Madison Police Department employees helped the Federal Bureau of Investigation recover two girls under the age of 18 from forced prostitution sometime between July 25 through 28 as part of a nationwide effort to end domestic sex trafficking, according to MPD spokesperson Joel DeSpain.
DeSpain said two community police teams, several MPD detectives and an MPD lieutenant aided the bureau.
Various other local and state agencies, including the University of Wisconsin Police Department in Milwaukee, arrested 100 other “subjects” involved in sex trafficking throughout Wisconsin and rescued 10 girls from the streets of Milwaukee, according to an FBI press release.
DeSpain said the MPD has been working for many years alongside a local project called Respect, launched by ARC Community Services, Inc. in 1986, to crack down on human trafficking.
ARC Community Services, Inc. is a local nonprofit that provides support and services to abused, underprivileged and substance-abusing women and “focuses on addressing a woman’s recovery within the context of her relationship with her children,” according to its website.
The Respect project on prostitution, which the city of Madison and Dane County fund jointly, is an outpatient service that helps women who have participated or been forced into prostitution reintegrate themselves into the community.
“We’ve done a lot of partnering with [Project Respect] in trying to get both those under 18 and over 18 who are involved in prostitution out of that and into lives that would be better for them,” DeSpain said.
The bust was a result of the FBI’s seventh annual Operation Cross Country, a four-day national program in which local and state authorities team up with the FBI to save women being sold into prostitution.
OCC is a part of the Innocence Lost National Initiative, which is responsible for the recovery of more than 2,700 children and the convictions of more than 1,350 criminals since its inception in 2003, according to the FBI release.
