A mission to save troubled girls

Veteran police sergeant fights gang-led prostitution and exploitation

Sergeant Detective Kelley O'Connell heads up Boston's human trafficking task force. (Pat Greenhouse/Globe Staff)

When Kelley O'Connell goes to work each day as a Boston Police sergeant-detective, her goal is challenging but straightforward: to save young women from life as a prostitute.

For the past three years, O'Connell has headed the Boston Area Human Trafficking Task Force. Her focus is on helping runaway and displaced teens, many of whom are coerced into prostitution by what she calls street gang thugs.

"Because of technology and the ease of communication with cellphones and Internet, the problem has worsened," said O'Connell. "The Internet has brought it from the street corners to the inside, making it less obvious to law enforcement so it's been able to flourish."

O'Connell, who spent 10 years of her 23-year career working in the gang unit, said she had a challenging time "selling" other agencies, and even her superiors, on the idea that teenage girls deserved their own program.

"When you think of human trafficking, you think of people unloading from cargo ships. You don't think of teen girls being sold to men or between gangs for the purpose of sex," she said. "But through my work with gangs, I knew it existed, but we had no idea where to start. So after educating myself, I tried to educate everyone around me. It took a good two years to sell the problem to them."

Prostitution and child exploitation know no class or racial bounds, said O'Connell. It doesn't matter if the girls are black, white, or Asian; from good families, or not; from the suburbs or the city.

A case in point: Two young girls from Norwood who got hooked up with a pimp via the Internet and disappeared to Boston. Fortunately, after three days, the girls were returned home before they became too involved in the business, she said.

Myspace.com and Craigslist.org are common sites where the pimps advertise, said O'Connell, who headed up intelligence for the Democratic National Convention in Boston.

Posted on O'Connell's bulletin board in her basement cubicle at her Boston office are pictures of some of the pimps she has been trying to locate.

She has a database of more than 200 young women, one as young as 11 years old, and more than 120 active pimps. Many of the girls are missing persons or runaways involved with the Department of Social Services or are involved with juvenile court's Children in Need of Services program.

The task force - one of 42 specialized task forces in the United States - works around the clock trying to identify and locate the girls who, she said, are traded by gang members in much the same way drugs and guns are.

"Gangs used to make their money selling drugs and through other illegal means," said O'Connell, who grew up in Dorchester and joined the police force in 1986 after working as an EMT. "Now the girls are their drugs. The pimps prey on girls they find on the Internet or on the streets. They give them attention and material things, and make them feel wanted."

O'Connell's aim is to locate the girls to save them, not to punish them. "We try not to lock up the girls, because that doesn't help them, but if I have to lock them up to rescue them, I will," she said. The pimps, however, are routinely jailed. If convicted, a pimp can receive 3 to 5 years in jail, or 10 to 40 years for a federal offense.

O'Connell now lives in Abington with her husband and three daughters, 11 to 18, the same age range as the girls she tries to save.

She said it's through quality time with her daughters and her husband, Joe, that she's able to put her job out of her mind. O'Connell also is a board member of the youth basketball program, and a basketball and soccer coach in Abington.

While real success stories are few, progress and intervention are making a difference, said O'Connell, who, along with her staff of four, runs training sessions for government and non-government agencies.

"I'll continue the fight to help these girls who feel no one else is on their side" she said.

"Also, hearing from parents who call to say thanks for taking the time to care is very rewarding."