PEHT was thrilled to participate in Timothy Dumas' article about human trafficking right here in Fairfield County in the August 28, 2019 issue of Greenwich Magazine. Read the full article below to learn more about what is happening here in our own backyard.
TRAFFICK STOP
If you think we’re immune to HUMAN TRAFFICKING, consider this: One of the most downloaded pornographic photos in the world was taken of an eight-year-old girl RIGHT HERE IN GREENWICH
Krishna Patel, a former federal prosecutor in Connecticut, and Rod Khattabi, a former special agent based in the U.S. Department of Homeland Security’s New Haven office, are two of the state’s leading authorities on human trafficking. They are sitting in the tea pavilion at Grace Farms in New Canaan, talking about trafficking cases they have worked here in leafy, affluent Fairfield County; they are talking about pimps, johns and assorted creeps; about massage parlors, strip bars and nail salons; about assignations between Jeffrey Epstein-aged men and girls as young as twelve at hotels and motels in our Gold Coast towns. “This happens in Greenwich,” Patel says. “It happens in Fairfield. It happens in Westport and in all of these towns.”
Let’s begin with the case of Theodore Briggs of Norwalk. Only twenty-three years old in 2011, the year he was arrested, Briggs lived an unaccountably posh lifestyle, tooling about in a Hummer and a BMW and dressing himself in Gucci clothing. He hoped to be a rapper and looked the part, but in fact the cars and the clothing, not to mention the wads of cash he carried, had been earned by his stable of prostitute-victims.
In the lexicon of his trade, Briggs was a “Romeo pimp,” one who woos and flatters girls into his fold, rather than a “gorilla pimp,” who rules by violence, usually with the help of a “bottom bitch,” a female right hand who sits atop the prostitute hierarchy. “He was a really smooth, savvy pimp,” recalls Khattabi, who led the Briggs investigation.
