Is “World Day Against Trafficking in Persons” A Sham?

Underage girls are being sexually exploited by adult men in numbers that are unprecedented in American history.

But while the world observed “World Day Against Trafficking in Persons” awareness day to bring this epidemic to light, the driving force behind this tragedy was kept in the dark. The issue is that the abortion industry and Planned Parenthood is the very backbone of human trafficking. For their thirty pieces of silver, they harbor sex traffickers and pedophiles, and as a result, American abortion clinics have become a place for those who harm women and children turn to, in order to help cover up their crimes.

As many of you may remember, at Life Dynamics we did an undercover investigation in 2002 by calling over 850 Planned Parenthood and National Abortion Federation facilities across America. Our caller was a young woman portraying a 13-year-old who was pregnant by her 22-year-old boyfriend. Her story was that she and her boyfriend needed an abortion in order to keep this sexual activity a secret from her parents and the police.

Despite the fact that many of the people we talked to told our caller that the relationship was illegal and that they were required to report it, over 90 percent of the facilities agreed to help conceal this sex crime. In fact, many of the people we talked to routinely instructed what they believed to be a child sexual assault victim to:

• lie about or conceal her age
• lie about or conceal the age of the man who impregnated her
• participate in illegal activity in order to circumvent the state’s parental notification law
• use a fictitious name, phone number or address when she came to the facility
• keep the situation hidden by altering what she would say when she came to the facility
• be more careful about what information she gave out and to whom.

In short, our caller was coached on how to avoid detection by other adults who might report the situation and/or how to circumvent state laws that were enacted specifically for the purpose of protecting children exactly like her in situations just like this.

When we had completed our investigation, one of the most alarming observations we made was about the manner in which they handled these calls. From start to finish, the attitudes of the employees we talked to made it brutally obvious that this is an issue they deal with routinely. In fact, several of them even volunteered that they get calls like this all the time.

“Front Lines”

This year the U.N., the creators of “World Day Against Trafficking in Persons”, focused on first responders since “the essential role of first responders has become even more important, particularly as the restrictions imposed by the pandemic have made their work even more difficult.” But facilities which offer pregnancy tests, STD treatments, birth control and abortions are, by far, the most common places victims are going to show up. And since underage girls are not legally capable of giving consent for sexual activity, anything that indicates sexual activity of an underage girl – like an abortion, pregnancy tests, birth control, STD treatments, are evidence of sexual abuse. In short, abortion clinics are the front lines!

Abortion apologists like to argue that the underage girls in the clinics could be potentially sexually active with someone their own age, they are entitled to patient privacy, and the Hollywood favorite story of the abusive parent. However, the responsibility for determining if an underage girl has been a victim of sexual abuse lies solely with the state. Healthcare workers have no obligation, nor authority, to investigate suspicions of child sexual abuse or make decisions about whether a crime has been committed. It is not unusual for child sexual assault victims to lie to protect their abusers – either out of intimidation, coercion, or misguided infatuation. That is why a healthcare worker’s only responsibility is to report. Investigations into criminal activity always override patient confidentiality, patient privacy and doctor-patient privilege. Furthermore, reporting to the state does not prevent, interfere with or even delay the child’s access to any services since the report can be made after the service has been rendered.

Real-World Consequences

As the second part of our investigation shows, the abortion industry’s refusal to comply with mandatory reporting laws is having profound, real-world consequences for the victims of child sexual abuse. We document criminal prosecutions against men who have been caught having illegal sexual relationships with minor girls. In each case, the victims were taken for abortions with no report being made by the abortion providers.

Case after case, girls continued to be raped and sexually abused – sometimes for years – after the abortion clinic where they were taken ignored the state’s mandatory reporting law. But once the situation was eventually revealed to the authorities by another source, the perpetrator was arrested and the abuse ended immediately. This illustrates why compliance with these laws is such an indispensable tool for dealing with our national epidemic of older males sexually exploiting underage girls. Below are a few of the cases detailed in the report.

“Maddie*” is one of the victims documented in that report. (*Name changed to protect the victim.) Her mother’s boyfriend, Martin Castillo, began sexually abusing her when she was 14 years old.  Determined to keep “Maddie” quiet, he told her that if she told anyone what he was doing he would kill her and her mother.  Eventually, the abuse grew to the point that he was having intercourse with her three to four times a week.  Shortly after turning 16, “Maddie” was pregnant and Castillo forced her to have an abortion.  Six months later, he forced her to have a second abortion and a year later he forced her to have a third.  Since Castillo continued to rape “Maddie” after each abortion, it is clear no report was filed by any of the abortion clinics involved.  The sexual assaults did not end until September of 2006 when “Maddie” told her mother and aunt about them and they notified the authorities. Castillo was convicted of 17 counts of lewd acts with a child and sentenced to over 30 years in prison.

In June of 2007, 15-year-old “Briana*” had been missing for over a year when police discovered that she was being held in a locked closet in the home of 41-year-old, Adam Gault.  Authorities say they also found a journal “Briana” had kept detailing her two-year sexual relationship with Gault.  In it, she revealed that she had once been impregnated by him and taken to Planned Parenthood in West Hartford for an abortion.  The time lapse between when the abortion occurred and when “Briana” was located makes it obvious that no report was filed by Planned Parenthood.  Gault was indicted for kidnapping and other charges related to the sexual assaults on “Briana.”  He entered a guilty plea and was sentenced to 50 years in prison.  Additionally, two women who lived in the house were sentenced to prison terms for being accomplices.

“Jerri’s” father, Dwayne Harris, began to rape her when she was just eight years old. At the age of 11, she became pregnant and Harris took her for an abortion at clinic in Philadelphia. At 14, “Jerri” was pregnant again and taken back to the same abortion clinic.  After the procedure, Harris asked that she be put on birth control and the doctor agreed.  No report was made by either clinic as evidenced by the fact that the abuse continued for yet another year.  At 15, “Jerri” told a cousin what had been happening and the police were called.  Harris was then arrested and charged with 17 crimes, including rape, false imprisonment and nine other felonies.  He was sentenced to 20 to 40 years in prison.

These cases are just a representative sample of what can be found in the second part of our investigation. Yet, we have consistently found that the law enforcement community is functionally indifferent to the problem of abortion clinics not complying with mandatory reporting statutes even in the face of irrefutable evidence that violations are occurring.

Among all the cases we researched – whether they are included in the report or not – we never found one example in which criminal charges were brought against an abortion clinic employee for failing to comply with their state’s mandatory reporting statutes. This was true even when this failure was noted during the investigation and/or trial, and was a direct contributor to subsequent assaults on these children. In some cases, the abortion clinics flaunting of these laws even resulted in sexual assaults being committed against other underage girls.

Additionally, our experience has been that, in the overwhelming majority of jurisdictions, when pro-lifers bring up the abortion industry’s open flaunting of mandatory reporting laws to the authorities – they threaten the pro-lifers!  What we have discovered is that most law enforcement agencies in this country are simply afraid of the abortion lobby. 

So the world can use all the hashtags they want, but as long as law enforcement agencies and prosecutors refuse to enforce the mandatory reporting laws that are being openly flaunted by the abortion industry, our children will continue to pay the price.

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To hear more about our thoughts on this subject, listen to Episode 19 of the “Pro-Life America Podcast”.