“My story is crazy. I still can’t believe sex trafficking happened to me or that people enslave young girls in Mobile.”
Michelle said this as she took a sip of coffee at her kitchen table. The house was clean, and all was quiet after she put her son down for a nap.
“But if it happened to me, it can happen to anyone.”
In a parking lot near Interstate 10, surrounded by cheap motels and gas stations, 25 undercover officers from units of the Mobile Police Department assembled at 6:30 a.m. on May 9. It was the start of Operation Snag, a sting in multiple locations to arrest johns and prostitutes and find additional crimes. This was MPD’s first early morning prostitution sting, but officers insisted it would be active this time of the day.
“It is a dark world happening right here. The average person doesn’t want to know what is happening under their nose. The only way to end sex trafficking is to stop the demand and arrest the men who are paying,” said Julie McGuire, supervisor over youth investigations for the Mobile Sheriff’s Department and the Childhood Advocacy Center.
“We are upset when a child is kidnapped and raped by a stranger, and we go after him with a vengeance,” Chenoweth said. “We should be just as upset when it happens in a child's home by family or someone they know. I have worked with vulnerable children my whole life and people still don't want to talk about what is rampantly happening in all of our communities, even ‘Old Mobile’.”
“Call it sexual slavery because that is what it is,” said U.S. Attorney for South Alabama Richard Moore. “Sexual slavery is one of the most frustrating crimes law enforcement goes after. We know it is happening in Mobile and Baldwin counties. We haven’t made a big arrest yet, but it is just a matter of time.”
These are Londoners with their own freakouts, including Brexit, a referendum that narrowly passed in June 2016 in favor of the United Kingdom leaving the European Union. As the exit deadline on October 31 approaches with no plan, the sides, for and against, are split down the middle, but all say England is in crisis.
Being beat by a pipe or a stick, isolated from friends and family, thrown out of car or watching your children get a beating should never be normal. But abuse, anger, and reactions to them are learned from childhood and over 40 million adult Americans grew up living with domestic violence (Childhood Domestic Violence Association).
Down South. West Virginia is barely south of the Mason-Dixon line. The Greenbrier is closer to Lake Ontario than the Gulf of Mexico, but the mat and the sign were both right. The resort has been part of the biggest chapters of American history and is one of the most “Southern” places in the South.
Blue tarps still cover roofs around San Juan. There are downed billboards, mangled street signs and leaning power poles here and there, but it is possible to drive through Puerto Rico and see no damage. The scars are more internal than external and life is described as "before Maria" and "after Maria." Survivors tell of PTSD, anxiety, and an increase in domestic violence. Posters hang in bathrooms and churches with numbers victims can call for help.
