THE FIFTH

OF SEVEN
PARTS
The Forum LATE EDITION
O F FA R GO - M O O R H E A D
THURSDAY, JANUARY 8, 2015 INFORUM.COM
A FORUM
NEWS SERVICE
INVESTIGATIVE
SERIES

CONNECT
IN A CLICK The Internet opens a world
of possibilities for pimps,
but it opens doors for
law enforcement, too

INSIDE
JENNY’S
JOURNEY
‘The second part’
finally arrives,
PAGE A5

TRAFFICKING
STINGS
For agents, willing
buyers easy to find,
PAGE A5

STORY BY
KATHERINE LYMN
AND AMY DALRYMPLE;
ILLUSTRATION
BY TROY BECKER
FORUM NEWS SERVICE

T
alking to seventh-graders in the small town
of Scranton, N.D., this past November,
Windie Lazenko told students that even
they aren’t immune from pimps.
They may not be in a big city and they may have
safe, secure homes, but potential traffickers may be
watching every time they log online, she warned.
“With the Internet, every single one of you kids
is at risk,” said Lazenko, who herself was first
prostituted when she was around their age.
Lazenko’s November visit to the school was part
of her ongoing work in western North Dakota,
fighting the increase in prostitution and
trafficking brought on largely by the oil boom.
It’s an unlikely topic, one many of the kids in
the town less than 300 hadn’t heard about before
Lazenko’s talk. But increasingly across western
North Dakota, communities are opening their
eyes – or rather, being forced to see that
commercial sex is all around them.
To many who remember history, the sex trade is
no surprise: These are mining towns after all, used
to a “work hard, play hard” approach to life and
aware that companionship for hire is available.
But this time, the prostitution “track” isn’t a
certain street
corner or strip. It’s the
Internet. Backpage and other
more obscure sites host the ads
that connect johns and women.
It has put Backpage, the most
well-known of the sites, at the
center of a legal and political debate.
While many are quick to blame
the Internet for helping prostitution
flourish, others point out it’s a new
tool for investigators to help crack
down on the crime.
“With pimps advertising on the
Internet, they out themselves and now
they’re trackable,” said Lois Lee, founder of
Children of the Night, a California-based
nonprofit that rescues children from pimps.
In online stings, agents post ads, posing as
pimps, and communicate with potential johns in
increasingly common operations throughout
western North Dakota.
They see incredible demand.
CONNECT: Page A4

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Parents say 17-year-old who was killed

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PAGE A2 Copyright 2015 The Forum
in bus crash was trying to save others
Cassidy rushed to front when driver slumped over, Sandstroms say
By Sarah Volpenhein ter, Cassidy Sandstrom, Board, confirmed the mes- what happened in the
Forum News Service rushed to the front of the sage was written by the moments leading up to the
LARIMORE, N.D. – The bus when Max Danner, the Sandstroms. crash from other students
parents of the 17-year-old 62-year-old school bus driv- The message conflicts on the bus.
girl killed in the train-bus er, “slumped over” in his with what North Dakota Seventeen-year-old Cas-
collision out- chair, with the bus stopped Highway Patrol investiga- sidy Sandstrom, a senior at
side Lari- on the railroad tracks east tors have said, namely that Larimore High School, was
more, N.D., of Larimore. they believe Danner’s driv- seated at the back of the bus
Monday say The email’s contents were ing was not impaired by any when she “realized what
their daugh- posted to Facebook and kind of medical condition, was happening” and rushed
ter died try- were shared more than 1,000 at least at this point in the to the front of the bus, ush-
ing to save times from one Facebook investigation. ering the other students
the busload of user’s page as of 10 p.m. “Our thoughts right now toward the emergency door
Cassidy students from Wednesday, with hundreds are he failed to provide a at the back of the bus, the
Sandstrom an oncoming of social media users hail- safe stopping distance,” Lt. email says.
train. ing Cassidy Sandstrom as a Troy Hischer, of the High- In the email, the Sand-
In an email to family and hero. way Patrol, said on Tuesday. stroms say their daughter
friends, Judy and Paul Jennifer Johnson, presi- The Sandstroms say in the
Sandstrom say their daugh- dent of the Larimore School email that they heard about TEEN: Back Page

