This is an extremely disturbing article:
http://www.post-gazette.com/pg/06080/673847.stm
Prostitution ring traded in girls as young as 12
Tuesday, March 21, 2006
By Robin Erb and Roberta de Boer, Block News Alliance
HARRISBURG -- For a truck stop that became one focus of "Innocence Lost," a major federal inquiry into underage prostitution, The Gables is surprisingly small and homely.
April McSwain was just 14 when she climbed on a bus in 1995 to work as a prostitute in Harrisburg. She was on her first "date" within hours and was arrested five days later.
"You could sit and watch girls run down the rows, run under the trucks, in all directions," Trooper David Olweiler said. "There were some nights out there it looked ridiculous."
On a stretch of roadway just off I-81 and surrounded by other, larger, better-lit truck stops, The Gables' patch of asphalt ends at the edge of a woods -- convenient for hookers hiding from police.
The truck stop was often jammed by late afternoon, according to investigators, especially "party row," the dark far end of the parking lot notorious for "lot lizards."
If she was able to duck the cops and enticed enough clients, a prostitute could end many nights $1,000 richer -- even with lots of competition.
Out of "the game" for almost a year, a Toledo woman known on the street as "Fire" said she had been selling sex long before her string of arrests in Harrisburg.
And the $418.50 fine and court costs? She shrugged. Shell it out and get back to the lot. There was plenty more.
"You could go back and double up, triple up what they took" she said.
Like most of the prostitutes named in the indictment, Fire, 25, comes from Toledo, Ohio, 420 miles away. "That became a joke around here: Is everyone from Toledo a prostitute?" said Trooper David Olweiler, a state police intelligence officer.
Tucked away in the back of Gables of Harrisburg truck stop, which is located off I-81 at Exit 27 in Harrisburg, is "party row," seen in a rearview mirror, where many truckers park to solicit prostitutes. Toledo pimps and prostitutes worked this location before they were indicted.
During her years in the sex trade, Fire said, she worked for four pimps, including, she said, Derek Maes.
Mr. Maes is now sitting in a Pennsylvania jail, awaiting trial next month on federal prostitution charges that could put the 41-year-old Toledoan away for life.
A 102-page federal indictment unsealed in December names him and 13 other men as co-conspirators in a nationwide sex-trade ring. He knows investigators allege this ring traded and sold girls as young as 12 -- routinely beating them if they failed to follow orders or make enough money.
But Mr. Maes said federal prosecutors have it wrong. He's no pimp, he said in phone interviews from the jail last week, he's "a player."
"Pimps do things like ... lock the girls up in closets. I'm 'finesseful,' you know what I'm saying?"
Mr. Maes has been accused at least three times of breaking women's noses. But he insisted that he forced no one to do anything. "These girls, they love the game. They love the game, trust me. It's the glamour, it's the pimped-out ride. ... It's Snoop. It's all of that."
Robert Scott, 44, agreed.
Convicted twice before of pimp-related charges involving minors, the Toledo man also awaits trial. Four others charged in the Harrisburg case, he said, are relatives: two sons, a cousin, and a nephew.
"The prosecutors are trying to make it like a bunch of us running around with candy in our pocket, going to parks and picking up little kids. It wasn't like that at all -- period," he said.
If the girls were forced or scared, Mr. Scott asked, why didn't they call home? And when they were arrested, Mr. Scott added, why didn't they ask police for help?
In a nondescript strip mall office, West Hanover Township Magistrate Roy Bridges handles everything from wedding vows to murder charges.
His three clerks set out candy on the front counter, and they and Judge Bridges, an avuncular man with a friendly smile, chatted with the girls they'd see again and again and again.
Even in some of the coldest weather, the judge said, "You should have seen how some of them were dressed. Sometimes troopers would wrap them up in one of those yellow blankets used to cover dead bodies."
Of the more than 100 prostitutes identified in the Harrisburg investigation, about two dozen were underage, officials said. The youngest was 13.
That's not surprising. Researchers and police alike say that 14 is the average age when minors enter the sex trade.
But law enforcement said it would be naive to believe that the young teens were willing participants, even though some of the girls may have offered aliases and fake Social Security numbers.
The federal indictment against the pimps reads like an inventory of brutality: beatings and robberies to keep hookers in check. But it wasn't just at the hands of the pimps, Trooper Olweiler said. "What really started to push this was we had girls dumped. We had one dumped off the highway with a sock in her mouth."
At least two died. One barely survived, he said.
"It's not like they're just getting slapped. These girls are getting violently abused," said David Johnson, chief of the FBI's Crimes Against Children unit.
Beyond that, maintaining control is a matter of psychological conditioning, especially for girls already fleeing homes of incest, battering, or even simple neglect, said Chip Burrus, the FBI's acting assistant director of the criminal investigative division. "Normal," he said, is a relative term.
"A lot of these girls, you wouldn't know they're victims. They love to brag. You wouldn't know they were in it against their will," he said.
Mr. Burrus takes it one step further: "You can't consent to be a prostitute at age 14. That's just an impossibility."
But Mr. Scott and other co-defendants argue that no one is forced into the business. And, as for brutality, Mr. Scott said: "Have I ever hit a woman? Yeah, I hit a woman, I'm not going to lie to you," he said. "You know why I hit her? Because she hit me. ... My old man raised me. [He said if] you're big enough to give a punch, you're big enough to get a punch."
Besides, Mr. Scott said, he's not even a pimp. If anything, he's in a partnership -- and partners are always free to change allegiance.
"She's choosing the best investment for her money," Scott said. "It's like going to Smith Barney or any other firm that invests your money."
Certainly there were sporadic turf wars, robberies, and a fight or two at area motels. But for the most part, business stayed within truck cabs, said West Hanover Township manager Mike Rimer.
Still, there are surprising ways to measure whether business is booming.
After Pennsylvania State Police began cracking down on the problem in 2004, money from court fines poured in to the West Hanover Township coffers.
In 2003, the township collected $3,319 in "ordinance fines," which included fines for prostitution or vandalism or trespassing. With undercover police working The Gables the following year, fines jumped almost tenfold, to $32,430, Mr. Rimer said.
These days, The Gables parking lot is newly lit, newly managed, and considerably quieter.
But for how long? From his state police barracks about a mile from the Gables, Trooper Olweiler considered the question.
"For a while, after the indictments came down -- even before -- it was pretty much cleared out," he said. "For a long time, we didn't see anybody. But one of our patrols came back the other day and said they're back out there."
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
(The Block News Alliance consists of the Post-Gazette and The Blade of Toledo, Ohio, which are both owned by Block Communications Inc. Robin Erb and roberta de Boer are staff writers for The Blade.)
Prev
Linear Mode
