Prostitution tied to drugs, dangerous website

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By JORDYN GRZELEWSKI and JUSTIN WIER

news@vindy.com | Part 1 of a 2-day series

YOUNGSTOWN

Every morning, Rachel wakes up with one thing on her mind: Dope.

Each day brings another turn of the cycle.

“If I don’t have money in my pocket, I have to get up dope sick, hit the block, and get money,” she said. “Or I call someone I know and set something up.”

By “set something up,” Rachel (The Vindicator is not using her real name) means she engages in prostitution. That’s been her way of supporting her drug habit for about the past 10 years.

The 41-year-old Warren woman talked to a reporter at a free weekly dinner hosted by a local ministry. In the fading light of a recent summer night, she sat on a curb, smoking cigarettes and candidly describing the life she used to think she’d never be living.

She chatted for a while, clear-spoken, friendly and blunt, until it was time to go collect groceries the ministry was distributing for people to take home.

Her story provides a glimpse into the experiences of women whose names and faces have appeared in local media reports in increasing numbers in recent years, as local police have cracked down on prostitution.

At the same time, anti-trafficking advocates have called attention to sex trafficking and how websites such as Backpage.com facilitate it.

A HOLE IN THE GROUND

Rachel, who grew up in Howland, started using opiates at 11. Her addiction has kept a firm grasp on her life – minus the two years she was clean.

Those were the happiest years of her life, she said.

“I always had two jobs,” she said. “One was to support my habit, and one was to pay my bills.”

When she saw other women out on the streets, she never thought that could be her one day.

“It’s not like you go and fill out an application for ‘prostitute,’” she said matter-of-factly.

She started engaging in prostitution about 10 years ago when she ran out of other options. Mostly, she walks a few streets in Warren. Because she’s been doing this for so long, she has regular customers and knows the signals men use to solicit her services.

Sometimes regulars call her. Sometimes, a vehicle circling the block tells her what she needs to know.

“After so long doing this, you pick up who’s who and what’s what,” she said.

She’s mindful of where she walks the streets. “This is a residential area. There are kids. I try to be respectful.”

Sometimes, she uses websites to advertise, but she is wary of this method.

“[Backpage.com] is more dangerous than me walking out here on these streets,” she said.

There are dangers either way, though. She has a friend who was beaten and sexually assaulted, and knows other women who have been raped and robbed after arranging a meeting with someone.

The women try to look out for one another when they can.

“We all know each other out here. I’m not saying we all like each other. But there’s a certain amount of loyalty and respect,” Rachel said.

She is numb to her circumstances now, noting an upcoming indictment and possible prison time with apathy (she has since been indicted for possession of cocaine/crack).

“I don’t have feelings anymore,” she said. She has no interest in romantic relationships.

She isn’t interested in intimacy of any kind.

Still, there is a part of her that longs to break the cycle.

If she ever managed to get clean and start over, she’d like to help other women similar to her by giving them a safe place to stay.

At times the barriers seem insurmountable, though.

“‘You make this money why don’t you do such and such?’” she said of what other people think. “I get $20 here, $15 there. Do you know how hard it is for an addict to hold on to that?”

She feels stuck, she said, “Because I really have nowhere else to go that is sober, stable and safe.

“It’s like a hole in the ground that I can’t get out of.”

IN THE VALLEY

Perhaps no local community has pursued prostitution investigations as doggedly as Austintown Township.

The push began in 2016, when the township charged 16 individuals with prostitution-related offenses – eight times the two arrests made in 2015. The department already has eclipsed that number this year, with 19 arrests on charges of soliciting sex in addition to four men who were arrested for promoting prostitution.

Township police assigned two officers to peruse postings on Backpage.com and conduct sting operations. Officers will arrange a meeting with someone suspected of prostitution, and arrest them upon arrival.

“It’s like buying anything else off the internet,” said Austintown Detective Lt. Jeff Solic.

Recently, some men who drive the women to their appointments have been implicated as well.

Solic said prostitution is just one of many crimes linked to the opioid epidemic, adding the vast majority of people arrested for soliciting have told officers they engaged in prostitution to support their drug habit.

“It also leads to other crimes, like setting up people for robberies and theft offenses,” Solic said.

He doesn’t suspect prostitution is more prominent in the township than other areas. If the township searched for seat-belt violations, they would have more arrests for those violations, he said.

“We just have the luxury where we have enough manpower to detail two guys from the patrol division just to focus on these activities every once in awhile,” he said.

Despite the correlation between opioids and prostitution, Solic said the department’s crackdown on prostitution is not about curbing the opioid epidemic.

