How a Hero Saved Two Women From Sex Slavery in NYC
The blogosphere was buzzing with rumors last spring that a young Manhattan woman had rescued two Russian college students from sexual slavery on Coney Island. Many people thought the whole thing was a hoax. Turns out, the story was true: Marie Claire editor-at-large Abigail Pesta tracked down the Russian women for an exclusive interview, and learned of their terrifying ordeal. Their story illustrates just how easily young foreign women can find themselves enslaved.
The Russian women explained how they flew to Washington D.C. for summer jobs as lifeguards — then found out the jobs had fallen through. That's when the women received new instructions from the Russian company that had arranged the jobs: Get on a bus to New York City and meet a guy named George at a nightclub on Coney Island, at midnight. Yikes. (A flier for the club, which has since closed, is pictured here.)
The scenario had all the signs of human trafficking. Here's how young foreign women are often ensnared: A woman is offered a regular-sounding job, which falls through, leaving her in a vulnerable situation. She gets sent to a new "job," where her passport is seized and she's told she has to "earn" it back, usually through sex work. If she doesn't obey, she faces beatings and threats against her family back home. Hard to believe? Sex trafficking is a $32 billion global business, and that includes America.
In the case of the two Russian women, something astonishing happened: A young woman in Manhattan named Kathrine Gutierrez Hinds learned of the women's plight from a blog post on the site MetaFilter. The post had been made by a guy in North Dakota named Daniel Reetz. He knew one of the Russian women from when he taught English in Russia a few years back. He thought the women were headed for danger, and needed help. So Kathrine stepped in, taking the women into her home, defying potential mobsters, and risking her own safety. You can read the whole crazy story on The Daily Beast.
Read more: How a Hero Saved Two Women From Sex Slavery in NYC - Marie Claire
Dear Fellow Readers,
Discovering this article delighted me in many ways. I loved hearing that a woman from a busy, anonymous city like Manhattan possesses so much passion for helping others that she deliberately sought to help her fellow woman when she found a need. Katherine literally sprang into action to help these two Russian woman. Truly she saved their lives--at no small cost to her own safety and peace of mind. How many of us can say we’ve done that?
And I was also delighted to see that so many of the blog readers were eager to help the girls as well. This showed me that there are still good people out there. They just tend to stay quiet until the need inspires them into action.
This was a victory story. Unfortunately, it is one of only a few. Reading of the terrifying plight of these girls disturbed me greatly. Disturbed me because this happened right in our own American backyard. This was not some far away account of sex trafficking in the Ukraine or South America. It was certainly no TV show where the detective hunts down the bad guys and good always triumphs in the end. These women escaped slavery by the skin of their teeth. This was a very real account of a very real evil in our country. This terrifying beast is here--Manhattan, Texas, San Diego. All of these places were mentioned by the slave ring in the news article. So if it exists in these places, what is to stop it from existing in your town, your city, down the street from your grocery store?
I’ll leave you with that sobering thought. These women were lucky, but most of these endings aren’t so happy. Are you ok with that? What if it’s not a visitor to our country next time, but our own daughters? It is possible; I doubt these women ever dreamt something like this could happen to them.
Fellow readers, think on this possibility. The threat is real. The question is: What are you going to do about it?
Passionately Awake,
Brittany Howard
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