Erickson 1

Wynter Erickson

Professor Bown

English 2010

March 28, 2017

Billy Kehl
There is hope, there is a future, and there is a way out

of the trade

Sex trafficking is a problem that the world has faced for a long time. The system has

grown with time to become bigger and more destructive than it ever has been before. It has

moved to all corners of the world, on every continent, country, city and town. . In an article

written by Michelle Pardee titled Identifying Domestic Minor Sex Trafficking she states, The

US Department of Health & Human Services estimates that between 100,000 and 325,000

American youth are at risk for sexual exploitation (1), and author Simon Hedlin says that 2.4

million people around the world are being trafficked, eighty percent of them for purposes of

sexual exploitation (3). As it grows, more lives are

destroyed and less and less places are safe. In an

attempt to better understand what is happening and

who is involved in it, we had the pleasure of

interviewing a police officer from St. George, Utah

about his story and his experiences with the system

and his opinions of how and why its happening and

what he thinks can be done to bring it to an end.

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Billy Kehl lives in St. George, Utah. For many years, he worked in construction but still

sought a place where he would have good pay and a more secure situation. In 2008, as he

watched the countries economy begin to crash, he reached out to a friend of his who worked in

the police force and, in his late twenties, was able to acquire a job there through him. Today, he

works closely with drug related cases.

After about two years of working in the police force, Billy became aware of sex

trafficking through his close ties and expertise with drugs and related cases, and was, and still is,

involved in fighting it and bringing it to a stop. Although he has seen many cases of sex

trafficking and many victims, he has never personally known any of them or the traffickers

themselves. His main involvement in sex trafficking is to rescue the victims and get them to a

place of safety where they can recover form their trauma, and gain their lives back. From his

experience with the victims of this terrible system, he has learned that they are very hard to talk

to them and to gain their trust. He says, They are usually scared, abandoned by their families,

and in most case, they are hooked on drugs. He emphasizes the importance of drug addiction to

the traffickers control system over the victims. They will give their victims drugs in hopes to

create a dependency, making drugs their lifeline. In the article Out of the Shadows, author Liz

Farmer tells the story of a young girl who runs away from home only to be led by a turn of

events to become involuntarily involved in sex trafficking. She was forced into a Heroin

addiction which was used to control her. Out of pure luck, the girl managed to escape but had to

undergo severe drug treatment to free herself of her Heroin addiction (1). They create addicts,

and then pay them in drugs. It is cheap and ruins the lives of all victims. The environment has a

great impact on everything, if there are drugs around, they are going to be used. Heroin and

Meth are two of the most commonly used drugs on the victims. Billy says that to be addicted to
 Erickson 3

these drugs to this extent makes it nearly impossible for any of the victims to ever break free of it

and a lot of the time, even survive it. He talks of the environment that the drugs make for the

victims. How the presence of drugs corrupts their minds and makes them desperate and willing

to do anything to receive them. And so, the traffickers have absolute control over their minds and

bodies. Billy, having had to watch many people young and old endure these abominations wants

to be able to give these people some peace of mind. He

said, If I could tell them anything, I would assure them there is hope, there is a future for

them, and there is a way out of the trade.

He says, I work a lot of cases in Las Vegas, I-15 is a major corridor, and there

are a lot of massage parlors that are involved with sex trafficking. His experience

with this has shown him, in a two month period alone, the closing of 5 parlors

that were using underage girls and getting them hooked

on drugs. Las Vegas has a huge underground market and it is

only growing worse. Social media is a major ally of sex trafficking. It happens on every site

including Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and any other social website. One of the biggest

problems that Billy has come to notice is the site Craigslist. It has become one of the largest sites

used in favor of sex trafficking. To lure in traffickers, Billy creates fake profiles of young girls

who are alone and looking for drugs and alcohol. After doing so, he watches as messages from

traffickers come through in droves, trying to convince the girls to come and join their trade.

Because of the influence the internet has over the world, no one is safe from sex trafficking, not

even within their own homes. He says, Sex trafficking is not talked about in the public as

widely as it should be. It needs to be brought to everyone's attention that sex trafficking is always

going to refer back to drug use. While we are decriminalizing the laws on drugs, sex trafficking
 Erickson 4

is only going to grow. Sex trafficking, especially when related to drugs, should require prison

sentences.

Billy continues even today to fight sex trafficking and make those who inflict it on others

pay for their crimes. Sex trafficking remains one of the largest problems he faces as an officer of

the law and as a human being. People need to learn something from his example. Although most

people do not fight crimes such as this for a living, they can still fight against it in ways just as

effective. We must come out as a society, holding together to protect each other from the

inhumanity of other peoples cruelty and disgraces on human rights.

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Works Cited

Farmer, Liz. "Out of the Shadows." Governing, vol. 30, no. 4, Jan. 2017, p. 40. EBSCOhost,

libprox1.slcc.edu/login?url=http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?

direct=true&db=f6h&AN=120561323&site=eds-live.

Hedlin, Simon. "Can Prostitution Law Reform Curb Sex Trafficking? Theory and Evidence on

Scale, Substitution, and Replacement Effects." University of Michigan Journal of Law

Reform, vol. 50, no. 2, Winter2017, pp. 329-386. EBSCOhost, libprox1.slcc.edu/login?

url=http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?

direct=true&db=lgh&AN=121278623&site=eds-live.

Pardee, Michelle, et al. "Identifying Domestic Minor Sex Trafficking." Clinical Advisor, vol. 19,

no. 6, June 2016, pp. 26-31. EBSCOhost, libprox1.slcc.edu/login?

url=http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?

direct=true&db=ccm&AN=115982953&site=eds-live.