Sixty-nine children in 40 cities being used as child prostitutes were rescued over the weekend by a law-enforcement task force headed by the FBI, which also arrested 885 people, including 99 suspected pimps.
“Operation Cross Country V,” a three-day national enforcement action as part of the Innocence Lost National Initiative, targeted truck stops, casinos, street tracks and Internet sites, based on intelligence gathered by the FBI and its local and state law enforcement partners, along with the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children (NCMEC).
“Child prostitution continues to be a significant problem in our country, as evidenced by the number of children rescued through the continued efforts of our crimes against children task forces,” said Shawn Henry, executive assistant director of the FBI’s Criminal, Cyber, Response and Services Branch.
“There is no work more important than protecting America’s children and freeing them from the cycle of victimization,” he said. “Through our strategic partnerships with state and local law enforcement agencies, we are able to make a difference.”
The Innocence Lost National Initiative was begun by the FBI in 2003 in conjunction with the Justice Department’s Child Exploitation and Obscenity Section (CEOS) and the NCMEC to address the growing problem of domestic sex trafficking of children in the United States.
Full story: 69 children rescued from prostitution