Busted: Trafficking victim further debunks Katie Britt's claims

11 March 2024

The woman who is the sex-trafficking survivor in the story U.S. Senator Katie Britt spun Thursday night in the GOP response to the State of the Union has come forward to denounce and debunk the Alabama Republican's telling of events.

“'I hardly ever cooperate with politicians, because it seems to me that they only want an image. They only want a photo — and that to me is not fair,' Karla Jacinto told CNN on Sunday," the news outlet reported (video below). Jacinto, now an advocate against human trafficking, "told CNN that Mexican politicians took advantage of her by using her story for political purposes and that it’s happened again in the United States."

Jacinto "was not trafficked by Mexican drug cartels, but by a pimp who operated as part of a family that entrapped vulnerable girls to force them into prostitution, she said."

The Daily Beast adds that Karla Jacinto "said no one from Britt’s camp or anywhere else contacted her asking for permission to use her story in the GOP’s SOTU response, and she also confirmed allegations from a viral TikTok video that Britt’s telling of that story was, at best, completely misleading."

Britt had told a story of a sex-trafficking survivor, now know to be Jacinto, that was crafted to sound as if the victim's horrific experiences had happened at the hands of a cartel and during President Joe Biden's term, in the United States, and as a result of his polices. In reality, the events took place in Mexico, during President George W. Bush's administration.

As the journalism news site Poynter reports, "former Associated Press reporter Jonathan Katz put out a video on social media, saying Britt was 'beyond misleading.' (Here’s Katz’s TikTok video.) The woman Britt appeared to be talking about is Karla Jacinto Romero, who testified before Congress about being the victim of sex trafficking by Mexican cartels years ago when she was 12. She was at a roundtable discussion at the border last year with Britt and two other senators."

CNN's Rafael Romo says he's known Jacinto since 2014, when CNN profiled her for a report.

"She was very surprised, she told me, when she found out on Saturday that she was involuntarily put in the middle of a social media storm," Romo said on CNN.

Through a translator, Jacinto told CNN: “I work as a spokesperson for many victims who have no voice, and I really would like them to be empathetic—all the governors, all the senators—to be empathetic with the issue of human trafficking, because there are millions of girls and boys who disappear all the time.”

“People who are really trafficked and abused, as she mentioned," Jacinto added, referring to Britt and her speech. "And I think she should first take into account what really happens before telling a story of that magnitude.”

Watch CNN's report, including the interview with Jacinto, below or at this link.

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