Ice Agent Honored for Exposing Sex Trafficking
By Michael P. Mayko
For the past five years Rod Khattabi's work as a federal agent has taken him through the sewers of child pornography, the degradation of teenage prostitutes and the horrific sexual abuse of Haitian and South African children in humanitarian programs. Each time, Khattabi has come back with evidence to arrest and convict people like Edgardo Sensi, who with his girlfriend made child pornography of sexual encounters with the woman's 8-year old daughter in Fairfield County; Corey Davis, of New York; Theodore Briggs, of Norwalk, for running separate prostitution rings involving teenage girls; Douglas Perlitz, who admitted abusing Haitian street boys in a program he designed to feed, educate and clothe them; and Jessie Osmun, a Peace Corps volunteer from Milford, now under arrest for abusing girls as young as 4 in a South African HIV-encampment. "I've put narcotics traffickers, money launderers and gun runners behind bars and that feels good," Khattabi said. "But being able to build a case against a sexual abuser and knowing that you may have saved a child ... there's no better feeling than that. You feel like you made a difference." Khattabi's efforts won him the U.S. Attorney's Award for Exceptional Contributions to Law Enforcement. "Throughout his law enforcement career Rod has exhibited courage, passion and persistence," said U.S. Attorney David Fein. "He has given voice and brought justice to those who are among the weakest and most vulnerable members of any society. Because of his work, children are safer in our country and in other countries and many individuals who have preyed upon the most innocent among us have been brought to justice." Khattabi was born in Morocco, grew up in France and came to the U.S. in 1986 to attend college from which he graduated with a degree in business administration. In 1991, he decided to call the U.S. home and became an American citizen while working in New York as a private investigator, but his interest was becoming a federal agent. So Khattabi, who speaks five languages, took a national examination and scored in the top 10. That led to him joining the Internal Revenue Service's Criminal Division in Bridgeport in 1995 investigating tax-fraud cases. Two years later he transferred to what is now the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement division of Homeland Security, which assigned him to their New York office. His Moroccan background and fluency in Arabic and French led to his selection as the lead agent in a narcotics and weapons investigation involving the Abu Sayyaf Group, a militant Islamic operation based in the Philippines. In 2008 the State Department and the Haitian Embassy were pressing the Justice Department to look into Perlitz and reports of his sexually abusing students at the nationally acclaimed Project Pierre Toussaint program in Cap-Haitien, Haiti's second-largest city. The assignment fell to Khattabi. He made several trips to Haiti interviewing investigators, physicians, educators and victims and met Cyrus Sibert, the Haitian journalist who first exposed the Perlitz scandal. "He was so motivated in uncovering the proof that you would think those boys were his sons," Sibert said. By September 2009 Perlitz was indicted. Within 14 months he pleaded guilty and was sentenced to 19 months and seven years in prison after admitting he sexually abused at least seven boys. "If it were not for the investigative skills of Rod Khattabi, the abandoned and homeless Haitian street children who were sexually abused by Douglas Perlitz would never have received one iota of justice for the horrific harms inflicted upon them," maintains Paul Kendrick, a Fairfield University graduate who has been advocating on the victims' behalf. "These children are among the poorest of the poor kids in the world and Rod Khattabi stood by their side. That speaks volumes as to the kind of investigator and person he is." "Agent Khattabi speaks Creole. He understands Haitian culture. He cultivated law enforcement contacts. "He was very concerned about finding the facts and in doing so he obtained the confidence of the victims," Sibert said.
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