Utah to crack down on human trafficking

They are hiding in plain sight.

Faced with a problem that police say exists even in Salt Lake City, authorities announced a task force Wednesday designed to crack down on the crime of human trafficking. A pair of $450,000 federal grants will help fund the law enforcement task force, as well as victim support services.

"Debt bondage, physical coercion, psychological coercion, deprivation of food, clothing, sexual assaults and isolation are just some of the factors that victims living in Utah have faced," said Susan Ritter, the director of the Utah Health and Human Rights Project, a group that helps human-trafficking victims. "Some are terrified to come forward to report. Others have complex relationships with their traffickers, and they've depended on them for years for their survival."

People who are victims of trafficking often include women forced to perform sex acts for money and day laborers who may be exploited by someone threatening to call immigration authorities on them.

A multi-billion-dollar international problem, authorities said its presence is being noticed in Utah. A series of cases linked to human trafficking have been recently filed in U.S. District Court in Salt Lake City.

Dahan Demari Anderson, 26, and Randy Chanhmany, 21, are charged with sex trafficking, accused of forcing two young women to commit sex acts with men they arranged encounters with on the Web site Craigslist. They face up to life in prison if convicted.

Federal prosecutors also recently secured a guilty plea from Jose Hernan Moreno-Sevilla to a count of forced labor involving a man who was smuggled into the U.S. from Peru and forced to work for Moreno-Sevilla's construction company for 14 hours a day nearly seven days a week. The man was paid only $9,500 a year in wages and allowed to keep only $1,000 of it.

Federal prosecutors said that in an effort to keep his victim loyal and to keep him working, Moreno-Sevilla kept the man's passport and told him every yellow car on the street was an immigration officer.

"In addition, the defendant encouraged (the victim) to join the Mormon church, as that would make it so he wouldn't stick out and be protected from discovery by immigration officials," Moreno-Sevilla's guilty plea said. "Because of these representations, (the victim) did not feel free to leave, but that he had to work for me until his smuggling fee was paid."

"Many people confuse human trafficking and illegal alien smuggling," U.S. Attorney for Utah Brett Tolman said Wednesday, noting that smuggling involves people willingly brought into the United States.