Program paints grim picture of human trafficking

By: ANDREA MOSS - Staff Writer | Saturday, March 25, 2006 11:10 PM PST ∞

RANCHO BERNARDO ---- More than 60 people got a sobering snapshot Saturday of the problem of women and young girls being forced into prostitution or slave labor.

A nearly all-female audience listened attentively as five experts involved in coordinated efforts to stop human trafficking and teen prostitution shared shocking statistics, as well as personal insights during a program at the Seven Oaks Community Center. Some of the information left listeners sitting in stunned silence or shaking their heads in disbelief.

The speakers said forced labor or prostitution is a modern-day form of slavery. The description covers people pressed to labor as domestic servants, nannies, agricultural workers, restaurant workers or other types of laborers through the use of force, fraud or coercion, as well as those forced into prostitution, the experts said.

Women and young children are the typical victims, they said. Human trafficking and prostitution will not go away until community members join the fight against it, the speakers said.

"There's no police agency in the world that can do this alone," said San Diego County Sheriff's Department Deputy Rick Castro, who heads a regional task force set up to document and fight the problem. "We all need to work together on this."

The American Association of University Women organized Saturday's event with financial support from the Soroptimist clubs of Poway and Rancho Bernardo. Rescued trafficking victims had been scheduled to tell their stories at the program, but did not attend.

Immigration attorney Lilia Velasquez, who represents many of the women, said they were too ashamed about what has happened to them to talk about it. The reaction is common and illustrates the emotional toll that trafficking takes on its victims, she said.

"It takes years and years of counseling before they can talk about it," Velasquez said.

She and the other experts shared numbers and stories of forced servitude, rapes, gang rape, and other types of human trafficking, drawn from their experiences with the task force. It received a three-year, $448,134 federal grant last year.

Several of the cases cited Saturday have made headlines in North County. They include the 2001 arrests of 40-plus people accused of smuggling teenage girls into the country from Mexico; the girls allegedly were forced into prostitution in migrant labor camps.

Velasquez said investigators were able to break the case because a 15-year-old victim helped law enforcement officers survey the camps for months before the trafficking ring was broken up. The case became the "poster case" for the problem in San Diego, but victims' reluctance to testify eventually forced prosecutors to dismiss all charges, Velasquez said.

Marisa Ugarte, executive director of the Bi-Lateral Safety Corridor Coalition, and Kathi Hardi, founder and executive director of Freedom From Exploitation, said the problem can be traced to the mind-set of those forced into slavery. Both organizations help trafficking victims after they are rescued.

Traffickers typically target poor and uneducated girls living in difficult circumstances and desperate for a way out, Ugarte said. Victims are either kidnapped or promised a better life, aid in getting into the United States if need be, and help in securing a good or glamorous job, she said.

Once a trafficker gains control of them, the girls ---- often Latinos, Asians or Eastern Europeans who speak little or no English ---- are told they owe a huge amount of money that they must work off, then are locked up or isolated and forced to labor or prostitute themselves, said Ugarte. Traffickers use beatings, rape, threats of violence to family members, and psychological abuse to control victims, she said.

Hardi said victims' experiences leave them feeling too ashamed to return home, powerless, and that only their traffickers will want them.

San Diego deputy district attorney Melissa Diaz said area law enforcement agencies are doing a better job of working together to stop human trafficking and help its victims in recent years. Those efforts the centralization of the district attorney's office's sex crimes divisions and decision to file the heaviest charges possible against those arrested for trafficking, she said.

Money and manpower shortfalls at all area law enforcement agencies, though, inhibit their ability to combat the problem, she said. Castro agreed, saying he is one of just two law enforcement officers in the county assigned to fight human trafficking on a full-time basis.

The task force spent the first year of its grant developing training materials and educating law enforcement officials and the public about the problem, and now plans to actively seek out trafficking rings, he said. The public can help by keeping an eye out for potential victims, the deputy said.

That includes quietly asking workers at escort services, massage parlors, nail salons and similar businesses where they sleep, whether they are free to go, sleep and eat when they want, and whether they have been threatened, then reporting suspicious situations, Castro said. Community members can also, Diaz said, help by making it known that they want law enforcement officials to make fighting the problem a priority.

Contact staff writer Andrea Moss at (760) 739-6654 or amoss@nctimes.com.

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