January is Human Trafficking Awareness Month, and just days ago, the Department of Justice (DOJ) announced the sentencing of a Florida man for sex trafficking of a child under the age of 14. The man reportedly “directly participated in a scheme that sexually exploited children in the Philippines in order to produce child sex-abuse videos for his consumption.”
The press release is horrific, discussing how the man, Christopher John Streeter, “communicated and transacted with Philippines-based facilitators to recruit children to engage in sex acts on camera” with children “as young as 12 and 13 years of age [who] were particularly vulnerable due to poverty and illness.” He paid extra for video featuring the young victims being put at risk of pregnancy, “including additional payment for emergency contraception pills and, occasionally, for abortions,” according to the press release. The investigation resulted in the rescue of six victims.
Christopher John Streeter arrested for sex trafficking (Image: Pinellas County Sheriff’s Office)
No, this is not fiction. Sickening acts like this take place on a regular basis.
Live Action News has documented that an important indicator or red flag of sex trafficking victims often includes numerous abortions, pregnancies and miscarriages. Other red flags can include the frequent use of emergency contraception, as well as a teen being accompanied by an older boyfriend or an adult that is not a family member. Sexual abusers look for ways to either prevent pregnancy or force abortions on their victims to cover their crimes.
And far too often, the abortion industry — including Planned Parenthood — are all too willing to help.
Signs of sex trafficking may include “seeking treatment for sexually transmitted infections, presenting with a history of substance abuse problems, seeking an abortion and/or with a history of multiple abortions,” among other things, wrote the American Psychological Association (APA).
Additional indicators of commercial sexual exploitation of children (CSEC), published by the Academy of Pediatrics, include:
- Child accompanied by domineering adult who does not allow child to answer questions
- Child accompanied by unrelated adult
- Child accompanied by other children and only one adult
- Child provides changing information regarding demographics
- Chief complaint is acute sexual assault or acute physical assault
- Chief complaint is suicide attempt
- Child is poor historian or disoriented from sleep deprivation or drug intoxication
- Multiple sexually transmitted infections (STIs)
- Previous pregnancy/abortion
- Frequent visits for emergency contraception
- Chronic runaway behavior
- Chronic truancy or problems in school
- History of sexual abuse/physical abuse/neglect
- Involvement of child protective services (especially foster care/group home)
- Involvement with department of juvenile justice
- Significantly older boyfriend
Despite all these red flags, the abortion industry and Planned Parenthood have repeatedly been caught covering for child sexual abusers. This was evident in a Live Action undercover investigation, which caught Planned Parenthood staffers on video expressing a willingness to aid undercover investigators who were posing as sex traffickers.
READ: The link between sex trafficking, abortion, and Planned Parenthood
Below is a compilation reel of that investigation:
A national study published in 2016 which was funded by the Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention of the U.S. DOJ noted, “A cross-sectional survey of female patients in five family-planning clinics (affiliated with Planned Parenthood) in Northern California found that of the 9% of young women (aged 16-29 years old) who sought services at these family planning clinics, 16% reported pimp involvement.”
According to Laura Lederer, former Senior Advisor on Trafficking in Persons for the U.S. Department of State and the founder of the anti-trafficking non-profit Global Centurion, sex trafficked victims are often forced to abort. “Fifty-five percent of the women surveyed had at least one abortion, and 30% had multiple abortions during the time of trafficking,” Lederer once testified.
“Health Consequences of Sex Trafficking” was published by the Annals of Health Law in 2014 and co-authored by Lederer along with Christopher Wetzel, who interviewed several women victimized by sex trafficking. They found that survivors had “significant contact with clinical treatment facilities, most notably Planned Parenthood.”
FacingLifeNow host Bradley Mattes previously interviewed experts on sex trafficking as well as some of those victims. Mattes recapped the story of “Marlene” in 2014, where he wrote, “Marlene also was responsible to arrange abortion appointments when the girls became pregnant. A hired ‘parent’ would take girls to Planned Parenthood for abortions. Marlene says the staff would be well aware the girls were being victimized, but they consistently looked the other way to avoid losing a paying customer in the lucrative business of abortion. By doing this, they functioned as criminal enablers or partners with the pimps, allowing the victimization to continue.”
Listen to her story below:
In 2017, 51-year-old James Aaron Lenox was arrested by the Texas’ Lone Star Fugitive Task Force for allegedly sex trafficking a 16-year-old of whom he had custody. Lenox reportedly took his victim, whom he had allegedly sexually assaulted, to Planned Parenthood for an IUD.
According to Kevin Malone, president and co-founder of the nonprofit U.S. Institute Against Human Trafficking, “Studies have shown that 88 percent of trafficking victims see a medical professional while being trafficked. Besides physical abuse, medical professionals should be alert to signs of botched abortions; in one study, more than half of sex trafficking victims reported having had an abortion,” Malone wrote in the Indy Star.
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