Sacramento Man Sentenced for Trafficking Girl to Vegas

If you ask me, 30 years is not enough, but it's a start. Don't tell me there's no sex trafficking in the US, it's happening every day right here in California.

California man sentenced to 30 years for bringing girl to LV for prostitution

A 31-year-old Sacramento, Calif., man was sentenced to 30 years in federal prison Tuesday after he was found guilty of transporting a teenager to Las Vegas for the purpose of prostitution.

In March 2006, a jury convicted Mario Weicks of transporting a minor for prostitution, traveling for illicit sexual conduct and being a felon in possession of a firearm. According to the U.S. Attorney's office, Weicks' sentencing was enhanced because he committed perjury on the stand and had a lengthy criminal history.

The Metropolitan Police Department arrested Weicks on Oct. 30, 2004 at the intersection of Las Vegas Boulevard and St. Louis Street. Officers recovered a revolver in Weicks' car. According to police, Weicks had told the 15-year-old girl that he carried the weapon to protect her during her work as a prostitute.

"Weicks also engaged in sexual relations with the juvenile in Nevada, and demanded that the girl provide him with the proceeds of her prostitution activities," according to the U.S. Attorney's office.

In addition to serving three decades in prison, Weicks will be under supervised release for 10 years and must undergo sexual offender treatment.

http://www.lvrj.com/news/9441096.html

Aug. 29, 2007
Las Vegas Review-Journal

Sexual exploitation of minors racks up billions

By Barbara Grady
Oakland Tribune
Article Launched: 04/24/2008 08:05:54 PM PDT
http://origin.mercurynews.com/crime/ci_9046514?nclick_check=1

The economic rule of supply and demand drives the market for everything from toothpaste to sports cars.

It also drives the sexual exploitation of minors.

If adults weren't interested in paying $120 or $200 to have sex with a child or teenager, girls and boys would not be peddled on the street by pimps.

"It's basic supply and demand,'' said Norma Hotaling, founder and executive director of San Francisco-based SAGE, or Standing Against Global Exploitation. Sexual exploitation is a multibillion-dollar industry worldwide, she said, "paid one dollar at a time by men who have decided to use their money, use their family's income, to buy a human being.

"They use these girls like sewers.''

Girls as young as 11 or 12 are increasingly being sold for sex on Oakland streets in what one law enforcement officer called "an epidemic.''

Sexual assault of a minor is a felony, punishable by long prison sentences. Hotaling said most of the johns she sees seem surprised to learn that buying sex from a minor is sexual assault.

Under contract with the San Francisco Police Department, SAGE runs a class for men arrested on a first offense of soliciting prostitution, from minors or adults. Police call it the "john school.''

"I teach a class of about 60 men every other month,'' Hotaling said. "I look out at that class and see men of all types.''

They are rich and not so rich, in distinguished professions and in manual labor,
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young and old, from the suburbs and the city.

That experience is echoed by young girls who formerly worked the streets. Three sexually exploited girls now in Alameda County juvenile hall said their customers ran the gamut.

"Rich dudes,'' said one 16-year-old. Another said she had a customer who was a judge. Both mentioned businessmen and lawyers as customers, and said some johns drive from the suburbs into Oakland.

The sheer number of men who come through Hotaling's class is startling. Add it up, and she sees 360 men a year who have been arrested in San Francisco on first-time prostitution charges. That number does not include men who police determine are ineligible for the one-day class that is offered as a substitute for prosecution.

Hotaling teaches her students about the potential legal consequences of paying for sex with a minor.

"When I tell them what they are doing could be charged as a felony, that sexual assault of a minor is a felony, that really has an impact,'' Hotaling said. "Their faces turn ashen.''

She also teaches the men about the damage they inflict on the young girls, how it ruins their lives and traumatizes them for decades to come. And she teaches them about sexually transmitted diseases.

John schools are now offered in 40 cities across the country. Oakland does not have a john school program in place.

