“Ve Haf Ways of Making You NOT Talk” | Psychology Today

A widely accepted statistic in the anti-trafficking community is that even though human trafficking is a crime, fewer than one in 100 traffickers will pay for it with jail time. The reason? Traffickers are adept at keeping their victims from testifying.

A Porn Star Decides to Out Her Victimizers

Take the case of the porn star Bevy Lane (not her real name). She was so depressed by the abuse she suffered that she was considering ending her life.

But then, in October of last year, she realized that rather than ending her own life, she wanted to stop the people who were sex trafficking her. Instead of being depressed, she wanted to get even. The focus of her life became gathering evidence to take down the trafficking ring.

She began taking notes, recording conversations, getting names and locations, and in general, gathering the kind of corroborative evidence that could put the bad guys in jail for a long time. She went from suicidal depression to finding meaning in her life.

Lane's story should have been uplifting and inspiring.

That's not how it turned out.

Today, She's in a Prison Psych Ward

Lane is now in the psych ward of a Texas prison. Several witnesses caught her in the act of setting a building on fire.

Lane is accused of arson. She may have been framed. Source: Stock Adobe

The entire building is now ashes and rubble. The consequence for Lane is she's considered to be criminally insane, and her credibility as a witness against her traffickers is zero.

What Happened?

Walter Bosley, whose career includes counterintelligence, counterespionage, and counterterrorism with government organizations such as the FBI and the Air Force, has some ideas.

First, he knows that the traffickers would have been well aware that Lane could put them behind bars. In Bosley's experience, the people to whom Lane is a threat would do what they had to do in order to neutralize the threat she posed.

Bosley doesn't know what actually happened in Lane's case. However, from what he's seen in other cases where criminals with resources feel threatened, they might find that framing her would be a way of protecting themselves. The goal would be to shred her credibility.

“In Lane's situation,” says Bosley, “having her end up in the psych ward would solve their problems.” Iin other cases, he observes, the traffickers would probably get help from their underworld contacts. An ideal situation for the traffickers would be to combine efforts with those of someone else who wanted a building burned down anyway.

The traffickers would offer money for the job, likely in the tens of thousands of dollars. They'd tell their underworld contacts, “When you guys are taking care of that arson gig, we want you to take care of this person who's causing problems for us.”

Under such circumstances, the underworld characters would most likely kidnap Lane and drug her. Then they'd make sure she's on the grounds when they torch the building. Having her there is important because later on, when forensic experts are examining her shoes, they'll see that there's dirt residue on the soles of the shoes she wore, proving she was there.

The traffickers would also insist that the arson take place when there's likely to be witnesses. Their goal is to create what looks like incontrovertible evidence that Lane did it. The actual arsonists would flee the area as soon as they had torched it, leaving her there, drugged, incoherent, with traces of accelerant on her hands and clothes.

This might seem too much like the plot of a movie, Bosley recognizes Still, he insists that it happens in real life.

What he can't know at this point is exactly what happened to Bevy Lane. What he can know is that arranging for someone to be framed is in character for criminals who have the resources to do it—and no conscience.

Bevy Lane may be an example of a reason traffickers rarely do jail time for their crimes.