‘IT OCCURS EVERYWHERE’
Statewide stings nab would-be sex buyers
Authorities from Cambridge to the Cape scooped up nearly 30 would-be johns from big cities and tony suburbs in a series of human trafficking stings aimed at curbing demand for an underground sex trade that’s sweeping the state.
“To effectively combat human trafficking, we must reduce demand and hold sex buyers accountable. Pimps and traffickers rely on the basic principles of economics — supply and demand. If there are no buyers, there is no demand,” Attorney General Maura Healey told the Herald last night.
“These operations again show that human trafficking knows no geographic, demographic, or economic barriers. It is happening in the communities we call home,” Healey said.
The stings netted 29 sex buyers across the state — nine in Barnstable, seven in Cambridge, 10 in Northampton and three in Springfield — between February and early April, with the state police Human Trafficking Unit overseeing the raids alongside local departments. Boston’s CEASE Network, an anti-sex trafficking coaltion, held a kickoff and training event for state law enforcement officials in December to recruit participants.
“It shows that it occurs everywhere across our state, our country,” said Boston police Lt. Donna Gavin, who helped train local authorities with Healey’s office ahead of the weekslong dragnet.
“It’s not just a crime that occurs in urban areas, but in small towns. The money that those sex buyers use ... in our experience, goes to violent pimps and traffickers and allows them to continue other crimes,” Gavin said.
News of the sweep comes on the heels of a Herald roundtable on Monday which was moderated by Healey and included survivors and advocates. The upshot of the meeting was that the sex trade appears to be worse than ever, and has seeped into all corners of society, largely out of public view because the transactions take place online.
Healey’s office has charged 34 suspects with sex trafficking since 2012, when tougher laws went on the books, but the recent stings were part of a national initiative targeting johns.
Nearly all of the men arrested were from surrounding towns and suburbs of the places where they were charged. Suffolk University professor emeritus Kate Nace Day, a sex trafficking expert who has made several documentaries on the scourge, said studies by Cambridge-based anti-sextrafficking group Demand Abolition show johns are often suburban men with high incomes.
Another Demand Abolition study estimated that more than 20,000 ads selling people for sex are posted online in Boston every month, with each ad receiving an average of 52 responses. Day said johns who are wellknown in their communities can use the internet to set up rendezvous in other towns where they can feel free from discovery, increasing demand beyond people who are buying sex on the street.
“Leaving their hometowns and going other places is part of a desire for anonymity and invisibility. These busts are challenges to that invisibility,” Day said.
“It’s a big, long war but every step is really, really important,” she added, “and this is a significant step here in the commonwealth.”