Editor's Note: The title, most of the subtitles and some vocabulary used throughout this article is terminology commonly used by pimps. You can find these definitions at In Public Safety. (Cover Photo Obtained from Ngan Ta, "News coverage of sex trafficking in the U.S.: The portrayal of sex traffickers")
Sherbrodrick Holloman, also known by his street name “Boss,” said he is into “pimping.”
Holloman, who has an extensive criminal past according to Lubbock public records, said his “business” is a real, serious matter.
“People die and lose their life,” Holloman said. “Don’t they give people time for that?”
According to the Lubbock-Avalanche Journal, Holloman and eight others were arrested on Oct. 12, 2017, for their involvement in a national sex-trafficking sting. While the ages of the victims were not disclosed in the article, it does state some victims were as young as 9 years old.
Leslie Timmons, education director at Voice of Hope, said the University of Texas did a prevalent study on sex-trafficking.
“They estimated that 79,000 12- to 14-year-olds in Texas are at risk of being recruited into sex-trafficking,” Timmons said.
Timmons also gave statistics for how many victims Voice of Hope has helped in Lubbock.
“In 2018, we assisted 37 sex-trafficking victims,” Timmons said, “and the year before that we assisted on 68 cases in Lubbock.”
While Holloman understands the risks he faces in his “business,” he also acknowledges those of his sex-workers.
“These women are out here fighting for their lives,” Holloman said. “Some have kids, some have parents.”
Chad Wheeler, executive director at Open Door, said the majority of trafficking starts with minors in vulnerable situations.
Timmons agreed with Wheeler.
“Sex-trafficking is one of the worst crimes because it’s typically traffickers preying on very young children,” Timmons said.
Seasoning
Wheeler said fatality in trafficking is insanely high.
“The life of a trafficking victim who doesn’t get out tends to be very short,” Wheeler said. “The lifestyle is very hard on them because they face abuse from Johns and traffickers.”
A “John,” as described by Wheeler, is someone who buys sex.
And according to Wheeler, people typically become victims of trafficking three ways: manipulation, coercion and force.
“Manipulation would be, ‘Hey, I need you to go out and do this because we have to pay our bills,’” Wheeler said.
He said coercion can begin with an online conversation leading to a request for nude and explicit photos.
“You send the photo and then they say, ‘I need you to go do this, you need to either get with me or with other people or else I’m going to send this photo out,’” Wheeler said.
Wheeler continued and said force is very rare but does happen.
One misconception of trafficking, Wheeler said, is that it only happens in big cities or with people coming from other countries.
“While it does happen, it’s the minority of cases; the vast majority of cases are homegrown,” Wheeler said. “It’s happening right here in Lubbock, as well as other places in West Texas.”
Wheeler said sex-trafficking is driven by demand, and if there are people who want to buy sex then trafficking is going to exist within that area.
Squaring up
However, there are solutions.
Timmons said when assisting a sex-trafficking victim, the most important thing to do is to establish a trusting relationship.
“We do this because they don’t really have any more trust,” Timmons said. “After that period of relationship building, we have to get them to then realize that they’ve been victimized.”
Wheeler said a person unfamiliar with the situation would expect a person who has been trafficked to have negative, clear-cut thoughts and feelings about their trafficker.
“'That person has exploited me, taken advantage of me, abused me and has treated me like total trash. I never want to go back to that person, I want to get as far away from that person as I can,’” Wheeler said. “That’s what a person on the outside would assume somebody to think.”
While it may not make sense to most, Wheeler said victims tend to form a connection with their trafficker.
“They’re so manipulated that they do have this connection,” Wheeler said. “In some ways it might be the devil you know is better than the devil you don’t know.”
Because of this mentality, Wheeler said they need to have a high-level of grace and understanding when working with trafficking victims.
“The trauma has been so significant and has taken place for multiple years,” Wheeler said, “that the road to recovery is also going to be very significant and take years to help people work out of it.”
To help with the process, Timmons said Voice of Hope has two full-time sex-trafficking advocates and one part-time advocate.
“Our advocates go out to the jail and the juvenile detention center and do all kinds of curriculum in hopes of when they get out, they won’t go back to that lifestyle,” Timmons said. “If they’re not in jail, we try to get them into a counseling program.”
