Crude Awakening: The Sex Trafficking Crisis That's Right in Our Backyard

[Algernon Moncrieff]

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In November 2013, Jordan (whose last name is withheld to protect her privacy) moved to Williston with a boyfriend who had taken a job in the oil fields. At 18, she wanted a "new start," she says, away from New York, where she had been abused as a child and lived in and out of the foster care system. "I was so in love with this boy," Jordan says. "Ready to do anything." But after a few months, their relationship crumbled: He lost his job, they started doing meth, and he started mentally and physically abusing her. Eventually, he became her first pimp, selling her to his boss when he took a new job as a mechanic. High at the time, Jordan doesn't know how much money her ex made from selling her.

After she left him, she sold herself on Backpage.com, a classified website notorious for prostitution, earning money to keep a roof over her head. "I felt like that was my only option at the time," she says. "What else was I going to do, lie on the side of the road until I die?" She also spent a month under a pimp's control, circling around oil towns with two other women, one from Milwaukee, the other from Atlanta. "[The pimp] had 10 or 11 junky flip phones and 10 or 11 ads up for the three of us," Jordan says. The going rate was $300 an hour. "It was almost fun," she says. They went to the mall, got their nails done, stayed in nice hotels, ate good food. "I guess that had to do with the fact that we were making [him] so much money."

Around that same time, law enforcement began conducting sting operations known as Operation Vigilant Guardian. Detectives posed as someone selling a 14-year-old girl on classified websites and arrested interested buyers. One weekend in Williston, police arrested three men; two weeks later, they arrested 11 in Dickinson, a town of roughly 25,000 located about two hours away. A 34-year-old named Clayton Lakey was arrested when he showed up at a hotel after making arrangements to have sex with a 13-year-old girl, for which he agreed to pay $250 for one hour. He also offered to pay $5,000 for a 10-year-old. (Lakey is now serving five years in federal prison.) Police had to shut down the sting ahead of schedule because Dickinson ran out of jail space. "When you identify that level of demand for commercial sex with underage girls, you're a fool if you don't think there's a supply out there," Purdon says.

He calls the stings the "seminal events" in galvanizing support in the area for the fight against trafficking. Fourteen arrests may not sound like an emergency to city dwellers, but to many in this rural area, it was devastating. "Dickinson is a sweet little town … not some crime-ridden place," Purdon says. "That these dudes decided the best way to spend their weekend was to go on Backpage and try and arrange commercial sex with a pimp for a 14-year-old girl—that was incredibly sobering to me. … I took a step back and said, 'Oh, my God, what am I, what is the U.S. attorney's office, going to do about this?'"

[yeoman6987]

1. Out of 320 million population,

You will have everything. Glad they are cracking down on this. The story did go from an 18-year old to underage girls. Whatever happened to the 18-year old? Is she in jail too?

[Gormy Cuss]

4. RTL

It has the answer.

[Lee-Lee]

2. Yep- it's everywhere right under your noses

And the Internet has made it worse.

Before the net, it was only word of mouth that advertised it.

In the 90's you had elaborate networks using fax machines in some cases- known customers fax numbers were out there and the pimps would fax "deals" and pictures of new girls.

We busted a ring that was smuggling 12-16 year old girls in from Mexico and traveling them around a circuit following the migrant workers. They kept them scared that they would end up in US prison for life if they ran off and were found to be in the country illegally. Most areas with large numbers of migrants will have this going on, but it's incredibly hard for LE to infiltrate and bust.

When the net came along it was disorganized at first- Usenet groups, soliciting on bigger chat rooms like Yahoo and AOL, etc. Then Criagslist came along and changed it all. When Craigslist quit taking the ads it moved to Backpage.

Just browse Backpage and see what's in your local area...:

[Algernon Moncrieff]

3. I'm a married man. Browsing "Backpage" for "research" wouldn't go well

Miss Cecily would not be pleased

And I'd need a shower afterward