Oakland’s Sexually Trafficked Youth: Arrest or Treat These Victims? (Series Part 6) | Oakland Local

Published on Friday, May 07, 2010
Last updated on 07:05AM, Wednesday, May 12, 2010

"The Corridor" by 1Flatworld, via Flickr: http://bit.ly/aIbrKj (CC license

By Sarah Terry-Cobo

This is Part 6 of an eight-part, four-day Oakland Local investigative series on youth sex trafficking.

The Oakland Police Department believes it must arrest girls involved in prostitution to get them off the streets for their own safety. Without a safe residential treatment facility, officers say, juvenile hall presents a better alternative than leaving them on the streets.

"We used to just warn them and let them stay out on the streets," said Vice Unit Investigator Jim Saleda during one of the department's operations. "I learned my lesson when I found the body of one of the girls a week later, mutilated in Mosswood Park."

Some fierce advocates in the Bay Area are working to change laws that punish young victims, in addition to providing services to exploited young women...

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But police say, unfortunately, conducting vice sweeps is an important way to gather information about johns and traffickers who perpetrate sexual exploitation -- the people they hope to put behind bars.

Consequently, young girls continue to be processed by the criminal justice system. This means they get handcuffed by police, taken to a staging area for paperwork, and later are transported in a police van to jail or juvenile hall.

Victims often don't think they're exploited

According to Alameda County Deputy District Attorney Sharmin Eshraghi Bock and other experts, many sexually exploited girls are brainwashed, and few realize pimps are exploiting them. At the staging area in East Oakland during a police operation, officers loaded nearly a dozen women into the back of a large van with bars on the windows.

"They treatin' us like fuckin' animals!" screamed one woman. Even though the nonprofit group Bay Area Women Against Rape (BAWAR) is on scene to offer snacks, water and services to the women, it can be difficult to win their trust.

Officer Saleda said the women and girls police often pick up on these sweeps won't accept help from BAWAR the first several times. Some never accept help, he said.

The women who are arrested will be processed at police headquarters in downtown Oakland. If they have no warrants and are not on probation, they will return to the streets a few hours later, Saleda said.

During questioning, police officers remind detained minors that they are not criminals.

"You know you are a victim, right?" one undercover officer said to a young girl in an interview room. "This is not your fault," both interviewing officers told the girl, who sat wrapped in a blue blanket. Like so many other young women, she is sent to Alameda County's Juvenile Justice Center, high in the hills of San Leandro.

Processing sexually exploited youth through the criminal justice system does help police gather crucial information, but some community advocates criticize this method.

Jennifer Kim, a policy advocate with Books Not Bars (an Oakland-based nonprofit for families with children in youth jails) acknowledged that police want to help. However, she said, she is concerned by the system's response to the girls' situation.

"It's kind of a disconnect," she said, "with treating these young people as victims -- but yet in order to give them the support that they need, you have to criminalize them first."

Kim thinks that, if the juvenile justice system can't treat the root problems of youth sexual exploitation, then it only serves as punishment to the children.

From handcuffs to juvenile hall

Juvenile hall may not be pleasant, but it can provide the structure some sexually exploited youth desperately need but rarely receive. Clark L. Blackmore is a supervisor who has worked at the Alameda County Juvenile Justice Center for two decades. On a rainy day in early February, he provided a tour of the detention portion of the three-building complex.

His job involves monitoring youth on home supervision with GPS tracking devices. However, during the tour, Blackmore behaved more like a guidance counselor to the kids he encountered.

"Hey, good morning, how are you doing? How are your parents?" Blackmore asked a young man waiting in the medical clinic. One teenage girl asked him about seeing her infant. (To prevent the spread of H1N1 flu, no small children are allowed in the facility -- even when a young mother has not see her child in weeks or months.)

This detention facility, which opened two years ago, seemed much less sterile than one might imagine. Art by local artists lined the walls on every floor, and some rooms had carpeting. The open-air courtyard includes a basketball court, as well as a grill for occasional outdoor cooking.

All main doors in the detention facility are monitored by cameras. They only open after someone in the control room checks a camera for that door and grants access. As youths walk down the hall, they must clasp their hands behind their backs, like invisible handcuffs. Visitors must stand against the wall until they pass.

An average day at juvenile hall is structured. It includes a full day of school (8 a.m. to 2:40 p.m.), covering all the subjects you would find in public school. Some classes offer opportunities for music, art and recreation -- but these are often the first to be cut in a budget crisis.

"They have the capacity to learn."

"You have to make the classroom a place where they want to go," Blackmore said, as he gestured to a row of computers lining the back wall of a classroom filled with female students. Alameda County's Juvenile Justice Center offers computer classes, with access to the Internet. "This shows they have the capacity to learn; it just depends on what you want to learn."

Some people do not think juvenile hall is an appropriate place for victims of sex trafficking. However, it does appear to be a healthier environment than overcrowded, underfunded public schools. All children in the Justice Center receive complete medical treatment, three meals a day and more modern classrooms with a smaller student-to-teacher ratio.

Blackmore smiled and mentioned how, every now and then, he "sees the kid side come out of them" -- especially on Saturdays when staff show cartoons in the morning.

"They're not bad kids," Blackmore said. But under the influence of peer pressure, "they just make bad decisions."

Compared to how they acted at the county's former detention facility, Blackmore said he has seen an improvement in the kids' behavior at the new facility. (The $176 million facility was completed in 2007, replacing a 299-bed juvenile hall that dated back to 1954.) However, it's not the specially designed building that helps kids understand they are in a safe place.

"If you don't have the right staff, then it'll be a wild house up there. They have to care about the kids," said Blackmore. Sometimes staff help parents learn about their kids -- but for kids who don't have parents to pick them up, or homes to return to, going to a group home might sometimes seem worse than staying in juvenile hall.

NEXT in this series: Part 7, Rescuing Trafficked Youth: Building a House for Kids With No Home...

COMPLETE SERIES INDEX: Youth Trafficking in Oakland

This story was produced under a fellowship sponsored by the
G.W. Williams Center for Independent Journalism, a project of Tides
Center.

We also would like to thank Robert Rosenthal and California Watch for their support -- as well as our reporters Barbara Grady and Sarah Terry-Cobo, and photographer Alison Yin -- for their amazing work.

Support more independent quality reporting like this! Please donate to Oakland Local on Spot.us. We are seeking additional support for continued coverage.

About Sarah Terry-Cobo
Sarah Terry-Cobo's picture
Sarah is a freelance reporter and a 2009 graduate of the University of California, Berkeley Graduate School of Journalism and Latin American Studies programs. She specializes in science and environmental policy issues, but also has a keen interest in immigration and Latin American affairs. Her work has previously appeared in The Oakland Tribune, Forbes.com and GreenBiz.com. She is currently reporting and blogging for Carbon Watch, a joint venture of the Center for Investigative Reporting and Frontline/World. She researched and wrote the stories in Oakland Local's youth trafficking series with the support of a fellowship from the G.W. Williams Center for Independent Journalism.


Oakland’s Sexually Trafficked Youth: Arrest or Treat These Victims? (Series Part 6) | Oakland Local