The day that would lead her into forced prostitution began innocently enough for Kay. Naturally, the 16-year-old went shopping.
The bubbly, athletic basketball player at Marietta High School traveled to downtown Atlanta with her older sister to look for fashion finds in the Little Five Points neighborhood. Kay, who asked not to be identified by her real name but consented to photographs, said an attractive older man struck up a friendly flirtation as she browsed in a boutique.
Little did Kay know she would stare down the same man, Jimmie Lee Jones, in a federal courtroom years later in 2007, when she accused him of forcing her to have sex with him and another man for money that he pocketed.
“He was cute, well-dressed, polite, very nice,” said Kay. “At the time of meeting him, your instincts wouldn’t pick up what you were going to go through later on.”
On Monday, Kay will be among several victims who will speak to a gathering of lawmakers, nonprofit organizations, police and prosecutors at a summit on human trafficking. The aim of the summit, hosted at Georgia State University by the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Northern District of Georgia, is to increase cooperation among local, state and federal agencies tasked with combating it. Also to speak are Gov. Nathan Deal, state Attorney General Sam Olens, GBI Director Vernon Keenan and Fulton County District Attorney Paul Howard.
Jones is currently serving a 15-year prison sentence on federal charges related to sex trafficking, in part thanks to Kay’s brave cooperation with authorities. But Atlanta remains a global hub for labor and sex trafficking for the same reasons that it is a center for transportation and commerce, said Atlanta U.S. Attorney Sally Quillian Yates.
“We’ve had a long and thriving commercial sex industry, a big convention business and large sporting events. So that creates a ready market for prostitution,” Yates said. “One purpose of this summit is coordinating with community organizations who can assist us not just with helping victims but providing avenues for outcry.”
Of particular concern are young women who fall victim to predators with false promises of love or money, good jobs or fame. According to the U.S. Department of Justice, the average age for girls who become victims of prostitution is between 12 and 14.
Much of the prostitution activity that was once evident on the streets has moved online to websites such as Craigslist or Backpage.com. There, classified ads can be posted and transactions can be arranged discreetly. But pimps rarely advertise a girl as being underage, Yates said. Instead, they may use code words or post pictures of girls who clearly look younger than 18.
Jones knew that Kay was only 16 when he promised to make her a successful model. He and a female teenager claiming to be his cousin picked Kay up a few days after their first meeting, ostensibly to go to dinner and a movie.
Instead, they went to a shopping mall where Jones bought Kay revealing clothes. The trio wound up at Jones’ downtown condo, where Jones enlisted the help of the cousin to convince Kay if she really wanted to model, she needed to be comfortable enough with her body to take off her clothes. Kay was shocked when Jones’ friend stripped down in front of her, assuring her it was no big deal.
Kay refused at first. Then she did it reluctantly, hoping that maybe Jones would then take her back home. She was afraid he was about to rape her.
She was right.
“I was just so violated, and I had no more innocence left in me at that point,” Kay said.
Jones promised to take her to a modeling “meet-and-greet” later. But instead he drove Kay and the other young woman to a strip club, bought them drinks and paraded them before the male patrons. After they returned to Jones’ home that night, the cousin confessed to Kay that she had been kidnapped and forced into prostitution.
The next day, Jones told Kay she owed him for the clothes he had purchased. And to repay him, he forced her to have sex with a man who came to his condo.
“I just felt so horrible, like how did I get myself in this situation?” said Kay.
After a two-day nightmare during which Kay constantly pleaded to go home, Jones finally dropped her off after dark at a MARTA bus station with $3. The 16-year-old made her way back to Marietta alone.
She made excuses for her absence to her family and told no one but her sister about what had happened. But the experience left her afraid, angry and confused. She stopped playing sports and cooking with her Grandma. She withdrew into herself.
“I had to carry this inside my heart secretly for well over two to three years,” Kay said. But when she saw news of Jones’ arrest on television, she went to the FBI.
Tapestri, an Atlanta nonprofit organization that helps human trafficking victims, has assisted about 70 victims since 2005 with counseling, shelter, job placement and medical services. That number is surprisingly low considering that the U.S. Department of Justice estimates there are between 14,000 and 17,000 victims trafficked into the U.S. each year. But it shows the gap between the victims believed to be in the metro area and those who are actually rescued, said Jadma Noronha, a Tapestri spokeswoman.
The state has more tools than ever before for recognizing and prosecuting people who smuggle and exploit humans. This year, Georgia lawmakers passed anti-human trafficking legislation that took effect July 1. The law mandates training for police officers on recognizing signs of sexual servitude, makes compensation available for victims and increases penalties for offenders convicted of trafficking minors to 25 years with a maximum of life in prison.
Olens anticipates the new law, considered a national model, will open the door for more local cooperation with federal authorities.
DeKalb County District Attorney Robert James welcomes the chance to work with federal investigators and local police to address the sexual exploitation of women in the county’s massage parlors and extended-stay motels. He believes the three-pronged solution is joint investigations, public education and the use of forfeiture laws to seize property and ill-gotten gains of human traffickers.
He started a program called Rahab while he was the county’s solicitor general that provided counseling to prostitutes. James came to view many of them as modern-day slaves. The women told stories about being on the street since they were 14 or 15, he said.
“We need to start treating these women as victims as much as possible,” James said. “You have to educate on it, you have to hit people in the pocket and you have to be tough if you want to see a real difference.”
The summit Monday will involve brainstorming to foster cooperation among law enforcement agencies. The aim is also to build relationships with community organizations that can reach out victims who have been silenced by physical abuse, shame and, in the case of foreign victims, threats of arrest and deportation, said Assistant U.S. Attorney Susan Coppedge.
Kay is silent no more. She wants others to know that sexual exploitation really happens and that predators don’t discriminate.
“You cannot let anybody take that freedom from you,” Jones said. “You have got to stand up and say this is not OK.”
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