Trafficked Day One: Sex for Sale in Bakken

This is an excerpt of Day 1 of a seven day series on human trafficking in the Bakken oil-producing region of North Dakota, the would-be crude oil source for the proposed Bakken Pipeline. To read the entirety of Trafficked Day One by Amy Dalrymple and Katherine Lynmn of Forum News Service, visit http://www.traffickedreport.com/?p=15.

Over the past six months, Forum News Service has investigated an emerging issue in the Bakken oilfield region of western North Dakota: sex trafficking, including the trafficking of children.
We reviewed hundreds of documents and conducted more than 100 interviews with law enforcement officers, victim service providers, victims rescued from the sex trade and experts who have examined the issue regionally, nationally and internationally.
Our reporting took us from the Dakotas to Washington, D.C., from predators in courtrooms and prostitutes in police cars to top law enforcement agents, high elected officials and victim advocates who once were caught up in “the life” themselves. Our weeklong series begins today.

What we found:

Sex trafficking can be an incredibly lucrative business, but far more for the traffickers than for the women and girls they exploit. Traffickers near and far have shown themselves eager to supply a booming demand in the “market” that is the Bakken.
Sex traffickers operating in North Dakota frequently are engaged in drug trafficking as well, and the extent of that trade is growing, along with the severity of the drugs involved.
Backpage.com, which has replaced Craigslist as the primary Internet prostitution marketplace, daily displays staggering numbers and varieties of sex-for-money ads, especially in pages aimed at growing male-heavy populations in Williston and Minot. But there is disagreement over whether authorities should seek to end the practice, fearing the ads could migrate to sites less easy for police to monitor — or use to set up stings.
While many people may see prostitution as a life of choice, advocates and others close to the issue increasingly resist that characterization: Most of the women engaged in prostitution actually are victims, they say, and need to be treated as such. And while North Dakota lawmakers will consider a proposal this year to decriminalize prostitution in the case of minors, advocates insist more change is needed in societal attitudes and authorities’ approaches to the problem.
Due to the nature of trafficking, women and girls caught up in the sex trade often go undetected and unaided until they have arrest records, mangled credit histories and other bruises that make it difficult to escape what they call “the life.”
North Dakota service providers, including staff at domestic violence shelters, report seeing a growing number of women and girls they believe to be victims of trafficking, but the state has no dedicated shelters for trafficking victims and the facilities that offer such services are 500 or more miles from the Oil Patch.
Law enforcement agencies and victim service providers in western North Dakota, even if inclined to help, are maxed out, struggling to keep up with all the demands of a booming population and the crime that has followed. With the recent drop in oil prices projected to cut into state oil tax revenue, advocates for shelters, more investigators, more mental health and other social service providers may be competing for funds from a diminished pot.

North Dakota under scrutiny

Adults who are coerced or forced into engaging in prostitution through the use of violence, threats, lies or other tactics are considered victims of sex trafficking under federal law. Anyone under age 18 who is involved in commercial sex is considered a victim regardless of whether force, fraud or coercion are involved.
In 2013, the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children estimated that one in seven endangered runaways reported to them was likely a sex trafficking victim.
The issue has attracted more attention in North Dakota lately because of the rapid population growth, especially in young, unattached men with lots of money and limited social opportunities. But it is hardly new.
Kara, considered an authority on human trafficking, said sex slavery has been more present in rural America than many people realize, and anecdotal evidence from western North Dakota prior to the oil boom seems to bear that out.
Heidi Carlson, who was recruited into prostitution as a Minnesota college student, said she traveled a circuit in the 1980s that included the Dakotas, Minnesota, Wisconsin and Nebraska.
“I’ve always known North Dakota as a spot that’s got a lot of trafficking,” said Carlson, who has since worked to help trafficking victims in the Twin Cities. “There were no man camps when I was in North Dakota. It was all the community guys.”
But the oil boom has put a brighter spotlight on North Dakota and the issue of human trafficking, drawing several rounds of national media attention and a recent visit to Williston by a senior human trafficking adviser for the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services.
Polaris sent a staff member from Washington, D.C., to North Dakota last year to provide training sessions. Polaris CEO Bradley Myles said people who track online ads for commercial sex noticed a spike in the Bakken region, and anecdotal reports from victim advocates and nonprofit groups also raised red flags.
People are wondering, Myles said. “Is this a new hotspot for human trafficking, both sex trafficking and labor trafficking, of U.S. citizens and immigrants?”
That concern brought Windie Lazenko to North Dakota.
The victim advocate and sex trafficking survivor traveled to Williston from Florida in the fall of 2013 to survey the area, planning to report back to national groups.
But she stayed in the region and is assisting sexually exploited women and girls more than a year later through her organization, 4herND.
“I was so overwhelmed and broken over the amount of human trafficking that’s going on here,” Lazenko said. “There were no resources. There was not one person in the entire state of North Dakota that was working in human trafficking, serving victims or even doing training or education.”

Underage and undetected

It’s unclear how many underage girls are being forced into prostitution in North Dakota, but national statistics show that the average age of entry into prostitution is 12 to 14.
Police in Moorhead, Minn., rescued a 13-year-old sex trafficking victim in June after responding to a suspicious ad on Backpage.com. The girl was a runaway from the Twin Cities.
Grand Forks police have encountered two underage sex trafficking victims in the past two years, said Lt. Jim Remer. One case involved a 17-year-old girl, and the trafficker was recently sentenced in a federal case in Minnesota.
Claudine O’Leary, who works with teens who have been trafficked in Milwaukee, said she’s identified at least 10 underage victims who were trafficked in North Dakota in the past three years.
And while the trafficking cases prosecuted so far in North Dakota have not involved underage victims, the strong response to stings that advertise underage girls using keywords on Craigslist and Backpage indicate underage victims likely are in the state, Attorney General Stenehjem said.
“If these people are out making the calls and responding to these advertisements thinking there are young girls, it must be because there are some available,” Stenehjem said. “Because otherwise the word would get around, there’s no point to call, all these ads advertising these young girls are cops, are stings. That’s not what’s happening.”
‘I don’t know how I could have even did it’
Lakey, the oilfield worker caught up in the November 2013 Dickinson sting, pleaded guilty in U.S. District Court in May to a charge of coercion and enticement. He was sentenced to five years in prison, followed by 10 years of supervised release. He also must register as a sex offender.
He did not respond to a letter requesting an interview sent to him in prison.
He was legally separated from his wife, he told a federal judge, and had been working in North Dakota for three years, trying to make enough money to get a better place and seek custody of his 5-year-old daughter.
“I was just going through a hard time and lonely,” Lakey told the judge.
He said he was earning $5,000 a month doing “solids control” on drilling rigs, drying and storing dirt brought up by drilling. He worked 12-hour days for two weeks, then had two weeks off.
“Well, I was working a real – a one-person job and really didn’t have anybody to talk to or anything like that,” he said in court. “And I just got bored and doing – looking back at this now, it just — I don’t know how I could have even did it.”
But he did. He arranged to pay to have unprotected sex with a 13-year-old girl. And he asked an undercover agent for his “secrets” on how he, too, could recruit a girl.
Rob Fontenot, an investigator with the North Dakota Bureau of Criminal Investigation, was involved with the sting.
“What was scary … was that he would refer to the child as ‘it’. As in, ‘It’s’ an object, not a human being. How do you keep ‘it’ from running away?” Fontenot said.
“As a parent and a cop and a human being … it’s shocking to think those people are really out there.”