U.S. financier Jeffrey Epstein charged with sex trafficking of underage girls

Members of the media await the arraignment of Jeffrey Epstein outside of Manhattan Federal Court, after the Southern District of New York announced charges of sex trafficking of minors and conspiracy to commit sex trafficking of minors, in New York, U.S., July 8, 2019. REUTERS/Shannon Stapleton

By Brendan Pierson

NEW YORK (Reuters) – American financier Jeffrey Epstein was charged with sex trafficking on Monday, as prosecutors accused him of luring dozens of girls as young as 14 to his luxury homes in New York and Florida and paying them for sex acts.

FILE PHOTO: Jeffrey Epstein is shown in this undated Florida Department of Law Enforcement photo. REUTERS/Florida Department of Law Enforcement/Handout via Reuters/File Photo

FILE PHOTO: Jeffrey Epstein is shown in this undated Florida Department of Law Enforcement photo. REUTERS/Florida Department of Law Enforcement/Handout via Reuters/File Photo

An indictment unsealed in federal court in Manhattan said Epstein, 66, “intentionally sought out minors and knew that many of his victims were in fact under the age of 18, including because, in some instances, minor victims expressly told him their age.”

The former hedge fund manager was accused of arranging for girls to perform nude “massages” and other sex acts, and paying some girls to recruit others.

Epstein has said in earlier court filings that his encounters with alleged victims were consensual and that he believed they were 18 when they occurred.

The indictment charged Epstein with one count of sex trafficking and one count of sex trafficking conspiracy for alleged misconduct from at least 2002 to 2005.

His lawyer, Jack Goldberger, said before the indictment was made public that Epstein will plead not guilty.

Epstein was arrested on Saturday night and is expected to appear in federal court on Monday.

Known for socializing with politicians and royalty, Epstein once had friends including U.S. President Donald Trump and former president Bill Clinton, and according to court papers Britain’s Prince Andrew.

None of those people were mentioned in the indictment.

EARLIER DEAL

The former hedge fund manager first came under investigation in 2005 after police in Palm Beach, Florida, received reports he had sexually abused underage girls in his mansion there.

By 2007, Epstein was facing a potential federal indictment for sexually abusing dozens of girls between 1999 and 2007, directing others to abuse them, and paying employees to bring victims to him, according to court filings.

However, Epstein struck a deal to plead guilty to a lesser Florida state felony prostitution charge. He served 13 months in a county jail, but was allowed to leave during the day to go to his office, and agreed to register as a sex offender.

Prosecutors involved in that agreement included Alex Acosta, then the U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of Florida and now Secretary of Labor for Trump.

A spokeswoman for the Department of Labor on Sunday declined to comment on Epstein’s arrest.

 

‘MASSAGES’

Epstein would initially recruit victims to provide “massages,” which they would perform nude or partially nude, the indictment said.

Prosecutors said the encounters would become increasingly sexual in nature, sometimes including groping and indirect contact with victims’ genitals, where Epstein would typically masturbate and ask victims to touch him while he did.

Epstein paid girls to recruit new girls, to ensure a “steady supply of new victims to exploit” prosecutors said.

Three unnamed employees, one in Manhattan and two in Palm Beach, aided Epstein by arranging some of his sexual encounters, the indictment said.

Several of Epstein’s accusers had challenged his Florida deal in court, saying they were denied a chance to express their views, violating the federal Crime Victims’ Rights Act.

In February of this year, a U.S. district judge in Florida agreed, saying the deal was illegal.

Even so, the U.S. Department of Justice said in a court filing last month there was no reason to cancel the agreement.

Democrats in the U.S. House of Representatives confronted Acosta about his role in April, during a hearing before a House subcommittee on a routine budget matter.

Acosta told lawmakers that human trafficking was “an incredibly important issue,” and that his office’s efforts ensured that Epstein would be punished.

“I understand the frustration,” Acosta said. “It’s important to understand that he was going to get off with no jail time or restitution. It was the work of our office that resulted in him going to jail.”

The Justice Department is investigating whether government lawyers committed professional misconduct in the Florida case.