The National Institute of Justice studied the effectiveness of the classes for a report released earlier this month. By studying the behavior and arrest record of 198 men who had taken the classes, the report found that participation reduced the number of men who reoffended by 35 percent.

"The study adds to the rapidly mounting evidence that prostitution and sex trafficking can be successfully fought by focusing on the demand for commercial sex,'' the study concluded.

Michael Shivery, senior Associate of the Center on Crime, Drugs and Justice at Cambridge, Mass.-based Abt Associates, which conducted the study for the Institute, said the johns cite several reasons for turning to prostitution. The most common is that they have not found successful intimate relationships through "normal channels,'' he said.

Some, however, are merely risk-takers, drawn by the illegal status of prostitution, he said.

Contact Barbara Grady at 510-208-6427 or bgrady@bayareanewsgroup.com.

John school takes a bite out of prostitution

John school takes a bite out of prostitution
by Justin Berton, Chronicle Staff Writer

Monday, April 14, 2008

"John School" Students. Chronicle Graphic Norma Hotaling, an ex-prostitute, got the idea for the jo...

Every two months, Valentina visits about 30 men enrolled in San Francisco's "john school" to tell them a sex story they don't want to hear.

The men are part of the city's First Offender Prostitution Program because they've been arrested for soliciting a prostitute, usually in the Mission or Tenderloin. If they agree to pay a $1,000 fee and spend a Saturday afternoon listening to sex-trafficking experts, neighborhood activists and doctors who subject them to photographs of venereal diseases, the district attorney's office will drop the misdemeanor charge.

Valentina, a striking Russian woman with jet-black hair (to protect her privacy, her full name is not given in this article), explains how she was molested from age 8 to 13 by a cousin; how she was a full-blown alcoholic and heroin addict at 21; how she became an "escort" a year later, and by age 25 was working Mission Street.

She hated every interaction with every client.

"Sometimes I see it register on their faces," said Valentina, 37, a mother and San Francisco resident who's been off the streets and sober for 10 years. "The fantasy isn't what they thought. ... I don't get much feedback from them. I do my presentation and go about my day."

Yet Valentina's presentation as well as the other components of john school are effective, according to a study to be released in the coming weeks by the U.S. Department of Justice. In the largest study of its kind, researchers concluded that men who attended San Francisco's john school were 30 percent less likely to be rearrested for soliciting a prostitute than men who did not attend such a program.

Researchers compared data collected from 5,000 johns who completed the daylong class in San Francisco over the past 12 years with roughly 75,000 men arrested for soliciting prostitutes in California who did not attend john schools. The costs of the school are covered by the men's fees, according to the district attorney's office.

"The punch line is, these programs work," said Michael Shively, a criminologist at Abt Associates, a Massachusetts-based research firm and the primary author of the two-year study commissioned by the National Institute of Justice. "Some men are probably responding to the appeal of their own self interests, which in the class emphasizes the personal risk they face if they continue to involve themselves in prostitution. And some men may be responding to the information conveyed about the harm they are causing the women they hire, and to the communities where the prostitution takes place."

The study arrives at the same time Supervisor Jake McGoldrick asked for an audit of the city's program, wondering if the arrests are worthwhile and the money for the program is being well spent. He did not respond to messages seeking comment for this story.

When the First Offender Prostitution Program began in 1996, it was considered a noble experiment in a progressive city. Since then, 39 cities have modeled programs after San Francisco's.

The class was co-founded by Norma Hotaling, a former street prostitute arrested 30 times before she gained sobriety and started Standing Against Global Exploitation, a San Francisco group committed to ending commercial sexual traffic.

Hotaling said a San Francisco police officer who repeatedly arrested her was the first to suggest that her johns needed an education instead of jail time. Hotaling recalled the advice and later developed the curriculum, which includes a six-hour course featuring multiple speakers who explain the negative impact prostitution has on women, their clients and the communities where it thrives.

