MIAMI – Experts say the arrest of a Miami pharmacist is bringing new attention to the prevalence of child sex tourism in Colombia.
Authorities said just as Stefan Andres Correa stepped onto a Miami International Airport jet bridge to board a flight to Bogotá Friday, an outbound border search revealed the 42-year-old — traveling alone — was carrying about nine cellphones.
On some of those devices, Homeland Security Investigations agents based out of MIA would discover photos and videos of Correa raping young girls and a conversation with a sex trafficker about his plans to victimize an 11-year-old girl, prosecutors allege.
Court documents state that in a graphic series of text messages, Correa promised that both the trafficker and the girl would get $300,000 Colombian pesos — about $75 — and the girl would receive an iPhone, as long as he was allowed to rape her in Medellín.
He had similar conversations and made similar promises about another girl of similar age, prosecutors allege.
“I don’t want her to say ‘no,’” they allege Correa texted the trafficker in Spanish, later telling him, “Please don’t interrupt, no matter what happens, OK?”
Investigators said Correa told them he flew to Colombia on numerous occasions to sexually abuse children. Prosecutors said that records show he traveled to Colombia roughly 45 times since 2022.
Medellín’s mayor sounded off on the platform X, formerly known as Twitter, after the arrest, posting in part: “These abuses against our children have been occurring with great intensity for years. We are not going to rest in this fight that has only just begun.”
Mayor Fico Gutiérrez added the English hashtag “#Don’tEvenTryIt.”
“Unfortunately since the ‘Cocaine Cowboy’ days back in the 80s there has been a war on children and that has led to the sexual exploitation of children,” attorney Kristen Reynoso Jackwin, who has represented clients in federal investigations, told Local 10 News. “It is children as young as 12 years old and they are finding U.S. citizens with children in hotel rooms and it is horrific.”
Gutiérrez recently announced new measures to combat child sex tourism, including seizing properties from owners that allow the sexual exploitation of minors.
Jackwin said while she commends the mayor, more needs to be done.
“Because simply shutting them down, there are always other ways that they can open up new locations to continue to do this exploitation of children,” she said.
Jackwin said prosecuting cases is not the only objective outlined in a partnership between the U.S. and Colombia, signed two years ago, but explained it is key to robustly combatting child sex tourism.
That partnership is called the U.S. – Colombia Child Protection Compact.
“You actually prosecute the offenders and that has been an issue, because a lot of these cases are not actually prosecuted,” Jackwin said. “There are 200,000 children in Colombia that are affected by sex crimes every single year and a mere couple of thousand are actually prosecuted, so making more strides that the prosecution happens and these children are treated as victims as opposed to perpetrators of crimes themselves.”
The U.S. Embassy in Colombia has promoted joint measures with officials in the country to combat sex trafficking.
Medellín: The sinister side of an increase in global tourism
Local 10 News spoke with an expert to explain why Medellín has developed a reputation for child sex trafficking.
Larry Gumbiner, a retired U.S. diplomat who spent two stints at America’s embassy in Bogotá, said Colombia is “opening up to the world and, with that, you are seeing a lot of the underbelly of international tourism, which is the international sex tourist trade.”
Gumbiner now works at consulting firm WestExec Advisors as its senior advisor for Latin America and the Caribbean. He said Colombia went through decades of low tourism owing to internal conflict between the country and guerilla groups.
Gumbiner said when that finally calmed down, “it kind of opened up a whole new country that had not been available to many tourists.”
“So you began to see, particularly in Medellín which was the epicenter of Pablo Escobar’s fiefdom — and it was a dangerous place to be for many years — finally became opened up to the world,” he said.
As the city has cleaned up its image, cracking down on the drug trade to attract tourists, with that has come child sex tourists, Gumbiner said.
“It is a wonderful city, lots of attractions, great weather, attracting tourists and along with that, what we have seen, prostitution is legal in Colombia for adults, but prostitution among minors began to explode and with it developed a reputation as a place you can go, because it’s inexpensive for Americans,” he said.
Gumbiner added that Gutiérrez is likely weighing in on the issue now because the recent high-profile arrests of U.S. citizens there has catapulted the issue into the court of public opinion.
“This has been building for many years in terms of Medellin and the growth of this industry,” Gumbiner said. “It built into a crescendo when they found an American citizen with two underage girls in his hotel room. I think, finally, for the political system, it reached a breaking point where the mayor felt he had to do something.”
As for Correa’s case, the pharmacist, facing federal charges of attempted sex trafficking of a minor and attempted travel to engage in illicit sex conduct, is scheduled to appear in Miami federal court Friday for a detention hearing.
If found guilty, he faces a mandatory minimum sentence of 15 years in prison with a maximum sentence of life in prison, as well as up to a lifetime of supervised release.
No booking photo was available for Correa; mug shots are not provided for suspects in federal custody.
In practice, however, booking photos are typically available in South Florida federal cases originating in Fort Lauderdale, since those suspects are generally jailed through the Broward Sheriff’s Office, rather than federally, while they await their court dates. Correa’s case, though, originates in Miami federal court.