A4 Thursday, January 8, 2015
ABOUT
THE SERIES
Forum News Service
takes on the issue of
human trafficking and
female exploitation
in this seven-part
in-depth reporting series.
We explore the emerging
crisis as it unfolds in the
Oil Patch of western
North Dakota, as well as
in Minnesota and South
Dakota.
SUNDAY
A Booming Crisis
Understanding the
global human trafficking
crisis and its connection
to the Oil Patch of
western North Dakota,
where an influx of men
and money in recent
years has brought an
increased demand for
commercial sex.
MONDAY
The Game
We take a deeper
psychological look at
pimp control, which is
the manipulation of
often already vulnerable
women. Pimps are
masters at making
unwanted, perhaps
discarded women feel
wanted.
TUESDAY
Difficulty
in Detection
How is human
trafficking detected?
Hospitals, hotels and
other groups are taking
various steps to detect
and report possible
human trafficking.
WEDNESDAY
Prosecuting
Prostitution
Conversation, rather
than arrest and
interrogation, is one of
the tactics officers are
using today to gain
information about
traffickers and put them
behind bars. It’s no easy
task. While going after
traffickers is a priority,
those cases are difficult
to prove.
TODAY
Making the
Connection
The Internet has
become the new
battleground for sex
trafficking. It’s where
women and traffickers
go to promote sex for
sale, but it’s also a
powerful tool for law
enforcement in arresting
them.
FRIDAY
Squaring Up
Law enforcement and
victim service providers
in North Dakota are
identifying more victims
of sex trafficking, but the
closest dedicated
shelter for trafficking
victims is more than 500
miles away.
SATURDAY
What’s Next?
Human trafficking will be
a major topic of
discussion in the next
legislative session,
including a proposal to
adopt a new uniform law
on human trafficking.
JAN. 11
The Documentary
WDAY’s Kevin
Wallevand digs deeper
into sex trafficking in
North Dakota in a
30-minute
documentary-style
news program, airing at
10:35 p.m. Sunday.
ONLINE
Many additional stories,
photos, videos and
more can be found at
traffickedreport.com
THE EXPLOITATION OF WOMEN AND GIRLS IN THE BAKKEN AND BEYOND
PHOTO BY CARRIE SNYDER / FORUM NEWS SERVICE
CONNECT FROM A1
Agents had to shut down a fall 2013 sting in Dickinson
because the responses came to the Craigslist and Backpage ads
so quickly that the arrests soon overwhelmed officers.
“It’s mind-blowing,” Dickinson police Det. Sgt. Kylan Klauzer
said of the general demand. “We’re definitely not immune to it.
It’s here, and it’s close.”
Agents say if they had the resources to run operations more
often, they would easily catch more johns.
A Forum News Service analysis of data collected by
independent group Marinus Analytics shows escort ads on one
prominent website have not only grown tremendously in North
Dakota, but that in recent months they’ve surpassed the
amount of ads in Minnesota, where Duluth and the Twin Cities
are recognized longtime trafficking hubs.
“We don’t know how many cases there are, we don’t know
how many prostitutes there are, we don’t know how common
this is,” North Dakota Attorney General Wayne Stenehjem said
in an interview. “We just know when we do a sting, we never
have a shortage of people who are looking.”
THE DEBATE OVER BACKPAGE
On an average day in fall 2014, Backpage had pages of
commercial sex ad galleries for Oil Patch cities. North Dakota
frequently has 150 to 200 ads every day, with Williston and
Minot being the most popular cities.
But still, the demand outpaces supply. Women say when they
post an ad in the state, the phone rings off the hook, and right
away. The posts even occasionally include offers to do “out-
calls” to smaller towns like Belfield, Stanley and Tioga.
“If it disappeared tomorrow, I’d be happy,” Sen. Heidi
Heitkamp, D-N.D., said of Backpage at a Bismarck sex
trafficking training in September.
But talk of simply shutting Backpage down is quickly met
with concerns from many fighting trafficking, who say that
would simply lead to the ads popping up on smaller sites less
likely to cooperate with investigations.
The Association of Attorneys General successfully pressured
Craigslist to shut down its adult listings page in 2010. Now the
majority of state attorneys general, including Stenehjem, have
taken on new frontrunner Backpage, which has resisted taking
down its “escorts” ads. The company says the ads would just
migrate to international or more obscure sites, hindering law
enforcement efforts. When Craigslist shut down, its ads just
migrated elsewhere, including to Backpage, and a similar
phenomenon could happen if Backpage shuts down, except the
ads would go deeper underground.
Liz McDougall, general counsel for Backpage, has been the
carrier of an unconventional message: Yes, the site houses
prostitution ads. But it’s responsible about it, responding to
subpoenas quickly and reporting possible cases of trafficking
to law enforcement, who can then take advantage of the
footprint criminals leave online.
She expanded on that in a statement she wrote for Forum
