The body of Ohio State University defensive lineman Kosta Karageorge was found today in a Dumpster near campus, along with a gun, Columbus Police said.
“At this time, there’s a lot of questions that we’re still trying to work out,” Sergeant Rich Weiner told reporters. “He was found inside of the Dumpster, the handgun was found inside of the Dumpster with him.
‘‘At this time we are able to confirm through tattoos here at the scene that it is the body of Kosta Karageorge,’’ Weiner said.
Karageorge, 22, a senior who played in one game this season for the Buckeyes, was reported missing by his family last week. His family told police he had several concussions and had texted his mother to say ‘‘I am sorry if I am an embarrassment,’’ the Columbus Dispatch reported.
The 6-foot-3, 273-pound Karageorge became a non-scholarship member of the football team in August after wrestling for the Buckeyes. He was one of 24 seniors set to be honored this weekend before their final home game.
The effect of head injuries on football players has gotten greater scrutiny recently with the National Football League gaining preliminary approval from a federal judge in Philadelphia in July for a $765 million head injury settlement in lawsuits filed by about 5,000 former NFL players seeking damages for head injuries.
The accord would reimburse retirees who suffer from a list of qualified injuries including Alzheimer’s disease, Parkinson’s disease and amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, or ALS.
The National Collegiate Athletic Administration has proposed a $75 million lawsuit settlement that would screen all NCAA athletes for concussions for 50 years.
To contact the reporter on this story: Rob Gloster in San Francisco at rgloster@bloomberg.net
To contact the editors responsible for this story: Michael Sillup at msillup@bloomberg.net
FERGUSON, Mo. (AP) — Missouri Gov. Jay Nixon says more than 2,200 National Guardsmen will be in place in the region near Ferguson on Tuesday night in the event of more violence.
He said Tuesday that hundreds more will be deployed to Ferguson, where fires and looting erupted Monday night after word that a grand jury decided not to indict a white police officer who fatally shot 18-year-old Michael Brown.
The rest will be in a position to respond rapidly, if needed.
CLAYTON, Mo.—Missouri Gov. Jay Nixon ’s office said he would hold a news conference this evening ahead of an expected announcement of a grand jury’s decision on whether to indict white Ferguson police officer Darren Wilson in the shooting death of unarmed black teenager Michael Brown.
Earlier, a spokeswoman for the St. Louis County executive confirmed that the grand jury had “finished with its work.”
Missouri Gov. Jay Nixon arrived in the area on Monday evening and was expected to hold a news conference at 5:30 p.m. local time, “calling for peace and discussing preparations to protect the public and free speech, in anticipation of the announcement of the grand jury decision,” according to a release from his office.
Mr. Nixon will be joined by St. Louis County Executive Charlie Dooley, St. Louis Mayor Francis Slay and Department of Public Safety Director Dan Isom.
There have been no announcements about when the grand jury announcement will be made, but it is expected later Monday evening.
The spokeswoman for the county executive earlier in the day had said a news conference was planned for an earlier time.
The grand jury has been hearing testimony for months on whether to indict Mr. Wilson for the Aug. 9 shooting of the 18 year old.
The initial incident brought weeks of sometimes violent protest in the Ferguson area. And police, businesses and protesters have been preparing for the possibility of unrest when the jury announces its decision.
A grand jury decision on the case against Officer Darren Wilson in the shooting death of Michael Brown in Ferguson, Mo., is expected soon. WSJ's law bureau deputy chief Ashby Jones explains how grand juries work. Photo: AP
A spokeswoman for Missouri Gov. Jay Nixon, who declared a state of emergency and called in the National Guard last week, said he will be in St. Louis on Monday, but declined to say any more about his plans for the day.
On Friday, the St. Louis County police put up metal barricades around their main building in downtown Clayton. On Saturday, police and workers arranged barricades in front of the justice center where the grand jury has been meeting.
Shops have long been boarded up in Ferguson, some to replace windows smashed during protests in the summer, others to prevent damage in case of more civil disturbance. But in nearby Clayton, shopkeepers have just recently begun to board up their store fronts in anticipation of property damage following the impending grand-jury decision.
ENLARGE
Rick Canamore, from Normandy, Mo., demonstrates against the August shooting on Monday outside the police station in Ferguson, Mo. ASSOCIATED PRESS
On Aug. 9, Mr. Wilson stopped Mr. Brown and another man for walking in the street. Brown family lawyers and police accounts say a struggle between the officer and Mr. Brown took place at the officer’s cruiser, resulting in the firing of Mr. Wilson’s pistol.
