This is an archived article that was published on sltrib.com in 2016, and information in the article may be outdated. It is provided only for personal research purposes and may not be reprinted.
The FBI reported Tuesday that its Child Exploitation Task Force (CETF) in Utah recovered a female juvenile being victimized through sex trafficking. The rescued juvenile is not from Utah and is currently in the custody of the state Division of Child and Family Services. Efforts were being made to reunite the girl with her family, who lives out of state, the FBI said Tuesday in a news release.
The three-day operation was part of Operation Cross Country (OCC), which took place Oct. 13-15, in the Salt Lake Valley and Ogden, Utah and in Missoula and Billings, Montana.
The FBI and its local law enforcement partners made contact with young women and adults involved in prostitution through the use of undercover agents and detectives canvassing websites that advertise prostitution and areas known for prostitution, according to the news release.
In addition to the girl who was recovered, the CETF in Utah also arrested three women on warrants and cited six others for prostitution. Some of the women may have been forced into engaging in prostitution since they were juveniles, but it is not uncommon for them to refuse to disclose that information to authorities, the news release said.
In Montana, the FBI and its partners arrested one woman for alleged prostitution and a male associate, accused of violating a protective order against her. He may have also been facilitating prostitution, the news release said.
In all cases, the women were made aware of and offered services within the community.
The annual OCC operation is part of an ongoing strategy to combat the commercial sexual exploitation of children, the news release said. This year, efforts occurred in 55 field offices and for the first time, with international partners from Canada, Thailand, Cambodia and the Philippines.
Agents in the FBI Salt Lake City Field Office conduct sex trafficking investigations every day. While there are victims from Utah, the nature of this crime is that pimps and their victims travel throughout the nation to engage in prostitution and do not necessarily live in the area where they are located by authorities, the news release said.
The nationwide initiative allows the FBI and its partners to cast a broad net for a better opportunity to identify, locate and recover victims before they are moved to another area, the news release said.
This is the tenth OCC. The first was conducted in 2008, and the Salt Lake Division began participating in OCC in 2013.
OCC is part of the FBI's Innocence Lost National Initiative, which began in 2003. These teams work all year to recover minor trafficking victims. Since the program's inception, more than 6,100 children have been identified and recovered, the news release said.
The FBI partnered with the following agencies for this year's OCC: Salt Lake City Police Department, Adult Probation and Parole, Homeland Security Investigations, Ogden Police Department, Ogden Metro Gang Unit, the Utah Department of Public Safety, Weber County Sheriff's Office and the Davis County Attorney's Office.