ICE agent honored for exposing sex trafficking

CONNECTICUT
CT Post

Michael P. Mayko, Staff Writer

Published 11:28 p.m., Wednesday, January 25, 2012

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.”

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