7 men arrested in WA child sex trafficking sting | FOX 13 Seattle (youtube.com)
It seems there was actually no actual minors being trafficked. They were imaginary children, ie police posing as minors using text messages and SM, and under this guise would communicate with men and try to engage them in a relationship and then try to manipulate them to agree to exchange money for sex, and then the police would arrest these men. They also arrested men who seemed interested but then later decided not to actually go meet the imaginary minor, including a school Assistent Principal, who did not go through with it, but the police charged him with a misdemeanor (and of course sort of destroyed his life). Charges can include Communication with a Minor for Immoral Purposes.
‘We start with that dialog, we make it very clear multiple times that the person is speaking to a minor, whether a 13-, 14- or 15-year old male or female, and that dialog leads to what we call an Offer and Agreement, where some exchange of a service for a monetary value or good could develop probable cause.'
The reporter said ‘it’s been estimated that at any time there are 300 [under age 18 people] who are being sex trafficked' in Washington State, but did not refer to anyone actually known to have been trafficked.
So it seems there was no actual instances of this happening, except that the police created it? We've seen this several times in recent years, where the largest component of a criminal thing is actually the authorities, who host or create the thing, and sometimes the participation of the authorities is necessary for the crimes, ie if the authorities did not do what they did, the crimes would not have happened.
However, watching the way this is reported, it's apparent why normal people could be misled to believe this is actually a serious issue in their state. The news story is presented confusedly, and I'd guess many people don't understand what they were presenting, and will revert to just the headline that there was sex trafficking in the state, which there wasn't.
#Journalism
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