News Service:
“Unless the Internet is wholly shut down, the end result of
this strategy will be that our children are advertised through
offshore websites who do not endeavor to prevent such activity,
who do not report potential cases of exploitation to law
enforcement, who do not expeditiously cooperate with law
enforcement to rescue victims and arrest pimps – and who are
outside the jurisdiction of U.S. law enforcement so they can
thumb their noses at U.S. law enforcement requests, even pleas,
for evidence to find a child or stop a perpetrator.”
Talking by phone one November night from Lyon, France,
where she and McDougall had just attended an INTERPOL
conference on trafficking, Children of the Night’s Lee lauded
Backpage’s cooperation with law enforcement, saying it’s better
than any other social network.
Along with enabling a flourishing commercial sex trade, the
Internet marketplace can make the individual crime harder to
see. Before the Internet age, johns and the women would have
to go to a physical location to find each other, said Tim
Wittman, a supervisory special agent with the FBI’s
Minneapolis office. “But with the Internet facilitating it,” he
said, “it can maybe escape the community’s notice on a wide
level.”
But the sites – like Facebook, with 1.3 billion regular users –
do also lead to criminals unwittingly documenting their crimes
in ways helpful to prosecutors.
Tim Purdon, U.S. attorney for North Dakota, said someone’s
own words can be “incredibly valuable evidence” against them.
Prosecutors used hundreds of chat logs obtained from
Facebook with a search warrant in the case against Darrin
Anderson, a Minnesota man now serving 12 years in federal
prison.
Anderson, in his mid-30s at the time, communicated with
A FORUM NEWS SERVICE
INVESTIGATIVE SERIES
“
I think this is especially
concerning here because the
defendant was in the home of so
many local adolescent girls via
their computers. He was in their
homes ... to sexually exploit them.
JENNIFER PUHL
ASSISTANT US ATTORNEY, ABOVE, ON
MINNESOTA MAN DARRIN ANDERSON, WHO IS
SERVING 12 YEARS IN FEDERAL PRISON
hundreds of girls using a fake Facebook profile, purporting to
be a cute younger boy. One conversation led to him arranging
commercial sex with a 13-year-old girl. Over roughly two years,
he engaged in 800 Facebook chat conversations with, most of
the time, 14- to 17-year-old girls in the Red River Valley region.
To get the girls to talk to him, he would say they had a mutual
friend, or she had “popped up” on his Facebook scroll, or he
just added her as a friend because she was attractive.
He would send them sexually explicit photos despite their
protest, and convince some to send pictures back.
“I think this is especially concerning here because the
defendant was in the home of so many local adolescent girls via
their computers,” Assistant U.S. Attorney Jennifer Puhl said at
Anderson’s May 2011 sentencing. “He was in their homes … to
sexually exploit them.”
The case showed how easily predators can find their prey
with the Internet: Of the roughly 800 girls Anderson reached
out to, 795 responded, Puhl said at a sex trafficking conference
in Sioux Falls last August.
“I was shocked to see how many of these girls communicated
with him,” she said.
Emily Kennedy, CEO of Marinus Analytics, said the goal of
the project that involves analyzing online ads was to see how
technology has opened new avenues for criminals, especially
pimps. “Technology really enables them to expand their
market, to keep their identities safe while still exploiting these
girls,” she said.
When grouped with South Dakota and Minnesota, North
Dakota’s share of ads on one prominent ads site has grown
substantially, according to an FNS analysis of Marinus’ data. In
2012, North Dakota made up 12.4 percent of the ads in the three
states, and through November of last year, the Peace Garden
State made up 45 percent.
Now Marinus works with various law enforcement agencies
to find evidence or establish timelines for trafficking
investigations.
Speaking at a sex trafficking conference in Sioux Falls last
year, Facebook’s Monika Bickert acknowledged how sites like
hers can be attractive to pimps for recruiting victims and then
threatening or coercing them, or to arrange transactions. But
Bickert, head of global policy management with the website,
said there’s another way to look at it.
“They may feel the Internet is a really powerful tool for
them,” she said, “but I have to say I think the Internet is a
much more powerful tool for those who are fighting against
human trafficking.”
‘WHY IS IT OUR BUSINESS?’
Leaders in the fight against sex trafficking say the root
problem is society’s willingness to accept the buying of sex,
and that “boys will be boys” – a problem amplified in an oil
boom.
“We have a whole culture now that has become, I think,
desensitized to the innocence of children, number one, and
desensitized to how horrific something like this is, in fact it’s
the kind of attitude of ‘Willing buyer, willing seller, why is it
our business?’ ” Heitkamp said.
