Human Trafficking

To avoid another tragedy like last fall's Tacony dungeon case, in which four mentally disabled people were discovered locked in a basement, the Social Security Administration is changing how it selects and monitors people who receive benefits on behalf of disabled individuals. Prodded by U.S. Sen. Bob Casey (D., Pa.), the administration will launch a pilot project Monday in Philadelphia that changes how it screens people applying to be "representative payees" for those with disabilities.

Today on PhillyDailyNews.com: View an interactive timeline looking back at the troubled career of former Police Officer Richard DeCoatsworth. IN 2008, AFTER the sentencing of a man who shot him in the face, Richard DeCoatsworth, who was then a Philly cop, said: "That young man's life is over now. He's going to have to find some way to get used to his new home. I'm sure the guys up there [in state prison] can't wait to meet him. " But this weekend, it was DeCoatsworth who found a new home behind bars, after he was charged with 32 crimes - including promoting prostitution, human trafficking and rape - for two cases involving alleged heinous acts against women.

RE JENICE Armstrong's column on Ashley Dupre: As the owner of an escort service, my view is that if there are consenting adults and no coercion, lawmakers should just make prostitution legal as in parts of Nevada and some foreign countries. Why should the law penalize one person's consenting actions if she can make a living at it? If you're good at something, why not get paid for it if there's no harm done? If politicians and law-enforcement really wanted to go wild with the prosecution of prostitution, they may as well go after women who marry men for the money in these huge divorce settlements.

MANY Daily News readers were no doubt shocked recently to learn that human trafficking and sexual slavery may be occurring right here in the Delaware Valley. In the Berwyn case that the paper put on Page 1, the system apparently worked. The victims are in the process of obtaining the status allowing their continued presence in the U.S., and the traffickers are being prosecuted. But what if those two courageous women had instead succumbed to the threats, violence and pressure of their handlers?

July Fourth fiasco I've been increasingly dismayed by how Welcome America manages the Fourth of July parade, concert and fireworks show. As The Inquirer reported, it tries to satisfy two audiences - the television audience and families who travel from Kensington and Kingsessing, Cheltenham and Lansdowne, and Chestnut Hill and Somerton to be there. Year after year, the audience at the event loses out. The parade is no longer a parade; it moves in fits and starts. People who line the curbs frequently have to wait 10 to 15 minutes at a time without hearing any music played.

Luna is keenly aware that play begins next month in the World Cup soccer tournament here, but she doesn't have a favorite team. "How the games go has nothing to do with me," she said, sitting in the bedroom where she does her work. "But I'll be ready to make money during the halftime breaks. " Luna, who uses only one name professionally, is one of an estimated 400,000 female sex workers in a country that legalized prostitution in 2002. But that won't be enough to fulfill the demands of the millions of fans who will flock to Germany during the tournament, experts say. An additional 40,000 are expected to come from outside Germany during the month-long tournament, at least some of whom, advocates worry, will have been forced into the sex trade.

Anne turned 45 last month. She's amazed she made it. Before dawn on an icy February morning last year, Anne was trolling for business on the corner of Kensington Avenue and Westmoreland Street. She had been on a crack bender for weeks and needed money. A woman in a car pulled up. "Do you ever do it with girls?" the stranger asked. Whatever, Anne thought, and slid into the passenger seat. She figured she could easily rip off the woman, then get the hell out of the car. As the stranger turned down an alley, Anne glanced in the rearview mirror.

Sixteen years after Madonna got in trouble with the Vatican for her supposed misuse of Catholic symbols in the music video for "Like a Prayer," Miss Blond Ambition is rattling the religious again. This time, it's the song "Isaac," from her new Confessions on a Dance Floor CD, that's causing the controversy. MTV reports that Israeli Kabbalist rabbis say "Isaac" is about the 16th century Jewish mystic Yitzhak Luria, whose name, according to Jewish law, cannot be used for profit. Rabbis Rafael Cohen and Israel Deri told the Israeli newspaper Maariv they were calling for Madonna - get this - to be thrown out of Kabbalah!

The sea is so wide and my boat is so small, goes the children's prayer. In this case it was a Nigerian-registered rust bucket, overloaded with 180 to 250 purchased children, some as young as 8 or 10, who must have stared wide eyed at the rolling waves of Africa's Gulf of Guinea. The saga of the African children's slave ship seemed to founder in confusion yesterday when the ship reappeared at a Benin port, sans children. The mystery of what became of the children is urgent, but even when that is explained, the underlying issue will remain.