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FBI Trafficking Sting Recovers 6 Juveniles In Kansas

fbi.gov
An FBI agent stands with a teenage victim of prostitution.

Six children were recovered, and one suspect was arrested in Kansas during a nationwide sex trafficking sting that took place earlier this month.

Over the course of four days, the FBI arrested 120 sex traffickers, and recovered 84 young trafficking victims.

The sting was part of Operation Cross Country, a nationwide effort focusing on underage human trafficking. It was the 11th time the FBI has conducted the effort.

Credit KMUW/Piktochart

The FBI’s Kansas City Division, along with state, local and federal partners, focused on 10 cities throughout Missouri and Kansas, including Olathe, Topeka and Wichita. Law enforcement officials staged operations in hotels, casinos, truck stops, on street corners and online.

Officials with the Wichita Police Department and Sedgwick County Sheriff's office assisted with the sting.

FBI director Christopher Wray said in a statement that the operation wasn’t just about taking traffickers off the street, but about offering young victims a way out of the cycle of abuse.

The average age of the victims was 15 years old; the youngest was 3 months old.

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Nadya Faulx is KMUW's Digital News Editor and Reporter, which means she splits her time between working on-air and working online, managing news on KMUW.org, Twitter, Facebook and Instagram. She joined KMUW in 2015 after working for a newspaper in western North Dakota. Before that she was a diversity intern at NPR in Washington, D.C.