Number of Human Trafficking Victims in O.C. on the Rise

By PAUL ANDERSON
City News Service

The number of human trafficking victims in Orange County doubled between 2011 and 2013 as law enforcement officials sought to rout pimps, free prostitutes and break up human smuggling rings, county officials said today.

A report on trends in human trafficking was released today to coincide with the unveiling of a Orange County Transportation Authority a bus with wrap- around ad promoting public awareness of the issue.

Orange County Supervisor Todd Spitzer, also an OCTA board member, said the agency’s buses serve about 1 million passengers weekly, and he hopes more people will come forward with information about human trafficking victims.

Eventually, all OCTA buses will carry ads that include phone numbers for reporting crimes, OCTA spokesman Joel Zlotnik said. Bus drivers also are being trained to recognize signs of human trafficking and have onboard radios for contacting law enforcement agencies, he said.

OCTA officials hope victims of human trafficking will see the ads and know there is help for them, Zlotnik said.

Sheriff Sandra Hutchens said Southern California is “one of the top destinations” for human traffickers and “Orange County has become a prime target.”

Anaheim police Chief Raul Quezada said that since his city has taken the lead in cracking down on human trafficking, there have been 750 investigations, 90 victims and about 350 arrests.

“We realize it’s not just a law enforcement problem, but a community problem,” Quezada said. “We’ve come a long way in our fight against human trafficking, but there’s a long way to go.”

Lita Mercado of Community Service Programs, a nonprofit that provides help for the victims of human trafficking, offered a number of statistics and trends that have been noted over the past few years. For instance, the perpetrators tend to be in their 20s and half the victims were teens or younger, she said.

About 65 percent of human trafficking victims are U.S. citizens, Mercado said. Most of the rest come from Mexico, the Philippines, South Korea, China, the United Kingdom, and Vietnam, but investigators are now seeing some victims from Iran, Kenya and North Korea, she added.

Not all of the victims come from dysfunctional families or have had difficult childhoods, Mercado said. Even those who have had stable upbringings can be seduced into the lifestyle by smooth-talking pimps, Mercado said.

Last year, the nonprofit noted in its report, that 28 women and eight men were victims of “labor trafficking,” while 177 females, one male and one transgender person were victims of sex trafficking.

In 2013, 35 of the victims of labor trafficking were adults and one was a child, 116 of the victims of prostitution were adult and 63 were children, according to the report.

Last year, there were 52 human trafficking related arrests and 48 were prosecuted. In 2012, there were 37 arrests and 33 were prosecuted. In 2011, there were 24 human trafficking arrests and all were prosecuted.

Orange County District Attorney Tony Rackauckas, who created a unit in his office to prosecute pimps, said Community Service Programs has been integral to the task force’s success in cracking down on the crime because it has helped stabilize victims, who can testify against their pimps.

“There was such a need to work with these victims,” Rackauckas said. “It’s just such an awful problem and CSP has done such a wonderful job... It’s one of these areas where you just have to have a collaborative effort... and it’s also going to require a lot of public awareness.”

Rackauckas encouraged everyone anyone to alert authorities when they see prostitution.

“When you see someone who is clearly a sex slave, we need to know about it,” Rackauckas said.

Prostitutes become “so debilitated” by their pimps that it is often difficult to help them turn their lives around and trust the authorities, Rackauckas said.