

MetaFilter saved my pals from sex traffickers - adamhowell
http://motherjones.com/mojo/2010/05/metafilter-russian-sex-ring

======
pacemkr
I have lived in the general area of what is now the Lux bar for over 10 years.
I see this sort of thing happen every single summer in New York City. "J1" is
what people call these girls and the story goes like this:

They come here on work sponsorships which are almost never really there (they
often dont know that). Then one of three things happens -- or all. They end up
working in the restaurant business as hostesses, bus "boy" positions,
eventually waitresses. They start sleeping with some guy who takes them
around, pays for everything, and possibly provides a place to live. If they
want to make real money, they start dancing (strip or go-go). At the end of
the summer their Visa expires and I'd say about 70% leave and 30% stay.

So... it probably wouldn't have been sex trafficking, this is all way too
dramatized. The J1 girls who come here are often offered to dance to make more
money. And they either refuse and struggle to find a job in some crappy lounge
or restaurant or they go dance and make pretty decent money. I'm not saying
that this is a wonderful situation, it makes me hate living in this city, but
its so common and a far cry from being locked in a room to be sex slaves.

I known some of these girls that are still here and still dance, and know a
few that are still here and still work at lounges. Last year, a friend of mine
was walking her dog and met two J1 students on the board walk at Brighton
Beach sitting on their luggage. They had to make the same trip from somewhere
to New York for a job. Of course the job wasn't really there. My friend let
the couple stay in her living room for most of the summer and they eventually
found a job at a restaurant.

Living in Brooklyn, this is a fact of live. Its nice that these particular
girls have gotten some help, but starting this week "the J1s are coming" and
this sort of thing is going to happen a thousand times over in the next couple
of weeks to a month. Non of it was surprising to read... which, I guess, is
pretty depressing considering that I live in the middle of it.

~~~
ErrantX
Yeh, as I was reading it the same thoughts came to mind - not exactly
trafficking but one step behind it.

If they had been trafficked they'd probably not stand a chance. It's possibly
not as big a problem in the US as, really, flying girls out is pretty
impossible but in the UK (and I guess the rest of Europe) there is a problem
with girls being brought in from Eastern Europe etc. All with false papers.
I'd say I see one, maybe two, cases a month where we are investigating visa
forging. It's highly organised and "well" executed.

------
sachinag
Here's the Ask MeFi thread: [http://ask.metafilter.com/154334/Help-me-help-my-
friend-in-D...](http://ask.metafilter.com/154334/Help-me-help-my-friend-in-DC)
and here's the MetaTalk thread: [http://metatalk.metafilter.com/19304/The-
kindness-of-strange...](http://metatalk.metafilter.com/19304/The-kindness-of-
strangers)

It was amazing to watch this unfold, mainly because I continually get reminded
of how varied and amazing MeFites are. One MeFite is at the US Department of
State who works with J visas and does _precisely_ this work.

------
nfg
A bit of a side-note, but Dan Reetz (the MeFite in question here) released a
great album a few years back, it's free to download and well worth a listen:
<http://www.fakeproject.com/you_are_not_dead/>

I'd also say that for anyone here that's considering it the $5 charge to join
MeFi is the best money I've ever spent.

~~~
thorax
I actually was grandfathered-in from eons ago, so if you used MeFi a long time
ago, you might still have an account sitting there. I didn't know about the $5
charge until a year or so back.

------
joshu
Anyone who wants to know what the future looks like, pay attention. We are
going to see things like this happen more and more and on a larger and larger
scale.

~~~
ImFatYoureFat
While it would be nice, I'm not sure this is true.

Meta filter is a pretty unique online community in that it is a very large
group of people who are sincerely helpful in a almost unlimited number of
subjects. As the article says, there are many much smaller cases of similar
actions of humanity and helpfulness on askmefi on a fairly regular basis.

It would be great if the proliferation of this type of online community was
the future, but Mefi has been around for a long time and, in my opinion, truly
separates itself from the rest in terms of helpfulness of the commenters and
consistent quality of the content.

HN and some other communities are equally helpful from time to time, but I
have come across none that match Mefi in consistency and breadth of subject
matter. (obviously HN isn't trying to match in breadth of subject matter.)

I guess what I am saying is that with most online communities I accept that
the other people won't necessarily act with the same compassion as they would
with friends they have IRL. Mefi has done a pretty extraordinary job
maintaining a community in which this standard of human decency is pretty well
kept.

tldr: Mefi is a unique online community in that it's community members act
more like they would IRL in confronting one another's problems.

~~~
alxp
I think it's reproducible if someone building a web community wants to have a
similar level of user community - but it requres doing the two things that
typical web startups won't do - have paid, full-time moderators who are in the
top tier of intelligent users, and don't just try and grow the site forever.

Reddit is a good example, the subreddits are often as good as any other web
community, but the site as a whole is trending down to Digg-levels and worse.

------
logic
For completeness, a counter-point to what happened:
[http://www.miconian.com/2010/05/23/metafilter-and-the-
russia...](http://www.miconian.com/2010/05/23/metafilter-and-the-russian-sex-
slaves-that-never-were/)

(It was posted by someone who actually went to the club the young women were
supposed to go to. I have no involvement in this at all, but thought HN would
appreciate another voice.)

------
tel
This is exactly the same principle as the Chinese Human Search Engines but
with a infinitely better goals.

I think the next stage of the internet is fostering of the bleeding smart mob.
That's powerful. I am so glad that MeFi was invigorated to save those girls
because it might be that it was the only thing powerful enough to catch it so
early.

------
sachinag
Hey, does anyone here have the AirBNB founders' info? It'd be really nice of
them if they could help to arrange a donation of an apartment(s) through July
in NYC for these girls.