(Reporting by Brendan Pierson in New York; editing by Noeleen Walder and Grant McCool)

Chinese raids hit North Korean defectors’ ‘Underground Railroad’

Photo sheets of the North Korean refugees helped by the North Korea Refugees Human Rights Association of Korea are displayed in Seoul, South Korea, June 11, 2019. REUTERS/Josh Smith

By Josh Smith and Joyce Lee

SEOUL (Reuters) – A decade after leaving her family behind to flee North Korea, the defector was overwhelmed with excitement when she spoke to her 22-year-old son on the phone for the first time in May after he too escaped into China.

While speaking to him again on the phone days later, however, she listened in horror as the safe house where her son and four other North Korean escapees were hiding was raided by Chinese authorities.

“I heard voices, someone saying ‘shut up’ in Chinese,” said the woman, who spoke on condition of anonymity to protect her son’s safety. “Then the line was cut off, and I heard later he was caught.”

The woman, now living in South Korea, said she heard rumors her son is being held in a Chinese prison near the North Korean border, but has had no official news of his whereabouts.

At least 30 North Korean escapees have been rounded up in a string of raids across China since mid-April, according to family members and activist groups.

It is not clear whether this is part of a larger crackdown by China, but activists say the raids have disrupted parts of the informal network of brokers, charities, and middlemen who have been dubbed the North Korean “Underground Railroad”.

“The crackdown is severe,” said Y. H. Kim, chairman of the North Korea Refugees Human Rights Association of Korea.

Most worrisome for activists is that the arrests largely occurred away from the North Korean border – an area dubbed the “red zone” where most escapees get caught – and included rare raids on at least two safe houses.

“Raiding a house? I’ve only seen two or three times,” said Kim, who left North Korea in 1988 and has acted as a middleman for the past 15 years, connecting donors with brokers who help defectors.

“You get caught on the way, you get caught moving. But getting caught at a home, you can count on one hand.”

The increase in arrests is likely driven by multiple factors, including deteriorating economic conditions in North Korea and China’s concern about the potential for a big influx of refugees, said Kim Seung-eun, a pastor at Seoul’s Caleb Mission Church, which helps defectors escape.

“In the past, up to half a million North Korean defectors came to China,” Kim said, citing the period in the 1990s when famine struck North Korea. “A lot of these arrests have to do with China wanting to prevent this again.” 

DIVIDED FAMILIES

Kim Jeong-cheol already lost his brother trying to escape from North Korea, and now fears his sister will meet a similar fate after she was caught by Chinese authorities.

“My elder brother was caught in 2005, and he went to a political prison and was executed in North Korea,” Kim told Reuters. “That’s why my sister will surely die if she goes back there. What sin is it for a man to leave because he’s hungry and about to die?”

Reuters was unable to verify the fate of Kim’s brother or sister. Calls to the North Korean embassy in Beijing were not answered.

Activist groups and lawyers seeking to help the families say there is no sign China has deported the recently arrested North Koreans yet, and their status is unknown.

The Chinese Foreign Ministry, which does not typically acknowledge arrests of individual North Korean escapees, said it had no information about the raids or status of detainees.

“We do not know about the situation to which you are referring,” the ministry said in a statement when asked by Reuters.

North Koreans who enter China illegally because of economic reasons are not refugees, it added.

“They use illegal channels to enter China, breaking Chinese law and damaging order for China’s entry and exit management,” the ministry said. “For North Koreans who illegally enter the country, China handles them under the principled stance of domestic and international law and humanitarianism.”

South Korea’s government said it tries to ensure North Korean defectors can reach their desired destinations safely and swiftly without being forcibly sent back to the North, but declined to provide details, citing defectors’ safety and diplomatic relations.

When another woman – who also asked to be unnamed for her family’s safety – escaped from North Korea eight years ago, she promised her sister and mother she would work to bring them out later.

In January, however, her mother died of cancer, she said.

On her death bed, her mother wrote a message on her palm pleading for her remaining daughter to escape North Korea.

