On April 30, 2009, Ka Leo published an article, “Modern-day slaves in Hawai‘i,” that quoted extensively from an alleged former sex slave. Ka Leo has been unable to verify the existence of the source, Marissa Higa.
The story said Higa was an English major at the University of Hawai‘i, but the UH English department said they have no record of anybody by that name. Nobody with the name “Marissa Higa” has existed in the UH student database for the past four years, although Higa said in e-mails to Mary Reuter that she was taking classes at UH.
This problem came to Ka Leo’s attention after a list of corrections was published on June 24 that said 29 sources from former news editor Kris DeRego’s articles could not be verified as UH students. The discrepancies were found in articles that ran from January 2008 to May 2009.
Reuter, who wrote the article about Higa and the sex trade industry, said DeRego gave her Higa’s e-mail address for an article on sex trafficking in Hawai‘i to try and bring awareness to the issue. In an e-mail to Reuter, DeRego wrote, “(Higa) said that she was willing to talk about what she’d been through.”
When Reuter asked DeRego if Higa would be willing to meet with her in person or if she preferred e-mail, he encouraged Reuter to correspond with Higa through e-mail because of her busy schedule.
“The virtue of e-mail correspondence is that you can access it at your leisure (and quote directly, of course),” DeRego said in an e-mail to Reuter.
In an interview with Ka Leo, DeRego said, “I was doing everything that I could to serve as an advocate for victims of sexual slavery, human trafficking, etc. in the islands.” DeRego said he helped Higa escape from a brothel in spring 2008, which Higa affirmed in her e-mails to Reuter. According to DeRego, Higa stayed at his house for a couple of days then left, and they have had limited contact since then. He said he does not have her phone number or address, nor does he know where she works.
DeRego has been unable to provide any proof of Higa’s existence. When DeRego was asked if he had impersonated Marissa Higa in the e-mails he said, “No, I didn’t pretend to be Marissa, not at all.” He said during the process, it didn’t occur to him that he would need to document everything, saying, “I don’t have evidentiary support for going into a brothel over a year ago to help somebody, I don’t have evidentiary support for her staying at my house.”
Reuter said she doesn’t want this correction “to detract from the importance of being aware and learning about sex trafficking because it really is an important issue.” She said she trusted her news editor and had every reason to believe that Higa was a legitimate source.
Referring to the original article, Kathryn Xian with the Pacific Alliance to Stop Slavery said, “The story (about Higa) is very similar to survivors’ stories. The only thing that is not accurate is that a survivor usually would not agree to publicize a story like this so soon after her rescue (which [was said to be] in April 2008). That is not common at all. It takes years of therapy for a survivor to be able to talk publicly about her experience and many never get to that point.”
In an e-mail to Reuter, Higa said, “I guess if I was being quoted anonymously it would make me feel like I had something to hide or something I should be ashamed of, but I don’t think that’s true and I’ve worked very hard to get to a point where I can say that truthfully.”
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