Slashdot Mirror
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.
Taxi drivers do this all the time. How come it's "BIG NEWS" when it involves uber? Who paid for this advertisement?
Don't become a prostitute.
Become an Uber celebrity!
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.
Prostitution is just Uber for sex.
You are welcome on my lawn.
The Uber driver who saved this little girl voted for Trump.
they've been getting a lot of criticism about being used for criminal activities (natch, they're a perfect vector for it) so they needed something like this. It'll get a lot of air time in the press as a result.
I'm glad the girl got rescued, but whenever I hear these stories I always think, what now? It's not like the systemic problems that lead her down that path are just going to vanish...
Hi! I make Firefox Plug-ins. Check 'em out @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-mp3-podcaster/
Trump will pardon these two savy businesswomen and jail the prostitute if she got pregnant and had an abortion!
I think I prefer the Taxi Driver to the Uber driver.
Someday a real rain will come and wash all this scum off the streets.
He posted it on Facebook Live and *then* called the police. Thats the astounding part...
I'm entirely happy he did the right thing,
I suppose it makes no difference since the girl was saved. Why turn it into a political commercial?
Certainly people who were not Trump supporters would have done the same thing.
Another consultant who stuck it out.
"We are the Priests, of the Temples of Syrinx..."
No one says that Uber drivers are not hardworking and conscientious. The issue is with the Uber system that passes the cost of the business model onto the lowest paid person in the chain.
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? Did the Uber driver pay for some sort of counseling? If not, then this is just a feel good story that really means very little, sad as it is.
Laws are rules for the court, but merely a bottom bar to hit for life. Think beyond laws in your actions always.
Walk into a Forever 21, and stop and think this is what your 12 year old daughter wears. Now, assuming that puberty was around 11-12 and we fastforeward to age 16...(clears throat)...PARENTS!, your average teenage daughter knows more about sex than you do. You bought them a smart phone and assuming always had Internet and a computer handy and hardly ever home. So, a young attractive girl meets some older "friends"; and FYI, attractive teenagers know when they are and usually can't keep it in their pants (find a virgin by graduation these days; I dare you). Honestly, the average 16 year old is just as mature as any guy that's 20. I think you got a girl that enjoyed sex (who doesn't) and wanted to make money. Her "pimps" (older friends more than likely) we're two women for Christ sake. A little odd don't you think? Police were called, and I'd put money on it that she lied her ass off to keep from going to jail. Hell, technically 16 is the legal age of consent in most states (age 12 in the Vatican; no joke), it is just that you can't film a sex act until 18. Some have a three year rule to prevent underage drinking (18+3=21). So, by not filming, the 20 year old "customer" cannot claim her as an "actress," which would be a legitimate defense against prostitution charges (think porn; no deference). And what brings this theory together, is that her family's reaction isn't mentioned at all. She wasn't kidnapped and forced to do anything. Human Trafficing is a bit of a stretch. Though, with modern feminism, I'm sure I'll look like an ass because no one thinks rationally or realistically anymore, and all women are delicate mermaids while all men will one day be reduced to cattle for semen and jokes because we've outlived our usefulness in everything else and allowed bs to influence our lives way too much. Millinials have figured out a way to have their cake and eat it too. Congrats.
Just because Uber is involved this is "news"? And almost a week late at that? This is not "news for nerds", sorry.
But she was with two women? The Uber driver was a male, HE is the aggressor!
RAPE CULTURE!!
Let's raise one for surveillance in general and snitching on your customers in particular!
In Soviet Washington the swamp drains you.
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.
Investigators learned today that sex traffickers see Uber as a safe way to move prostitutes around without getting caught.
Stuff that Matters!
But isn't any disgruntled underpaid Uber driver free to rent a few AWS instances and build their own alternative ride-hailing system called, say, Newber, or Goober, which gives more of the revenue to drivers?
Where are we going and why are we in a handbasket?
Yet another nail in the coffin for autonomous vehicles. Should we really keep going?
I think I prefer the Taxi Driver to the Uber driver.
From the taxi drivers I have seen, the difference is that instead of calling for the police as the Uber driver did, the taxi driver would have hired her for his day off...
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Despite heroics I bet they still didn't tip the driver and probably only gave him a 2-star rating.
And he probably made $3.75 for it.
Do everything right AND save the kid and Uber will give you:
"Your Uber rating is slipping. Don't worry, your account is still active! But here are some tips from Uber Pros on how to improve your driving rating!"
Fuck you Uber. With sand for lube. Fuck you.
Sig for hire.
