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April 18, 2021 Jose Alfaro says he was perfect prey for a sex trafficker because of the color of his skin. The Mexican American youth was 16 years old and homeless when he reached out for help on the internet more than a decade ago. He joined a gay chat room and met an older man named Jason Gandy who offered him empathy and a place to stay. “It seemed like a dream, and at the time, not having anywhere to go,” Alfaro says now. But the dream quickly became a grim reality. Gandy told Alfaro he would have to work in the older man’s “massage” business, which was a euphemism for prostitution. Alfaro provided sexual massages to Gandy’s clients in his Texas home in transactions that escalated to sexual assault. ....
April 5, 2021 Chris Bates was 16 years old when he started selling nude photos of himself on the internet to adult men who pressured him for more and more images. The demands snowballed into riskier requests, and within months the gay Connecticut teen was trading sex for dinners out, designer sneakers and other luxuries. Bates says he was lured by the attention and what appeared to be easy money. He secretly hoped his financially struggling single mother, or anybody, would notice what was happening and protect him. No one did and within two years, the tall, lanky youth was living alone in a dilapidated apartment, prostituting himself to get by. His home and an array of hotel rooms in Connecticut and Massachusetts became a “revolving door” of sex buyers. ....