencing right now!

For months now, I have been planning and working towards an exploratory trip to South East Asia. I've been investigating ministries, talking with potential ministry contacts, planing out budgets and project proposals, and now the time has come...

 

Statistics reveal that India has 17 million child laborers -- the highest in the world. Lack of awareness about the basic rights of a child has lead to easy violation of laws meant to protect and empower children. In homes, on the streets and in sweatshops, children are being exploited by the thousands.

Held captive and sent to the streets, rock quarry, mines, or sweatshops to work I can't help but think about their childhood. What happens to their childhoods?

Millions of children that are being FORCED to work and BEAT if they don't bring in "enough" money for their "owners."

When I was in India the first time (2006) we were told to not give the beggars on the street any money**. Most of them, according to the staff I was working with, are what they call "professional beggars." Some of the beggars were old, some middle aged, but some as young children; even little ones that could barely walk, or mothers that carry up their baby to your window. Many of them, once they become of older (usually around teenage years), will be maimed and disabled in hopes of creating more sympathy and bring in more money. The goal: to bring in as much money as possible so the traffickers can live the "good life" and so they can buy and enslave more children so they can earn more money. 

Eight charged in N.J.-based sex-trafficking ring

 
Allen E. Brown Jr., authorities say, is the CEO of a sex-trafficking ring based in Jersey City.

Brown was indicted, along with six alleged accomplices, Friday.

 

TRENTON -- From Newark to Atlantic City, he preyed on women at bus stations, train stations and night clubs. He flashed his cash, proposed dinner dates in New York City and promised them a taste of the "good life."

He sought out women on drugs, and offered them more; those who were not yet hooked, he gave them a hit.

                Allen E. Brown

For nearly two decades, Allen Brown Jr., aka "Prince," of Jersey City, allegedly lured scores of women into a life of prostitution, first confiscating their cell phones and any form of personal identification, and then forced them to turn tricks until they made a nightly quota of up to $1,000, according to law enforcement officials who announced Brown's indictment by a state grand jury Friday.

"This is a case about human trafficking which, put simply, is modern day slavery," said Attorney General Anne Milgram.

Six others, including Brown's mother and niece, were also indicted in connection with the human sex trafficking ring Friday on charges that resulted from an investigation by state and local officials, dubbed "Operation Red Light."

Milgram described the womens' situation as "a living hell of addiction and prostitution."     

                                                                                                                           Tecora L. Robinson

Since 1990, officials said Brown, 47, recruited women from Camden, Atlantic City, Elizabeth, Newark and Philadelphia. He brought them to living quarters he called "stables," in Jersey City, some which had locks that could only be opened with a key that few people held. His last known location was an upscale condominium in the Society Hill section of the city, officials said.

All of the women, ages 17 to 43, were required to make a certain amount of money each day, ranging from $500 to $1,000, or face beatings, officials said. They were forced to work to support their cocaine and heroine drug habits, some of which were started by drugs provided by Brown. If they failed to come up with the money, the women were denied drugs to satisfy their addictions and locked out until they finished their work, officials said.

"These women were forced to prostitute every single day -- Thanksgiving, Christmas, there were no holidays. We believe that he had between two and 20 women," working for him on any given day over the 19-year period, Milgram said.

Brown's high school girlfriend, Annie Cooper, aka "China," 40, of Jersey City, led the household, kicking and beating women who did not reach their quota, law enforcement officials said. She managed the workers who drove the women to motels and to the streets of various cities, to work, and told them to use force against them if they refused to carry out orders.

Law enforcement officials said Brown earned hundreds of thousands of dollars through the operation, using it to buy jewelry, cars, furniture and drugs.

He laundered the proceeds through various financial transactions, once using his mother's bank account to launder a $500,000 inheritance one of his prostitutes turned over to him after he threatened to hurt her and her family, authorities said.

He also used family members to hold the titles of cars and leases. They     included his mother (photo to the left), Tecora B. Brown, 72, of Bayonne, and niece, Tecora L. Brown, 35, of Jersey City, both charged with racketeering and promoting prostitution, among other charges.

