A young teenage girl who was recently found after spending more than a year as a sex trafficking victim is an example of the kind of concerns pro-life advocates presented earlier this year about Planned Parenthood.
The girl became entangled in a snare of a Cleveland, Ohio couple running a sex trafficking ring and she eventually found herself pregnant as a result. Once pregnant, the perpetrators took the young girl to Detroit, Michigan for an abortion and made a fake ID for her to allow her to escape the state’s parental involvement law on abortion.
From the WEWS-TV report:
Family members searched unsuccessfully for a 15-year-old Cleveland runaway for almost one year. Then a break came earlier this month.
On June 11, Cleveland police got a call from a teen girl who told them she escaped from an apartment on the city’s west side after being a sex slave and unknowingly being infected with the HIV virus.
The now 16-year-old girl admitted to authorities that, at first, she willingly moved into the apartment of Richard Morris, 28, and his wife Tranace, 23, on W. 174th Street in September 2010 when she ran away from her family’s house. At that point, her family reported her missing and she was soon after profiled by the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children.
The girl met Richard Morris on an Internet chat room in late 2009. After talking via the web for several months, Morris began picking her up from her house and she told authorities she began engaging in consensual sex with both the husband and wife.
According to the Cuyahoga County Prosecutor’s Office, Morris never told the girl he had HIV and ended up getting the teen pregnant. That’s when Morris created a fake ID for the teen and drove her to Detroit for an abortion.
That sounds very much like the problems Live Action uncovered in an undercover sting operation at multiple Planned Parenthood abortion centers earlier this year where video footage showed staff at the abortion centers helping alleged sex traffickers obtain abortions for underage girls.
The footage showed three centers in southern Virginia, a Perth Amboy, New Jersey abortion business and a Planned Parenthood center in Richmond, Virginia all having staffers helping the alleged sex traffickers find information on how to obtain abortions without facing scrutiny and get STD testing for the girls.
A Planned Parenthood staffer in New Jersey has already been fired, New Jersey officials are looking into a shoddy abortion center Planned Parenthood referred to in its video, and the Virginia attorney general has received the full footage of the Richmond Planned Parenthood expose’. All three of the new videos clearly show staff willing to aid and abet the sexual trafficking and exploitation of minors and young women and the videos, Lila Rose of Live Action says, provide more evidence of a clear, disturbing pattern of gross misconduct by Planned Parenthood.
The videos have a Roanoke, Virginia abortion facility staffer suggesting the sex trafficker consider going to the health department instead of taking the girls he is victimizing to the Planned Parenthood — because it would be easier to hide the illegal activity.
“They’re discreet. They’re confidential. They, you know, don’t tell people what’s going on, because — frankly — it’s nobody’s business,” the female Planned Parenthood staff person is shown saying on the video. “And the thing is, see this is the thing a lot of people don’t know that. . .Right, through the Health Department.”
Rose, commenting on the videos earlier this year, said, “The only acceptable response to encountering a self-identified sex-trafficker of underage girls is zero tolerance. The only ‘professional’ response is to immediately call law enforcement to the scene and push for an arrest. Our investigation – and their response – continues to show that an institutional crisis has engulfed the highest levels of Planned Parenthood. If you’re a sex-trafficker of minors or young women, you have a partner in Planned Parenthood. But if you are a minor or a young woman, you are not safe at Planned Parenthood clinics.”
The perpetrators in Ohio, Richard and Tranance Morris, didn’t have to take the young girl to Michigan to force her into an abortion that would cover up their crimes. They could have stayed in Ohio, since Planned Parenthood there has a history of not informing the authorities about cases of sexual abuse and statutory rape of young girls.
Meanwhile, back in Ohio, the story of the young victimized girls ends with her discovery.
Tips led Cleveland police to the home on multiple occasions, but they could never find the girl.
“The police went over there so many times,” recalled neighbor Shakara Welch. “All the residents were outside and they always came up empty handed and we wondered why,” she said.
That’s because prosecutors would later discover Morris had a video surveillance system that alerted him to when police were coming. When they searched the apartment the victim was always hiding in a compartment inside a couch.
“This is not that much different than when they’re moving young children from one city to another city and having the sex slaves,” said Mason. “This is not that much different except that it was happening here in our neighborhood.”
In the end Mason says it was the victim who alerted police. “They began to beat her and and assaulted her when she wanted to leave. She then left their house and ran to a neighbor’s house and called 9-1-1,” said Mason.
Morris and his wife now face a 14-count indictment, including kidnapping, unlawful sexual conduct with a minor, felonious assault and more.
Richard and Tranace Morris are currently behind bars in the Cuyahoga County Jail and will be arraigned on Friday. They face dozens of years in prison if convicted of the crimes.
The teen girl is currently living in a group home and undergoing counseling.
