By Edie Gross All 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 had spent the better part of a decade pursuing justice for human trafficking victims in the U.S. and abroad, so he’d heard stories like these before. The … [Read more...]