Crackdowns across the nation last week led to the rescue of 21 children from sexual exploitation and the arrests of hundreds of people on prostitution charges, federal law-enforcement officials said Wednesday.
The FBI said agents teamed with state and local police in 16 cities from Boston to Los Angeles to arrest 345 adults on charges of prostitution and pimping - a greater number being suspected of the former, though no precise breakdown was released. Officials called the series of stings Operation Cross Country.
“We together have no higher calling than to protect our children and to safeguard their innocence,” FBI Director Robert S. Mueller III said during a news conference at FBI headquarters. “Yet, the sex trafficking of children remains one of the most violent and unforgivable crimes in this country.”
The 16-city sweep marks the five-year anniversary of Innocence Lost, an initiative involving FBI, the Department of Justice and the National Center for Missing & Exploited Children. The goal is to combat domestic sex trafficking of children.
Since 2003, a total of 24 task forces have taken 433 children from prostitution and returned them to their homes or placed them with child protection agencies. The task forces’ efforts have also resulted in the convictions of 308 people who exploited those children, according to the FBI.
Ernie Allen, president of the National Center for Missing & Exploited Children, said most Americans associate child trafficking with Southeast Asia and Eastern Europe. But he said a University of Pennsylvania study concluded as many as 300,000 children in the U.S. are at risk of being forced into prostitution.
“This is 21st-century slavery,” said Mr. Allen, who described the child-prostitution victims as runaways who have left their families, or “throw-aways,” who have no families that accept them. The FBI said most of the youths are girls between ages 13 and 15.
Acting Assistant Attorney General Matthew Friedrich used the case of Don Arthur Webster to illustrate the type of prosecutions that have been undertaken.
Webster, of Anchorage, Alaska, was convicted in February of prostituting two teenage girls. One girl was 13 when Webster first forced her into prostitution; the other was 17. Webster, who is awaiting sentencing, kept all girls’ money and plied them with crack cocaine.
He also beat the girls and locked them in a small closet when he felt they disrespected him, according to the FBI.
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