How this story was reported

Last update: October 8, 2005 - 11:00 PM

Reporters Dan Browning and Pam Louwagie reviewed hundreds of police and medical records, attended trials, read court transcripts and interviewed dozens of sources, including six Hmong girls who were victims of sex crimes. The Star Tribune generally does not name victims of sex crimes.

The Ramsey County attorney's office pulled computer records and spent hours helping the reporters track cases. Judges cleared obstacles for reporters to get transcripts and photographs of evidence. Staff at the Midwest Children's Resource Center, a division of Children's Hospitals and Clinics of Minnesota, shared information. Many Hmong community members -- victims, parents, scholars, elected and appointed officials -- were interviewed.

The Ramsey County attorney's office does not track criminal cases by the ethnic origins of the defendants. So the Star Tribune provided the office with a list of probable Hmong surnames developed by the FBI. The county used the list to extract sex crimes and prostitution cases filed between 1999 and June 2005 in which the defendant was probably Hmong.

A reporter manually reviewed the cases and eliminated two in which the given names of adult defendants made it impossible to tell whether or not they were Hmong. The newspaper was unable to review juvenile names because they are not released by the county.

Law enforcement officials say there are many more victims who don't report the crimes. Others don't show up in the data because prosecutors did not believe the evidence was strong enough to prove a case in court.

A note on quotes: Statements within quotation marks were heard directly by one or both of the two reporters. Quoted statements without quotation marks come from court documents, police reports, and/or the recollections of people who were there.

PROJECT STAFF

Reporters: Dan Browning,dbrowning@startribune.com,

and Pam Louwagie,plouwagie@startribune.com

Designer: Leslie Plesser

Story editor: Beth Podtburg

Photo editor: Vickie Kettlewell

Copy editors: Judy Arginteanu and Pamela Miller

Graphic designer: Eddie Thomas

Projects editor: Laurie Hertzel, lhertzel@startribune.com

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