’Brand New, Recently Stolen’: Inside Tijuana’s Sex Tourism Trade of Young Children Kristina Davis - The San Diego Union-Tribune
go to original October 22, 2017

Lorena, a "mujer alegre," or woman of joy, looks for customers on the infamous Coahuila Street in the Zona Norte red light district (Don Bartletti/Los Angeles Times)

“It’s William from tonight. Precious was weird and fun. I’m already thinking about coming down next Thursday. Please send me pics of 3 or four of the youngest ones so I can choose.”

FBI investigators say William Dixon Adelman, a 51-year-old Studio City man, sent the request to a Tijuana sex broker on July 3, 2015 — the same day border crossing records show he was returning to the U.S. from Mexico.

“Thin, pretty … Like a precious but smaller,” the request continued. “You have a safe apartment? Hotel people would freak out no?”

The broker responded that he had a “good” place in mind, but reservations were needed: “in this place you can take the girls realy young 9,10,11.”

... Prostitution has long been tolerated in Tijuana’s La Zona Norte, where customers — many of them Americans — easily find commercial sex on the street or in established brothels. Young children are offered more covertly, authorities say.

“It’s as easy as going on the internet and the dark web to get what you want,” said Marisa Ugarte, a former Tijuana social worker and founder of Bilateral Safety Corridor Coalition, a National City-based service organization for victims of sex-trafficking.

Many of the children are brought up from other areas of Mexico, Ugarte said. Some are orphans, unaccompanied minor immigrants or sold by their parents. Some are kidnapped, she said.

Child sex trafficking has long been known to be a problem in Tijuana, but there is no official data suggesting just how prolific it is.

Read the whole story at The San Diego Union-Tribune

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