Mr. Brown then moved away from the vehicle. Accounts of what happened then differ. Mr. Brown’s family says the unarmed teen put his hands up or out in supplication, while police and pathologists have said Mr. Brown likely had been moving toward the officer. Mr. Wilson then fired multiple shots, killing Mr. Brown.
The national hysteria over the Ferguson grand jury is a fresh indictment of America. The core issue is a charge of police brutality by a white officer shooting an unarmed black 18-year-old man. Yet all around the country, the talk is about black violence.
To be sure, Attorney General Eric Holder and many black clergy have also asked for police restraint for any protests after the grand jury decision is announced. But such balanced pleas have been drowned out by the drama of an FBI warning that the grand jury’s decision “will likely be exploited by some individuals to justify threats and attacks against law enforcement and critical infrastructure.” The memo said people “could be armed with bladed weapons or firearms, equipped with tactical gear/gas masks, or bulletproof vests to mitigate law enforcement measures.”
“Why not taze him?” asked an anguished father of the boy. According to the Cleveland Plain Dealer, a Taser was never a consideration because information that the gun was nonlethal never made it to the officers who responded.
And many criminologists say we hardly know the full truth as USA Today found that only 750 of 17,000 police departments around the nation file killings by police with the FBI. The Obama administration, led by Holder, has demonstrated a vigilance not seen in many years, issuing findings of patterns of unconstitutional police misconduct, racially discriminatory enforcement or excessive force in several police departments, including those in Albuquerque, Miami, and New Orleans.
But there are obviously thousands more departments to be examined. Psychologists have proven that black people are perceived as more dangerous, yet relatively few police departments are known to train officers against such stereotypes. “We would find out which departments are the worst, which ones do better than others and begin to have an idea of what departments need in training, policy and supervision,” Samuel Walker, professor emeritus of the University of Nebraska at Omaha, told me in an interview. “Information empowers the public and public officials to say, ‘Let’s figure out what to do.’ ”
Geoffrey Alpert of the University of South Carolina, who has conducted several studies for the Justice Department, said that “data would be the first point of contact with getting a handle on what is going on. It would tell us if there had been no other questionable shootings in the department or if it was the fourth such shooting in a year. It would help give us a bird’s eyes view instead a worm’s eye view.”
So far, the nation has settled for the worm’s eye view on police while maintaining an eagle watch for an explosion by black people. Although few want riots, the disparity between these views is so blatantly unequal that it guarantees that violence against the black minority will remain built into established American society.
FERGUSON, Mo. — The revolution, or whatever happens here, most certainly will be televised, but until then, every part of the lead-up will be, too. In recent days, shop owners boarding up stores have found themselves giving impromptu news conferences. Media galleries form to listen in on church sermons. Television trucks hum in the parking lot of a tire shop, a front-row seat across from police headquarters.
The national media has again assembled in Ferguson, but this time, they’ve been drawn here not by something that just happened but something that’s about to, with a grand jury deliberating whether to indict a white police officer who fatally shot a black teen. The any-day-now anticipation, coming with ever-revised cable news speculation, has returned this city of 21,000 to a spotlight it both understands and sometimes bristles at.
Media mega-events come and go. But this one stands out because it has gone on for so long, because it’s so emotionally charged, and because cameras have seized on a place that once considered itself ordinary. Some 31/2 months after the death of Michael Brown, nearly everybody in Ferguson has a strong opinion on the shooting — and the way it’s been covered.
Many residents, business owners and elected officials have welcomed the increased scrutiny, saying that a media presence helps expose systemic, race-related problems in the police force and the justice system. But others, particularly those who haven’t taken part in the protests, say news organizations have produced a warped portrait of Ferguson, a small city with middle-class homes and a historic shopping district.
They’re worried, too, that reporters are here to document the next round of violence, if there is one, not the underlying problems. “Riot porn” is what Democratic committee member Patricia Bynes called it, referring to images of young black men with their shirts off, using them to guard their faces from tear gas.
Demonstrators block traffic at an intersection as they march through the streets of the Shaw neighborhood in protest. (Eric Thayer/The Washington Post)
Bynes rejected any characterization of Ferguson as a failed community. “You aren’t seeing this city if you think this is a ghetto,” Bynes said. “And you are missing the story, which is that this could happen anywhere, including the suburbs.”