More recently, Hotaling said, presentations have focused on global sex trafficking, to help men consider their role in the illegal phenomenon.

"The men who seek out prostitutes don't like to think they're part of exploiting someone," Hotaling said. "They like to believe it's a victimless crime."

Since the program's inception, critics have wondered if the classes had any real impact on the men and the streets, Hotaling said. Previous studies have shown that recidivism rates among men arrested for soliciting prostitutes is particularly low compared to other crimes, such as robbery.

Shively, the study's author, said in San Francisco the recidivism rate for such men was about 8 percent before the program began. Now, it rests at about 5 percent.

"It's a significant drop if you consider it didn't have much further to go," Shively said. "The results are surprising."

Anecdotally, the researchers also found that police departments reported street prostitution declined in the cities where the classes were available. Shively said the study could not factor what role online prostitution may have played in reducing street prostitution in the past 12 years.

"But for some people, it's good enough that street prostitution is out of their faces and behind closed doors," Shively said, "where the entire community doesn't have to deal with it."

Robert Garcia, a member of Save Our Streets Tenants and Merchants Association in Lower Nob Hill, credits the john school program as helping to reduce street prostitution in his neighborhood near Post and Hyde streets. As part of the agreement between Hotaling's organization, which facilitates the school, and the district attorney's office, which agrees to drop the charges, the Police Department is required to run eight sting operations per month designed to arrest the johns. Last year, the department arrested 335 men, up from 130 in 2006.

Garcia has monitored the Post and Hyde intersection near his home for about 20 years, and said he was skeptical the program would have any impact.

"This place used to be infested with prostitutes," Garcia said. "But we don't see as many hanging out on the corners, and we don't have as many cars circling the blocks, whistling and all that."

Hotaling said the study's results validate the once-experimental school, and hopes the city will expand the program.

"It doesn't matter if they get picked up on the streets or through a new Web site that's popped up," Hotaling said. "There's always a need for the education."

Learn more

For more information about Standing Against Global Exploitation, the nonprofit that facilitates the First Offender Prostitution Program with the S.F. Police Department and district attorney's office, go to: www.sagesf.org.

E-mail Justin Berton at jberton@sfchronicle.com.

Craigslist Slammed For Hosting Prostitution Ads

The company says it has implemented a new screening process for erotic service ads that has substantially cut down on the number of such ads.

By Thomas Claburn, InformationWeek
March 28, 2008
URL: http://www.informationweek.com/story/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=207000476

Craigslist, we have a problem.

No, not the baby being sold for drug money earlier this week -- that was a hoax and the person who placed the ad was arrested.

Not the malicious ad placed last Saturday that left a Jacksonville, Ore., man with a plundered home, recalling a similar incident last May.

The problem is prostitution. Connecticut Attorney General Richard Blumenthal on Thursday sent a letter to Barry Reingold, Craigslist's lawyer, demanding that the community-driven site clean up its act.

"I am astonished and appalled by Craigslist's refusal to recognize the reality of prostitution on its Web site -- despite advertisements containing graphic photographs and hourly rates, and widespread public reports of prostitutes using the site," Blumenthal wrote.

Though Blumenthal acted on behalf of citizens of Connecticut, following the arrest earlier this month of a Connecticut woman who allegedly used Craigslist to advertise prostitution services, his concerns reflect problems with Craigslist across the nation.

On Tuesday evening, police in Aurora, Ill., west of Chicago, arrested five people for alleged drug possession and prostitution. According to the Chicago Sun-Times, the prostitutes advertised on Craigslist.

Blumenthal contends that Craigslist is ignoring the "serious and growing problem" by refusing to hire anyone to review postings that contain graphic nudity or solicitations with hourly rates. "The company effectively denies the undeniable, incomprehensibly and unacceptably," Blumenthal said. "Although Craigslist touts measures to ban illegal activities and limit or remove inappropriate postings in its erotic services section, a cursory review of this section shows that its supposed solutions are woefully and obviously inadequate."

