Trafficking

A court in Honduras has delayed a verdict in a sex-trafficking case linked to the 2022 disappearance of Angie Pena, a case that has raised concerns about impunity in transnational crimes.

On Monday, Honduras’s judiciary cited the need to review evidence and wait for the return of a court interpreter, who was out of the country. The decision has been delayed until November 20.

The verdict was expected that same day. Critics framed the unexpected delay as yet another hurdle in a case that has drawn comparisons to the crimes of the late Jeffrey Epstein, a convicted sex offender in the US accused of running a sex-trafficking ring.

Four men, including two US citizens, are on trial for crimes related to Pena’s disappearance four years ago.

Harold Green and William James Murdock, both from the US, face human-trafficking charges. Another US citizen, Gary Lee Johnston, and Honduran citizen Gustavo Trejo are accused of criminal association.

Honduran authorities have also sought an Interpol notice for another suspect, US citizen Antony Frank Grayson.

The Honduran public prosecutor’s office said the suspects are part of a network involved in crimes including drug trafficking and sex trafficking involving minors.

It alleges police and at least one judge helped facilitate the criminal network, without naming the officials.

Defence lawyers, however, have denied the men’s involvement and requested an acquittal.

Pena went missing on January 1, 2022, after setting out on a jet ski from West Bay on the Honduran island of Roatan, while vacationing with her family.

Authorities initially focused on a rescue mission at sea, treating her disappearance as a possible accident.

But the case expanded into a trafficking investigation after Pena’s jet ski was found in Belize, some 170km (90 nautical miles) away.

In August 2022, authorities investigating the disappearance found a minor in the Roatan house occupied by Johnston, who was later sentenced to 32 years for commercial sex trafficking and child pornography in a separate case.

An analysis by Honduran media found that the country was mentioned more than 100 times in the Epstein files, including multiple references to Roatan, from where Pena disappeared.

“There are many more women and girls who have been victims of trafficking networks, and those cases are silenced, they go unpunished,” said Kenia Paz, a lawyer for the Legal Team for Human Rights, which represents Pena’s family.

Lawyers representing the family have questioned the lack of transparency in the investigation and in the trial, which was not open to the press or the general public.

Postponing the verdict “fuels the perception of impunity, increases public distrust in state security institutions, and prolongs the suffering and vulnerability of affected families”, said former Honduran Vice Minister of Security Julissa Villanueva in a post on X.

Dereck McNeil, a key protected witness, was killed in August, spurring further concerns about the case.

In videos made public after his death, McNeil alleged corruption within a special unit of the public prosecutor’s office known as the ATIC.

He accused the unit of leaking information about the case and being linked to drug-trafficking networks.

The ATIC director has denied any corruption and said that the unit has not been involved in investigating Pena’s disappearance.

Villanueva, the former vice minister, told The Associated Press that she believes prosecutors mishandled the case from the start, pushing a “tunnel vision” explanation of what happened.

“There are connections with other larger networks, and only by making them public will this family be able to get justice,” said Villanueva.

“It’s not just Angie. It’s all those women around Angie. There are many.”

Two women filed a lawsuit Thursday against former U.S. Rep. Matt Gaetz, saying they were sexually exploited by him and other men in violation of a federal anti-trafficking law.

The lawsuit, filed in federal court in Orlando, Fla., comes nearly two years after the House Ethics Committee said the Florida Republican had regularly paid for sex, including once with a 17-year-old girl, purchased and used illicit drugs, and violated state laws while a member of Congress.

Gaetz had left office when the report was released and denied wrongdoing. But the report helped to tank his nomination to become attorney general in President Trump’s second administration.

Two women said they were in their early 20s in 2017 when they met Gaetz through Joel Greenberg, who was a tax official in Seminole County and is now in prison for a raft of crimes, including a sex crime.

Gaetz provided drugs and paid the women for sex, out-of-state travel, lodging and other expenses, according to the lawsuit.

“Much of the conduct alleged against me is false,” Gaetz said in response.

“The lawsuit relies almost exclusively on a Congressional Committee report that didn’t allow me to confront my accusers. Now I will finally have that chance,” he said in a statement.

Gaetz also appeared to mock the women on the social platform X, sharing a 2018 social media photo of the backs of three women in bathing suits looking at the ocean in the Bahamas.

“I’m shocked nobody responded to their repeated cries for help, posted to instagram,” he said Thursday.

The lawsuit also names Greenberg, another man and businesses tied to Greenberg’s family.

“Every part of this venture ran on an exploitative power imbalance,” the women’s attorney, Spencer Kuvin, said in the lawsuit. “On one side stood a sitting congressman, an elected tax collector, and a former state legislator, men with public office, private homes, and money to spend. On the other stood young financially vulnerable women in their early twenties.”

Gaetz hosts a political talk show on One America News Network. He was recently appointed to the board of Triumph Gulf Coast, which oversees how Florida spends money recovered for damage from the 2010 Deepwater Horizon oil spill.

White writes for the Associated Press.