“What I would tell them is probably some of the most horrific
victimization in this country happens in those relationships,
and so we have to have a change in societal attitude about
human trafficking, about prostitution and about the value of
children.”
Boomtown prostitution opens a lucrative field for pimps, who
know those selling sex willingly will never meet the demand,
and word of the oilfield market is spreading fast through pimp
networks and in larger cities like Minneapolis and Milwaukee.
The Internet fuels that.
Pimps are bringing their “stables” of women to North
Dakota, or sending women on their own after first filling their
heads with threats of violence or what will happen to their
families if they don’t come back with their quotas filled.
Motels and hotels around the Oil Patch have had to maintain
blacklists of women they suspect of operating there, and john
stings show how easy it is to catch the low-hanging fruit: men
cruising the Internet.
Agents say they hope to get to the traffickers eventually, but
that in the meantime, the stings may deter some men who,
lonely but wealthy, give in to curiosity and log on to the
“Backpage.com” they’ve heard so much about at work.
“The condition of the men here, they’re vulnerable and the
traffickers know that,” Lazenko said. “The men are being
exploited on a whole ’nother level.”
A FORUM NEWS SERVICE
INVESTIGATIVE SERIES
‘THE SECOND PART’ FINALLY ARRIVES
After pointing gun
at son, Jenny begins
to mend relationships
By Katherine Lymn
Forum News Service
J
enny Gaines’ mother remembers a child
who organized neighborhood activities,
got involved in acrobatics and theater
and did homework with “Little House on
the Prairie” on TV in the background.
Things changed as “little Jenny” grew into
her teens. She argued more, started making bad
choices and her years quickly became filled
with stays in various treatment programs.
Jenny longed for her father, who was the fun
one, and she was angry at her mother, who
made the rules. A “daddy’s girl,” she blamed
her mom for her parents’ divorce, not knowing
about her dad’s addiction issues.
“All of a sudden there she was; it’s like a
person I didn’t really know, like this hardcore,
makeup, angry,” Diana Arrell, Jenny’s mother,
said. “I mean, she was such a delightful child. I
didn’t really understand who it was I was
seeing.”
Jenny’s years-long transformation out of the
dark life she had fallen into accelerated six
years ago when she pointed a gun at her then-
12-year-old son.
After doing something degrading a john had
requested, something she normally wouldn’t
do, so she could afford the cellphone her son
wanted, Jenny found her son had programmed
her number in the phone under a derogatory
name.
“
I was never going to shoot him. I only wanted to scare him,
but it was wrong. He was so afraid, because he’s seen me do
some pretty violent stuff and he didn’t know if I was going to
do it or not.
JENNY GAINES
ON POINTING A GUN AT HER THEN-12-YEAR-OLD SON
AGENTS: NO
SHORTAGE
OF WILLING
BUYERS
By Katherine Lymn
Forum News Service
D
ing.
The arrival of texts and emails sounds
repeatedly from phones and laptops in
this bustling suite on the fourth floor of
one of Bismarck’s nicer hotels.
Local, state and federal law enforcement agents
have posted ads on Backpage and Craigslist,
offering sex for sale.
The group is dressed comfortably for the long
night ahead of them. They could be getting ready
for the weekend, but not this Friday night.
Instead they are actors, posing as pimps
marketing sex with underage girls.
Ding. Another potential customer, another
willing buyer.
The sting, led by Internet Crimes against
Children agents, was like many that occur in
western North Dakota now, whether on a small
scale within local police departments or on a larger
scale like this one. It’s one way experts say the
Internet opens doors for law enforcement in
addition to opportunistic pimps.
Forum News Service was granted special access
in September to observe a sting.
As a chat develops between the agents – posing as
pimps – and the men who are responding, the agents
reveal the offer for sex is actually with an underage
girl. Many of the men stop chatting and move on.
Others are undeterred or even enticed by the idea
of sex with an underage girl. They are instructed
on where to meet her.
The ones who show up at the hotel are directed to
a particular room, a room where a knock on the
door will make prosecutors’ cases and change the
men’s lives.
Ding.
In two “arrest rooms,” agents pass the time
playing video games and snacking until a john
comes knocking.
There’s a female agent in each room and she
serves as the voice behind the door.
When the would-be john enters, it’s “a guns-out
scenario,” says Rob Fontenot, a state Bureau of
Criminal Investigation agent who periodically
checks out each staging area, grabbing snacks from
each room as he goes.
And then the men are in handcuffs, and they see
the bulletproof vests, Tasers and badges.
“They physically can’t move a lot of times,”
Fontenot says. “We’ve had people say, ‘Just
