As many teens do, B and her friends used to call up boys to be silly and flirt a bit.
But one day, after getting into an argument with her family, she called up a man she had met through a chat line and asked him to come pick her up from her suburban Sacramento neighborhood.
He did, and on that day B–not yet 16–lost her freedom.
The man held her captive inside a Bay Area apartment and forced her into prostitution the next two years.
“I really wanted to leave but I couldn’t,” said B, whose name is being withheld because the man is still out there. “I was watched like a hawk. I knew I had a small window to get away.”
B was a victim of human trafficking, a crime that law enforcement has put high on its target list in the past few years.
“I want people to think about it, it could happen to anyone’s kid,” B said. “There’s not a look, an age or a face to this.”
Right here at home
Human trafficking was a focal point of awareness campaigns and news stories in the weeks leading up to the Super Bowl, but county officials, nonprofits and survivors say the problem is so pervasive in Santa Clara County that it can’t be benched now that the teams and fans have left town.
Modern-day slavery likely takes place in the county every day and traffickers don’t discriminate; they target people of all backgrounds by means of force, fraud and coercion, officials say.
Trafficking victims can be found working in restaurants, nail salons, nursing homes or food trucks. They can be seen peddling wares or cleaning buildings. Many are forced into prostitution, pornography or exotic dancing.
Law enforcement officials estimate that at least half of trafficking victims in the United States are citizens, despite a perception that most are smuggled into the country. About 80 percent of them are female and about half are children.
Experts surmise more men and boys are likely victims than what the numbers show, and note that many cases go unreported or are categorized under other crime categories such as wage theft.
California, New York and Florida have become hotbeds for the human trafficking industry, according to county officials, likely because those states have large and diverse populations and victims can easily be moved around them through a plethora of docks, airports and other transportation systems.
“Human trafficking is too big of a business to go away on its own,” said Santa Clara County District Attorney Jeff Rosen, adding that although his office used the Super Bowl as a sounding stage to spread awareness, it will aggressively pursue trafficking cases the rest of this year and for many years to come. “This is not a game, it’s a rescue mission. We view every rescue as a success regardless if we are able to prosecute.”
By its very nature, human trafficking is a difficult crime for law enforcement and prosecutors to tackle because criminals prey on the vulnerabilities of victims, said Assistant District Attorney Terry Harman.
The office prosecuted 15 human trafficking cases last year, 14 of which involved sex trafficking and one labor trafficking. The year before, seven cases were prosecuted. All of these cases are still ongoing but Harman said a typical sentence for someone convicted of trafficking humans is 10 years or more, and it may take two years to get to trial.
In November, three Saratoga residents were charged with three felony counts of human trafficking and one count of wage theft. The case involved at least four victims who came from Spain seeking work. According to authorities, one woman wasn’t allowed to leave the salon she worked in for almost no pay and one man received no pay at all while working 60 hours a week at a tapas restaurant.
“The dynamics are that it’s rare for a victim to come forward,” Harman said. “We had to redefine how we determine success.”
For the district attorney’s office, success is in part measured by helping victims find emergency housing and connecting them to services such as counseling or to nonprofits focused on survivors of sex or labor trafficking. A victory is when a survivor is separated from his or her exploiter.
Fear, intimidation and shame keep some victims from seeking help in the justice system, so officials count on residents to report suspicious circumstances.
“If a cop pulls over a car and there’s a bunch of dope, we know there’s a crime,” Harman said. “But with trafficking we have to have a victim come forward or we need law enforcement to be alerted–and a lot of that is Good Samaritan reporting.”
Most tips that come in go to the Santa Clara County Human Trafficking Task Force, which is comprised of three members of the Sheriff’s Department, one FBI agent and two employees from the District Attorney’s office, including an investigator.
Harman said one tip that led to a case came from a neighbor who noticed the only time a woman left her house was to take the garbage out on collection days and she always looked sad.
The neighbor called police because something just didn’t seem right. And she was right–the woman was being held against her will inside the home.
“If you are aware…there may be something else about an incident that hits you–it’s just odd,” she said.
Face in the crowd
No one called police when B was being shoved around in the hallways of a Bay Area apartment building.
Nor did anyone call to report that B–still a teenager at the time–only left the building under the watchful eye of a man almost 30 years older, even though “Missing Children” fliers with her photo were posted just around the corner.
“If you see something, say something,” the 21-year-old survivor said. “There were fliers right down the street from me but nobody called the police. A lot of people think ‘she’s not a kid anymore, she’s a prostitute.’ But what makes one (child) any different than any other (child)?”
She and her friends would go on the chat line to “be silly” and have fun talking to guys. That’s how she met the man, and got into trouble. He told her he needed someone to spoil. She initially shrugged off his romantic overtures and told him she was too young, thinking it would scare him off. But it didn’t.
“He began to call me obsessively; he started acting like he was my boyfriend,” B recalled.
Then in the heat of a family argument, she made an impulsive decision and asked him to take her away from home.
“He drove to Sacramento the next day and drove me to the Bay Area,” she said. “He wined and dined and gave me anything I could ask for.”
After two months, B was picked up by police during a prostitution sting and brought back home. She was put on juvenile house arrest and attached with an ankle monitor.
When she told the man over the phone that she couldn’t return to him, he became enraged.
“It got to me,” she said, adding that she didn’t want to upset him. “I told him to come get me. He got me and cut off my ankle monitor.”
