On November 19, an investigation into a crash on the Pennsylvania Turnpike in Lurgan Township led to the arrests of Jose Antonio Hernandez-Guittierez and Edgar Jesus Espinoza-Gamboa. Both men are facing charges of trafficking in individuals, simple assault, and terroristic threats and are being held at Franklin County Prison.
The evening of November 19, a state trooper witnessed a pickup truck driving erratically on the turnpike before abruptly stopping in the median. The trooper approached the truck and saw that Espinoza-Gamboa had been stabbed in the neck and shoulder area and was bleeding profusely. A woman who was in the car ran across the turnpike and fled to a nearby wooded area.
When law enforcement located the 23-year-old woman, she accused Hernandez-Guittierez, 30, and Espinoza-Gamboa, 28, of kidnapping, drugging, and threatening to rape her. According to the woman, her boyfriend had allegedly arranged for the men to pick her up from Missouri on November 18 and transport her to Canada. She was from Quebec, Canada, according to her identification. During the trip, the woman reportedly began to feel sick and suspected she had been drugged, as the men were purportedly blowing dust on her to keep her asleep. Hernandez-Guittierez and Espinoza-Gamboa then allegedly became hostile and began to threaten her. According to the affidavit, the men are accused of saying they were going to force the woman to have sex for money, sell her to someone for $1,000 before sexually assaulting her themselves, and then throw her in the mountains for her to freeze and die. After the men reportedly brandished stun guns, the woman stabbed Espinoza-Gamboa because she had been sexually assaulted in the past and “didn’t want to go through that again.”
According to law enforcement, Hernandez-Guittierez and Espinoza-Gamboa provided inconsistent stories that did not match one another’s. Furthermore, investigators seized two stun guns, zip ties, binoculars, a new pair of boots, and two encrypted cellphones from the pickup truck. Authorities also found $1,020 and a ledger on a notepad containing alleged “information on human trafficking,” along with $3,200 on Hernandez-Guittierez’s person.
The woman is also facing drug paraphernalia charges in connection with the incident. She is being held at Franklin County Jail on $100,000 bail.
While the CSE Institute applauds law enforcement for charging Hernandez-Guittierez and Espinoza-Gamboa with trafficking in individuals, an additional charge of involuntary servitude is necessary to accurately reflect the means employed by Hernandez-Guittierez and Espinoza-Gamboa. Under Pennsylvania law, a person is guilty of involuntary servitude when they knowingly subject an individual to sexual servitude through any of the means enumerated in 18 Pa.C.S. 3012(b), including: causing or threatening to cause serious harm to any individual, kidnapping or attempting to kidnap any individual, fraud, and duress, through the use of or threat to use unlawful force against the person or another. In this case, Hernandez-Guittierez and Espinoza-Gamboa allegedly kidnapped the woman under the false pretense that they were taking her home to Canada and threatened to sexually assault, sell, and kill her. These means fall squarely within Pennsylvania’s involuntary servitude statute and Hernandez-Guittierez and Espinoza-Gamboa should be charged accordingly.
Furthermore, the CSE Institute encourages law enforcement to consider the intersecting vulnerabilities of the woman in this case. Factors like addiction, immigration status, economic need, past sexual abuse, and unstable living conditions are often exploited by traffickers. As a result of their trafficking, victims may face criminalization for crimes other than prostitution, like retail theft and drug possession, which can prevent survivors from moving forward with their lives. Here, the woman, a Canadian immigrant who has allegedly been sexually assaulted in the past, faces drug charges as a result of this incident. A report found that 84% of exploited women used drugs, alcohol, or both during their exploitation. Addiction is often exploited by traffickers to manipulate victims into engaging in prostitution in exchange for promised substances. Any “choice” made under these circumstances is no choice at all. On the other hand, sex buyers always have the choice not to purchase sex and further contribute to the exploitation of an already vulnerable population.
The CSE Institute advocates for the Equality Model to combat commercial sexual exploitation. The Equality Model seeks to reduce the demand for commercial sex by criminalizing sex buyers and traffickers and decriminalizing persons in prostitution. The four pillars of the Equality Model are: (1) decriminalization of the person who is selling sex, (2) criminalization of sex buyers and facilitators, (3) educating the public about the harms of prostitution, and (4) funded, holistic exit services for victims of commercial sexual exploitation. The decriminalization of prostituted persons recognizes that those who are bought and sold for sex are exploited, not perpetrators of a crime.
The CSE Institute will continue to provide updates on this matter.
All views expressed herein are personal to the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of Villanova University Charles Widger School of Law or of Villanova University.