Conchita Sarnoff

Pimps brand their victims the way Nike brands its shoes.

A 16 year-old girl Nicholas Kristoff identified as "Taz" in today's New York Times op-ed "She Has a Pimp's Name Etched on Her" was "branded" on her neck with a safety pin when she refused a tattoo. According...

Finally, the New York Times' Nicholas Kristof reports on U.S. teenagers being sold for sex -- sex trafficking in America.

In today's New York Times op-ed (Thursday, April 19, 2012), Kristof reveals "Not Quite a Teen, Yet Sold for Sex" that the child sex trade or child sex slavery (as...

Nicholas Kristof reported in Sunday's New York Times Magazine that Goldman Sachs owns a 16% stake of Village Voice Media. Village Voice Media in turn owns Backpage; and "Backpage replaced Craigslist as the leader in the prostitution online ad space" according to an October 19, 2010 report published...

On Friday, February 24, 2012, CBS online reported how Florida "is taking stricter action against" human trafficking. According to Alex Conant, Press Secretary to U.S. Senator Marco Rubio, the Florida House passed a bill that implements harsher penalties on human trafficking and smuggling in the sex-for-pay trade. "Just...

In 2010, Jezebel, an online site, published "The Sex Trafficking Model Scout" warning about the dangers of deregulated modeling agencies in the U.S.

Given the growing number of modeling agencies that transport underage teenagers from foreign countries into the United States and the growing sex trade of...

According to the Department of Health and Human Services' fact sheet on the Trafficking Victims Protection Act (TVPA):

The TVPA ... created new law enforcement tools to strengthen the prosecution and punishment of traffickers, making human trafficking a Federal crime with severe penalties.

For example, if...

In the West Palm Beach Courthouse "a circuit judge Wednesday squashed an attempt by attorneys for Jeffrey Epstein to prevent parties in a civil lawsuit involving the billionaire sex offender from talking to the media. Circuit Judge David Crow denied the motion for a gag order," writes Michele...

Yesterday, Tuesday, May 31st, Virginia Governor Bob McDonnell signed a landmark legislation on human trafficking. During the State of Virginia bill signing ceremony at Dulles Airport in Virginia, Governor McDonnell signed bills HB-2190 and HB-1893 proposed by Delegates Timothy Hugo, Vivian Watts and Adam Ebbin. The bills will go into...

According to Friday's NY Post Jeffrey Epstein returned to New York City "making wisecracks about his just-ended jail stint for having sex with an underage girl". "I'm not a sexual predator, I'm an 'offender,' " the Wall Street hedge fund manager told The Post. "It's the difference between...

Jorge Castaneda, a former Foreign Minister of Mexico in 2000-2003 and a wise friend, wrote an analysis recently in which he credits President Obama for leaping into Mexico's drug war at the outset of his administration. According to his analysis, however, President Obama "now faces perils that are...

Greece, Paris, New York, Tuscany, and Brazil share one thing in common: the selling and buying of children for sex. While investigating the disturbing business of child trafficking I have come across many stories -- some more horrific than others. A few of those stories have become reference points for...

On September 30, 2010, at The Great Hall of Cooper Union in New York City, Amy Goodman, host of Democracy Now!, and Claus Biegert, co-founder of the Nuclear Free Future Awards, co-hosted the NFFA award ceremony to honor the prolific work of five inductees: Martin Sheen, Henry Red Cloud, Oleg...

Washington D.C.- A bill to create a grant program to benefit minor victims of sex trafficking will be heard today in Congress. The bill, H.R. 5575 has two main objectives. First, it would authorize large block grants to establish a comprehensive, victim-centered approach to addressing the issue of sex trafficking...

On July 8, 2010, the Coalition Against Trafficking in Women (CATW), Prostitution Research and
Education (PRE) plus more than 75 Co-Sponsors including Innocents at Risk, protested Craigslist's "Adult Services Section" at the company's headquarters in San Francisco, California. "When we arrived, Craigslist was literally whitewashing their cyber trafficking by...

After numerous conversations with law enforcement officials I realized that most law enforcement officials at every level of government and across every state, city and county are under the false assumption that some form of movement is required for a predator to be guilty of child sex trafficking. A child...

The federal government became seriously engaged in the fight against human sex trafficking in 2000, with the passage of the Trafficking Victims Protection Act (TVPA); a federal effort that was and still is focused on the 50,000 (a vastly conservative figure), or more victims who come each year to the...

Washington, D.C. -- According to Congressional estimates, everyday 100,000 children (that is under the age of 17) in the United States are being sold, bartered and bought for sex.

Outside of the enterprising Mexican drug cartels who traffic children for sex into this country -- using the same routes...

In my continuous search for a viable legislative solution to the issue of child trafficking in America I spoke with Patrick A. Trueman, the former Chief of the Child Exploitation and Obscenity Section, Criminal Division, U. S. Department of Justice in Washington, D.C., about the increase of child pornography in...

Washington D.C. -- The hearing on "Human Trafficking: International and National Implications" took place March 25, 2010 in Congress at the Rayburn House. The Commission, which was chaired by U.S. Rep. James P. McGovern (D-Mass.) and U.S. Rep. Frank R. Wolf (R-Va.), promotes, defends and advocates internationally recognized human rights...

On Sunday, March 21, 2010, in the New York Times' "Week in Review section," Thomas L. Friedman, one of my heroes, wrote about the virtues of legal immigration in the U.S. As an example of its success he cited attending the 2010 Intel Science Talent Search dinner award...