“It will haunt me for the rest of my life that I didn’t keep my promise,” said woman, who now lives in South Korea.

Her 27-year-old sister was in a group of four defectors who made it all the way to Nanning, near the border with Vietnam, before being caught.

“When you get there, you think you’re almost home free,” she said. “You think you’re safe.”

INCREASE IN ARRESTS

There are no hard statistics on how many North Koreans try to leave their country, but South Korea, where most defectors try to go, says the number safely arriving in the South dropped after Kim Jong Un came to power in 2011.

In 2018 about 1,137 North Korean defectors entered South Korea, compared to 2,706 in 2011.

Observers say the drop is partly because of increased security and crackdowns in both North Korea and China.

Over the past year, more cameras and updated guard posts have been seen at the border, said Kang Dong-wan, who heads an official North Korean defector resettlement organization in South Korea and often travels to the border between China and North Korea.

“Kim Jong Un’s policy itself is tightening its grip on defection,” he said. “Such changes led to stronger crackdowns in China as well.”

Under President Xi Jinping, China has also cracked down on a variety of other activities, including illicit drugs, which are sometimes smuggled by the same people who transport escapees, said one activist who asked not to be named due to the sensitive work.

North Koreans who enter China illegally face numerous threats, including from the criminal networks they often have to turn to for help.

Tens of thousands of women and girls trying to flee North Korea have been pressed into prostitution, forced marriage, or cybersex operations in China, according to a report last month by the non-profit Korea Future Initiative.

“SMASH UP NETWORKS”

An activist at another organization that helps spirit defectors out of North Korea said so far its network had not been affected, but they were concerned about networks being targeted and safe houses being raided.

“That is a bit of a different level, more targeted and acting on intelligence that they may have been sitting on to smash up networks,” he said, speaking on condition of anonymity to protect the organization’s work.

Y. H. Kim, of the Refugees Human Rights Association, said the raids raised concerns that Chinese authorities had infiltrated some smuggling networks, possibly with the aid of North Korean intelligence agents.

“I don’t know about other organizations, but no one is moving in our organization right now,” he said. “Because everyone who moves is caught.”

(Reporting by Josh Smith and Joyce Lee. Additional reporting by Ben Blanchard in Beijing and David Brunnstrom in Washington. Editing by Lincoln Feast.)

Wisconsin man found guilty of sex trafficking on now-defunct Backpage.com

FILE PHOTO: An image of the current home page of the website backpage.com shows logos of U.S. law enforcement agencies after they seized the sex marketplace site April 6, 2018. backpage.com via REUTERS/File Photo

By Dan Whitcomb

(Reuters) – A Wisconsin man who prosecutors say transported seven young women across state lines and forced them into prostitution using ads on Backpage.com before U.S. authorities shut it down was found guilty on Monday on federal sex trafficking charges.

The conviction of Erin Graham, 37, marks the latest criminal case stemming from Backpage, which became the largest sex marketing website before it was seized in April 2018 as part of an investigation that saw the website’s founders and CEO charged in a 93-count federal court indictment. They are set to go on trial next year.

Graham was found guilty of seven counts of sex trafficking following a five-day trial in federal court in Madison, Wisconsin.

During the trial victims testified they had been forced to engage in multiple acts of prostitution and turn over the money to him and his girlfriend, Patience Moore, 28, the U.S. Attorney’s Office said in a written statement.

He was arrested in April 2017 when a young woman ran bleeding into a Madison, Wisconsin hotel lobby and hid behind the front desk, prompting a clerk to call police. The woman told a nurse at a local hospital Graham had strangled her to the point of unconsciousness after telling him she wanted to leave.

“Through violence and coercion, Graham exploited vulnerable young women into committing commercial sex acts for his profit. In the process the victims were often degraded and robbed of their human dignity,” U.S. Attorney Scott Blader said in the statement.

Graham faces a sentence of 15 years to life in prison when he is sentenced on July 1. Moore pleaded guilty last month to a role in the sex trafficking scheme and also faces a possible life prison term.

