By Khalida Sarwari
The pews inside the Saratoga Federated Church were filled Sunday afternoon, but the dozens in attendance weren’t there to listen to a sermon. They were there to hear about one of the largest and fastest-growing criminal industries in the world: human trafficking.
Presented by the volunteers of Stop Trafficking on Our Planet, the event “Hope in the Darkness,” invited people involved in the battle against human trafficking to speak about what their agency or organization is doing to combat the problem. The speakers at the Jan. 28 event included Santa Clara County District Attorney Jeff Rosen; Bryanna Pellizzer, residential services manager for The Nest, a home for girls in San Jose who have been sexually trafficked; and Betty Ann Boeving Hagenau, co-founder and executive director of the Bay Area Anti-Trafficking Coalition, a group that helps people and civic and nonprofit groups fight human trafficking regionally and beyond.
Rosen said the district attorney’s office has partnered with the Santa Clara County Sheriff’s Office to lead a task force that’s seeking to fight the multibillion-dollar business. What may surprise some is that many of the victims of trafficking are not foreign nationals but American citizens, many of whom are in foster care, Rosen said.
He also shared cases, including one about two teenage girls who ran away from a group home and were captured by a man and woman who took them to Oakland and San Jose for prostitution. The girls were eventually able to escape, he said, with the help of a receptionist at a hotel in San Jose.
Human trafficking, he said, is “a crime that hides in plain sight. It very often masquerades as something else. The identification of human trafficking usually requires peeling back the layers of the image presented.”
Rosen underscored the importance of educating the youth about navigating social media to avoid becoming targets for traffickers, and of outreach such as the new state mandate that requires human trafficking be taught in public schools as part of the California Healthy Youth Act.
While Rosen said “human trafficking is too big of a business, too profitable for it to go away,” he encouraged everyone to do what they can to help eradicate the problem. For many, that can mean being a little more observant and asking the right questions when they encounter a potential victim or situation where they suspect trafficking.
“Don’t underestimate your ability to help fight this problem,” he said. “Ask questions: What type of work do you do? Are you being paid? Can you leave if you wanted to? Can you come and go as you please? Where do you sleep and eat? Has your identification been taken from you?”
Hagenau discussed potential red flags to watch out for, such as bars on the inside of windows, and garages that appear to be living spaces.
“The reality is that every form of human trafficking that has been found in the United States has been found in the Bay Area,” she said.
Pellizzer talked about how success takes on a different meaning at The Nest. While some of the girls go on to graduate college and get jobs, she said there have also been those who went through the program but returned to their previous lifestyle.
“Many of them, in reality, will fall back into the lifestyle, and you see that happen all the time,” she said. “They come into our program for six to nine months, and then the world calls like the world calls and we fail. But, do we fail? I don’t think so. I see us as planting a seed.”
After the 90-minute presentation, folks poured into a reception room to feast on cookies, browse STOP merchandise and discuss their newfound knowledge about the epidemic.
Andrea Ramirez, a law student at Santa Clara University from Stockton, said she had no idea that human trafficking existed at all in the Bay Area.
“I was shocked to hear about the local issues,” she said.
Her friend and fellow law student, Camilla Amato, from Rome, Italy, said she was encouraged by Rosen taking a stance on the issue.
“To have the perspective of someone in power who can directly do something against the traffickers … I don’t think it works like that everywhere; it’s not something that’s talked about,” she said.
Ramirez said she appreciated the honesty in many of the speeches.
“One thing that stood out to me is I really like that they acknowledged that it’s not a straight uphill climb,” she said. “I think that’s very realistic. It seemed like they were trying to engage in their struggle. It just showed that they’re honest about it.”
STOP is a group that is made up of about a dozen local women whose intention is to raise awareness about the existence of human trafficking in Santa Clara County and find ways to ameliorate the problem within their own communities. The group supports The Nest, which is run by Advent Group Ministries.
Link:
