 |
|
For many victims, last week’s incarceration of sex offender Jeffrey Epstein represents belated justice after more than a decade of impunity and governmental complicity.
Labor Secretary Alex Acosta, right, accompanied President Donald Trump, left, speaks to members of the media on the South Lawn of the White House in Washington on July 12, 2019, announcing his resignation over his handling of a 2008 case involving Jeffrey Epstein. (AP Photo/Andrew Harnik)
Beneath that gloomy surface, however, an even darker picture emerges: federal prosecutions of those who trafficked children for sex dropped 26.7% over the last year.
The startling numbers appeared Tuesday in a report from the Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse at Syracuse University.
“If the present pace of such prosecutions continues, the fiscal 2019 total will be 162, compared to 221 last year,” TRAC’s report states.
The Obama administration dramatically ramped up such prosecutions, climbing threefold from 85 cases in 2009, the year the 44th president took office, to more than 260 during his final year in the White House.
While those prosecutions held steady in the first year under President Donald Trump, TRAC’s analysis of Justice Department data says they have taken a dramatic plunge every year since.
|
|
|
|
