On one early August afternoon of 2019, Zephi Trevino, who was then 16, was with Philip Junior Aguilera Baldenegro and his friend Jesse Martinez, then both 18. Allegedly, that day, the teens participated in a robbery in Grand Prairie, Texas, and a man named Carlos Murillo was shot and died. Baldenegro and Martinez were quickly arrested and charged as adults; Trevino was a few weeks later and eventually indicted for murder also as an adult. Trevino – asking a court to return her case to juvenile court -- argues she was a sex trafficking victim and implies other events in her past that relate to ongoing trauma. The prosecution and the court, however, argued that Trevino’s text messages and actions were “sufficiently sophisticated and mature,” and, for that reason, she should be charged as an adult.
Trevino’s case has drawn a lot of celebrity attention – a full-page ad by Jamie Lee Curtis in the Dallas Morning News, a petition by Kim Kardashian, and an appearance on Dr. Phil.
Baldenegro’s defense attorney David Finn argues Trevino was not sex-trafficked, rather she was an active participant, perhaps even the mastermind.
I haven’t interviewed the people involved in this case and I don’t know enough of the details to talk about any of the facts – everything I recited above comes from public news articles. But what does interest me is that, despite the massive calls to pay attention to “sex trafficking” by politicians, law enforcement, social media, church groups, Qanon, Joe Biden, Ivanka Trump, the FBI, and others, Trevino is being charged with murder as an adult. This argument is playing out in the typical way – she is either an innocent victim or she is a lying manipulator. That’s a lot to put on a teenager, but it’s sadly typical of how the media and law enforcement think about “sex trafficking.” (Further complicating matters, the Trevino family appeared on Dr. Phil, and he used those interviews as evidence of his theory that “Sex trafficking is happening all around us every day.”)
Trevino’s case has made me think about victims. Specifically, who are the victims law enforcement seems to believe?
My main conclusion is that the most believable victims are the ones who don’t exist.
Since January was “Sex Trafficking Awareness Month,” social media and local news stations have been plastered with copaganda that supports law enforcement involvement in “sex trafficking,” often through undercover stings. For those who aren’t familiar, a sting operation means that a law enforcement officer or officers “pose” as teenage women (usually) and lure men (usually) via the internet in order to create a reason for their arrest and criminal charges. Even though there are no actual “victims” in these cases, they can usually be charged as “solicitation.” This is a trick as old as To Catch a Predator (or older) when host Chris Hansen used to gleefully confront men who were lured to a house under the pretense of meeting a minor. Cops were usually waiting outside to make the real arrest after Walsh did the reality-television public shaming. The television show was scripted to maximize viewers’ prurient interest and the vicarious appeal of watching the equivalent of an execution through social shame. (The show ended abruptly when one of the so-called guests shot himself.)
Sting operations, of course, don’t involve actual victims, which eliminates the need to persuade them to cooperate with the police — unsurprising since research shows that trafficking stings do NOT help victims and do nothing to prevent "human trafficking.” A report from USC Law School points out that, in fact, sting operations are counter-productive: “[Sting] operations are a form of over-policing that re-traumatize victims, perpetuates systemic racism, and undermines the aims of [laws supporting victims].”
This is reflected in the media surrounding such stings, which seems to show that police prefer not to deal with victims at all. In the vast majority of stories I read, the victims are silent or nonexistent. There are calls for “awareness” which, again, feature nonexistent victims or, when victims are present, they are petulant, reluctant, infantilized, and devoid of agency. This, I suppose, makes life simpler for the criminal legal system. Polk County Sheriff Grady Judd “explains,” “Sex trafficking victims are difficult to locate…difficult to work with” and laments that “some of them just won’t work with us and won’t admit they are victims.” [Later in the statement, which is 30 minutes long and goes into glorious detail about “sex,” he holds up a mug shot of Black woman and says she’s “into kinky stuff,” and, even though she is a sex worker, is not a victim but a criminal.]
The new, pandemic narrative puts a high-tech spin on the issue and posits that the increased use of computers during the pandemic has led to more endangered children. Take this interview of Senator Chuck Grassley, in which he manages to both blame negligent parents (who let their kids spend too much time online) and touts “Operation Homecoming,” one of many overblown federal “busts.” (One of the victims of Operation Homecoming was a 4-year-old kidnapped by a noncustodial parent, a far more common crime.)
