Documents: Federal agents engaged in sex acts with victims

PHOENIX – The women were forced to live and work in filth and near darkness, the federal agent said, surviving on only the tips they received from performing massages and sexual favors. Lon Weigand, deputy special agent in charge of Homeland Security Investigations in Arizona, described them as “Asian females” who may be sex-trafficking victims. He praised the joint operation between federal agents and local police in western Arizona that led to their rescue and credited “investigative techniques” with helping to crack a “transnational criminal organization.” What Weigand didn’t say at that September 2018 press conference – although HSI documents show some supervisors knew – was that federal undercover agents repeatedly paid for and engaged in sex acts with suspected victims. That fact, coupled with HSI’s refusal to let its agents testify, caused the collapse of a case that was more than three years in the making. All felony charges against the alleged ringleaders were dropped. And sex-trafficking experts said the women were likely re-traumatized. Defense attorneys were outraged when they learned of the agents’ actions. “That’s our tax money,” said attorney Josephine Hallam, whose grandfather was former U.S. Supreme Court Justice Hugo Black. “Shouldn’t they be at the border, or doing something with terrorists rather than getting sex acts?”

https://abcnews.go.com/US/wireStory/documents-federal-agents-sex-trafficking-victims-70619440?fbclid=IwAR1P9GJhVuzfwnADKC_ejlrzQVxCsyCWahgxLbs1YP9sI__Mw_LwixxgKqo