Erotic postings aren't confined to the erotic services section either. A brief scan through the "therapeutic services" section on sfbay.craigslist.org suggests that that particular category should be relabeled "therapeutic erotic services."

Jim Buckmaster, CEO of Craigslist, said in an e-mailed statement that illegal use of Craigslist won't be tolerated. "This month we implemented new screening procedures for erotic service ads, which [has] dramatically improved compliance with our terms of use and reduced the volume of such ads by up to 80%," he said. "Mr. Blumenthal's office is aware of these improvements, and we are disappointed that he has not recognized the tremendous progress we are making."

Buckmaster said that using Craigslist illegally isn't a good idea since posting information leaves an electronic trail and Craigslist staff regularly works with police officers.

And Buckmaster also challenged the claim that Craigslist profits from prostitution. "In the New Haven Register, Attorney General Blumenthal is quoted as saying that our company profits from prostitution," he said. "That is both utterly false and significantly defamatory, as 100% of our revenue comes from paid job listings and broker apartment rental listings. We certainly hope that the attorney general was misquoted or misinformed, and we look forward to an immediate retraction of this false and damaging allegation."

Buckmaster said that telephone company yellow pages, weekly newspapers, and other offline and online media in Connecticut regularly include paid erotic ads. "In this country, that's legal," he said. "Unlike these media, of course, Craigslist does not derive any revenue from such ads."

Underage prostitutes marketed on Internet

This summary is not available. Please click here to view the post.

It's all fun and games till organized crime shows up.

Our friend Sam just posted this over at SFist and it was too good so we're posting it here too.

******

Yeah, it's all fun and games till organized crime shows up.

Here's the problem. Once you announce San Francisco is open for business and the cops are officially looking the other way, every john, pimp and trafficker who reads Google news will be on the next flight into town.

This is business 101 - supply and demand. The johns will show up looking for some. As a rule, johns are not interested in middle-aged white women marching in the streets for their sex-worker rights. Johns want young women, "barely legal" if you will. Wink wink nudge nudge. And johns love little asian and latino women. (Take a look at the Las Vegas yellow pages sometime.)

It's not as easy as you might think to convince high school and college-aged girls to prostitute, there just aren't enough of them. So you gotta import the supply. That requires coercion, violence, drugs, and for your shipping needs, you will have to go with organized crime (why? because they said so.)

So your supposedly progressive law has now resulted in a thriving prostitution, drug, AND organized crime trade. And if you think we have gang violence now, wait until the Armenian mafia is battling with the Mongols or Nortenos for control of the Tenderloin.

SF massage parlors thriving

For a few months there it seemed the city was going to take the problem of massage brothels seriously. But what has been happening since May? Did the city give up? A quick look at any of the john forums will tell you that prostitution is a happening business in San Francisco massage parlors. Surely the members of the task force and/or the San Francisco Police Department and/or the FBI know where this is happening.

In case the task force needs help locating massage parlors doing straight up prostitution on a daily basis, here are a few hints:

http://www.usasexguide.info/forum/showthread.php?t=3478
http://forum.myredbook.com/cgi-bin/dcforum2/dcboard.pl?az=list&forum=DCForumID19&conf=rb
http://www.myredbook.com/showpro.aspx?area=sf&cat=massage
http://forum.myredbook.com/dcforum2/DCForumID19/31838.html
http://sfbay.craigslist.org/sfc/ers/

[Warning: there are pictures of naked women on these sites. There is also actionable information should anyone care to take action.]



From way back in May....



17 massage parlors closed by task force
Undercover drive by the city against human trafficking

Meredith May, Chronicle Staff Writer
Friday, May 18, 2007

A special San Francisco task force designed to combat human trafficking has closed 17 massage parlors suspected of forcing immigrant Asian women into sex work.