Now she was a runaway, which gave him additional leverage–and that’s when everything changed, she said.
“I found out he was married. I found out he was a pimp. I found out he was an exploiter. He began beating me.”
At first, shame and a fear of facing consequences at home or of being beaten kept B from trying to escape.
“I felt like it was my fault,” she said. “I blamed myself and thought this is what I deserved because I came to him. After six months, I really wanted to leave but I couldn’t. I was watched like a hawk.”
The pimp began to post her picture online advertising sex, then bring her to prostitution calls. The physical violence began to escalate.
“I would feel terrified,” she said. “He would tell me I had to stay out until I came up with the money. It grossed me out…I didn’t want them to look at me, I didn’t want them to touch me.”
Just months before she turned 18, her exploiter was arrested on a charge unrelated to her captivity.
“When he was in jail, I knew I had to make an escape,” B said.
When asked what motivated her to seize that moment, B said a combination of things. She had seen him “brutalize” other girls far worse than he had ever hurt her. He had also said he was going to marry her when she was of age.
“I knew if we got married…he would kill me,” she said.
She walked away from her abuser and exploiter on her own–but didn’t seek help from programs, authorities or even her family at first. Out of fear of retaliation, she didn’t report her trafficker.
“I felt so alone,” she said. “I didn’t want to call family at the time…I felt gross, degraded.”
Her relationship with her mother has grown stronger over time. B is married today, employed as a full-time accountant and developing ideas to help trafficking survivors get management jobs.
With the help of counseling and a mentor from Love Never Fails, a human-trafficking awareness and survivor support organization based in San Jose and Dublin, B said she was able to take on one of the biggest challenges of her life: self-forgiveness.
She is on Love Never Fails’ board of directors and regularly speaks to youth about being aware of trafficking and exploitation.
“I want people to know that you can make something of your life,” she said. “What they told you is not true. Before I met him I had so many dreams and aspirations. When I met him, I forgot all of them. It’s like I was brainwashed.”
Know the signs
Though sex trafficking might be easier to detect, labor trafficking is believed to be more prevalent worldwide and in Santa Clara County.
“Statistics indicate that a lot of labor trafficking happens in the home,” Assistant District Attorney Harman said. “And sometimes if they are coming from out of the country, they are made a promise.”
As an example, the South Bay Coalition to End Human Trafficking points to a woman who was recruited to work in a nursing home. Upon arrival, she was told she had to work off a travel debt.
She was then required to work in a second nursing home and to clean the homes of the trafficker and the trafficker’s family, all without pay.
Another woman traveled to San Jose after being persuaded to take care of her trafficker’s grandchild. Her passport was taken upon arrival by the trafficker and she was told she needed to work off $10,000. After she had done so, the trafficker increased his demands.
In another case, a homeless man was befriended by a trafficker in a Santa Clara County shelter but the relationship turned to threats of physical violence if he didn’t hand over his money from begging and cashing in recyclables. Whenever the man refused to beg or collect recyclables, the trafficker would beat him.
“Labor trafficking is alive and well,” said Vanessa Scott Russell, founder of Love Never Fails. “Some of the most common (examples) of labor trafficking are those on the corner selling T-shirts or hot dogs. Ask questions; is this an entrepreneur or someone brought here?”
Russell said people shouldn’t be afraid to ask questions, especially of someone who works in an establishment they often frequent or have a rapport with.
If an employee doesn’t seem to be in control, displays poor physical health, seems overly nervous or avoids eye contact, feel free to ask questions out of the presence of a possible exploiter, or call authorities, she said.
Some questions might be as simple as asking what the employee did over the weekend. Others might need to be more direct, such as “are you being threatened?” or “can you leave?”
“Ask questions if things don’t seem quite right,” Russell said.
What next?
County officials, prosecutors and anti-trafficking organizations have recognized that one of the biggest barriers to victims coming forward is the uncertainty of what happens next.
There may be immigration issues to deal with, a fear of retaliation, drug addiction, emotional trauma or anxiety over where else to go.
Harman said the district attorney’s office and local organizations usually can find emergency housing for victims.
“It’s long-term housing that is a problem,” she said. “Everyone needs that foundation. You need a safe place to live, and from there you can explore.”
That’s where a network of more than 50 Northern California organizations and agencies step in, such as Love Never Fails, which offers mentoring, housing, education and workforce development, and Freedom House, which operates two safe houses for survivors.
Jaida Im, founder of Freedom House, said a comprehensive program for people in a “vulnerable state” is just as important as a rescue.
First, someone must be moved to a safe, undisclosed environment, then his or her trauma must be addressed. Her nonprofit operates The Monarch, a home for women in Northern California, and The Nest, a home for minors in Santa Clara County.
“We help reset their mindset from lies and mistrust and help them understand what is right and what is wrong,” she said.
From there, Im’s staff helps survivors find “empowerment” through education and therapy, and provides them with assistance during any legal processes.
Typically clients reside in one of the homes for 18 months, but sometimes more.
“We help them become self-sufficient and it takes a lot of people to help them,” she said. “If given that opportunity where they are given empowerment and regain trust in the community…they thrive.”
But the community needs to understand more about trafficking, she added. “People don’t understand it’s happening in their own backyard,” Im said.
To report suspicious activity, calls can be made to the National Human Trafficking Hotline at 1.888.373.7888 or directly to local law enforcement.
