Santa Clara County: Motel sting targets human trafficking and sex exploitation as part of broader sweep

SANTA CLARA — At the end of the night, after a series of encounters that ended with a few citations issued and some stern talks given out, the detective found herself having a heart-to-heart with a young woman fumbling to explain how she ended up in a motel room filled with police.

“He doesn’t force me,” the woman said of the man police suspect is her pimp, “but if I choose not to do something he threatens me.”

She continued: “So I don’t have a choice. I mean, I have a choice, but not the ones I want to make.”

The detective, sitting next to her on the motel bed Wednesday, interjected.

“It sounds like he’s manipulated you emotionally,” the detective said. “Is it right for someone to get the money that you’re doing all the work for? He doesn’t seem to care about you. He has two other girls.”

Her tone softened further.

“I would really like to help you get out of this,” the detective said. “I would really like to help you move forward with your life.”

So ended the second night of an undercover sting spearheaded by the Santa Clara County Sheriff’s Office, as part of the county’s two-year-old human-trafficking task force, aimed at curbing sexual exploitation within the South Bay’s underground sex trade.

Through the first two days of the operation, the task force detained or questioned 20 prostitutes and customers in the joint effort that also involved the FBI, Department of Homeland Security, county juvenile detention, and local victim-advocacy groups. They arrested one man they suspect was pimping a 16-year-old girl.

It’s an elusive but rewarding find. Most of the people who responded to detectives’ online ads were men looking to buy sex, along with a few women who asserted they were working of their own volition, all of them caught in the wide net cast in search of exploited minors and victims of coercion. Most were issued identical misdemeanor prostitution citations — the state penal code does not distinguish between customer and worker — and sent on their way.

“We’re looking for human trafficking and to find victims of human trafficking. That’s our goal,” said Sheriff’s Sgt. Kurtis Stenderup, who is running the operation. “Whether or not we arrest or cite sex workers, we don’t have a blanket policy on that. We know there are sex workers out there who aren’t being exploited, they’re in that business and that’s what they want to do.”

Stenderup stressed that the task force works with a “victim-centered” approach that de-emphasizes arrest and attempts to connect victims of exploitation with health and counseling services. On hand Wednesday were representatives from the YWCA and the county nonprofit family-wellness group Community Solutions.

“I appreciate the way it’s a multi-pronged approach,” said Tanis Crosby, CEO of the Silicon Valley YWCA. “This is the way in which it should be provided, with confidential onsite support for survivors, where they can talk without fear of retaliation. It gives a measure of support and safety that is absolutely integral.”

The sheriff-led enforcement this week is part of a wider net of similar operations conducted across the country as part of the FBI-sponsored National Slavery and Human Trafficking Prevention Month. Santa Clara County identified at least 150 cases of human trafficking in 2015 and that at least 70 percent of the victims were victims of sexual assault at some point.

But many sex-worker advocates contend that while these efforts are laudable, the same or better results could be achieved by decriminalizing prostitution. They argue that eliminating the fear of arrest would sharply increase the reporting of abuse and exploitation from both sex workers and their customers.

Tara Burns, a former sex worker turned advocate who researches prostitution enforcement across the country, said people involved in the sex trade can’t rely on the hope that the police officer they encounter will use their arrest discretion to zero in on abuses, and could just as easily wield it to commit them, as seen in the ongoing East Bay police sex scandal.

“All that criminalization of prostitution does is make people afraid to reach out,” Burns said. “(People) need to feel they can call the police and that they are not going to be arrested and have their names all over the news, or be seen as an exploiter.”

Stenderup said he is sensitive to advocacy groups wary that authorities could conflate human trafficking and sex work as a whole. He is less discerning about male purveyors they cite, contending that “driving down demand” is one part of decreasing human trafficking, whatever the ancillary effects on the conventional sex trade might be.

“That trade-off is worth it, the finding of a commercially sexually exploited child, which is really what we’re trying to do,” he said.

The 18-year-old woman who talked to the detective Wednesday night also met with advocates from Community Solutions and the YWCA. She appeared ambivalent but emerged apparently receptive to getting help.

Stenderup spoke with his team and emphasized keeping in contact with her, to ensure she knew she had a lifeline and that she wasn’t on her own. He noted that it could also lead them to whoever was exploiting her.

“I don’t want her to go dark on us. She’s right here,” he said, gesturing his hands to draw an imaginary line between the scenario of the woman following through or returning to her abusive situation. “I don’t want to lose her.”

Source: http://www.mercurynews.com/2016/10/13/motel-sting-targets-human-trafficking-and-sex-exploitation/