 

   

All together, eight people were arrested and charged in the ring. Seven were indicted on charges of first-degree racketeering, which carries a maximum sentence of 20 years in prison and a $200,000 fine, and third-degree promoting prostitution, which carries a penalty of a maximum of five years in prison and a $15,000 fine, among other charges. The eighth, Brown's girlfriend Cooper, was charged but pleaded guilty to first-degree racketeering on July 28 in Hudson County. She faces five to 10 years in state prison as part of a plea agreement.                                                                                                                                                                                         

Allen Brown Jr. was indicted on charges of first-degree racketteering, human trafficking and money laundering, as well as numerous second- and third-degree charges, including drug possession, theft by extortion, possession of a weapon for an unlawnful prupose and failure to pay state and gross income tax, authorities said. He faces a sentence of 20 years to life on the human trafficking charge alone, Milgram said.

The others charged in the case and indicted: Anthony Evans, 51, of Jersey City; Brown's nephew, Arthur Brown, 37, of Jersey City; Jerome Robinson, 30, of Newark; Marlo Taylor, 39, of Newark.

Milgram said the case came to light after someone came forward and cooperated with authorities.

Allen Brown Jr. was arrested last September, along with Cooper and Anthony Evans, after a search warrant of the Jersey City condominium -- it took a year to get the indictments. The three are being held in the Hudson County Jail on $325,000 bail each.

Since 2005, in the state of New Jersey, 107 people have been identified as victims of human trafficking by non-profit and service organizations, Milgram said.

She said that between January 2007 and Sept 2008, 1,200 incidents of human trafficking were reported in the United States. The Department of justice estimates nearly 80 percent of all human trafficking is sex trafficking.

 

I love family dinners! There has always been something special about sitting around the dinner table and sharing a meal together. While I was on the World Race, my first month with team Banah we had a dinner table where we spent a ton of time. We laughed, cried, and laughed some more around that table. We talked, played games, and prayed; it was a beautiful time of fellowship. We always made sure we had a "dinner table atmosphere" (even when there was not dinner table to eat at... it was more about the intimacy that it represented). Oh how I miss the days of sitting around the table with Banah.

But this is a new season. Instead of sitting around the table with Banah I sit with some more of my World Race family. Each Thursday we have our family dinners with the Hindes and just of late we have started to have more family dinners here at the house. Last Monday we had homemade pizzas that we made together and shared as we ate. Again, beautiful time with my family.

I was already thinking about the intimacy of the table when I received this Henri Nouwen Society meditation for the day yesterday:

Those of you who thought Ohio was all about rock n' roll, amazing chili, and a seriously unhealthy football obsession may want to think again. A new report conducted by the Trafficking in Persons Study Commission found that 1800 people are trafficked in Ohio every year. This includes 800 immigrants who are exploited in commercial sex and factory work, as well as about 1000 American-born children who are forced into prostitution. Who would have thought that Ohio would be such a hotebed of human trafficking?

But why Ohio, whose largest city, Columbus, is dwarfed by neighboring Chicago? How can a place that sounds and appears so wholesome be responsible for forcing a thousand children into sexual slavery each year? The report cites weak laws on human trafficking, a growing demand for cheap labor, and Ohio's proximity to the Canadian border as the key reasons modern-day slavery thrives in the state. I'm going to take a metaphorical highlighter to that word "demand," because that is the key to the human trafficking crisis.

Like many other places in the U.S., Ohio has a growing immigrant population, including those who have migrated legally, illegally but voluntarily, and involuntarily. Undocumented migrants are at increased risk for trafficking and exploitation, and in Ohio about 800 of them were found exploited in factories, agriculture, constriction sites, and brothels. Often, migrants are trafficked by high organized criminal networks who transport the victims into and around the U.S. They are the criminals, but it's the demand for cheap goods and food and for commercial sex that create an industry for trafficked immigrant workers.

What may be even more shocking in this study, however, is the 1000 American children who were forced into commercial sex over the course of a single year. It is shocking because it means that enough men in Ohio were willing to pay to rape a child to make trafficking that many kids profitable and worth the risk. If each of those children had sex with 5 men per night, 6 nights a week, that over 150,000 sex acts per year. Potentially, that's 150,000 men who are buying sex with trafficked children in Ohio. The report cited laws and geography as primary causes of trafficking in Ohio, but I would ask them to take a long hard look at the demand for commercial sex with children.

Ohio first made it onto the map of major trafficking destinations when a child sex trafficking ring that moved victims from truck stop to truck stop along the rust belt was busted. Most of the activity was centered in Toledo, Ohio, and Harrisburg, Pennsylvania. Not exactly the places I would have picked in my "International Criminal Trafficking Rings" poll. But traffickers go where they can make money by selling their victims, and those places were small cities in Ohio and Pennsylvania.