It was a bit­ter­sweet mo­ment for the Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Min­istry and Trinidad and To­ba­go Po­lice Ser­vice (TTPS) yes­ter­day, as de­spite suc­cess­ful­ly achiev­ing the first-ever con­vic­tion un­der this coun­try’s hu­man traf­fick­ing laws, the per­pe­tra­tor broke free of his elec­tron­ic mon­i­tor bracelet and is now on the run.

At a hasti­ly called me­dia con­fer­ence yes­ter­day, Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Min­is­ter Fitzger­ald Hinds start­ed off with the good news that An­tho­ny Michael Smith was on Thurs­day con­vict­ed of five counts of hu­man traf­fick­ing un­der the Traf­fick­ing in Per­sons Act, which be­came law in 2012.

Smith, a lo­cal bar own­er, was ar­rest­ed in 2015 af­ter he was ac­cused of forc­ing a then 16-year-old Trinida­di­an girl to com­mit acts of pros­ti­tu­tion, af­ter she re­spond­ed to a news­pa­per ad seek­ing em­ploy­ment. He was al­so charged with the sex­u­al and phys­i­cal as­sault of the vic­tim.

Woman Po­lice Cor­po­ral Dane-Marie Mar­shall, who was laud­ed by Hinds for her “ex­quis­ite” po­lice work in the ap­pre­hen­sion and sub­se­quent con­vic­tion of Smith, ex­plained how the ar­rest tran­spired.

“In Sep­tem­ber 2015, I was then at­tached to the Counter Traf­fick­ing Unit, and we re­ceived in­for­ma­tion from our coun­ter­parts in the TTPS, and we pro­ceed­ed to a lo­ca­tion in East Trinidad. With­in the course of the in­ves­ti­ga­tion, I ob­tained a search war­rant and searched a lo­ca­tion in East Trinidad, where I found a Trinidad and To­ba­go pass­port be­long­ing to a child. In­ves­ti­ga­tions en­sued as to why this pass­port was in a lo­ca­tion where up­on search­ing, we found sev­er­al items of sex­u­al para­pher­na­lia and oth­er things. And in the traf­fick­ing world, we tend to call these places, ‘places of ill re­pute’,” Mar­shall ex­plained.

“The law pro­vid­ed that our chil­dren be safe­guard­ed from places like these, so we pro­ceed­ed to find this child with a view to as­cer­tain­ing why the pass­port was at this lo­ca­tion. It took some time and in No­vem­ber 2015, we found the child. We were able to in­ter­view the child and se­cure and record state­ments in re­la­tion to what oc­curred dur­ing the pe­ri­od she was in the cus­tody of her traf­fick­er.”

Two Venezue­lan na­tion­als were al­so found at the site but they chose to re­turn to their home coun­try.

Smith was ar­rest­ed that same year. Mar­shall briefly de­scribed what was done to the child by Smith and oth­ers.

Some­time in 2015, she was asked to as­sist him with a for­eign na­tion­al at a ho­tel in Trinidad, and when he meant as­sist him, it was to have sex­u­al in­ter­course with that per­son. The child found her­self in var­i­ous sit­u­a­tions where she had to per­form sex­u­al in­ter­course with men and ob­served Mr Smith re­ceiv­ing mon­ey on her be­half. “Dur­ing the child’s or­deal, she suf­fered beat­ings, em­bar­rass­ment and sex­u­al at­tacks from both Mr Smith and oth­er clients,” Mar­shall said, paus­ing at times to col­lect her thoughts.

Min­is­ter Hinds had ear­li­er ref­er­enced that the girl was of “low eco­nom­ic sta­tus” and “the child of a sin­gle par­ent house­hold”.

“I say this be­cause there are so many peo­ple of that ex­pe­ri­ence who, per­haps for those rea­sons and more, can be vul­ner­a­ble to the urges of peo­ple like An­tho­ny Smith,” Hinds said.

But the time­line since his ar­rest in 2015 is cru­cial to un­der­stand­ing his es­cape.

“Smith was charged by my­self in Jan­u­ary 2016 and we went through a process of pre­lim­i­nary en­quiry, which end­ed in June of 2017, when he was com­mit­ted. In the process of a com­mit­tal, we now wait for a date to be heard in the High Court and that date we got was Sep­tem­ber 18, 2023. So the tri­al com­menced at that point. He ap­peared in the court not just one day but a few days up un­til the point that he made a de­ci­sion to change his at­tor­neys. Sub­se­quent to the change of at­tor­ney, he did not ap­pear, so he ab­scond­ed while the tri­al had al­ready com­menced,” Mar­shall ex­plained.