The grand jury, after a weekend pause, could meet again as early as Monday to discuss the case of Darren Wilson, the officer, who has not spoken publicly since the shooting. CNN anchors Don Lemon and Anderson Cooper both revealed Sunday on Twitter that they had met secretly with Wilson to solicit an exclusive interview. Several other networks and channels are in the running, said CNN’s Brian Stelter, who first reported the off-the-record negotiations.
So, “literally only journalists know where [Wilson] is at?” one Twitter user asked Cooper after the anchor acknowledged “meeting briefly” with Wilson.
No matter what happens after the grand jury decision, many feel the wall-to-wall coverage has overplayed the extent of misbehavior in the aftermath of the shooting. The St. Louis Post-Dispatch noted rather pointedly this week that the property damage stands at $5 million — one-24th as much as that from a hailstorm two years ago. The newspaper also referred to The Washington Post’s description of Ferguson as a “burned-out symbol of racial and class divisions in America.” But only one building has burned.
“A lot of the press corps is looking for that kind of [violent] action, and that is contributing to the nonstop narrative of expecting violence,” said Mervyn Marcano, a communications strategist who works for several St. Louis grass-roots organizations. “I think that actually undermines the community-building work people are trying to do here.”
Many reporters and Ferguson residents say a complicated relationship has formed since the shooting in August. Some restaurants have benefited financially from the droves of hungry reporters. Other businesses, such as barbershops and dollar stores, say the media presence has at times emboldened protesters to be more violent, forcing owners to board their windows and costing them business.
Demonstrators march through the streets of the Shaw neighborhood in protest of the killing of Michael Brown, on Sunday, November 23, 2014, in St. Louis, Mo. (Eric Thayer/The Washington Post)
Barber Thomas Bradley estimates that he has lost 80 percent of his business, in large part because many regulars want to avoid the neighborhood where the shooting occurred until things calm down. The boards covering the windows and the newspeople often hovering outside, he added, don’t necessarily help.
“It’s a Catch-22,” he said. “You want justice, and you want people to have their voices be heard. But I also need to pay my bills.”
Derek Shaeffer, 55, a concrete laborer who has participated in protests, said, “I don’t mind having you guys around.”
Shaeffer explained: “There might be more harassment and beatings if the cameras went away. Our focus should be keeping you guys around. If the cameras had been here initially, Michael Brown wouldn’t be dead.”
Because of the media frenzy in Ferguson, many residents — even those with no direct connection to the shooting — have given multiple interviews. Charles Davis, who bought the Ferguson Burger Bar one day before the shooting, has told some version of his story to The Washington Post, USA Today, CBS, Bloomberg Businessweek, CNN and Al Jazeera America. On a more disturbing note, several days ago, a passenger van nearing a protester-erected barricade was swarmed by cameramen, who turned into a barricade that prevented the van from backing out.
CNN has several dozen reporters and crew members here. The Post has four reporters, one photojournalist and one videographer. Some nights in Ferguson, media employees outnumber protesters. There are 166 reporters and editors on an e-mail list who have asked the St. Louis County prosecutor to notify them directly when the grand jury has reached a decision.
“A media circus,” said David Carson, a Post-Dispatch photographer. “When I was driving down West Florissant the other day, I saw three or four people being interviewed in the span of a half-mile.”
Carson said he has experienced the deep suspicion that the community feels about the media. On Sept. 23, he arrived at the spot where Brown was killed — where a memorial of candles and stuffed animals had been erected — to take pictures of another potential crime scene.
Part of the memorial had caught fire — accidentally or deliberately — opening fresh wounds among residents on Canfield Avenue.
“Some people came at me and told me to delete the pictures on my camera,” Carson said. “. . . They said, ‘You guys are just down here being vultures.’ I said, ‘No, I’ve been down here since the first day.’ ”
Carson said some residents and protesters, who had seen him working for weeks to document the community’s response to Brown’s shooting, vouched for him, and the crowd backed off.
David Montgomery contributed to this report.
Chico Harlan covers personal economics as part of The Post's financial team.
Wesley Lowery covers Capitol Hill for The Fix and Post Politics.
Kimberly Kindy is a government accountability reporter at The Washington Post.
