GUILTY TX - Gregoria Salgada Vazquez & David Salazar for sex trafficking, Houston, 2008

Vegas Bride said:

OMG at first I thought they were talking about 2 men, but a man and his mother!!! This is as sick as can be, that poor girl I hope she's now able to get the care she'll so badly need. And yes, they need to also arrest all the others who used her at the club.

VB

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hipmamajen said:

Will this poor girl get care here? Or will they just ship her back? How does that work?

Bless her.

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Kandi372s said:

I never even new humantrafficking even existed until I watched a movie called Humantrafficking. Has anyone else seen it with Donald Sutherland? It is if I remember correctley based on true events. It is hard to believe that such a thing happens in our world. I hope these two rot in Jail.

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David Salazar is accused of selling a 16-year-old sex slave at the bar, according to court docments.
The girl rescued earlier this year told authorities that she was lured from her hometown in Mexico by David Salazar after he made promises of love and offered an escape from extreme poverty.
She was illegally brought across the border in January and once brought to Jacinto City, in the Houston area, she was locked up in David Salazar's mother's house and forced to sell herself five to six nights a week in his cantina, the girl told police.
"When she refused, they would lock her up in a room and wouldn't feed her for days," said Jacinto City Detective B.J. Silva.
The girl could not escape because the home's yard was fenced and guarded by pit bulls and a chow. The home's windows were barred, and the storage room where the girl slept was padlocked.

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U.S. District Judge Sim Lake today sentenced Vasquez, 59, a Mexican citizen, and her son, Salazar, 28, a United States citizen, to serve 27 months in federal prison each for harboring a female illegal alien in their Houston residence. Those prison terms are to be followed by a three-year term of supervised release. Salazar was also fined $4,000. Judge Lake also entered a final order of forfeiture to the United States of Vasquez’ house located at 1320 Jennifer Lane in Houston.

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Salazar and Vasquez-Salgado originally were charged with kidnapping and aggravated sexual assault of a child in Harris County in the case, but those charges were dropped in December 2008.

According to state court documents, the girl said she was duped by Salazar into coming illegally from Mexico and then being forced to work as a sex slave at their Houston cantina, El Club Guerrero, on Wallisville Road.

But Vasquez-Salgado said the 16-year-old was her son's girlfriend.

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Last week, federal agents secured the indictment of alleged cantina owner and operator Maria "Nancy" Rojas and nine others, arresting them in a late-night raid on the club and compound and rescuing at least nine women and girls...

Vazquez and her U.S.-born son, David Salazar, were arrested in 2008 by the Jacinto City police department after another teenage trafficking victim called 911, claiming to be held captive in their house. Her calls, on a borrowed cell phone, prompted manhunts.

Once found, the girl told a Jacinto City detective she also had been forced to prostitute herself in cantinas. Vazquez and David Salazar were prosecuted for harboring an illegal immigrant; their house was seized. But their Clinton Drive cantina, the Maria Bonita, remained open for another year or more.

Bar owners who operate businesses as fronts for organized crime can be shut down, or even lose their property, under various state and federal laws, though the process can be complex. But lawless bar operators employ lookouts and bouncers to thwart agents and use legal tricks to keep operating by changing ownership on deed records or renewing liquor licenses under names borrowed from family or friends.

"It's been hard to stop them," said Mandi Sheridan Kimball, director of public policy and government affairs for the advocacy organization Children at Risk. "People are kind of at a loss for how to prevent it."

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Though investigators tried to shut it down in 2005, women refused to testify against its owner, David Salazar, a U.S. citizen, or his mother, Gregoria Salgado Vazquez, an illegal immigrant and convicted prostitute known as "Doña Blanca."

Both operated the bar, liquor license records show, which was used for human trafficking by fugitive Gerardo Salazar...

The TABC's lead agent on the case, Ben Giese, suspected David Salazar also was involved in trafficking or prostituting women.

But Giese, who now works for the Naval Criminal Investigative Service in Brazil, told the Chronicle that victims he and others attempted to question in 2005 were "scared to death."

"We even arrested one out of there — but she wouldn't talk to us, even though she was getting deported," Giese said.

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