Sex trafficking is not a thing and has never occurred in the history of the universe.
A child is someone that is prepubescent and it's highly unlikely that this 16 year old was prepubescent. Being small doesn't make any difference. Girls generally develop faster than boys, but even if chances are she was not by any definition a child. Sex at 16 is legal in a good chunk of the United States and around the world. What may or may not have happened is what is immoral here. If the 16 year old was forced into prostitution (ie via violence or actual coercion, which would be threat of violence generally) then her captors should be arrested. However if she ran away and voluntarily entered prostitution when the opportunity presented itself that's not coercion. The concern I have is we make every scenario into this horrible crime that may not have even occurred just because the person seemed young. The repercussions of that are you are depriving people in what might be shitty situations or even not shitty situations of rights that you may not be able to fully comprehend the reasons for people doing what they are doing. Every 13 year old boy wants to fuck his hot 20-30 year old teacher and yet we act as if teenager is a victim. The only way you can argue that is on screwed up religious grounds. This logic is dangerous and one can see that by looking at it being used to stone girls and women to death for little more than an affair, premarital sex, or even just unavailing of the face in front of men in the middle east. It may be getting used on women in the middle east, but we have our own form of it particularly on men in the United States.
If you watch the full video of him giving his livestream of the event, he goes into a tirade about how Hillary supporters wouldn't have reported it to the police, but Trump supporters would. All reporting on this conveniently omits this fact.
He could have been regarded as a hero. Instead, he's shown himself to be just another deplorable.
Captcha: airbag
The girl — apparently a runaway — was taken “to an alternative housing location,” according to the authorities.
“She was reunited with her family
that she had probably had good reasons to run away from
bottom line uber guy did the right thing, namely he didn't look the other way.
Yeah right. Now imagine the same thing happened but this time instead of female "pimps" it had been a huge muscled black man pimping her. Do you still think this uber kid would have had the balls to call the police then and risk the comeback that would have surely come to him from the pimp or his friends? Not if he was smart he wouldn't have. The kid would have wound up dead "by accident" while the pimp was somewhere where he could be seen and proven innocent afterwards.
There is already a movie with De Niro about that.
Why broadcast a video to the world? The police knows how to deal with this kind of material and they have a mandate to act appropriately. The general public doesn't and shouldn't be involved.
What religion doesn't promote 13-year-olds having sex? Most of them do, so long as it's arranged.
You clearly don't understand the origins of "age of majority".
That aside, legally, pimping is pimping. "Good" pimps get lumped in with the "bad" pimps. One of the women pimping out the 16-year-old was also (apparently) having sex with her, or so the article intimates. Before you go jumping on your moral high horse, it pays to pay attention to the local laws regarding sexual activity with those who are not at least 18 years of age.
Arranging sex between two people for money: illegal
Including a 16-year-old female human being in that bargain: illegal
Having sex with said 16-year-old female when one is an adult: hmm
PENAL CODE
SECTION 261-269
261.5. (a) Unlawful sexual intercourse is an act of sexual
intercourse accomplished with a person who is not the spouse of the
perpetrator, if the person is a minor.
For the purposes of this section, a "minor" is a person
under the age of 18 years and an "adult" is a person
who is at least 18 years of age.
(b) Any person who engages in an act of unlawful sexual
intercourse with a minor who is not more than three years
older or three years younger than the perpetrator, is
guilty of a misdemeanor.
(c) Any person who engages in an act of unlawful sexual
intercourse with a minor who is more than three years younger than
the perpetrator is guilty of either a misdemeanor or a felony, and
shall be punished by imprisonment in a county jail not exceeding one
year, or by imprisonment in the state prison.
Okay, illegal
All three of the individuals involved knew - or should have known - that every part of what they were arranging was against the law. Certainly the older women knew that (which is why they asked for the radio to be turned up). It's not like the three of them marched into the state capitol (which is nearby, Elk Grove is close to Sacramento) and demanded the right for intercourse between the 20-something and the 16-year-old to be legal, nor did they make a demand to legalize sex-for-hire for the 16-year-old.
And why was the 16-year-old (who looked young for her age) being pimped out to some John? Why weren't the 20-somethings prostituting themselves? Simple: they had a pedo John, so they were selling him a desirable product. He probably didn't want anyone as old as a 20-something.
