Lici’s story of abandonment, coercion and exploitation shows the reality of sex trafficking in America.
GATESVILLE, Texas ― When Lici met Joseph at a friend’s party in Killeen, Texas, in 2015, she was a 14-year-old who’d run away from foster care. She liked him from the start. He was kind and just seemed to get her; they both had rough childhoods and he didn’t wince when he saw the self-inflicted cuts on her arms. Joseph made her feel safe, often buying her food and clothes. She says they became “friends with benefits” and it just felt right.
There is little precise data on domestic sex trafficking, because victims are hard to identify and there is no standardized system for tracking them. But there are hundreds of thousands of human trafficking victims in the U.S., according to Polaris, an anti-trafficking organization, and studies show that most sex trafficking survivors in this country are U.S.-born women and girlsof color who are first exploited as minors.
She was eventually sentenced to 20 years in prison for aggravated robbery and aggravated kidnapping; Joseph got 15 years for the robbery. She preferred to express herself through spoken-word poems. During a recent visit, she put six pieces of folded lined paper on the wooden ledge in front of her and held one between her hands. She nervously warned that it was “very profane,” then looked down at the page with a serious expression as thelines tumbled out of her mouth:
When she was 10, Lici was adopted into a family for a few years. Anita C. Roberts, her adopted mother, is a retired lieutenant colonel who did public relations for the U.S. military. She said Lici was a smart, funny and talented kid who was popular at school. But no one in the foster care system had adequately prepared Roberts to handle the girl’s traumatic past and behavioral issues.
Another issue is that law enforcement officials and attorneys are not required to screen offenders for signs of sex trafficking. And if they do, they ask blunt questions that won’t illicit honest answers, such as, “Are you being sex trafficked?” “Like many abusers, he was careful with who he selected,” said Sigrid McCawley, a lawyer who represents some of Epstein’s victims. “He found individuals who were not in good circumstances and who needed assistance.”
Traffickers also tend to target marginalized groups, such as kids of color or LGBTQ youth. Forty percent of sex trafficking victims are Black,according to the latest available data from the Department of Justice, and 85% of calls to the National Human Trafficking Hotline in 2018 were from survivors of color.
“These are words we’re using to describe a child being sold, traded and abused by adult men,” Henneke said. “The language used throughout these docs reflects the perception that she is no longer a child deserving of our protection, but a woman to be scorned.”Dispelling The Pimp Myth In pop culture, pimps are often depicted as cane-wielding criminals in top hats or violent gang members with a stable of girls.
“Epstein got a free pass because he was a billionaire,” said McCawley, Giuffre’s lawyer. “His wealth allowed him to be viewed as someone who liked women and not someone who manipulated girl after girl after girl.” “If you put yourself in a trafficker’s shoes, it’s much easier to take advantage of someone who doesn’t fight you,” Tipton said, “and who doesn’t see the intricacies of how you are taking advantage of them.”
Two lawyers are working to challenge Lici’s sentence on the grounds that her case was not properly investigated. But they wouldn’t have even known about Lici if it weren’t for a student reporter who discovered that she was the youngest inmate being held in a Texas prison and brought the minor to their attention.
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