In 2011, a victim of sexual assault claiming to be 18 walked into a Lubbock University Medical Center for medical assistance. An advocate with Voice of Hope arrived at the hospital soon after, where she listened to the victim’s horrifying story.

The victim began to confide in the VOH advocate that she was being trafficked in a child porn ring located somewhere between Lubbock and Levelland, according to Education Director at Voice of Hope Leslie Timmons. The VOH advocate also discovered the victim was a minor.

The victim gave specific details, names and addresses. But when the VOH advocate left the room momentarily to assess a plan of action, the girl was gone.

“She left and we haven’t seen her since,” said Timmons.

Law enforcement attempted to locate the porn ring but was not successful, according to Timmons. She said this case was the first red flag, which lead Voice of Hope to conduct a survey in the general community among people who have access to youth.

The survey asked a series of questions regarding warning signs associated with human trafficking. Timmons said through the survey, they discovered 73 percent of respondents had been seeing some of these warning signs in youth.

She said that was when they were alerted to the scope of the city’s problem. She now says with certainty that “sex trafficking is rampant in Lubbock.”

In 2017, the Polaris Project identified 10,615 victims of human trafficking in the nation, 68% were categorized as sex trafficking. The majority of these victims of sex trafficking were between the ages of 15 and 17.

According to Timmons, Voice of Hope identified and assisted 68 victims of sex trafficking in 2017 and 37 in 2018.

“Most people don’t want to think that it happens here,” she said. “Most people want to think that it’s in a foreign country, in a third world country.”

From 2013 to 2018, the Lubbock County District Attorney’s Office has filed human trafficking cases against 11 suspects.

Nine of the suspects have been tried and convicted of some crime, one suspect’s case has been re-filed and one suspect’s case is still pending. Of the nine that have been convicted, seven received a lesser conviction than their original charges.

Former Lubbock Police Department Officer, Stacy Peterson, who now works as a case manager and victim advocate for Voice of Hope, said that it is very difficult to prove sex trafficking as a crime. She said having to prove the victims were forced into prostitution is one of the biggest challenges.

“It’s a tricky thing because traffickers are really, really smart,” she explained. “Trying to nail them down for it is much harder.”

Andrew Wipke, Assistant District Attorney for Lubbock County’s DA Office, said the small number of cases of human trafficking filed through his office compared to the number accounted for by Voice of Hope could be attributed to the fact that victims are choosing not to prosecute their traffickers.

Timmons said a great obstacle in freeing victims from their situation is helping them recognize that they are indeed victims.

“A lot of the victims are in love with their trafficker,” she said. “They’ve been brainwashed, they’ve been manipulated.”

Peterson said the lack of statistics in Lubbock regarding cases of human trafficking is due in part because often traffickers are not tried for trafficking.

Peterson said attorneys will often take a roundabout approach and charge the suspects for theft, fraud, tax evasion or other crimes that are easier to convict than trafficking in order to get them behind bars.

“They’re very savvy businessmen, they know how to fly under the radar and know how to not get caught,” she explained.

Richard Sustaita III, one of the 11 trafficking suspects mentioned above, was arrested on November 10 of 2014 and charged with aggravated promotion of prostitution of a minor and trafficking of a minor. He was sentenced in April of 2016 for possession of cocaine with intent to deliver, a crime he committed in December of 2011.

Peterson said traffickers arrange their crimes in such a manner that their victims are the easiest to arrest.

“The girls are the ones that are set up most of the time to take the fall,” she said. “How do you prove this guy is the one when the Bentley is in her name, the million dollar house is in her name?”

Timmons said traffickers usually target people between the ages of 12 and 14 years of age. She added that vulnerable teenagers that are over-sharing on social media make easy targets.

Captain Ray Mendoza with the Lubbock Police Department said social media is the main avenue through which traffickers are finding their victims. Traffickers will pose as someone they are not, establish a connection and then attempt to obtain compromising information or pictures from the victims to use as blackmail.

Mendoza explained a lot of the trafficking activity happens online in private chats and across jurisdictions, which is why it is so hard to pin on a map.

“There’s nowhere to plot where this is beginning or where it ends,” he said. “There’s no real way to track it accurately.”

Timmons said the human trafficking business uses a very sophisticated system through which customers contact traffickers. Backpage was seized by the Federal Bureau of Investigation after sex traffickers were found to be using the page to promote their illegal services.

However, the shutting down of one webpage is not a deterrent for traffickers, Timmons said.

“Once they shut a site down, there’s another one right behind it,” she shared. “There’s a lot of fake businesses – massage parlors, escort services, strip clubs.”

One such site is Rubmaps, a user-generated page, which lists erotic massage parlors where users can find businesses that offer massages with “happy endings.” The website has 18 locations listed in Lubbock.

According to the Texas Department of Licensing and Regulation, only 2 of the 18 locations have a current massage therapy license.

Timmons said that victims of modern slavery find themselves in situations that are much more complicated than what is seen in the media in movies like “Taken.”

She explained the traffickers keep any money the victims make and take possession of their IDs so that it becomes almost impossible for them to escape and live a normal life again.

“They are trapped, but not physically trapped, emotionally trapped,” she said. “They are threatened.”

Timmons said it is not uncommon for families to traffic their own children, sometimes in order to pay for a drug habit.

Peterson said a positive aspect she has seen in combatting cases of human trafficking is that more entities and agencies are beginning to recognize their need to work together and are starting to communicate in order to tackle these crimes that are crossing jurisdictions on all levels.

Captain Mendoza said police, hospitals and community advocacy groups in Lubbock are working together to educate each other. He said Voice of Hope, One Voice Home and the Child Advocacy Center are examples of said community advocacy groups working to fight local trafficking.

“The biggest thing that we’ve found working for us is education,” he said.

Timmons said a lot of what her job entails is educating the public. She said getting people to talk about trafficking is very important because awareness allows people to respond to the issue.

“Just being aware it happens and being aware that we’re not in a little bubble in West Texas,” she said. “I think people think we don’t have the same issues big city problems.”

She said there is a lot people can do to help fight human trafficking in Lubbock such as volunteering at community advocacy organizations like the Human Rights Campaign.

“You don’t have to be a cop to be involved and to help,” she shared. “You can be a behind-the-scenes person and have just as much as an impact.”