Min­is­ter Hinds sought to un­der­score that the law was de­signed so that the tri­al could con­tin­ue ‘in cam­era’, even with­out his pres­ence, and that led to his sen­tenc­ing of 15 years in prison by Jus­tice Ge­of­frey Hen­der­son on Thurs­day.

Guardian Me­dia un­der­stands that the last time the court saw Smith was on Sep­tem­ber 22. How­ev­er, it was re­vealed at the me­dia con­fer­ence that for the last 880 days, Smith wore an elec­tron­ic mon­i­tor­ing bracelet.

Head of the Elec­tron­ic Mon­i­tor­ing Unit, Lawrence Hinds, was asked by Guardian Me­dia to ex­plain what hap­pened.

“So, in 2021, Mr An­tho­ny Smith, based on a con­di­tion of his bail was af­ford­ed elec­tron­ic mon­i­tor­ing. He was then placed on 24-hour home cur­few for 510 days. Fol­low­ing that, he ap­proached the court for some­thing called a vari­a­tion of his or­der, that was to al­low him to work and we changed the de­vice, mov­ing him from home cur­few, and placed him on a one-piece de­vice,” Lawrence Hinds re­vealed.

“Mr Smith stayed on that de­vice for a fur­ther 370 days. On Sep­tem­ber 24, 2023, at ap­prox­i­mate­ly 6.32 am, his de­vice sent an alarm to us, in­di­cat­ing there was some sort of in­ter­fer­ence. Fol­low­ing our stan­dard op­er­at­ing pro­ce­dures and all rel­e­vant checks, we ini­ti­at­ed the po­lice re­sponse mech­a­nism af­ter all at­tempts to con­tact him failed. That proved neg­a­tive, as there were no signs of Mr Smith. The po­lice con­tin­ued their ac­tions based on what they had to do and Mr Smith was no longer seen.”

Lawrence Hinds said this was the sec­ond time some­thing like this had hap­pened with the bracelets.

Min­is­ter Hinds sub­se­quent­ly told Guardian Me­dia that steps have been tak­en to mit­i­gate fu­ture re­cur­rences.

Ground-break­ing case

How­ev­er, de­spite not hav­ing a body to put in jail, Min­is­ter Hinds still her­ald­ed the case as a vic­to­ry in the coun­try’s fight against hu­man traf­fick­ing, adding that he ful­ly ex­pects that Smith will be found.

“The court is­sued war­rants for his ar­rest af­ter his con­vic­tion, and the Trinidad and To­ba­go Po­lice Ser­vice and all arms of po­lice ser­vice are now man­dat­ed to find him wher­ev­er he might be in Trinidad and To­ba­go, in this re­gion or the world, so that he will pay the price that he must for the griev­ous crimes he was con­vict­ed of,” Min­is­ter Hinds said.

“So, in the next few hours and days, you will see pub­li­ca­tions invit­ing the pub­lic to as­sist us in find­ing An­tho­ny Smith,” Hinds added con­fi­dent­ly.

Hinds al­so said he did not see Smith’s es­cape as a stain on their ef­forts.

“The sys­tem worked, worked par­tic­u­lar­ly well, the rules of the court per­mit­ted that the tri­al be pur­sued in ab­sen­tia from the time of his ab­scond­ing, so it puts noth­ing, no stain on the sys­tem. A war­rant has been is­sued for his ar­rest, when he is ar­rest­ed, if and when, he will be tak­en to a place that has been pro­vid­ed for him for the next 15 years,” Min­is­ter Hinds said.

Guardian Me­dia asked for a pic­ture of Smith, who should be around 38 years old now, but was told that would be pro­vid­ed soon.

Mean­while, Min­is­ter Hinds said he hoped the Unit­ed States’ De­part­ment of State would take no­tice of the con­vic­tion, as in the US gov­ern­ment’s 2023 Hu­man Traf­fick­ing re­port, T&T was still on its Tier 2 Watch List. This means that the Gov­ern­ment has not met the min­i­mum stan­dards of the Unit­ed Na­tions’ Traf­fic in Per­sons Pro­to­col and the US’ Traf­fick­ing Vic­tims Pro­tec­tion (2000) Act but is still mak­ing strides to do so. A lack of con­vic­tions for hu­man traf­fick­ing of­fences was a ma­jor rea­son this coun­try was giv­en a pro­ba­tion­ary- type grade.