As I mentioned, all of these stories are better without victims because, when victims do enter the picture, it is usually because they have either done something reprehensible – committing a crime or killing their abuser – or because they are “uncooperative,” an excuse which permits police and prosecutors to cajole. When victim narratives are used, they are chosen and framed to follow the “proper” story of an innocent victim, a bad actor, and a rescuer.
There are several frameworks at play, including Qanon’s Christian-purity framework, which focuses on extremes – the youngest victims and the worst defendants – as well as dominance feminism, which strives towards “abolition” of sex work and casts trafficking as “slavery,” terms that seem primed to appeal to a sense of moral repugnance but are actually just historically inaccurate and not at all representative of the framework behind anti-sex trafficking laws. To be honest, from where I sit, there is not a lot of space between the two, which makes the entire narrative panic about “sex trafficking” immensely appealing to law enforcement. Law enforcement members themselves frequently make these same assumptions and elisions – focusing on the youngest, purest victims and the most heinous crimes where the savior is always helpful and appealing, not coercive. In one study, the researcher noted that in her interviews with law enforcement, the interviewees constructed narratives where the victims became younger and more innocent, whiter, more worthy of care:
Whether referenced as runaways, throwaways, domestic trafficked minors, or the victims of commercial sexual exploitation, there was a consistent emphasis on the fact that those victims are young (varying from 10 to 17 years of age) and that they keep getting younger.
Such stories don’t match the available data or prosecution trends of sex trafficking cases. (see last week)
Law enforcement also has a clear preference for victims who need to be saved, not victims who self-report. Since those individuals who self-report tend to be seeking to shield themselves from further violence – often from the state – their narratives are inherently suspect. Victims who come forward to claim their status as victims defy the narrative law enforcement and sex trafficking organizations promulgate (one which really gets my goat) – that (generally) women are helpless and in thrall to their abuser, that they don’t understand what is going on rather than considering that they are, perhaps, exercising free will and self-determination.
I think immediately of Cyntoia Brown, a Tennessee woman who as a 16-year-old killed 43-year-old Johnny Allen in what she said was self-defense. She was convicted of first-degree murder – prosecutors alleged her motive was robbery – and she would have had to serve over 50 years if the governor had not pardoned her thanks to online activism and Kim Kardashian. She was still in prison for 15 years. Brown’s childhood was filled with trauma, but no one rescued her and, when she tried to tell her story to prevent the violence of jail, she was silenced and not believed. It’s worth noting that Brown has talked about her survival strategies extensively and never once called herself a “slave.” Brown is now an adult, showing resilience in the face of trauma.
When Zephi Trevino, the teenager I mentioned at the start of this story, appeared on Dr. Phil, the bloviating charlatan immediately transformed the teenager’s personal experience into one where Trevino was “overtaken” by traffickers. “They [the victims] don’t think they have options,” Dr. Phil opined. (The horror of enduring trauma only to have Dr. Phil tell you how victimized you are.) The media has turned her case into one where Trevino must prove she’s a perfect victim, rather than focusing on the fact that teenagers shouldn’t be charged as adults and that people survive trauma in complicated ways.
And there are others – Alexis Martin, CeCe McDonald, Ky Peterson, Maddesyn George, and on and on.
As Mariame Kaba and Brit Schulte wrote about Brown,
[Assuming every young person who trades sex for money is trafficked] ignores the complexity of their experiences — and does a disservice to them by denying them any agency or self-determination, including to define their own experiences and demand their own solutions. Their lives should not be flattened in the service of ‘perfect victim’ narratives.
The narrative law enforcement would have the public believe is one where teenagers aren’t allowed to tell their own story; where their stories are co-opted; where they are “saved” rather than fighting to survive.
The thing is, adults hurt teenagers when they don’t listen and don’t take them seriously. This is a form of trauma itself. Take the troubled teen industry. At a Teen Challenge facility (see Rachel Aviv’s story) in Lakeland, Florida, a 17-year-old girl died in the spring of 2020. According to news reports, Naomi Wood was sick and reporting pain and having potential seizures. As was the practice at the facility, rather than seek medical attention, she was forced to get out of bed, fed soup, and received “prayers.” She was found unresponsive; the medical examiner deemed the death “natural” from a “seizure disorder.” Florida’s Department of Children and Families found in a report, that the facility was negligent. (It is unclear if there were other factors involved; the facility also refused teens psychiatric care and used isolation and silence as punishment.)
The case was referred to the office of Polk County Sheriff Grady Judd. The sheriff’s office did not find the claim substantiated and never pursued the facility for any violations or crimes. But you know what Judd does spend his time doing? Sex trafficking stings, which don’t involve the complications of real victims.