In the past 18 months, a team of undercover police officers, along with city fire, building and environmental health inspectors, has been conducting surprise inspections of suspected erotic massage parlors.

The 17 Asian massage parlors were closed after incurring at least three health and safety violations within a year. Four others were fined, suspended and allowed to reopen after a temporary closure. Two others closed voluntarily.

But a handful of parlors shut by the city have since reopened illegally, and one has applied for a new permit as an acupuncture clinic with massage.

"Enforcement has not been as effective as we had hoped, but we are making a dent," said Johnson Ojo, San Francisco's principal environmental health inspector.

"It's much harder to open a massage parlor in San Francisco now because we are taking a hard look at an owner's past history, and denying permits if they have been involved in prostitution before."

Enforcement has been difficult, but Mayor Gavin Newsom said the task force is making headway into a problem that until now has gone largely undetected.

"There is momentum and a commitment to resolve this," Newsom said. "We are moving away from looking at this issue as harmless prostitution to a criminal act against human dignity and human rights."

San Francisco is a major hub for the $8 billion global sex trafficking industry, and is home to more than 100 erotic massage parlors listed online and in Asian-language newspapers.

Traffickers abroad charge women tens of thousands of dollars to smuggle them into the city, and then force them to work off their debts in erotic massage parlors, sometimes servicing more than a dozen men a day. Sometimes the women are lied to about the type of work they will be doing in the United States.

Often the women are forced to live in the same parlors where they work, and are watched on surveillance cameras and kept inside by metal security doors.

Newsom convened the massage parlor task force after federal agents investigating a South Korean sex trafficking ring raided 10 San Francisco massage parlors in summer 2005.

After a sex trafficking investigation by The Chronicle, Newsom increased surprise inspections last fall from once to twice a month, and the Board of Supervisors passed a law requiring public hearings of all proposed massage parlors. The city and nonprofit agencies placed human trafficking posters with hot line numbers in bus shelters.

Ojo has issued cease and desist orders to the parlors that have illegally reopened after their permits were revoked, and he is working with the city attorney to get court warrants allowing him to send sheriff's deputies to shut the places.

On Wednesday, the inspection team returned for a second visit to CEO Health Club, on the sixth floor of an office building on Sansome Street.

Inside the club, six women were cited for wearing inappropriate attire -- lingerie and clear plastic heels -- and one of them was cited for working without a massage practitioner's license. The business was also cited for employing an unlicensed masseuse.

One woman, in tears, said she left a dying father in China and that she didn't like working in the massage parlor. She said she wants to teach piano to children.

The new citations at CEO Health Club, and similar violations recorded in August, are enough to revoke the club's permit, Ojo said.

"We have to build up a case against each one, and while it takes a long time and uses a lot of city resources, it is starting to show results," he said.

Newsom said he plans to begin enforcing a rarely used 1913 "red light" abatement law that allows authorities to fine and jail California landlords who let massage parlors operate as brothels in their buildings. He will also deliver a speech on human trafficking at the U.S. Conference of Mayors in Los Angeles in June.

Ojo said city inspectors also investigate tips from the public. The Department of Public Health number is (415) 252-3800.

Go Gavin!

Well here's an interesting little nugget. Mayor Newsom thinks San Francisco should keep prostitution illegal. He is right. You don't deal with violence against prostitutes and trafficked women by declaring San Francisco open for business to every pimp and trafficker in the known universe. McGoldrick is going to have a fight on his hands trying to push prostitution down the throats of San Franciscans. We've already got plenty of things to worry about, budget deficits, gang violence, and the housing shortage to mention a few.



http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_umt9rcHGB8

Keep prostitution illegal

David Smith, The Examiner
2007-12-13 11:00:00.0

Reducing law enforcement pressure on prostitution in The City would be a “terrible mistake,” Mayor Gavin Newsom said Wednesday in response to a proposal by one city legislator.

