Attacking the sex trade

Vegas a hub for industry, which includes minors

WHAT happens in Vegas shouldn’t always stay in Vegas — especially when children are likely being sold for sex every day in this city. This is an atrocity that needs to be stopped. And I’ve moved to Las Vegas to do it.

When I became general manager of the Los Angeles Dodgers in 1998, I made headlines for my off-the-cuff proclamation, “There’s a new sheriff in town.” Now I’ve set my sights on policing something much bigger — saving the lives of the children caught in this dark and barbaric industry. If I can do this, it will be my work as the co-founder and president of the U.S. Institute Against Human Trafficking that will be my most enduring legacy.

As much as we may not want it to be true, Las Vegas is a hub for sex trafficking, including among minors. Arizona State University researchers and detectives from the Vice & Sex Trafficking Investigation Section found that one in five underage victims was brought to Las Vegas specifically for the purpose of sex trafficking. And between 1994 and 2016, there were 2,794 minors recovered from human sex trafficking by the Metropolitan Police Department. In 2016, Metro documented about 140 child sex trafficking victims — roughly a dozen per month.

It is important to note that these numbers include only the children who have been identified by law enforcement. There are far more victims still out there than arrests that have been made. Because of this, it is impossible to know with certainty the exact number trapped by sex trafficking today.

What we do know is that children make up the majority of this industry. According to the Federal Human Trafficking Report, nearly two-thirds of the 661 active sex trafficking cases last year involved victims under 18. Of the 190 victims of sex trafficking identified in 2014 by Metro, 64 percent were children. Many of them are younger than teenagers. Esther Rodriguez Brown, founder of The Embracing Project, which works with victims of child sex trafficking in Las Vegas, says she has helped children as young as 8 years old.

This is not a benign industry. The Arizona State Las Vegas case study revealed that not only does sex trafficking exist in Las Vegas, but it is extensive and cruel — the report showed that “violence was a pervasive theme of most sex trafficking cases, especially with underage victims.”

The only real way to stop sex trafficking in this country is to get the message across to men that buying sex, however “willing” the person may seem, actually feeds the dark industry of sex trafficking — including among children. And the change has to start here in Vegas.

The culture of Las Vegas is a promiscuous one. To

SEX

Aliberal lawmaker’s attempt to shame Nevada’s biggest companies just backfired spectacularly. Last legislative session, state Sen. Yvanna Cancela sponsored a bill that required the government to publish a list of large employers with full-time employees on Medicaid.

“This will allow us to see what entities are functionally subsidized by Medicaid for health care costs,” Cancela said.

Cancela’s contention is part of a long-standing leftist complaint about big businesses. Liberals claim that government subsidizes large employers by providing food stamps and health care to their low-wage employees. The implication is that government benefits allow companies such as Walmart to pay their employees lower wages, which increases their profits.

The information mandated by Cancela’s bill was supposed to provide the proof of this nefarious scheme. Instead, the report, which was released recently, highlights some of the problems inherent in Medicaid.

In 2017, there 104,512 people who were on Medicaid and worked fulltime at a company with 50 or more employees. Medicaid was originally intended to provide health coverage for the poor and indigent, so this finding looks like evidence that large employers are freeloading off the public sector. Just one problem. The report shows that 79 percent of them are eligible for the program only because of Medicaid expansion. In 2014, Nevada gave healthy adults with incomes above the poverty line Medicaid access, which was an option under Obamacare. Liberals cheered Gov. Brian Sandoval’s decision to expand, but now they’re upset these same people are enrolling in the program.

Then you get to the list of employers who have workers on Medicaid. It starts exactly as progressives might predict. Walmart had the most employees, 3,149, on Medicaid, costing taxpayers $10.5 million. The second employer, though, doesn’t fit the narrative. It’s the Clark County School District, which had 1,502 employees on the dole costing $4.8 million. The state of Nevada comes in fourth. There were 683 state workers on Medicaid, costing $1.5 million.

Other government employers had hundreds of employees on Medicaid, as well. The Nevada System of Higher Education had 379 workers using Medicaid, costing $1.2 million. The Metropolitan Police Department had 246 employees on Medicaid, costing $715,000.

Even liberal groups made the list. Eleven employees of the Culinary union, Cancela’s old employer, were on Medicaid, for a cost of $31,000. Ten employees of the Nevada State Democratic Party used Medicaid, costing $75,000. Maybe they should form a union?

This isn’t corporate greed. It’s rational behavior by individuals. Walmart offers full- and part-time employees health insurance “starting at around $26 a pay period.” The school district and the state of Nevada also offer health insurance. But it can’t complete with Medicaid. Medicaid in Nevada has no premiums, deductibles or co-payments.

If you are eligible for Medicaid, you are losing money not signing up — even if your employer offers health insurance. People making $15 an hour or more can still be eligible, too. Thanks to the Obamacare expansion, you qualify for Medicaid if your family is under 138 percent of the federal poverty line. For a family of four, the cutoff is $34,600 a year.

Leave it to Democrats both to demand that government expand Medicaid and to be upset when individuals start using it.

If you want to reduce the number of Walmart — and government — employees on Medicaid, scale back eligibility.

those who come here to drink, party and gamble, this city can feel like a place where anything is acceptable. In one survey, 16 percent of men reported having paid for sex in Las Vegas. A 2018 study commissioned by Nevada nonprofit Awaken Reno found that Nevada’s commercial sex market is bigger than any other U.S. state. Researchers also found that at least 5,016 individuals were being sold for sex in an average month in Nevada.

But when a man pays for sex, he has no idea whether that “willing 21-year-old” he is buying is really 14 — or whether she’s in the room because she’s being forced by someone else.

These children caught up in the sex industry in Las Vegas are victims,

not criminals. And I can tell you that as long as the demand for sex buying exists, traffickers will fill the supply with victims, using whatever means necessary.

Every American man should be asking himself: What if these were my kids or grandkids? We need to get the message out that buying sex is not an innocuous act. It propagates the dark industry of sex trafficking, and I’m here to be a voice for those children who are trapped in silence. And if Las Vegas leads the fight against sex trafficking, other cities will undoubtedly follow.

Tim Brinton