November 23, 2008
Five charged in South Florida sex trafficking

McClatchy News Service

They spent the hours between the beatings and threats and forced sexual encounters cloaked in suburbia, stashed invisibly in quiet family homes.

Now they are free, and the ring of smugglers who prosecutors say kidnapped them in Mexico and shuttled them to brothels across South Florida to service as many as 100 clients per week are behind bars.

Federal agents this week charged five people with operating a prostitution gang that targeted girls as young as 14, smuggled them across the border and forced them into a “modern day form of slavery,â€