Human trafficking becomes a local issue
The term human trafficking used to conjure up images of young impoverished girls in Southeast Asia for Diane McKeel. Now she sees it as an issue affecting young women and girls right here in East Multnomah County.
“It’s an issue in all of our schools, in all of our neighborhoods,” said McKeel, who represents Gresham and East County on the Multnomah County Board of Commissioners. “I used to think, ‘Oh that happens in foreign countries.’ But it’s happening in our shopping malls. It’s amazing.”
As defined by federal law, human trafficking victims are subjected to force, fraud or coercion for the purposes of forced labor or sexual exploitation.
Some victims are immigrants, forced to sell drugs to pay off passage into the country. But increasingly, police are arresting prostitutes, only to find that the young teens or adults in custody are victims of human trafficking.
Portland second worst in nation
As part of a national effort to identify pimps and child prostitutes, Portland yielded the second highest number of arrests and victims in a 30-city sting conducted by FBI agents and local police in February 2009.
Seven girls and six pimps were taken into custody at four sites across the Portland-metro area. Another 14 adult female prostitutes were arrested, as were three clients, or “johns.”
And that was only during an eight-hour period. Other cities netted fewer pimps, victims and clients across a 24-hour period.
“What they have been subjected to is slavery, pure and simple,” said U.S. Sen. Ron Wyden, D-Ore., as part of his testimony on Feb. 26, before a federal Senate Judiciary subcommittee on human rights.
At the international level, girls are subjected to forced marriages and immigrants work as unpaid labor. But in the United States, children tend to be sexually exploited by pimps or other adults.
And Oregon — and Portland in particular — are increasingly becoming hubs for child sex trafficking. Interstate 5, which bisects the state, is partly to blame, making it easy for pimps to traffic victims up and down the corridor, McKeel said.
As a result, McKeel is spearheading the county’s fight against human trafficking and is working to open a shelter for sexual-trafficking victims.
She also has joined forces with state lawmakers to pass local legislation designed to help victims.
Legislation passed, proposed
During last month’s emergency session, state legislators unanimously passed a human trafficking bill inspired by McKeel’s efforts.
The bill allows the Polaris Project, a Washington, D.C.,-based nonprofit organization fighting human trafficking, to include stickers with its national hotline number in the Oregon Liquor Control Commission’s yearly mailings to 11,000 bars, restaurants, grocers and liquor stores statewide.
Stickers are to be posted in prominent places — windows, bathrooms and the like — where human trafficking victims are most likely to see them.
Wyden also has introduced a bill aimed at protecting victims, prosecuting their pimps and providing more law enforcement against trafficking.
His legislation would fund shelters for human trafficking victims, complete with counseling, legal aid, education, job training and daily needs, such as food and clothing.
If approved, funding would go to areas with the most need, including Oregon. Each pilot program would receive $2.5 million to be used for shelters, in addition to investigations and training for police agencies and social service providers working with victims.
Shelters critical
Creating shelters for victims is the first step in addressing the problem, Wyden said.
“Without a place for the girls to escape to, they return to life on the street and to the same men who exploited them in the first place,” he said. “That leaves police and prosecutors with no victim and no case.”
In the U.S., there are only about 70 shelter beds for sex trafficking victims across 50 states, Wyden said. “So the pimps are just playing the odds,” he added.
McKeel is focusing her efforts on opening a secure 22-bed shelter in the Portland area for child trafficking victims. Security is critical, she said. Brainwashed victims, even if placed in foster care away from their pimps, often run back to them and refuse to testify. Or pimps find their victims and intimidate them back into working the streets.
Either way, the legal case against the pimp is lost.
“Just one girl could be a combination of a victim, evidence, and a witness all in one misguided package,” wrote Keith Bickford, deputy sheriff with the Multnomah County Sheriff’s Office who heads the state’s human trafficking task force, in a newsletter.
Meanwhile, the community at large is left wondering, “Why don’t they just leave?” McKeel said.
Tightly controlled
These women, and in some cases men, are under the control of pimps, who intimidate, brainwash and beat them into submission. The pimps control every aspect of their lives — when they eat, sleep, use the restroom — as they are shuttled across cities, states, even countries.
Often, victims are runaways who’ve been sexually abused. They have no family or home to go back to and consider their pimps and fellow trafficking victims their family.
Once trafficked, many are arrested, resulting in criminal records that make it difficult to return to society. Also, many victims become addicted to drugs — to either cope with their lives or at the urging of pimps who know it’s one more way to control them.
All of this makes it less likely for victims to leave their pimps, McKeel said.
And then there’s the money.
One girl or woman generates an average of $200,000 a year, money she or he rarely sees a dime of, said Wyden during his Feb. 26 testimony before the federal Senate committee on human rights.
Meanwhile, there seems to be an endless supply of potential victims. Pimps typically target runaway and homeless youths, McKeel said. Many have histories of sexual abuse and trauma, making them ideal targets.
But don’t be fooled. Victims come from every neighborhood and every socioeconomic background in the Portland-metro area, she said.
Through her efforts to fight human trafficking, McKeel has learned pimps wait outside schools to target children. Also, because students are allowed to be in school until the age of 21, some pimps send prostitutes back to high school to recruit other girls from within.
“These are young girls,” McKeel said of those being groomed and recruited into sex trafficking. “I think it’s our mind set that it happens somewhere else. But it’s happening right here, right now. And it has to stop.”
Human trafficking statistics
• An estimated 300,000 minors or children are being trafficked for sexual exploitation in the United States. Of those victims, about 90 percent are U.S. citizens. An estimated 15,000 to 18,000 victims are brought into the U.S. each year.
• Average age for a victim’s first encounter with forced prostitution is 13.
• Since it started in December 2007, the National Human Trafficking Resource Center Hotline operated by the Polaris Project had received more than 14,000 calls.
• One in three runaways who end up on the street will be lured or forced into prostitution within 48 hours.
Sources: The U.S. Department of Justice, Federal Bureau of Investigations