Escondido police arrested 19 people in a prostitution sting Friday, according to a news release. Out of 50 people contacted by undercover investigators, police said they arrested 15 men and one woman for solicitation, two women for loitering with intent to commit prostitution, and one man for pandering.

The undercover sting targeted an area between Mission and Washington avenues and Quince Street and Broadway, police said. They impounded 14 vehicles.

(Via The San Diego Union Tribune)

A 16-year-old Kauai girl will be returned to her grandparents by Los Angeles welfare officials after she was reported missing on Sunday, Kauai County officials said today.

The juvenile reportedly had been in communication over the Internet with a man who purchased a ticket for her to fly to Oklahoma to meet him, according to Kauai police. Her grandparents reported her missing from her Hanamaulu home Sunday morning. (more…)

After her husband was killed, Atoor’s family tried to sell her to a local Baghdad brothel. “I didn’t think it would happen to me,” she said. “My mother used to spoil me. Yes, she sold my sisters but she regretted that. I thought that she loved me.”

She goes by “Hinda,” but that’s not her real name. That’s what she’s called by the many Iraqi sex traffickers and pimps who contact her several times a week from across the country. They think she is one of them, a peddler of sexual slaves. Little do they know that the stocky, auburn-haired woman is an undercover human rights activist who has been quietly mapping out their murky underworld since 2006.

Continue reading at TIME.com.

Craigslist CEO Jim Buckmaster has responded to the lawsuit filed this week by the sheriff of Chicago’s Cook County against the Web classified publication.

Buckmaster suggested that the suit is a waste of time. Cook County Sheriff Tom Dart called Craigslist one of the country’s largest sources of prostitution in the complaint he filed in federal court and asked the court to force Craigslist managers to remove their erotic services section. (more…)

The sheriff of Illinois’ Cook County, which includes Chicago, filed suit in federal court Thursday against Craigslist, alleging that the Web’s largest classifieds publication is “facilitating prostitution.”

Sheriff Tom Dart has asked the court to force Craigslist to remove the Web publication’s erotic section. Cook County also wants $100,000 in compensation for the man hours the county has had to pay police to investigate alleged criminal services being advertised on the site.
(more…)

Three women were arrested Friday on suspicion of prostitution during a sting operation conducted by the Escondido Police Department’s Special Investigations Unit.

Detectives posed as “Johns” and were quickly approached by the women, who began to solicit sex acts for money, police said. Arrested were a 22-year-old from Daly City; a 20-year-old from Fresno; and a 24-yar-old from Las Vegas. They were booked into the Vista Detention Facility.

Continue reading on the San Diego Union Tribune website.