By 9:30 a.m. on a Friday, the defendants start filing into the fluorescent-lit hallway outside Judge Toko Serita’s courtroom in Queens Criminal Court in Kew Gardens, checking anxiously for their names on a sheet of paper behind glass. Many of the women are Chinese and find that their names, typed in English, are misspelled.
In the hallway, they speak mostly in Mandarin, in accents from across China. Some speak Korean. They meet with their court-appointed lawyers in the hallway, often helped by an interpreter born in Fujian Province and hired by the city courts. A snazzy dresser, the interpreter bounces from one defendant to the next; he has found himself adding terms to his usual vocabulary: prostitution (“maiyin”), illegal massage (“feifa anmo”), unlicensed massage (“wuzheng anmo”).
This is the Human Trafficking Intervention Court in Queens, which is marking its 10th anniversary next month, and which serves as a model for astatewide 11-court program that began last year. The intention is to change the legal conversation around the multibillion-dollar sex trade by redefining the women in it as victims instead of criminals. Most are offered a deal: Take part in a set number of counseling sessions, usually five or six, and the charges will be dismissed and the record sealed.
Photo
Outside the courtroom.CreditUli Seit for The New York Times
After 13 months, the five New York City courts are still a work in progress, their success tracked more in individual stories than statistics.
“This court is not devised to solve the problems of trafficking,” Judge Serita said of the program, “but to address one of the unfortunate byproducts, which is the arrest of these defendants on prostitution charges.”
All defendants in the specialized courts are presumed to be victims at risk, the first of many assumptions made, in part, because of the silence surrounding sex trafficking. That silence also makes it tougher to shift social mores. Not only do the police and the justice system still treat prostitution as a crime, but the women themselves, most undocumented, often don’t define themselves as having been trafficked — whether out of fear, shame or choice.
New York State’s progressive anti-trafficking law has no definition of a victim, but describes the coercive tactics a trafficker uses. These include fraud, physical injury, withholding or destroying immigration documents and exploiting debt.
At no point in the proceedings does the judge, the prosecutor or the defense lawyer ask if the defendants have been trafficked; nor is there a quid pro quo to give up a trafficker. It is rare, but the hope is that the women, perhaps after working with counselors, will feel comfortable describing the conditions that led them to prostitution.
“It’s a trigger mechanism to establish contact between individuals and service providers,” Judge Serita said of the court. “We know that five sessions is not necessarily going to change some people’s lives, but if they can establish meaningful contact with somebody else that can be used in the future, that’s what we’re hoping for.”
Inside the courtroom, the drama may seem perfunctory. The defendants have been charged with prostitution or loitering with intent to engage in prostitution, both misdemeanors. After arraignment, Kimberly Affronti, the assistant district attorney who has been the Queens court’s only prosecutor since its inception in 2004, decides what to offer the defendants after discussing options with their lawyers.
“This court is a lot more nonadversarial than other courts,” Ms. Affronti said. “It’s a team effort.”
Photo
Judge Toko Serita listening to cases. She may hear 40 cases in three hours during one Friday session.CreditUli Seit for The New York Times
For a first offense, five counseling sessions is the primary option. A defendant can also plead guilty to disorderly conduct; a small percentage of clients choose to fight their charges and get sent to an all-purpose court.
During an initial appearance, Judge Serita will refer the defendant to one of the court-approved counseling organizations. Upon completion of the sessions, she will grant an adjournment in contemplation of dismissal, which means that if the defendant stays out of trouble for up to six months, the record will be sealed. Over the past year, her court has issued 398 such adjournments out of 639 cases heard.
The Queens court has changed significantly in the decade since Judge Fernando M. Camacho founded it. Dismayed at seeing the same American-born teenage girls reappearing in his court for prostitution, Judge Camacho said he wanted to break the cycle by offering them alternatives to a criminal record or incarceration.
Now, a majority of the defendants who sit in the worn walnut benches are either Latin American women or, even more often, older, undocumented immigrants from Asia, ranging in age from 30 to 50. According to statistics Judge Serita’s court has kept, Asian defendants represented 27 percent of the cases in 2010. In 2014, they have made up 40 percent.
If Judge Serita, 53, seems sensitive on the bench to the plight of new immigrants, perhaps it is because she, too, was an immigrant, coming to this country with her parents as a 5-year-old from Sapporo, Japan. As an only child attending elementary school in Boerum Hill, Brooklyn, in the late 1960s, she would bring the lunch her father, an artist, packed for her in a bento box. “I used to get teased all the time,” she said.