“We’re fighting the crime,” Solic said. “It’s illegal. ... There’s no magic recipe. There’s no hidden agenda.”

Police Chief Bob Gavalier said the department started targeting prostitution in an attempt to curtail sex trafficking in the area.

Gavalier said, however, police have found few of the arrests involved women being sex-trafficked. The department may focus less on prostitution arrests as a result, he added.

Boardman police employ similar tactics as Austintown. Police Chief Jack Nichols said officers investigate complaints about prostitution and actively monitor Backpage.

He cautioned that though Boardman’s prostitution arrests appear relatively low – over the last two years, records show only a handful of prostitution-related arrests and a few incidents with no arrests – those numbers don’t reflect the whole picture.

“It might show up as an arrest for drugs or a stolen car,” he said, adding it’s often easier for officers to charge suspects for, say, a drug offense, then to organize a prostitution sting.

Plus, he said, “Prostitution arrests almost always have at their roots, drugs. Those two are kind of connected at the hip.”

Law-enforcement officials and experts on the topic say the internet has drastically changed prostitution.

“Being that there’s no motel rooms to rent in Youngstown, it used to be that prostitutes were picked up on the streets and brought to motels in Austintown and Boardman and Liberty,” Nichols said. “Now they advertise on Backpage and they meet either at their place or at the customer’s house or a hotel or motel someplace.”

Backpage adds to another challenge, Nichols said: Identifying cases of sex trafficking.

“A lot of times, it remains hidden from us. If a girl is advertising her services on Backpage, and somebody hires her and pays her the money, they often don’t come into contact with her pimp or her back-up, the guy that’s farming her out,” Nichols said. “It’s hard to tell how much prostitution actually involves the trafficking or if it’s an independent” person.

At a recent meeting between law enforcement, medical professionals and anti-trafficking advocates, Nichols told the group: “This Backpage is just an absolute nightmare. It has completely changed the face of prostitution in this area over the last 10 years.”

BACKPAGE.COM

An 18-month U.S. Senate subcommittee investigation into Backpage found evidence the website “knowingly facilitated” online sex trafficking.

In an appearance before the subcommittee earlier this year, Backpage executives invoked their Fifth Amendment right not to incriminate themselves.

According to the Washington Post, the investigation found more than 93 percent of Backpage’s ad revenue in 2011 came from its adult section, and the site is projected to bring in nearly $250 million in revenue by 2019.

The Post also revealed earlier this summer Backpage uses a contractor in the Philippines “to solicit sex ads from other websites and also posts sex ads on other sites to attract more customers.”

“The documents show Backpage hire d a company in the Philippines to lure advertisers – and customers seeking sex – from sites run by its competitors. ... Workers in the Philippines call center scoured the internet for newly listed sex ads, then contacted the people who posted them and offered a free ad on Backpage.com. The contractor’s workers even created each new ad so it could be activated with one click,” the Post reported.

“Workers also created phony sex ads, offering to ‘Let a young babe show you the way’ or ‘Little angel seeks daddy,’ adding photos of barely clad women and explicit sex patter, the documents show. The workers posted the ads on competitors’ websites. Then, when a potential customer expressed interest, an email directed that person to Backpage.com, where they would find authentic ads, spreadsheets used to track the process,” the newspaper added.

Backpage corners 80 percent of the market for online sex ads, according to the documentary “I Am Jane Doe,” which chronicles the experiences of young women who were trafficked.

In 2010, Craigslist, the world’s largest classifieds website, shuttered its adult section.

Backpage, the next-largest classifieds website, didn’t follow suit until January of this year.

A brief perusal of the website’s “massage” section, however, for example, turns up a slew of suspicious advertisements.

The Vindicator responded to some of these ads to find out if they were for legitimate massage services, or something else.

One woman, who asked to be identified as “Candy,” agreed to exchange text messages with a Vindicator reporter about her use of the site to sell sex services. She described herself as a 27-year-old white woman who is single and has three kids between the ages of 4 and 7.

Candy said she works part time at a job that “barely pays rent let alone bills and food,” and is engaging in prostitution as “a last option type of thing.”

“It’s not about me no more. My kids come first, and if working my real daytime job isn’t enough to cut it I got to so [sic] what I have to do,” she said. “I’m simply doing this to survive and make sure my kids have a home and food n [expletive].”

She said, too, she does not use drugs and has higher aspirations for herself, such as one day opening her own business or working as a nurse.

“This ain’t the end for me. I’m just [expletive] up right now and had no where else to turn in such a time crunch,” she said.

Contributor: Staff writer Amanda Tonoli.