Sex Trafficking Problem in Houston

Every night, right here in Houston, children are being sexually assaulted by strangers. Having sex with a child is a serious crime. It's also a multi-billion dollar business.

To most people, it may just look like prostitution. Until you look closer.

"It's our children!" says Maria Trujillo, Executive Director of the Houston Rescue and Restore Coaliation.

These are children who have run away from troubled homes. But they never meant to run into this.

"I know that girls don't run to prostitution," says FBI Special Agent Pat Fransen. "These girls run from something, and they land in prostitution's arms."

In Harris County, alone, there are 6000 runaways every year. And research shows, one in three of them will be lured into sex-trafficking in the first 48 hours.

"One in three!" Trujillo stresses. "That means that 2000 kids are being prostituted every year! That's just the new ones."

Kids like "Airreal." That's not her real name. It's what she's called on a website, advertising her services for $150 an hour. All of it, cops say, getting pocketed by her pimp -- a guy who trafficks children for sex.

"We just got her.. She had a pimp here", says Houston Police Officer Emma Rodriguez. She and Agent Fransen are both assigned to "Innocence Lost," an FBI task force that tries to rescue girls like "Aerrial" from sex-traffickers.

On a Thursday night, "Aerrial" finds herself under arrest for prostitution in a West Houston hotel room, where an undercover cop allegedly caught her.

Downstairs, her suspected pimp is being fingerprinted on state-of-the-art equipment used to track sex-traffickers.

"He says he's not a pimp," says Fransen. "We know differently. We've had previous dealings with him in the past."

It's rare for a trafficker to "fess up." Dorothy Harper is rare.

"I remember saying this-- 'You look like you're by yourself, you need a friend," the attractive 62-year old woman recalls.

She's "fessing up" about trafficking children for sex on the streets of Chicago some 30 years ago.

"It's a trade. Hear what I'm saying!" she emphasizes. "I give you a place, you work for me!" Harper explains.

Runaway teens, as young as 13, worked for the woman who came to be known as "Mama." Unlike a pimp, she says, she never beat them. Never had to.

"I can look at them and use words. And they were just as bad as a hit," she looks somber.

She convinced herself she wasn't hurting them.

"It didn't bother you that these were little girls that should be home playing with dolls?" we ask her.

"No," she replies, "because I had been used and abused, so what I was really doing was taking out my hurts and frustrations on them."

Before turning trafficker, Harper says, she was a teenager turning tricks. A victim, herself.

"My brother was raping me... I'm being raped, I'm being beaten," she drops her head.

At the time, she didn't know she was a victim. And the kids she trafficked didn't know they were. Now, she's telling her story in her new mission to help victims of sex-traffickers.

Back on Houston's West side, it's just before midnite as "Aerrial" waits in the hotel parking lot for Fransen to fingerprint her.

"You don't consider yourself a victim?" we ask her. "No," she softly replies.

"Aerrial" was 14, she says, when her parents kicked her out. It's been four years, and she hasn't seen them since. You can't help but notice, she's just a kid. Ashamed and embarrassed.

Girls her age are getting ready for their high school proms, while she's in handcuffs, being arrested for prostitution.

"Right now, we have to lock them up," Fransen explains, "because that's the only thing we have for them."

And her suspected trafficker? He'll go free, for tonight.

"This is probably not the last time he's going to see us," says Fransen.

Fransen and Rodriguez make it their mission to put traffickers away. They only hope getting "Aerrial" off the streets, for now, will give her the chance to get away for good.

That's their hope. "...talk to her and make her believe that she's worth something," says Rodriguez.

That's why they're out, night after night, looking for girls like "Aerrial."

"We're very passionate about what we do," says Fransen. "These are our children."

Trafficking Information and Referral Hot Line: 888-3737-888
or Crime Stoppers Tips Line: 713-222-8477

For more information on human trafficking, you can visit or contact the following agencies and organizations:

Houston Rescue & Restore Coalition
713-874-0290
e-mail: contact@houstonrr.org
website: www.houstonrr.org

Children at Risk
713-869-7740
email: info@childrenatrisk.org
website: childrenatrisk.org

U.S. Department of Health and Human Services:
1-888-3737-888
website: www.acf.hhs.gov/trafficking

FBI - "Innocence Lost"
website: http://www.fbi.gov/innolost/innolost.htm