WUNRN
Lisa’s pimp branded her with a tattoo on
the inside of her lip. Photo provided by Sharee Sanders Gordon/Los Angeles
Deputy City Attorney and |
By Charlene Muhammad -
National Correspondent - June 17, 2014
Editor’s
note: This is part of a three-part series on sexual slavery and Black
LOS ANGELES
(FinalCall.com) - Pimping, or sex trafficking, is a multi-billion dollar
industry: Some say $64 billion worldwide and approximately $10 billion inside
The average
pimp has four to six girls, according to statistics from the
While many 13-
to 14-year-old girls are being groomed for academic decathlons, recruited for
middle and high school sports or drama clubs, others that age are being groomed
for sex work.
Girls are
raped, beaten, branded, indoctrinated, and sold day in and day out in a
lucrative sex trade.
In this file photo released by the
Spanish Police on March 24, 2012 a tattoo in the form of a bar code is seen
on the wrist of a woman in this hand out photo. Spain´s Interior Ministry
says police have arrested 22 persons of Romanian nationality on suspicion of
using violence to force women into prostitution and tattooing them with bar
codes as a sign of ownership. Officers freed one 19-year-old woman who had
been beaten, held against her will and tattooed with a bar code and an amount
of money which investigators believe was the debt the gang wished to extort
before freeing her. The women were tattooed on their wrists, and the freed
woman had the sum 2,000 euro ($ 2,650) etched onto her skin. Photo:
AP/Wide World photos |
Survivors
and advocates want the horror clearly identified as sex trafficking and
not prostitution, especially when it comes to minors. “Child prostitution
and Johns are two words that should not exist when addressing child sex
trafficking because a child cannot commit to commercial sex according to state
and federal law,” said Lt. Andre Dawson, officer-in-charge of the Los Angeles
Police Department’s Human Trafficking Division, which is responsible for
getting pimps off the streets.
Lt. Dawson
said society needs a major shift: Children involved aren’t criminals, they’re
victims. The buyers aren’t Johns, or sex purchasers, they’re rapists, he said.
Law
enforcement advocates like Mary Howard, an officer and president of the Nu
Alpha Delta Multicultural Sorority, a non-profit organization, agreed.
The sorority,
comprised of women from various professional, organizational and faith
backgrounds, has joined a growing movement of those outraged and ready to fight
sex trafficking.
The sorority
hosted a day-long “2014 Human Trafficking Intervention Forum” at Good Shepherd
Missionary Baptist Church of Los Angeles. A second forum was held at
The problem is
real, Ms. Howard said. “We in the community need to embrace this (fight) and
not wait until one of our youth or loved ones is a statistic,” she said.
Johns and
Pimps 101
Sharee
Sanders Gordon, deputy city attorney and
She had never
thought about how devastating the problem could be for a child and a community.
“I never
thought about how students going to school would have to divert themselves so
they could go to a safer route, or being propositioned by young ladies on the
street who were just confused, or seeing used condoms as they went to school,”
Atty. Sanders Gordon said.
As she grew
more entrenched in the community and her work, and seeing nothing really being
resolved in the courts, she helped to develop a Prostitution Diversion Program
targeting repeat offenders. The program aids victims and strives to help
improve their lives, she said.
Part of the
problem is a lack of resources to deal with pimps, as well as jail
overcrowding, the prosecutor explained. Penalties for pimping amount to 30 days
but sometimes pimps get out the same day they’re arrested, she said.
Her program
works with service providers that help women who are victims of trafficking and
street prostitution exit the life. Her program provides food, clothing,
shelter, medical care, individual and group counseling, and job training.
The
Prostitution Diversion Program also works to increase education and awareness
through
Critics
sometimes bash the work with Johns because they’re part of the problem, but the
point is to stop the same individuals from helping to destroy the community,
Atty. Sanders Gordon explained. Basically, educators spend a day scaring
One middle
school on
Five
people in
“Now you ask
why did they come down here? Because
Root causes
and symptoms of active sex trafficking
Tony Muhammad,
Nation of Islam Western Region Student Minister, encouraged advocates and
police to go to the root of the pimping problem. The problem is spiritual and
mental, he said during his address at the Nu Alpha Delta Multicultural Sorority
sponsored forum.
