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Eavesdropping Uber Driver Helps Rescue 16-Year-Old From Her Pimps (washingtonpost.com)
Slashdot reader sabri writes "In California, an Uber driver saved a 16 year old girl from human traffickers after he overheard them talk about delivering the girl to a customer." The Washington Post reports:
Uber driver Keith Avila picked up a passenger who looked like a 12-year-old girl in a short skirt Monday night. That was the first sign that something was off, he would say later. Two women got into his car with the girl outside a house in Sacramento. Halfway to their destination -- a Holiday Inn in Elk Grove, California -- they asked Avila to turn up the music, he said. Then the women turned to the girl. Avila listened in.
"They were describing what they were going to do when they get there: 'Check for guns. Get the money before you start touching up on the guy,'" Avila said on Facebook Live minutes after he dropped off the passengers, then called police to report the women whom he suspected of prostituting the child. The girl was 16, not 12, Elk Grove police told local news outlets. But Avila's suspicions were right, they said. The teen was being sold for sex at the Holiday Inn, and her eavesdropping Uber driver had saved her.
The teen girl was returned to her family, while the two women with her were charged with multiple felonies. The driver had only joined Uber a few weeks earlier, but his Facebook Live video from outside his fare's house has now been viewed more than 240,000 times.
"They were describing what they were going to do when they get there: 'Check for guns. Get the money before you start touching up on the guy,'" Avila said on Facebook Live minutes after he dropped off the passengers, then called police to report the women whom he suspected of prostituting the child. The girl was 16, not 12, Elk Grove police told local news outlets. But Avila's suspicions were right, they said. The teen was being sold for sex at the Holiday Inn, and her eavesdropping Uber driver had saved her.
The teen girl was returned to her family, while the two women with her were charged with multiple felonies. The driver had only joined Uber a few weeks earlier, but his Facebook Live video from outside his fare's house has now been viewed more than 240,000 times.
Uber has one hell of a good marketing team. Stay in the news at all costs. Become a household name. Pretty good for a taxi company.
Not making them any money but who needs that when everyone knows your name.
The article doesn't say whether the girl was there by choice, or was forced.
Of course it doesn't matter, legally speaking. 16 is under the age of consent, and prostitution is illegal most places anyway. The article just says they "saved her," but didn't say whether they saved her from kidnappers, or from herself.
The article also quotes the guy referring to her client as a "pervert." While it is appropriate and correct that sexual engagement with a 16 year old child should be illegal, it is also biologically normal for men to be sexually attracted to girls at that age. They are at their sexual peak, fertile, and pumping out pheromones like a steam engine. Whoever was taking advantage of her was being a criminal and an asshole, but not a pervert.
That's all.
You are assuming that she is indeed "prostituting herself" rather than being sold . The story and outcome makes it sound like the second possibility is the reality here...
Go and see the Facebook live video. The cops were already there on the video and he only made the video because the cops told him to stay because they would like a second statement from him
Did the Uber driver also investigate what it was about this girl's life that led her to prostitute herself in the first place and remove those conditions so that she won't just turn around and do the same thing next week?
Yeah, the two pimps went to jail. The harder it becomes to sell your daughter into this kind of situation, the less likely it will be to happen.
"First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."