Timmons said Voice of Hope has partnered with Open Door to help victims get into their housing program.
Wheeler said Open Door’s housing program is for adult survivors of trafficking and their children.
Regardless of someone's situation, Wheeler said they can accommodate those in need of immediate to long-term arrangements.
“We have 20 units of housing in Lubbock where we can move in somebody who is a trafficking victim,” Wheeler said. “They can stay there for up to 18 months.”
Wheeler said their housing program is unique to West Texas; there are very few programs in the country like Open Door’s.
(Video from Open Door website)
Aside from their survivor-housing program, Wheeler said Open Door also provides case management and counseling.
“We have 24-hour on-call case management to help them do things like become clean and sober, get a job, get their kids into school and whatever they’re trying to work on,” Wheeler said. “We [also] have a licensed professional counselor that meets with the adults and their children.”
Counseling Counselors
Timmons said it is frustrating to see people become victims of sex-trafficking every day.
“We’ve probably been desensitized to it a little bit because we see it every day,” Timmons said, “but we’re still human.”
Placing emphasis on the silver lining, Timmons said there is hope when seeing positive results after helping victims recover from a horrendous situation.
“We have the opportunity to help somebody on maybe the worst day of their life,” Timmons said. “I would say that’s why most of us do what we do.”
Wheeler echoed Timmons' sentiments and said it’s emotionally challenging to hear and see what people have gone through.
“Working with someone who has been through trauma,” Wheeler said, “you feel and share some of their stress, and it can definitely wear people down.”
Wheeler said Open Door works hard to make sure their staff is taken care of.
“They do self-care, take time off and seek counselors themselves whenever they’ve encountered difficult situations,” Wheeler said.
Wheeler said helping victims affects everyone in a multitude of ways.
“It’s emotional, physical, relational and spiritual,” Wheeler said.
Facilitators
While sex-trafficking is heavily based on relationships, Wheeler said it can occur through businesses - the biggest one being massage parlors.
“There are massage parlors all throughout Lubbock that are selling sex,” Wheeler said. “There have been some busts in recent years.”
Mei Chen Massage, 5903 82nd St., was one of those parlors busted for sex-trafficking several years ago.
The police report states Yue offered to perform a sexual act in exchange for money while an undercover officer was receiving a massage. When the officer gave the money to Yue, a team of officers entered the parlor and placed Yue under arrest.
Lee Rodriguez said to his girlfriend, Yu Juen Xiang – current co-owner of Mei Chen Massage – he felt the previous operation has cast a shadow over their work.
“I told you,” Rodriguez said to Xiang, “this place got a bad reputation.”
The previous owner transferred the lease to them after the incident, and he said he does not know anything about him except for why he leased them the massage parlor.
“His mom got sick in China,” Rodriguez said, “so he had to go back.”
Massage parlors offering illegal services, Rodriguez said make it hard for legitimate businesses.
“The bad ones make the good ones look bad because of what they do,” Rodriguez said. “It kind of trickles down to everybody else.”
Rodriguez said Xiang's business is different from other massage parlors in Lubbock because they have an open-door policy.
“There’s no closed-door services; you will see they just got a curtain,” Rodriguez said. “Anybody can come in and observe.”
Finishing up, Rodriguez said Xiang works at a massage parlor because she doesn’t speak English well and would rather be in a different line of work.
On Aug. 12, 2019, four arrests were made at two different establishments on prostitution charges, according to an LPD news release. Fengying Wu and Yufang Wang were arrested at Cherish Spa, 1301 50th St., while Lanxiang Li and Lianhya Gu were arrested at Spring Spa, 4114 Ave. Q.
Though sex-trafficking does happen at massage parlors, it also takes place in other businesses.
Holloman acknowledged his “pimp” lifestyle, but also said he runs a car repair shop.
“My business is fixing cars,” Holloman said.
An undercover detective for LPD said Holloman has learned he can’t just make “pure criminal money” and get away with it.
“He has to have something legit to funnel his money through,” the detective said. “If I have a bullshit car-repair shop that hasn’t had any business in six months, I can say that I’ve got all kinds of business because there’s nobody checking.”
The detective said businesses allow traffickers to funnel their money through property rental.
“He can rent a business out and say, ‘all I do is fix cars,’ but the only thing he’s fixing is drug deals and prostitution,” the detective said.