Then-Backpage CEO Carl Ferrer agreed to shutter the website in April 2018 as part of an agreement with prosecutors that saw him plead guilty to conspiracy and money laundering charges.

A study released to Reuters last week found Backpage’s closure dealt a huge blow to the illicit world of online prostitution. Demand for prostitutes dropped 67 percent and search volume plunged 90 percent immediately after the site went offline.

Days after the Backpage seizure, President Donald Trump signed into law the Stop Enabling Sex Traffickers Act and Fight Online Sex Trafficking Act, or SESTA-FOSTA. The new laws amended the ‘safe harbors’ provisions of the Communications Decency Act that had protected websites from criminal liability over third-party or user-generated content.

(Reporting by Dan Whitcomb; editing by Bill Tarrant and Rosalba O’Brien)

Traffickers used Russia’s World Cup to enslave us, say Nigerian women

Blessing Obuson from Nigeria, 19, rescued from human traffickers, speaks to a lawyer in the office of Civic Assistance Committee as she seeks help with applying for asylum in Moscow, Russia February 15, 2019. Picture taken February 15, 2019. REUTERS/Maxim Shemetov

By Maria Vasilyeva

MOSCOW (Reuters) – Blessing Obuson thought Russia’s soccer World Cup would be an opportunity to find a job and flew into Moscow from Nigeria last June on a fan ID. Instead, she found herself forced to work as a prostitute.

Fan IDs allowed visa-free entry to World Cup supporters with match tickets, but did not confer the right to work. Despite that, Obuson, 19, said she had hoped to work as a shop assistant to provide for her 2-year-old daughter and younger siblings back in Nigeria’s Edo state.

Instead, she said she was locked in a flat on the outskirts of Moscow and forced into sex work along with 11 other Nigerian women who were supervised by a madam, also from Nigeria.

“I cried really hard. But what choice did I have?” Obuson told Reuters after being freed by anti-slavery activists.

She said her madam had confiscated her passport and told her she’d only get it back once she’d worked off a fictional debt of $50,000.

Obuson told her story to a rare English-speaking client who got anti-slavery activists involved.

Two Nigerians were later arrested and charged with human trafficking after striking a deal to sell Obuson for 2 million rubles (around $30,000) to a police officer posing as a client, according to her lawyer, statements from prosecutors, and evidence presented at court hearings in the case attended by Reuters journalists. The case is still under investigation.

VIOLENCE

Obuson’s case is not isolated. Reuters met eight Nigerian women aged between 16 and 22 brought into Russia on fan IDs and forced into sex work. All said they had endured violence.

“They don’t give you food for days, they slap you, they beat you, they spit in your face… It’s like a cage,” said one 21-year old woman, who declined to be named.

In September, a Nigerian woman was killed by a man who refused to pay for sex, police said. The Nigerian embassy later identified her as 22-year old Alifat Momoh who had come to Russia from Nigeria with a fan ID.

Russian police say 1,863 Nigerians who entered the country with fan IDs had not left by Jan. 1, the date when the IDs expired.

Kenny Kehindo, who works with several Moscow NGOs to help sex trafficking victims, estimates that more than 2,000 Nigerian women were brought in on fan IDs.

Neither Russian police nor the Nigerian embassy in Moscow replied to requests for a comment. A Nigerian foreign ministry spokesman also did not respond to text messages and phone calls requesting comment.

“Many are still in slavery,” said Kehindo, who said he had helped around 40 women return to Nigeria.

“Fan ID is a very good thing, but in the hands of the human traffickers it’s just an instrument,” he said, calling for more cooperation between the authorities and anti-trafficking NGOs during major sporting events, including the 2022 Qatar World Cup where a fan ID system is also being considered.

Anti-slavery group Alternativa said its helpline had fielded calls from Nigerian women held in St Petersburg and other World Cup host cities.

While a prosecution has been launched in Obuson’s case, police have been unable to act against suspected traffickers in other cases due to a lack of evidence.

“A lot of girls are still out there,” said Obuson.

 

(Additional reporting by Camillus Eboh in Abuja; Editing by Andrew Osborn and Gareth Jones)