A voice of outrage from within

By Dan Browning and Pam Louwagie, Star Tribune

Last update: October 10, 2005 - 11:00 PM

Ilean Her's concern about young Hmong girls getting raped in St. Paul started in church.

About 10 years ago, Her, 36, noticed that a number of the girls who sang in the congregation's fourth- through eighth-grade choir group were disappearing for weeks at a time.

Her taught Sunday school classes to some of the girls' parents, who confided that their daughters had run away. When they returned, Her reached out to them and encouraged them to talk. The girls trusted her, she said, because she was young -- in her early 20s at the time -- kept things friendly and treated them with respect.

The girls told lurid stories about running off with their boyfriends -- many of them gang members -- who later forced them to have group sex or work as prostitutes.

"And then when they started disappearing," Her said, "you feel like, oh, you're so sad."

She was busy with law school at the time. But she and a friend, Out Vang, were so concerned about what they were hearing at their Roseville church that they started a girls' support group. They organized group discussions and took girls to lunch or dinner just to show them someone cared about them. Her said they wanted to bridge the communication gap between the girls and their estranged families.

The group lasted several years, until Her and Vang started their own careers and got too busy. Her became a lawyer and now is executive director of the Council on Asian-Pacific Minnesotans, a state agency that represents residents from 40 countries. Vang works on catastrophic losses for an insurance agency.

Her's interest in Hmong runaway girls was rekindled in fall 2003 with the arrests of Marla Thao and her boyfriend, Tha Ying Moua, for prostituting 12- and 13-year-old Hmong runaways. Each was convicted and sent to prison.

Thao had attended the girls' support group, Her said. "With Marla, it's a very sad story," she said. "Even when she was in her early teens she would run away and be gone for many days."

Ten Hmong men, ranging in age from 36 to 59, were eventually charged with hiring a minor for prostitution, which is a felony. Her said the arrests got only muted attention in the Hmong community.

"The community didn't come out and say, 'Oh my gosh, we're outraged,' " she said.

Instead, the Ramsey County attorney's office, the St. Paul public schools, law enforcement and other government agencies stepped up to create the Hmong Youth Task Force to try to stop the problem. Her and other outspoken Hmong women signed on to help.

She fears the task force will fade away like her own girls' support group unless it can rally the Hmong leadership. That means getting the support of male elders.

Besides attending the Hmong Youth Task Force meetings, Her works with others to combat human trafficking. She helped promote a bill that was signed into law this year that will protect victims from being prosecuted for forced prostitution.

The writers are at dbrowning@startribune.com

and plouwagie@startribune.com.

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