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By YVETTE CABRERA
COLUMNIST
REGISTER COLUMNIST
ycabrera@ocregister.com
Story Highlights
On national Human Trafficking Awareness day doing just that was a struggle for OC activists
Early Monday morning, as the rumbling of the approaching Metrolink train grew closer, Linda Cahill perked up and walked briskly toward the tracks of the Santa Ana Depot.
It was National Human Trafficking Awareness day and Cahill, clutching a stack of slick counter-trafficking flyers, wanted to catch commuters as they exited the train.
By the time the train's wheels had screeched to a stop, she was standing by, outstretched arm, flyer at the ready.
The problem was people just rushed by. Some offered a curt "Oh no thank you," but most just shook their head and scurried away before Cahill could explain that she and fellow members of the Soroptimist International club of Garden Grove were trying to raise awareness.
I get it. People are in a hurry to get to work. Some don't trust anybody soliciting anything. But others just didn't want to be bothered and looked annoyed.
At the front of the station, Cahill's fellow members were having better luck, passing out the brochure, the first step in helping residents understand that human trafficking is not just a global issue, it's local. And that's the point of this particular national awareness day, says Sandra Morgan, administrator of the Orange County Human Trafficking Task Force.
"We're not looking at what's happening in Thailand or India. We're looking at what's happening in America. And, for us in Orange County, what's happening in our own backyard," Morgan says.
To that end, Morgan, who teaches at Vanguard University in Costa Mesa, had her students role play authentic American trafficking cases at a candlelight vigil Monday. The idea was to raise public awareness about incidents that could be occurring in their neighborhoods.
The task force, created in 2004, has been working on that for some time. For example, the group made a video, which was shown to an estimated 10,000 people in churches across the county to mark last year's National Human Trafficking Awareness day.
Between July 2008 and June 2009 the Task Force also made 176 community awareness presentations throughout the county. But with limited funds, a vast county to cover, and many inroads still to make on both raising awareness and investigating these cases, Morgan's group had been limited in its reach.
On Monday, however, the state announced that the California Emergency Management Agency would funnel nearly $3 million to support the state's six human trafficking task forces already working in the state, and to create two new ones. Orange County, expected to receive $375,000 of that money, will use the funds for law enforcement and to support the work of others working on the problem, including victim assistance.
This comes on the heels of a December announcement that over the next three years the Task Force will receive $1.2 million in federal Recovery Act money. Morgan says the plan is to use that money to produce training materials on domestic trafficking that will be used by law enforcement statewide, helping agencies to implement a "victim-centered" approach in their response to trafficking cases.
That's already happening locally. Community Service Programs Inc., the Santa Ana nonprofit that founded the Task Force, has a staff member who focuses on helping potential trafficking victims – some of the women arrested for prostitution – from the moment they are contacted by law enforcement. By doing this, victims are more likely to cooperate as witnesses.
"That's a significant part of creating a tide of deterrence to stop trafficking," Morgan says.
In the case of Shyima Hall, the 12-year-old Egyptian girl who was enslaved in an Irvine home, Hall did not speak out for two years before she felt safe and confident enough to tell her story. It was at that point that the prosecution was able to move forward, says Morgan.
Hall's case also highlighted the importance of community awareness about human trafficking — it was a neighbor's phone call that alerted police to her plight.
Morgan's hope is that with the increased funding, the Task Force will be able to do more training sessions, offering information to everyone from police to clerks at health clinics to school nurses – so they can be on alert for potential trafficking victims.
"In Shyima's case... there were no law enforcement, or rescue teams, scouring the neighborhoods for a 12-year-old girl who didn't speak English," Morgan says. "But there was a neighbor who saw something and picked up the phone and called.
"That's how we're going to find human trafficking because it's hidden beneath the surface."
Human trafficking is tough to spot - Home - The Orange County Register
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