Women in prison are being baited by sex traffickers when they are close to being released.  Thinking they are going to have a  fresh new start and getting letters from men who claim to just want to help them only to end up caught in a cycle of horrific abuse.

Caught in a recurring pattern of prostitution and incarceration, they are among the most vulnerable women in the US. Yet gaps in the criminal justice system, ruthlessly exploited by sex traffickers, make escape almost impossible. Kate had spent three years behind bars at Lowell Correctional Institution, Florida’s largest women’s prison when the letters from Richard Rawls started to arrive.

Men had written to Kate in prison before, but this time was different. Although she had never met him, Rawls made her feel special. He wrote that he’d seen her mugshot online and couldn’t stop thinking about her. Somehow aware that she was getting out soon, he offered her money, a home, and unconditional love when she was released.

The letters promised Kate a future she never imagined possible – a way out of the cycle of prostitution and incarceration that had defined her life after a childhood of chaos and abuse. Soon, Rawls stopped signing his letters “Rick”; instead, he urged her: “Come on home to your daddy.”

“When you’re in prison, all you think about is getting out,” Kate says. “The hours go by and it really hurts to know that nobody thinks about you in there.”

“So when you get a letter it’s like a gift from God. He told me everything that I wanted to hear. He said I wasn’t going to be a prostitute any more, that I could go home with him and live at his house, and that he would be the love that I was searching for.”

When Kate walked out of prison, Rawls, a career criminal and convicted felon with more than 47 charges for sexual battery, child abuse, drug possession, and assault, was there to pick her up. Just as he had promised.

“When I got into the car, he’d brought me two sweater dresses, a bottle of Heineken and a lot of crack,” she says. “I went right back to smoking crack my first day out of prison.”

When she got back to Rawls’ house, Kate knew immediately she was in trouble. Instead of the comfortable home she had been promised, the house was filthy and chaotic. Cockroaches crawled up the walls. The windows were sealed shut. And hungry, chained pit bull dogs whined and barked outside. Inside the house, Kate found half a dozen other former Lowell inmates.

“It was just crazy in there, really a living hell,” she says. “At first he gave me all the drugs I wanted, but he made sure that I watched him beat the other girls and I wasn’t allowed to leave his room. Then, after two weeks, it switched up and he started telling me that I owed him for all the drugs he’d given me, and now I had to go make him money.”

An 18-month police investigation concluded that, over the course of five years, Rawls had trafficked Kate and at least 18 other women out of jails and prisons across Florida.

A Guardian/Observer investigation has found that jailhouses and prison cells across the US are routinely used as recruiting grounds by pimps and sex buyers. Exploiting gaps in the criminal justice system, predators are targeting some of the country’s most vulnerable and isolated women, trapping many in an endless loop of criminalization and exploitation. State to state, the recruitment methods being used to target victims are broadly the same.

The first stage involves finding potential victims. US public record legislation means that, in many states, anyone charged with a criminal offense will have their personal data posted on government websites. The information can include mugshots, home addresses and details of criminal records. In some states, details of arrests and charges are also printed in local newspapers.

This means predators can cherrypick potential targets, find where women are being held, and on what charges, and – in some cases – learn when they are likely to be released. Information posted online can also include information on bail bonds set for women awaiting court dates.

Quick Facts

• The number of women in state prisons has risen by 834% over the past 40 years.
• Women are the fastest growing group among the incarcerated population in the US.
• Prostitution is illegal in every US state apart from a few counties in Nevada.
• A National Survivors Network survey found 91% of trafficking victims were under the control of a pimp when arrested.
• 37% of sex trafficking victims calling a national helpline in 2017 said they were trafficked by their partners.

The system is so very flawed.  Sex trafficking in America is REAL. It’s EVERYWHERE and those involved go all the way to the top.  Top government officials. Top celebrities. Top “elites” with wealth.  It’s time to END this epidemic!

Source:

https://www.theguardian.com/global-development/2018/jun/29/americas-outcasts-women-trapped-in-cruel-cycle-of-exploitation