The girl may have a miserable home life, but damn, is prostitution the solution? Why kind of stupid conclusion is that? Foster care does suck, some families are awful, but talk about out of the frying pan and into the fire. Very few prostitutes in this country find prosperity and happiness. Their rates of drug abuse, domestic abuse, alcoholism, and depression are high, and 80% want to get out of their "chosen" line of work:
http://sex-crimes.laws.com/prostitution/prostitution-statistics
Can't we find someplace else for the kid to go besides being an underaged call girl? And seriously this isn't an age-of-majority issue, nobody's fighting for the rights of 16 year olds to screw older people. The older person in this case specifically wanted the girl because she looked like she might be too young for sex!
You teach her that the cops wont help
In many cases, they won't. If she was slightly older they would have treated her as a criminal rather than a victim.
Revictimization is a problem, especially as people get older, but by and large traffickers control trafficked women the same way that bullies control abused people (primarily abused women): threats and distortions of reality. Police will certainly not always be perfect, but mostly they will try to do a good job and even if they don't they will still be better than the person who is conspiring to rape you ten times a day.
she was free, but in a mental and emotional sense she was in just as much of a jail as someone behind bars.
It is common to view women, especially young women, as mindless objects incapable of rational thought and certainly incapable of acting in their own best interest. Often the people holding this viewpoint are those most opposed to the legalization and regulation of sex work that is the best hope to improve their lives.
It's certainly debatable whether legalization and regulation are the best hope and a lot of factors come into that, but it's a legitimate position.
But you are (deliberately or accidentally) implying that slavery not maintained by physical force is not a real thing.
When you ABUSE people, you reshape their way of thinking and do a lot to take away their perceived range of decisions. If you know or believe you'll be beaten if you call police, you don't do it even if there's nobody stopping you. If you have Stockholm syndrome, you don't call police even though nobody's stopping you. When your world is narrowed down to the one person bigger and stronger than you throwing you onto a street corner and telling you to bring back X dollars and you're a teenager who doesn't know how to think your way out, that's not the fault of an anti-trafficking activist for objectifying you.
Trafficking includes not only slavery by the use of force, but also slavery by fraud and coercion of all kinds.
Real lawyers write in C++
Do emancipated minors count as adult for purposes of age of consent?
If so does that mean an emancipated minor could perform in porn, since they are technically an adult?
I originally started wondering about this when I was a kid during the time where McCully Culkin (or however you spell his name) was becoming an emancipated minor, as I remember it to keep his parents from stealing his Home Alone proceeds.
There is a big bag of worms there on both sides of the aisle, since it could also lead to a debate over what age girls an emancipated minor should be allowed to date/fuck (California used to have a 3 year grace period for age of consent, so a 17 year old and a 20 year old could hook up for example. However what would a 13 year old emancipated minor count as for example? A 13 year old +/- 3 years, or an 18 year old (+/)- 3 years?
Having said that I am not sure what the best option is, but I can state that more of my generation seems to be irresponsible until a later age as a result of the steadily upwards creeping age restrictions on driving, sex, working, etc whereas my father's generation (where you could, as an average child, at least get a job at 13 if not any of the other items) did the same (or worse) stupid and immature things, from drinking and smoking to driving and stupid shit out in the neighborhood, but also could get jobs, and not just from sympathetic neighbors, which allowed them to pay their own bills by the time they had completed high school and had their first opportunity to choose between working on a job/career or getting a higher education. My generation for instance seems far more likely to end up in dead end jobs, not have careers even coming out of college, and very few have any sort of money management skills until late in their 20s or early 30s (if then!) because outside of the lower middle class to outright poor ones they had coddled fiscal lives until 18-20 rolled around and their parents finally cut them off and kicked them out.
What would give this story a real happy ending if somehow those two bitches had "something happen" to them in prison. Hopefuly something real gory and drawn out.
She can't vote, she can't enlist, she can't buy booze, she can't enter adults only establishments. That is the textbook definition of a child.
I'm not sure what your point is anyway. Human trafficking of 16 year olds is no less criminal than human trafficking of 12 year olds.
This really hits the nail on the head and drives it right in as far as I'm concerned. An attentive Uber driver overheard what was going on and did the absolutely right thing, perhaps literally saving a young girl's life in the process. Batman himself would be hard pressed to do better.
A cab driver in the same situation would have offered to make a deal with the two other women in the cab to supply new customers for their child prostitution ring. I base this statement on the fact that it's a semi-weekly occurrence in my city to have a cab driver arrested and charged for doing similar or worse things to vulnerable women, and I'm not exaggerating in the slightest when I say that.
The taxi industry constantly cries about the disruptive effect of Uber, and then so many taxi operators seem to go out of their way to make sure everybody knows what reprehensible pieces of shit they are.