Operation seeks missing Cleveland-area kids

AKRON — Nobody should be surprised by the need for a new federal and local law enforcement effort to find 200 children missing from the Cleveland area, a local human trafficking expert said.

“If they were looking for kids every day, they would find kids every day,” said Suzanne Lewis-johnson, CEO at RAHAB Ministries in Akron. “It’s about having the resources to find them.”

The first few weeks of Operation Safety Net has already led to the discovery of 25 children between ages 13 and 18, including two who were found in Akron. About one of every four children found so far has been linked to human trafficking, with the rest considered to be endangered.

Lewis-johnson said the effort is putting needed resources toward a largely hidden problem — vulnerable children who become the target of human traffickers.

Many are from

Cleveland and neighboring cities, but authorities are finding kids across northern Ohio and even out of state, U.S. Marshal Peter Elliott said. One was found in Miami.

Elliott said the task force was working Monday to find more missing children and plans to continue for about seven more weeks.

Every case of a missing child is different, Elliott said. But the members of the Northern Ohio Violent Fugitive Task Force, which is helping local law enforcement, are trained to find people, and there’s a lot of crossover.

“Our guys are very good at what they do,” Elliott said. “I think that’s why we’ve had great success in the first couple weeks.”

Before she ran RAHAB Ministries, Lewis-johnson was an FBI agent and worked on a Child Exploitation Task Force running similar operations.

She said there are a lot of misconceptions about how children become targets and eventually victims of human trafficking and prostitution. Lewis-johnson said people often ask on what street or in what area are children most at-risk, but often they’re targeted when they’re home and online.

“There are places where kids are recruited out there in the world, but it is so often online,” she said.

Human traffickers target vulnerabilities and recruit already missing children or kids who are at home and can be lured away. They’ll often look for insecurities, such as a bad home life, or even social media posts about needing money or just feeling uncared for.

Lewis-johnson said predators groom children and offer themselves as a counterfeit solution, luring them away from home.

There are many vulnerable children in our backyards, Lewis-johnson said, and while it isn’t a new problem, social media has made it worse.

“Right now, I believe our children are more vulnerable to traffickers than they’ve ever been,” Lewis-johnson said.

Operations like Safety Net are important because they give the issue dedicated resources, Lewis-johnson said. Human trafficking cases are long and intense, and it can be hard to keep local officers on them while they cover the everyday crimes in a city, she said.

Having undivided attention is one reason the task force works well for the problem, U.S. Marshal’s Public Information Officer Anne Murphy said.

She said the members of the task force are fortunate to not have to worry about calls coming in, and it allows them to focus on finding the endangered children.

Lewis-johnson said there are many techniques law enforcement uses to find these children and human traffickers but doesn’t share, because it doesn’t want the traffickers to know them.

But she said investigations often involve following little pieces until they all add up, saving a victim.

These operations take a lot of commitment and resources and need community support, Lewis-johnson said.

“They made a difference when we’re willing to allocate the resources,” Lewisjohnson said. “The community needs to get educated, and the community needs to support these operations.”