“Don’t just
deal with the effects of what’s going on in the poor communities because you’re
looking at the fruit that’s coming from a rotten tree,” he said.
“Where did
trafficking start? Pimping didn’t start with the gangs that’s doing it. Pimping
started with the slave ship. You can’t just deal with branches,” Mr. Muhammad
said.
He was not
defending pimps wreaking havoc on the Black community, but reminding listeners
that a man engaged in such is not in his natural state.
“How did God
want this thing to be? How did the man get out of control? In the Nation of
Islam, we believe that no man can rise any higher than his woman, who is the
second self of God … We have to line this thing up,” Mr. Muhammad said.
“Something’s
missing and in my honest opinion, I haven’t seen a group that is as good at
reforming Black men in particular like the Nation of Islam,” he said. “Malcolm
was a pimp, but you love him now. But he was a pimp! Who changed him and what
changed him … all Elijah Muhammad did was line Malcolm’s mind back up with
God’s mind.”
The task is to
teach Black men acting as pimps and self-haters how they got in their condition
and how they lost their names, language, religion and culture, he said. “Get
those things back and you will begin to tune yourself up.”
Tattoos or
branding?
Many frown at
the sight of big, bright or deep, dark tattoos on youth, especially on young
females. While some of the tattoos are by choice, others are by force.
According to
Atty. Sanders Gordon, a pimp in
Pimps love to
memorialize their conquests, observed Lt. Dawson. But in tattoo branding their
victims, they’re now providing material that can be used as court evidence, he
added.
into
silence and prompted verbal outbursts. One photo depicted girls with the
acronym C.R.EA.M. (Cash Rules Everything Around Me) tattooed across their
cheeks, breasts, thighs and rear of their legs, extending from their buttocks.
The message
from the pimp who branded them is no matter what you say about me, my name is
on your face, Lt. Dawson said. Dollar signs are very popular too, he added.
The branding
is all part of the pimps’ indoctrination process, he continued.
The
presentation contained images typically unseen in documentaries on sex
trafficking because it’s a tough story to tell. “In this stage of the game, I’m
trying to show the reality of it and the crisis that these people are in. It’s
sad. It’s sad how people are treating each other and what’s more disgusting is
what grown men are doing to these children,” Lt. Dawson told The Final Call.
Another slide
showed a seated pimp, posing for the camera. Behind him was a young, nude girl
face down on a counter in a planking position. Her hands were shackled behind
her back. Her head was covered with a white plastic garbage bag.
According to
Lt. Dawson, some pimps have a structured entity with a seal and nationwide
licensing. A pimp who was recently convicted had his “pimping license” revoked
and lost all right to refer to himself as a pimp by the organization, Lt.
Dawson continued. The banned pimp was told he’d be fined $500,000 per violation
if he went against the ban, according to the police lieutenant.
It sounds
ridiculous, but it’s true, he said.
“You do the
math. They’re making money. The girls are reusable every day. They’re just a
product to these guys and it’s easier to sell a young lady than it is with
drugs, because with drugs, once it’s gone, you have to go out and buy new
drugs. But when you have a young lady out there, you can use her over and over
and over again,” said Atty. Sanders Gordon.
Many listeners
sat fuming in their seats with angry faces, shaking their heads or wiping away
tears. The audience was clearly moved as Atty. Sanders Gordon continued to
share the horrors experienced by young victims.
The case that
broke her heart involved a then 17-year-old from
Two pimps eyed
her and gave her an ultimatum.
“‘You’re
working for one of us, so you just pick which one you want to work for,’ ” the
pimps told her, according to the prosecutor.
The teen,
frantic to get away, started walking down the middle of the street in morning
rush hour traffic, she recalled. The girl eventually was rescued by
police.
The District
Attorney rejected the case, fearing she wouldn’t testify and all Atty. Sanders
Gordon could do was file a misdemeanor charge.
After a
grueling court trial endured by the girl, her mother, father, and younger
brother, the pimp was convicted.
“It was just
devastating for her but she wanted to make sure that that individual never did
that to anyone else,” Atty. Sanders Gordon said.
“We as a community need to take charge of the situation because the court systems are not able to do it on their own. We’re only going to be able to have any kind of lasting effect if we work on this together,” Atty. Sanders Gordon declared.
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