She turned an inclination for public service into work as a Legal Aid appellate lawyer and was appointed to the bench by Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg in 2005, becoming the first Japanese-American judge in the state court.
On Fridays, Judge Serita usually hears more than 40 cases in three hours. “How are you today?” she asks each of the women, inquiring whether they take English classes and praising their progress. Several defendants said they noticed less that she was an Asian woman and more that she had a warm demeanor. On other days, she presides over the drug treatment andmental health courts in Queens.
The trafficking court, she acknowledged, is a Catch-22: For people to feel less like criminals, they must first go through the criminal justice system.
Photo
A woman leaving Human Trafficking Intervention Court after her case was heard.CreditUli Seit for The New York Times
Leigh Latimer, the Legal Aid Society lawyer assigned to Judge Serita’s court, agreed. “There is a somewhat more recent view that clients are potentially victims, but we’re still arresting them at a very rapid pace,” she said. “We’re trying to solve their problems through being arrested, which is not an affirming process.”
Judge Serita has tried to offset that by assembling a large network of counselors and court advocates. Judge Camacho originally partnered with Girls Educational and Mentoring Services, and Judge Serita has added a half-dozen more, including two that work with Asian women: Restore NYCand New York Asian Women’s Center. On Fridays, counselors from those groups stand with clipboards outside the courtroom, waiting to sign women up.
Moving in and out of the courtroom is Paul Puma, 40, the head court officer for the trafficking court. He, too, must make assumptions.
“When at any time a defendant comes in escorted by a male, I just ask the male to step outside,” Mr. Puma said, adding: “Nine times out of 10, I know I am speaking to their handler, or whatever you want to call them.
“I don’t want them in the court,” Mr. Puma continued. “I want the women free to be able to take advantage of the services this court offers. I don’t have a legal right to stop them from coming in there. But I tell them, ‘I’ll let the judge and the prosecutor know that if you insist on being here for this young lady, they’re going to want to know who you are.’ ”
One Mandarin-speaking man who waited outside seemed less than encouraging about the counseling sessions his female friend would be attending.
“As far as I’m concerned,” he said in Mandarin, “this is just propaganda.” He would not give his name.
On several Fridays, nearly a dozen women said during interviews in Mandarin that they did not feel like trafficking victims, but victims of the police. The women all spoke on the condition of anonymity because their cases were still pending.
Photo
Paul Puma, the head court officer.CreditUli Seit for The New York Times
“My name has been tarnished,” said one woman, who was upset that her case was “lumped with all those others.” She denied performing a sex act, but the police report contradicted that, Ms. Affronti said.
Another woman explained that she was arrested at 4 a.m. on her sixth day of work. She and her sister, who quit after the second day because she sensed “something was not right,” owed more than $80,000 to friends and family members who raised the money for them to come to the United States from Fuzhou.
That type of pressure to pay back smuggling agents — often with interest as high as 12 percent — is considered “debt bondage.” It is a more subtle condition of human trafficking, but is pervasive in New York’s Asian communities, lawyers say.
“Of course we have to borrow,” said the sister who was not arrested. “Who has that kind of money?”
The women who accept the court’s deal attend full-day group counseling sessions once a week; they often begin the day with yoga, and then learn about the court process, their rights and prostitution laws.
X. — who asked to be identified only by her first initial because she had not told her family in China she had worked as a prostitute — told a common story of debt bondage. Last November, she owed $60,000 to the travel agent who arranged for her entry to the United States. Because she had to pay $500 for her airport pickup, she soon began running out of money.
She could not find a job without work papers, and by the time she started looking through the classifieds of World Journal, a popular Chinese-language newspaper, she was desperate.
The section is full of ads for so-called authentic massage — “tuina” — and there are plenty of questionable ones, too, like those looking for a “spicy little sister” or “a woman tender and warm.” One ad seeking massage workers promised $500 daily; another, “tens of thousands” for a month.
Photo
The hallway outside the courtroom.CreditUli Seit for The New York Times
She was 42, alone and broke; she agreed to work at the first place that was hiring.
It was not until her new boss drove her to the job — in a Queens house — that first day, she said, that he told her she would be performing sexual services instead of massages. “All the women like you who come here and don’t have friends to help them — they all do it,” he told her.
One month later, she was arrested and felt humiliated. But after she appeared before Judge Serita and completed the counseling sessions, the charges were dropped and her case was sealed.
