Ambassador
for Freedom Alumnus Fights to End Human Trafficking By Edie Gross
A
ll of the women who testified in United States v. Campbell had come to America with dreams of a better future only to be trafficked by Alex “Cowboy” Campbell, a violent sex trafficker who branded his victims so they’d never forget they belonged to him. For several weeks in January 2012, the women, all from Eastern Europe and in their early 20s, took the witness stand in a federal courtroom in Chicago. They shared in excruciating detail how Campbell offered them affection, housing, and help with immigration before seizing their passports and forcing them into prostitution. One by one, the women described how Campbell branded and beat them, extinguished cigarettes on their skin, videotaped them in compromising positions, and threatened to share the videos with their families back home.
John Cotton Richmond ’93 earned the nickname “every trafficker’s worst nightmare” over a lifetime of work. Richmond is shown testifying before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee on his nomination to become U.S. ambassadorat-large and director of the Office to Monitor and Combat Trafficking. He was confirmed in November 2018.
12
UNIVERSITY OF MARY WASHINGTON MAGAZINE FALL/WINTER 2019