VENE PAGEANT GIRLS RECRUITED FOR SEX WORK IN T&T

SEX workers are being recruited through beauty pageants in Venezuela and trafficked to Trinidad and Tobago, a shocking new report has revealed.

The expose uncovered that a group called El Tren de Aragua, named after the Araguan prison in Tocoron in the north of Venezuela, has been enticing poor girls from 10 of the country’s 23 states to take part in beauty contests.

The girls are promised valuables, such as foreign trips, money, jewellery and modern phones, but are sucked into a smuggling racket and trafficked into prostitution in Trinidad and Tobago and Latin America.

The sex trafficking ring operated by the gangsters is expanding, the report stated.

Venezuela is in Tier 3 of the United States Trafficking in Persons report for failure to enforce “minimal international norms in trafficking.”

The US authorities have come to a similar conclusion about T&T.

Many of the girls who are shipped to T&T are from Guiria, in the eastern State of Sucre, where they are enticed with gifts and invited to parties.

Guiria, once a thriving fishing and port town of some 40,000 residents, has now collapsed, like most of Venezuela, and is providing “a rich harvest of youngsters desperate for money,” the report stated.

Operatives of El Tren de Aragua enlist girls, some of whom are transported by bus and permitted to spend time with gangsters behind bars with the sanction of the prison authorities.

The prison gave birth to the international sex trafficking scheme, which, apart from T&T, spans Venezuela, Ecuador, Peru, Bolivia, Chile, and Colombia.

In September 2022, the State’s police formed a special department to deal with sex trafficking, but the trade continues to flourish, according to the stunning report.

According to the account, a local resident with ties to El Tren de Aragua organises the beauty contests, “but girls can also be caught through modelling adverts on social media.”

The report added: “Others are lured by other girls doing the gang’s bidding.

“Sometimes some of these youngsters end up falling in love with gang members, become their girlfriends, and are manipulated into joining the ‘business’.”

An official of a non-governmental organisation confirmed that girls are smuggled into T&T, “forcing them into prostitution…”

In other instances, the girls may be sold “to other gangs on the two islands, and, in the worst cases, some girls drown” while being shipped to T&T.

The distance between Guiria and T&T is 147 kilometres.

The report further stated that “impoverished parents or relatives are also known to have sold their girls into prostitution.”

The eye-popping account went on: “People living in the Paria peninsula, where Guiria is located, say the gang has tightened its grip over the area.”

An in-the-know figure said that “nothing leaves here without (the gang’s) approval.”

A 21-year-old woman of La Vela de Coro in western Venezuela said the gang attempted to recruit her to be trafficked to T&T after seeing her picture on social media and being recommended by a friend.

She fled the town to escape the recruiters.

There have been instances, the report revealed, where sex workers return to their town “to show off their fine clothes and new looks.”

In its latest report on sex trafficking, the US estimated that the number of victims in T&T is “significantly increasing.”

The country is “not taking proportional concrete action,” the report stated.