‘This could happen to anyone,’ Sean Reyes said about human trafficking, but he has a message of hope for victims and survivors.
To the neighborhood kids, he was “Tio,” Uncle.
They appreciated the wads of cash he flashed around, the gifts, trips to sporting events, help for their families, and the work he provided around their quiet Salt Lake City neighborhood.
Their parents trusted him, too—they had no idea the dark secret their kids were carrying. That neighborhood house was where their boys were raped and kept quiet by fear.
They feared the shame if they reported being raped. Worse, they feared their families would be killed.
The kids, dozens of them, were also selling drugs—marijuana, cocaine, and methamphetamines—in local grade schools and high schools. They feared being arrested as drug dealers if they reported “Uncle.”
The case became the biggest human trafficking case in Utah history, and it turned state Attorney General Sean Reyes into a crusader.
“There were so many victims, and there was so much devastation,” Reyes said of the 2014 case. “He had caused so much, so much trauma, and had many, many victims who are now adults, but had started when they were young boys.
Reyes was just a year into his tenure as the state’s attorney general when he took on the case. He went on to serve three terms as the state’s top law enforcement officer.
A man of faith and action, Reyes found a way to help by directly overseeing human trafficking cases. He supervised a statewide anti-trafficking strike force and a team of assistant attorneys general focused on convicting traffickers. He worked to support legislation to help human trafficking victims.
Today, Reyes is retired from public office, but continues the fight as an adviser in the private sector.
‘Horrific Stories’
The former attorney general recounted the details of that first major trafficking case in an interview with The Epoch Times. The alleged perpetrator, a suspected member of the violent MS-13 criminal gang, had been deported many times, but kept returning to the United States under different aliases.
“There were scores of victims who were willing to come forward,” Reyes said.
“Many, many survivors came forward and told their horrific stories of how as young men, they had been trafficked … often in their own houses, in their own rooms.”
According to Reyes, for many of the victims, the trafficker’s threat of hurting their families if they told anyone about the events was the biggest deterrent: “You’ll do anything and suffer any type of indignity to protect those that you love.”
