Tinder, Sailor, Hooker, Pimp: The U.S. Navy’s intercourse trafficking scandal in Bahrain

Tinder, Sailor, Hooker, Pimp: The U.S. Navy’s intercourse trafficking scandal in Bahrain

Caution: this report contains direct language.

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The first in a cascade of U.S. Navy investigations into mariners implicated of trafficking, construction and pimping female prostitutes in the Middle East are tracked back again to Summer 2017 and a string of sex-charged encoded texts between a sailor in Bahrain and a Thai prostitute the guy fulfilled on the island.

“Yo u hot than a mama fucker with your mean ass,” Gunner’s friend second lessons Jihad H. Littlejohn had texted the girl on Summer 4, 2017, based on Navy court records.

Prosecutors would later allege that Littlejohn, a 29-year-old from New Jersey subsequently assigned to the patrol ship Hurricane, had compensated the so-called “working girl” for gender.

“i wish to sleeping on the titty,” the sailor have texted the lady.

“Lol you gotta wages,” she responded, based on court public records.

Nevertheless girl, Lin Raiwest, was more than simply another prostitute. Court records showcase she additionally ended up being generally a “mamasan,” a pimp exactly who managed her very own solid of prostitutes that she trafficked, safeguarded and profited from.

Raiwest’s chats with Littlejohn quickly looked to larger companies, prosecutors later alleged.

Court records reveal she told your she would pick “some most women” from Thailand and would put them to the office in Bahrain’s worthwhile sex trade ? one usually fueled by U.S. military staff stationed indeed there.

“You want some?” she asked the sailor in a text.

“Hell yea i actually do,” Littlejohn answered.

“Girls for what?” the guy questioned.

“Work. Earn money,” Raiwest replied. “Don’t inform no one tho.”

Browse The entire four-part collection right here — Tinder, Sailor, Hooker, Pimp

Military period provides printed a four-part series exposing the Navy’s own investigation into sailors seeking to site visitors prostitutes in Bahrain also gender crimes.

Navy prosecutors later cited the writing content trade to allege your duo got hatched plans to fly several ladies in from Thailand, house them in Littlejohn’s off-post house and set these to function selling gender, with Littlejohn likely to get a cut regarding earnings.

The petty policeman would “take their passports, simply take their particular independence,” Navy prosecutor Lt. Ty Christian stated at Littlejohn’s demo in August 2019.

To close the deal, Littlejohn presumably paid Raiwest 1,000 Bahraini dinar (about $2,650 at that time) to front the expense of obtaining the prostitutes from Thailand to Bahrain, based on court public records.

Inturn, Raiwest gave your the girl passport as guarantee.

Naval illegal Investigative Service agencies raided Littlejohn’s house in September 2017 and found Raiwest’s passport concealed in a safe, relating to court public records and testimony.

For reasons that stays not clear, Raiwest didn’t testify at Littlejohn’s test together with petty officer ended up being acquitted on all charges latest summer time.

However in 2017, this alleged relationship between Littlejohn and Raiwest — chronicled inside the text messages she provided to NCIS — aided ignite an internet of investigations that uncovered just how seriously present some U.S. sailors http://datingmentor.org/pet-dating had be with all the commercial intercourse trade in Bahrain.

Throughout the next season, those probes uncovered facts that sailors were casing prostitutes within taxpayer-funded flats, seizing the women’s passports and having a slice with the women’s profits, profiting from a gender trade that maintained shipmates whom existed in the island or emerged ashore during interface phone calls.

Allegations of raw sexual assaults on vulnerable woman furthermore stumbled on light, as did evidence of one or more sailor acting as an enforcer for regional prostitutes, trembling down a shipmate for repayments.

Raiwest appeared as a main figure in several regarding the Navy’s research. Court public records showcase the lady is famous among sailors in Bahrain

She was also a longtime confidential NCIS informant, plying the lady illegal trade, stating sailor misconduct and accumulating funds payoff along the way.

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