BOGOTA Thomson Reuters Foundation - When Matt and seven traffickers lay face down and handcuffed in a luxury villa one afternoon last month, surrounded by Dominican police pointing guns at them, he knew the sting operation had been a success. Three days earlier Matt, a former CIA agent and United States diplomat, had been posing with an undercover team as tourists looking to buy sex with children in the Dominican Republic's northern beach town of Sosua.
But the island is also known as a sex tourism hotspot, driven by demand from foreign tourists, Dominican expatriates visiting the island, and local people. While adult prostitution is legal in the Dominican Republic, it can lead to sex trafficking - known as modern day slavery - when someone is forced, deceived or coerced into commercial sexual exploitation against their will.
We imply to the traffickers we only want the really young ones. Matt and the undercover team told the traffickers they were organizing a private party for their boss, a wealthy American businessman who was flying in for the event. All the traffickers see is the money. We were told the girls would do anything we wanted, however we wanted," Matt, 43, told the Thomson Reuters Foundation in a telephone interview. As the music and drinks flowed and the hidden cameras rolled, 15 men and one woman posing as partygoers, including an ex-U.
Navy SEAL and three undercover armed Dominican police, mingled with the 29 women and girls the traffickers had brought. The money changed hands and someone said: "Let's have the wine," the signal to send a message to seven other Dominican police who were staking out the sex party in a house across the street. Minutes later, police stormed through the front door and arrested seven alleged traffickers - five men and two women -along with Matt and the undercover team to preserve their fake identities.
The sting operation, based on investigative work by U. After the sting, the suspects were placed in pre-trial detention for a year awaiting trial, and if convicted, they could face up to 15 years in prison for trafficking. Of the 29 victims of sexual exploitation rescued, 14 were aged between 14 and 17, of whom eight remain in a government shelter.
