Unprecedented lawsuit filed on behalf of child sex exploitation victim

9-23-15 Minnesota:

Rare case seeks monetary damages for rape ordeal.

Panyia Vang was a 14-year-old aspiring singer living deep in Laos’ countryside in 2006 when a much older man from Minnesota flew to her home and offered her a music video audition.

After a 12-hour bus ride to the capital city of Vientiane, Thiawachu Prataya took the shy girl to a hotel room and brutally raped her.

Vang, who soon found herself pregnant and bound to a traditional Hmong marriage with Prataya, moved to Minnesota with her father. There, Prataya, then 43, threatened to deny her visitation rights to their child unless he could continue to have sex with her.

In late 2010, Vang met Twin Cities attorney Linda Miller, who immediately recognized that the strong young woman in her office had an extraordinary case that could help break through the legal roadblocks faced by young sex exploitation victims in confronting their perpetrators.

Miller, who has handled dozens of human trafficking cases in her long legal career, has filed an unprecedented lawsuit that attempts to recover monetary damages for violations of federal laws regarding child sex tourism and trafficking. She also is discussing the case with the U.S. attorney’s office in hopes of federal charges.

Miller has the support of many local and state Hmong advocacy groups that hope to end the tradition of child marriage among some in the Hmong community.

“This is just an enormous issue,” Miller said. “Her young life and innocence was crushed. It’s ruining so many people’s lives in Minnesota.”

Der Yang, Prataya’s lawyer, said it would be inappropriate for her to comment on a pending suit. The case has come before U.S. District Judge Joan Ericksen, who is reviewing a summary judgment motion filed by Miller. If Ericksen’s ruling goes in Miller’s favor, the case would end with a financial award and wouldn’t go to trial. Vang has asked for $450,000 in damages, the minimum amount allowed under the statute for the three criminal counts alleged in the suit.

The legal picture

Miller’s law firm brought the suit in 2011 under Masha’s Law, a 2006 federal statute that gives children the right to sue anyone who produces, distributes or possesses their pornographic images. The act is named for a 5-year-old who was adopted from a Russian orphanage by a man who began sexually abusing her the night she arrived in the U.S. Masha’s Law also allows the plaintiff to sue anyone who has downloaded the pornographic images.

Prataya admitted to all of the elements of child sex trafficking and child sex tourism under Masha’s Law, the suit said. He lived in Minnesota and traveled to Laos in 2006, and he had repeated sexual contact with Vang that he paid for.

In court documents, Prataya claimed he didn’t know Vang was a minor. In a deposition, he said he wasn’t worried if she was 12 or 13, because that’s why he paid her family $5,000 to be his bride. He said the sex was consensual.

Miller’s suit got a boost from a 2013 federal Court of Appeals ruling that reinstated the convictions of two South Dakota men who had tried to pay for sex with minors over the Internet. The ruling now allows consumers, not just suppliers of commercial sex acts, to be prosecuted under the federal trafficking statute.

Former South Dakota U.S. Attorney Brendan Johnson, who prosecuted the case, said Miller’s suit is unique because victims rarely go after their perpetrators for financial damages. Her suit has good legal standing to succeed, he said. ..Continued.. by David Chanen Star Tribune

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