Ms. Latimer, the Legal Aid lawyer, put X. in touch with Sanctuary for Families, an organization helping victims of sex trafficking and domestic violence; Sanctuary is now working on a visa application for her and arranges medical appointments for her problems incurred during that dark month last fall.
“I recognize that I took the wrong path,” X. said in Mandarin in an interview recently, interpreted by Rosie Wang, 26, a legal fellow at Sanctuary and recent graduate of Columbia Law School.
“But,” X. continued, “I also think that if I didn’t, and these bad things didn’t happen, I wouldn’t be connected to so many people who have helped me so much.”
Despite the court’s innovative ambitions, it hasn’t always been able to meet the day-to-day needs of the women whom it aims to help. As the number of Asian defendants has surged in Queens, the private counseling agencies, already short of money, have had trouble keeping pace. Over the summer, defendants faced waits of up to six weeks to begin their court-mandated counseling with the New York Asian Women’s Center or Restore NYC. Both organizations said recently that there currently were no waits.
Danielle Sennett, a public defender with Queens Law Associates who is assigned to the court, said any delay could make it more difficult for clients to get work and could keep them stuck, living in danger. “Some women who are in high-risk situations are not being served,” Ms. Sennett said.
Photo
Rosie Wang, a legal fellow with Sanctuary for Families, an organization that helps victims of sex trafficking and domestic violence.CreditUli Seit for The New York Times
The courts do not keep a record of recidivism, although if women are rearrested, they often return to fulfill more counseling sessions. Despite efforts by the New York Police Department’s vice enforcement squad, advocates say the message has not always filtered to the precinct level to treat women as victims when arresting them.
So far this year, the Police Department recorded 686 arrests in Queens on misdemeanor charges of prostitution and loitering, including 149 in the 109th Precinct, covering Flushing, which is where most of the massage parlors in the borough operate.
Queens Criminal Court has only 15 cases pending for trafficking, a felony that is tried in a separate courtroom, deliberately far from Judge Serita’s court.
“In a system that prioritizes a high volume of low-level arrests, you still have to ask: ‘Who is getting arrested?’ ” said Kate Mogulescu, the supervising lawyer of the Trafficking Victims Advocacy Project for the Legal Aid Society in New York. “What’s the endgame?”
The New York State chief judge, Jonathan Lippman, acknowledged that “the focus should be on the demand, on the traffickers and the buyers.” But he added: “The reality is we don’t make decisions as to who gets arrested, and we want to assure that these victims get the assistance that they need and ultimately get out of ‘the life.’ ”
M., 40, who asked to be identified only by her first initial because she is undocumented, is one of those trying to get out. Arrested on a prostitution charge in Queens in May, she went through the counseling program at the New York Asian Women’s Center; when it was over, the group told her to call if she ever ran into trouble again.
M. said she had been working at what she thought was a legitimate Manhattan massage parlor in September when her bosses forced her to perform commercial sex. They beat her and threatened her life if she did not continue, she said. Desperate, she called the Women’s Center, which swiftly connected her with Sanctuary for legal help.
Ms. Wang, who came to this country from Chengdu when she was 1 and jokes that she speaks Mandarin with an American accent, met with M.
Gradually, M. felt comfortable telling her of the abuse and became emboldened by Sanctuary’s support. “After the incident happened where I was trafficked, I was feeling very lost,” M. said in an interview, with Ms. Wang interpreting. “But now I feel like I have the courage to talk to people about it, including law enforcement.”
Like many Chinese immigrants who settle in Flushing, M. had applied for political asylum when she arrived. The lawyer she approached said it would cost $3,500 and demanded $500 upfront, which she paid. His office has since closed.
Sanctuary explained to her and many other clients that political asylum is rarely granted and applying for it risks deportation. Instead, women like M. are better off applying for a T Visa, reserved for victims of trafficking, said Melissa Brennan, Sanctuary’s senior staff lawyer in Queens. In July, Ms. Brennan created a free project involving seven New York law firms that have since given 34 immigration consultations. The program is now helping nine clients, including M., to apply for legal status.
“Launching this project, I never expected to see the level of disclosure that we have,” Ms. Brennan said. Six women have told Ms. Wang that they were victims, and Sanctuary is following other cases of potential trafficking.
In a court that is based on assumptions, success can be hard to define. Or it can come splashing down in grateful tears.
“I just don’t want what happened to me to happen to anyone else,” M. said.
By 
