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NewsJanuary 31, 2012

ST. LOUIS -- A suburban St. Louis event planner wants to enlist hotels in the fight against human trafficking of minors, particularly for sex. The St. Louis Post-Dispatch reports that Nix Conference & Meeting Management has begun pressuring the 500 or so hotels it does business with to sign a code of conduct to protect children from trafficking...

The Associated Press

ST. LOUIS -- A suburban St. Louis event planner wants to enlist hotels in the fight against human trafficking of minors, particularly for sex.

The St. Louis Post-Dispatch reports that Nix Conference & Meeting Management has begun pressuring the 500 or so hotels it does business with to sign a code of conduct to protect children from trafficking.

Federal authorities say the Kansas City, Mo., area prosecutes more human trafficking cases than anywhere in the U.S., and scrutiny is growing in St. Louis. Traffickers like the fact that St. Louis is at the intersection of several interstates, making it a convenient stopover when sporting events or conventions are in or near the city.

Nix event planner Kimberly Ritter, 42, first learned about the serious problem of trafficking of minors when a client, the U.S. Federation of the Sisters of St. Joseph, told her they would only book a hotel with a human trafficking code of ethics.

Through research, Ritter learned that organized sex trafficking is both a domestic and international problem. She learned the age of teenage prostitutes is dropping -- the preferred age now is 14. And she learned that pimps are now targeting vulnerable suburban and rural kids, not just urban runaways and homeless youths.

"People ask, 'Wow, there's human trafficking here?' Absolutely," said Noelle Collins, assistant U.S. attorney with the U.S. Attorney's Office for the Eastern District of Missouri. "It's just such a hidden crime."

A 2006 U.S. Department of Justice Report identified St. Louis as one of the nation's intensive hubs for human trafficking. Collins said the bulk of trafficking in St. Louis involves minors and younger adults being pimped for sex.

Ritter and her co-workers plan not only to push their code of conduct with the hotels they do business with, but also encourage other meeting planners to do the same. They want to educate hotels and their staffs about human trafficking, help them identify it and come up with a plan to reach out to exploited minors.

A version of the code initially was established by the human rights organization ECPAT USA, which stands for End Child Prostitution and Trafficking.

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Michelle Guelbart, a project coordinator with ECPAT in New York, said planners have the leverage to press hotel chains into agreement.

"They can take it as far as to refuse to work with companies," Guelbart said. "They have the ability to put us in the door with every single meeting they have."

In July, the Millennium Hotel was the first in St. Louis to sign the code at the request of Ritter and the Sisters of St. Joseph.

In a position statement, the American Hotel & Lodging Association endorses anti-trafficking policies in all hotels but does not specifically mention the ECPAT code.

"It's the right thing to do," said CEO Joe McInerney, who noted meeting planners like Nix are increasingly putting anti-trafficking language in their request for proposals.

But some chains are reluctant to sign the code because it requires literature about trafficking in guest rooms, and hotels must report to ECPAT annual statistics on trafficking found on their properties. McInerney said some chains worry that patrons will get a false idea that a hotel is a hot spot for illegal activity.

At the Millennium, Ritter said, managers were shocked when they began their training. But housekeepers and room service staff were not. Many of them live in lower-income areas, where children are more likely to be on the streets.

"When we began our talks, so many of them quietly nodded their heads," she said. "They knew."

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Information from: St. Louis Post-Dispatch, http://www.stltoday.com

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