THE EXPLOITATION OF WOMEN AND GIRLS IN THE BAKKEN AND BEYOND
Thursday, January 8, 2015 A5
“And the rage came over me
like, ‘How could you call me a
exploiting her, and she began
mending relationships with her
bitch? You have no idea what I children, including the son who
just did for this money to get
this [expletive] phone and
left after she pointed a gun at
him.
you’re going to call me
something that one of these
It was the start of what would
come to be known in Jenny’s
dudes used to call me? You, my circle as “the second part.”
son, my ride-or-die baby, Arrell, her mother, says she
really?’ ” heard a voice one day when she
She got a gun, pointed it at This is the life of Jenny was doing laundry and walked
him and told him to leave. Gaines. Lured into sex by her daughter, then just a
“I was never going to shoot trafficking at age 14, she baby.
him,” she says now of that cold spent 28 years in a life of Her daughter was going to
Friday night. “I only wanted to prostitution. Throughout the cause her a lot of pain, the voice
scare him, but it was wrong. He past six months, Forum News said, but there would be a
was so afraid, because he’s seen Service has spent time second part to the mother-
me do some pretty violent stuff getting to know Jenny. This is daughter relationship. The pain
and he didn’t know if I was her story. would only last a little while,
going to do it or not.” she recalls the voice telling her,
He packed his bags and left. and then Jenny would go on to
She wouldn’t talk to her son for help a lot of people.
a year. Arrell, who lives in
Jenny’s family told her over and over to let it Minneapolis now, never lost faith in what she
go, to accept that her son was gone. She moved calls the prophecy.
to an apartment in Minneapolis’ Uptown After her Jenny started wearing heavy
neighborhood, a place that reminded her of makeup, having angry fits and becoming
New York. violent, Arrell would dream about the daughter
And she tried to let it go, the hurt and who was. “Dream Jenny,” with her stringy hair,
emptiness. her little goggles, her yellow nightgown, would
She did all the drugs she wanted and turned visit from the Land of the Dead, Arrell said.
all the tricks she wanted. She found herself in
And through the rocky stays in treatment, the
violent relationship after violent relationship.
And then one day, she realized she wasn’t suicide attempts, the arrests – Arrell would
“there” anymore. She was all used up. think about the promise of the second part of
She was evicted from her apartment and fell the prophecy, and she would become impatient.
into a deep depression. Getting dressed took “I thought it was just gonna be a short time.
three hours, she said. What’s with this years and years and years and
With the next call that came, she made a years?”
friend who helped her without sexually In those difficult moments, Jenny would ask
herself, “Is this really the end of this?” Was her
personal struggle coming to an end?
“No,” she told herself. “My testimony isn’t
strong enough yet. No, ’cause I’m gonna help
people one day. It’s just not powerful enough.”
Jenny’s son was close to his grandmother,
who had told him about the vision. He would
turn to her and ask, “Well, do you think we’re
in the second part of the prophecy?”
It was in those moments, Jenny and her
mother say now, that the “second part” finally
arrived.
AMY DALRYMPLE / FORUM NEWS SERVICE
Local, state and federal law enforcement agents conduct a sting operation Sept. 5, 2014, at a
Bismarck hotel that targeted buyers of commercial sex with minors.
[expletive] shoot me. My life’s over.’ ” was forced to service 68 men in one day.
Back at a makeshift headquarters, agents chat “I realized hell’s gonna be full,” Fontenot said.
and plan, replacing ads as their host sites remove The sting that night, also a training exercise for
them. The TV show “Law and Order: SVU” – special officers who hadn’t participated in such an
victims unit – plays in the background. operation before, netted one human trafficking
Ding, ding, ding. arrest and another days later from the same set of
Another agent tracks requests in an Excel ads. Similar stings in the state have captured johns
spreadsheet, collecting the age of the child the man at rates that show the demand is there, and that a
thinks he’s meeting, the acts he has requested, the man’s first stop when looking to pay for sex is the
price he has agreed to pay. Web.
The 20 agents take eight hotel rooms,
three for the operation and five for sleep.
Many have traveled for this, and it’s a long
commitment.
Responses kept coming, questions,
requests for pictures.
The chats leading to potential meetups
quickly become nauseating, the men
rushing to see what they can get. The
younger a girl looks in a picture, the faster
the offers come, Fontenot says.
He doesn’t try to disguise his disgust.
“There’s no way of making sense of what
these guys want to do to kids.”
At a national training session Fontenot
attended to learn more about human
trafficking, he heard about a woman who