Innocence Lost

The inhumanity of people never ceases to amaze me.

Last week, a St. Louis man was indicted in one of the worst human trafficking cases I have ever heard of in my life. There were five men, all from my home state of Missouri, who were indicted for the kidnapping, torture and forced sexual slavery of a then 16-year-old handicapped girl over eight years.

The five men, who are between the ages of 31 and 62, are being charged with 11 different crimes in connection with the systematic imprisonment, sexual abuse and torture of this child. The indictment, which can be read here, goes into greusome detail about the different things that this girl (who remains unnamed) endured from 2002 to late last year. It truly is a disgusting description, so use your own discretion.

The girl, who had a bad home life to begin with, was bounced around from foster home to foster home until she decided to run away from one. After she ran away, Bagley (one of the men indicted) coerced her into his home with promises of turning her into a model and a dancer and giving her "a great life". This blog won't go into details about what happened after that, but in the span of seven years this girl endured things that no human should ever dream of enduring. To make matters worse, these sick individuals taped all of this and posted it to the web.

As a journalist, it's almost impossible to maintain objectivity in cases like these. Almost every one of us knows at least one girl this age, and imagining her enduring this type of treatment even for a second is too much for many of us to bear. I admire the journalists who can cover this story and be objective, because I would not be one of them. For the journalist assigned to a story like this, detaching oneself from the story is difficult, impossible even. Going into detail and researching it further, as every journalist needs to do with any story, only puts nightmarish thoughts into one's head. It truly is a horrific thing.

What makes this story especially horrific is the fact that this girl was handicapped and therefore did not have the mental capacity that the rest of us do. Not that it would matter; a normally functioning person of the same age would not be able to escape, either, but not being able to understand or articulate what happened to you over a good part of your life is torture in itself.

And, while this case of sex trafficking is horrific, this young woman is unfortunately not alone. There have been over 150,ooo sex slaves living in the United States since 2001. Over 300,000 children in the U.S. are runaways or "throw-aways" and are at considerable risk for becoming sex slaves. In Western Missouri, where this case took place, human trafficking is a big problem: in Kansas City, MO, alone, there were 84 cases of minors being used as sex slaves discovered by Child Protective Services alone since 2000. This doesn't include the cases that haven't been discovered, the cases outside of Jackson County, or the cases where adult women are involved.

Furthermore, girls and women who are under the control of a trafficker or a pimp usually cannot be helped because of the lack of security in many womens' shelters. When (and if) they escape, they have no place to go. Given their age (the average age for a sex slave is 11-14 years old, and there are some as young as five), they are also less likely to escape their captors. Or they are like the girl in the above case and do not have the mental or physical resources to escape. Many never do escape; instead, they die in the hands of their captors.

Crimes like these are among the worst because it involves gaining the trust of the victim before subjecting her to this torture. We, as adults, are supposed to be gaining the trust of children so we can help them and do things to benefit them, not so we can hurt them. For generations, children have been taught to trust adults because we know what's better for them than they do. Too often, as in cases like these, that trust has been perverted and abused. But trust issues are the least of our problems. As these girls and women grow older and escape from their captors, we (as a society, because it's everyone's problem) are going to have to deal with the mental, emotional and physical scars that these victims will carry for them for the rest of their lives.

This posting's name is "Innocent Lost", and aptly so as this is exactly what happens to these girls and young women. There is a part of their innocence that is gone forever in acts such as these.