Lucy Gellman Photo
Clarion’s Ortiz (in pink): Feels for the kids.
If you notice a hotel room filled with condoms and sex toys, multiple guests filing in and out of a single location, or a girl or boy who does not appear to be allowed to speak for themselves — you may be renting a room to a sex trafficker.
Hotel staffers received that message delivered Thursday morning at Gateway Community College, where the Connecticut Lodging Association joined forces with the Connecticut Department of Children and Families, the Office of the U.S. Attorney, the Federal Bureau of Investigation and the advocacy organization Love 146 to host a “Human Trafficking Awareness” training.
The training focused primarily on the practice, prevalence, and prevention of Domestic Minor Sex Trafficking (DMST) in hotels and motels. About 60 hoteliers from across the state attended. The training was co-sponsored by the CT Trafficking in Persons Council (TIPS) and Gateway Community College.
Sneed.
State agencies are looking to private lodging institutions, often hubs of DMST, to get more victims out of “the life” and send more traffickers to prison.
As child sex traffickers adapt to the possibilities of the internet and social media, the agencies and organizations trying hardest to track, fight, and prosecute them have realized how many victims are going unaccounted for, and how many traffickers reman under the radar. In Connecticut, they’re now counting on the lodging industry to help.
“We have a lot of kids that we’re missing, and that’s why we do this type of outreach,” said Tammy Sneed, director of the Human Anti-trafficking Response Team (HART) at Connecticut’s Department of Children and Families (DCF). Sneed noted that DCF’s 2016 data —195 minors, most between the ages of 11 and 17 years old — seemed very low, taking into account an estimated 2,000 “buyers” or traffickers in Connecticut last year.
She said that one of the causes is the recent deletion of Backpage‘s underage classified section, which has sent traffickers once concentrated there to dating websites, social media sites, and other online chat forums.
“What we want to get across is this is happening in the U.S. and it is happening here” in Connecticut, she said. “Often, your hotels are the hubs for this industry and you don’t even know it.”
To catch hoteliers up to speed, she and Love 146 Survivor Care Program Director Erin Williamson identified a number of DMST “red flags,” warning signs of which management too often finds itself unaware. Some significant and frequent ones, they said, are minors who appear malnourished, anxious, depressed or unaware of their surroundings, have many inconsistencies in their narrative, or do not have access to their own identification money, possessions or cell phone. If management, front desk clerks, or cleaning staff see something, they said, they should say something immediately.
As they finished their points, a video titled Very Young Girls popped up behind them. The room filled with low gasps and murmurs as a young women told her story of getting picked up, momentarily wood, and then savagely threatened and raped by a pimp in New York City. Police lights flashed blurrily in the background.
“A lot of people think it doesn’t happen in their towns of hotels, but it does,” said Wendy Bowersox, a special agent for the FBI. “We need great record keeping, video surveillance. If you see any of these [red flags], please don’t hesitate to call the police.”
Using audiovisual aids, Sneed and Williamson also spoke to hoteliers about the psychology of traffickers. Traffickers can be anyone, they told the audience: men and women, well-heeled folks in suit and tie, cheerleaders with ruby red lipstick and pom-poms, high school teachers, church members. Williamson told one particular anecdote in which a well-known trafficker, a physically attractive, clean-cut, middle-aged man, would prowl malls, bump into young women, and help them clean up whatever they had dropped, apologizing profusely.
When he found young women who blushed, laughed, and kept their eyes to the ground as he spoke, he told them after being caught, he would say: “that’s my girl.”
Bowersox and Nagala.
The workshop, intended to help hoteliers identify and catch traffickers where they conduct a large percentage of their business, received a mixed reception. It’s not that hoteliers aren’t receptive to catching these sexual predators, said Dihu Patel, a representative of the Asian American Hotel Owners Association (AAHOA). They take identification of those red flags seriously, Patel said. But, he said, managers hesitate to call the cops because it puts their business at risk, and they don’t want to lose over a misidentified case.
“My duty is to help people see how it [running a hotel] works,” said Patel, who has been in the hotel industry since 1979 and teaches newcomers the ropes. “But we are in a Catch-22 situation. For us, the laws sway toward the guests as far as what we can say. This is good info, and we want to know it. But a lot of times we are too skeptical to call the cops, because the rules and regulations are so strict. The first thing the police will do is say that the management called.”
“It opens up a lot of questions about hoteliers, and the extent to which we want to police our guests” said Win Smith, who operates Winvian Farm resort with his family in Litchfield. “It’s obviously our responsibility to be vigilant, and I think this is a continuation of what we do [to protect guests] already. If there’s too much noise, we interevene. If someone is drunk, we intervene. But it’s also a double-edged sword.”
Assistant U.S. Attorney Sarala Nagala said she understood, but stressed the importance of vigilance, and willingness to involve law enforcement when necessary. “Ovbiously you’re in the business of generating business,” she said. “You don’t want the police there every day. But there’s a balance.”
To her point, other attendees were slightly more sympathetic.
“I picked up a lot of tips,” said Sherleen Ortiz, who has served as the operational manager at the Clarion Hamden for two years and been in the hotel industry for 13. “It’s really refreshing to have a training lke this — I knew a lot of it already, but it opens your eyes to what to look for. You worry, especially about these young kids. ”