Human sex trafficking is an international problem with local impact, and it’s much bigger than many people realize, Kane County State’s Attorney Joseph McMahon said this week.
“This is not something that is taking place in the inner city but across the region,” McMahon said. “We see it going on in the labor market, in nail salons and massage parlors, and the people involved in it keep moving from location to location making them difficult to follow.”
McMahon made his comments Tuesday in Montgomery, where he was the keynote speaker during the Aurora Navy League Council 247 monthly dinner, which included more than 20 guests.
“This issue affects the metropolitan area like ours,” Council president Richard Todas of Sugar Grove told the audience before introducing McMahon. “There are kidnappings and disappearances … This is something that is international in scope and a huge challenge.”
After a reception and dinner, McMahon offered about a 40-minute power point presentation and question/answer session in which he offered a perspective about the seriousness of the problem and how the internet has increased it exponentially.
“This is an issue based on supply and demand, and our approach has been to go after the demand side on the state and federal level,” McMahon said. “We set up undercover operations with someone posing as a young child and advertise these things through websites and wait until someone reaches out about meeting up. Once something is posted, we get a hit on it usually within a few minutes.”
McMahon said internet commerce “has made it easier for people to meet up and make transactions easy to arrange” and the problem continues to expand.
“This is not a big city or a socio-economic issue — it affects people in all walks of life. Many who are participating have no criminal record and many cases have gone unreported,” he said.
McMahon said in 2014 Homeland Security Investigations and the Aurora Police Department approached the Kane County state’s attorney’s office about a partnership to address sex trafficking. Since then, five sting operations have been conducted, resulting in 14 arrests.
“Eight defendants pled guilty and are currently serving prison sentences,” McMahon said. “Four others went to trial and were all found guilty and two more are awaiting trial.”
McMahon said the best thing Kane County residents can do to combat sex trafficking is keep an eye on businesses and “report those that don’t appear to be legitimate.”
“We look for things like people working strange hours and having a large turnover of employees,” he said. “We also look at workers that are disengaged with their customers and those that work somewhere for three weeks and move on somewhere else. A lot of these people are the victims of brutal exploitation.”
