Forcibly given heroin. Daily physical abuse and sexual assault. Such was the life of young women forced into prostitution in a Greater Hartford prostitution ring with tentacles spanning New England — a case that would be among the first instances of domestic sex-trafficking taken to trial. Windsor Police Sgt. Chris McKee was at the heart of the investigation, which lasted three years, and began in , resulting in the conviction of ten traffickers and promoters of prostitution.
With many of the case's targets having run into Windsor Police at one point or another, McKee became a lead investigator on the multi-jurisdictional task force assigned to the case. Working alongside Detective Deborah Skates of the Hartford Police Department, the Federal Bureau of Investigation, the Internal Revenue Service and staff from the Department of Justice, the task force managed to uncover a startling occurence of underage American females being held against their will, and forced into prostitution.
I'd even use the word shocking," McKee said of the case, which began with a routine prostitution sting in Hartford and developed into a federal investigation into now-convicted criminals, some of whom lived in Windsor. It's not something we're used to dealing with.
Generally, McKee explained, trafficking is thought of as having involved international borders and non-U. According to McKee, the female was a New Hampshire girl. She was blonde, had blue eyes and was out of place on the streets of Hartford. Picked up by officers, the young woman was questioned, but having been addicted to heroin, and high at the time, she provided officers with little information.
In custody, the young woman, referred to as Gwen in a Vanity Fair article , sobered up and requested to speak with Scates, who handed her a business card with contact information when she was first arrested, state documents say. According to state documents, Gwen's testimony would open investigators' eyes to multiple sex-trafficking rings operating throughout Greater Hartford under the guise of an escort service.
