Sen. Katie Britt, R-Ala., is considered within the U.S. Capitol at some level of votes on Tuesday, January 9, 2024.
Anna Moneymaker | Getty Photos
Alabama Republican Sen. Katie Britt is below fire for the usage of what looks to be a sex trafficking victim’s abilities from the early 2000s to sentence President Joe Biden and his border policy.
Britt gave the GOP rebuttal to Biden’s Pronounce of the Union handle to Congress this week.
At some level of her rebuttal, Britt referenced a talk over with to the Del Rio sector of the Texas border the put she depicted a reputedly personal conversation with someone who had survived sex trafficking by groups within the U.S.
“That is the put I spoke to a woman who shared her myth with me,” Britt talked about within the video. “She had been sex trafficked by the cartels starting up on the age of 12.”
The victim Britt referenced was once Karla Jacinto Romero, who was once sex trafficked in Mexico — no longer the United States, as the senator suggested — from 2004 to 2008, twenty years sooner than the Democrat Biden become president.
The journalist Jonathan Katz first pieced together Britt’s presentation of Jacinto Romero’s abilities in a TikTok video.
Britt reputedly tried to original the parable as a damning instance of Biden’s border management.
“We would no longer be okay with this happening in a third-world nation,” she added. “President Biden’s border policies are a disgrace. This crisis is unsuitable.”
Nevertheless Jacinto Romero did no longer abilities sex trafficking within the U.S. because Biden’s border policy — because he was once no longer president from 2004 to 2008 and because she was once sex trafficked in Mexico.
Katz slammed Britt for the implication that Jacinto Romero divulged her experiences privately.
“Britt tells it cherish she’s sitting by the banks of the Rio Grande, cherish preserving her hand, cherish getting her to inform the parable that she may presumably perchance no longer expose any individual else,” he talked about.
In its place, he added, Jacinto Romero is a public advocate for sex trafficking and has consistently shared her myth publicly to shed light on the scenario. Jacinto Romero has testified to U.S. Congress, the Mexican Home of Representatives and the Vatican, in accordance with a transient 2015 profile in a U.S. Home of Representatives document.
Britt visited the Del Rio space in January 2023 on a joint day out with Sens. Marsha Blackburn, R-Tenn., and Cindy Hyde-Smith, R-Leave out. At some level of that day out, Jacinto Romero seemed at a press convention with Britt, Blackburn and Hyde-Smith the put she publicly relayed her grueling sex-trafficking myth.
Britt has faced a flurry of online criticism since the parable was once exposed as misplaced, compounding earlier disapproval about her rebuttal’s transport.
“So no longer handiest was once Katie Britt a flaming embarrassment. She is additionally an out and out liar. Alabama’s finest!” political scientist Norman Ornstein wrote in an X put up.
Ornstein is a section of a broader refrain of journalists and others slamming Britt for her storytelling.
“This was once ragged Alabama politics. The politics of danger and confusion,” Alabama columnist Kyle Whitmire wrote on X. “Britt blamed Biden for an assault that looks to comprise happened Twenty years ago. Her spokesman may presumably perchance no longer give a sure reply when requested.”
Christine Pelosi, political strategist and daughter of former Home Speaker Nancy Pelosi, demanded in a Saturday X put up that Britt insist regret “for lying in regards to the horrific case of sexual violence that you just exploited for political purposes.”
Sean Ross, spokesperson for Sen. Britt, did no longer divulge that Jacinto Romero is the sex-trafficking survivor in demand of however doubled down on Britt’s myth.
“The parable Senator Britt told was once 100% moral,” Ross talked about in a commentary to CNBC. “Nevertheless there are extra harmless victims of that extra or less disgusting, brutal trafficking by the cartels than ever sooner than appropriate now.”
Though sex trafficking has taken put within the U.S. below the Biden administration, Jacinto Romero’s sex-trafficking myth is no longer an instance of it.
“This day, Karla is a actually chuffed and successful mother of two exquisite girls, a wife, a student, and an global activist,” reads the 2015 Home document.