Escort Services
Aside from organized meetings, the detective said most sex-trafficking busts happen through online stings.
“Typically, there’s a few different websites that the prostitution subculture uses,” the detective said, “and they place ads, kind of like a Craigslist or Backpage.”
People scroll through, find pictures they like, click the pictures, contact the phone number and go through a few different screening processes before an actual meeting occurs, he said.
“Once you’re together,” the detective said, “if I was a purveyor of sex, we would have sex in exchange for money.”
The detective said when he meets with the trafficker and sex worker, they come to an agreement, he gets the elements of the charge for the penal code and they make the arrest.
“We have to prove the elements of an offense,” the detective said. “The penal code says a person knowingly traffics another person through the use of force or coercion to cause that person to be involved in forced labor or the sex-trade.”
Wifeys
The detective said sex-trafficking is hard to bust because it’s not as straightforward as drugs.
“[Traffickers] know if they have even the smallest crack rock, or the smallest amount of narcotics on them, they can go to prison for a long time,” the detective said, “but if they have a person in their possession, that is not illegal unless it’s a kidnapping.”
The detective said they have to prove kidnapping.
“If I can manipulate somebody into being next to me, if I can have them agree to sit with me and do all this stuff,” the detective said, “if I get pulled over by the police, it’s just a guy and girl sitting next to each other, that’s not illegal contraband.”
Wheeler elaborated and said if a police officer pulls over a trafficker, the victim has already been manipulated and brainwashed so much that they won’t tell the officer that this is their trafficker.
“They may not even think of themselves as being trafficked,” Wheeler said. “They may just say, ‘this is my friend’ or ‘this is my boyfriend’ they’re going to deny that they’ve been trafficked, and how are you going to prosecute that?”
Caught a Case
Wheeler said he is a supporter of significant punishment and rehabilitative consequences for traffickers.
“Sending someone to prison may be a justified consequence,” he said, “but we have to realize that trafficking is often a learned trade that is usually passed on from generation to generation - just like drug dealing.”
These people make a livelihood out of trafficking, he said, because they’re coming from places with poverty and lack of opportunity.
“Sending someone to jail for 25 years doesn’t necessarily correct that,” Wheeler said, “but what we could do is require them to go through rehabilitative classes about the realities of sex-trafficking so that they can learn and understand how serious it is.”
In his opinion, Wheeler said every person is good and created with purpose and value.
“Open Door is a faith-based organization so our faith drives a lot of what we do,” Wheeler said. “Ultimately, those people doing terrible things are still our brothers and sisters, too.”
Finesse Pimp
However, the detective had a different perspective.
When dealing with people like this, the detective said you have to look at the sociology and psychology in and behind the situation. Oftentimes, an offender may see themselves as being capable of maintaining personal relationships; however, they view their victims as property.
“I may think, ‘this is my property,’ and I have no cares or qualms about what happens to it as long as I’m getting money,” the detective said, “but you’re my best friend, or brother, and you get killed in a car accident, and I shed tears for you, does that make me nonhuman that I don’t care about her, but I care about you?”
Sex-traffickers will psychologically manipulate people for personal gain, he said.
“When you deal with someone who’s a psychopath, are they saying they love someone because they love them,” the detective said, “or are they saying they love someone because they want to manipulate them?”
While former traffickers don’t seek rehabilitation, the detective said everyone can be rehabilitated if they chose to be.
“Until I say, ‘you know what, I’m tired, I want to be with family, I want to have a job and I don’t want to go to prison,’ they’re not going to be rehabilitated,” the detective said about offenders.
With a lot of former traffickers going back into trafficking after serving their sentences, the problem is not only cyclical but grows - affecting many people.
The detective said many of them return to the streets because they are masters of manipulation, even claiming their reformation to parole boards under the pretense of Christianity.
The detective said traffickers are all there mentally; they are very smart, but they are not all there emotionally.
And while these perpetrators are human, the detective said these people will lie, cheat and do whatever they can to build rapport with police in an attempt to hide their illicit activity.
“Yes, they’re human,” the detective said, “but so is Jeffrey Dahmer.”
If you or someone you know may be a victim of sex-trafficking, call 888-373-7888 for help. For immediate help, do not hesitate to call 911.