'It's evil': Officials sound alarm after Morgan County human trafficking bust

Yahoo

16-03-2025

Mar. 15—Six men are now in custody and being charged with first-degree human trafficking after a sting operation in Hartselle last week where they allegedly targeted and solicited decoys posing as juveniles — an issue some officials say demands urgent attention.
On March 6 and 7, the Morgan County Sheriff's Office Criminal Investigation Decision conducted an anti-human trafficking operation with help from the Morgan County District Attorney's Office and Birmingham-based Covenant Rescue Group, a nonprofit organization that advises law enforcement on child exploitation and human trafficking operations.
In addition to the human trafficking charges, the following suspects were charged with electronic solicitation of a child and traveling to meet a child for a sex act: Winston Terrell James, 35, of Madison; Wayne Lynn Rosetti Jr, 59, of Madison; Deandre Lamar Floyd, 27, of Hillsboro; Joffre Mauricio Salazar Briones, 27, of Athens; Bud Winston Cunningham, 48, of Crane Hill; and Luis Said Cadena Morales, 23, of Toney, who is also being detained by immigration agents, according to the Morgan County Sheriff's Office.
Morgan County District Attorney Scott Anderson said all six men are being held without bail following an Aniah's Law hearing, which allows judges to deny bail for suspects accused of certain violent crimes. It's named after Aniah Blanchard, an Auburn University college student who was kidnapped and murdered in 2019 by a man out on bail for attempted murder.
Quanda Stevenson, the director of the criminal justice program at Athens State University and a member of the North Alabama Anti-Human Trafficking Task Force, said she has seen an increase in the area over the last five years.
"Human trafficking is the smuggling, recruiting, abducting, transporting, grooming, harboring, buying and selling of any individual person no matter what age or ethnicity," Stevenson said. "They do this by force, threats, violence, threats, coercion, fraud, intimidation. All for profit, and that profit can come from commercial profiting, meaning you have a large organization set up or it could be for an individual person."
Stevenson said she estimated human trafficking to be the second largest organized crime activity after drug trafficking in the United States.
"Just imagine if we're seeing drugs, something you use once or twice, and the amount of money it comes with," Stevenson said. "Human trafficking is allowing some people to be used multiple times. We have some victims who have admitted they were forced to commit 50 (sexual) acts a day."
Child sexual abuse is not as prevalent with human trafficking, according to Stevenson, but she said it is still connected. She said human traffickers will groom juveniles for sometimes up to four or five years.
"With social media now, (traffickers) can actually speed the process up," Stevenson said. "They can groom a child from six months to about a year and get them to do different things they would like for them to do, which is scary."
Stevenson said the trafficker will groom the victim to the point the victim looks at them as a friend.
Decatur Police Cap. George Silvestri, head of the department's Criminal Investigation Division, said human trafficking cases fluctuate in the city, but it is something he wants the public to be aware of.
"It's evil, I don't know how else to describe it," Silvestri said. "The way they use these people, especially the young ones."
All the suspects arrested in the Morgan County sting last week were from other counties, and Stevenson said that constitutes human trafficking because the suspects traveled across county lines to meet up with the decoys.
Stevenson said human trafficking is difficult to track because the traffickers tend to not stay in the same area for long. Silvestri agrees and said they do this to avoid detection.
"They are hard to catch because they know how to stay below the radar, so to speak," Sylvestri said. "They don't want to bring attention to themselves because that's usually when something happens. For example, they'll be like two days in Decatur and then they'll move to Memphis and move them around and that's how they avoid getting caught."
He said he has not seen many cases of children being trafficked because traffickers usually do that in cities with larger populations to stay anonymous.
"Decatur is like the world's largest small town," Silvestri said. "Everybody knows everybody and they notice things. Whereas, if you're in a city like Nashville or Atlanta, it's so easy to be anonymous in there and do whatever you want to do. Not saying it can't happen here, but it's really focused on the larger cities."
Stevenson said the Morgan County case involved law enforcement officers posing as underage girls online. She explained that the men engaged in conversations with them, agreed to pay for sex acts and arranged to meet at specific locations.
In Alabama, human trafficking is a Class A felony and under The Sound of Freedom Act passed in 2024, it is a mandatory life sentence if a person is convicted of first-degree human trafficking involving a child.
"If they are predators and they are targeting children, then I want the maximum sentence in every case," Anderson said. "We don't want people out in public looking to abuse children."
Anderson said in all cases of human trafficking, suspects are subject to Aniah's Law.
"In these last few with that sting operation, we requested that all the defendants be no bonded, and the court agreed," Anderson said. "All those gentlemen will remain incarcerated for the time being."
Anderson said every human trafficking case is different, and convictions can be difficult to obtain if a victim does not testify.
"If it involves a true victim (not a decoy), then getting that victim to come forward and testify, a lot of times it involves minors," Anderson said. "Court is a very daunting place for minors, and that's one impediment we have is getting our victims to testify."
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