Maine Police Know Sex Trafficking Is Here, Yet Many Still Fail To Fight It

Shawna Calhoun and Alvin Houston are each serving nine years in federal prison for their roles in transporting a person they intended to prostitute across state lines. (Photos courtesy of the Penobscot County Sheriff’s Office)

 

 

By Danielle McLean, BDN staff

Posted Sept. 08, 2016, at 6:17 a.m.
Last modified Sept. 08, 2016, at 7:53 a.m. 

 

Last December, a 14-year-old Maine girl stood before a judge and faced the woman who sold her for sex to numerous men. She described the agony she had endured. Was life not worth living? she asked.
She didn’t talk about being repeatedly raped by strangers in Bangor and Boston hotels. 

With the words of someone far older, she shared how it changed the way she saw herself, stole her sense of self-respect and self-love, and made her feel less than human.

She talked about how she wanted to preserve her sanity to make sure what she’d been through wouldn’t happen to others.

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