“There are few cities in the world that have more problems with sex trafficking than San Francisco,” Newsom said. “All this does is further the prospects that that will continue.”

Last month, Supervisor Jake McGoldrick asked the city attorney to draft legislation directing San Francisco police to make prostitution one of its lowest enforcement priorities. McGoldrick said reducing enforcement would help curb trafficking and exploitation in the sex industry.

The City spends $11.4 million enforcing prostitution laws, according to a Budget Analyst’s Office estimate.

Prostitution is not a victimless crime, the mayor said.

“I think the legalization of prostitution would be a terrible mistake,” the mayor said. “Any time you see a security gate and a security camera, you know something inappropriate is happening in there.”

McGoldrick told The Examiner he is pushing the idea in an effort to bring out from the shadows the problems of trafficking and exploitation by muting legal repercussions for sex workers.

“By driving sex workers underground, what you do is create opportunity for crimes to be committed against them,” McGoldrick said.

Dawn Trennert, a resident in the Middle Polk neighborhood, has worked with police to cut down on prostitution there, and said she disagreed with McGoldrick’s proposal.

“The vast majority of prostitutes who work in San Francisco don’t live in San Francisco,” Trennert said. “They commute here because we’re easy on crime. How much more of this trafficking would occur if the police don’t even address the issue?”

dsmith@examiner.com

Dusting off an old decriminalization proposal - still a bad idea 11 years later

On Dec. 6 Supervisor Ammiano introduced resolution #071642 commending a pro-prostitution group called US Prostitutes Collective. Supervisor Ammiano is an incredibly sweet human being and a good politician, but he does not understand the true nature of trafficking & prostitution in San Francisco.

Full text of resolution.

The resolution refers back fondly to the recommendation that came out of the S.F. Taksforce on Prostitution in 1996 to decriminalize prostitution in San Francisco. The language of the resolution seems to imply that the S.F. Board of Supervisors agree that decriminalizing prostitution would somehow reduce the harm of prostitution.

Below is an email written by a friend which makes the case against this resolution. Something not mentioned is the possibility that this vote will be cited as a precedent by those pushing for decriminalization.

Despite letters and calls to the Supervisors urging the defeat of this resolution, it passed today with no dissent and no discussion. So does every Supervisor support decriminalization of prostitution in San Francisco? Apparently so, based on this vote.

* * * * *

Dear Supervisor,

Resolution #071642 will automatically pass the board today unless a Supervisor removes it from the consent calendar. The wording of the resolution implies that the Board of Supervisors supports decriminalization and promotion of prostitution. Before a policy statement like that gets passed, it should be discussed.

The prostitution decriminalization resolutions are well-meaning theories that have been proven completely wrong over the past decade and are harmful to women. Global trafficking of human beings is a huge problem in the 21st century. The Board members may honestly feel they are promoting tolerance, but the end result of these policies would be cruel indifference to human suffering.

Background

Resolution #071642 commends a group called US Prostitution Collective for their work 11 years ago getting the Task Force on Prostitution to urge decriminalization of prostitution in San Francisco. That Task Force Resolution was thankfully never implemented, but there seems to be new efforts to push prostitution decriminalization onto the citizens of San Francisco.

In the 10 years since the Task Force on Prostitution report things have changed:

* A huge body of research has been collected which clearly shows that prostitution is harmful to the prostituted woman.

* Research has shown that sex trafficking and organized crime iINCREASE wherever prostitution is legalized. Once an area is open for business, the law of supply and demand kicks in and traffickers get rich serving up a supply of younger and more desperate women to feed the demands of johns.

* In 2000 Amsterdam legalized prostitution. In September 2007, the city of Amsterdam spent $15 million Euros ($22 million U.S. dollars) to purchase and shut down one third of the brothels in the red light district.

* On December 4, 2007 the California Alliance to Combat Trafficking and Slavery (CA ACTS) Task Force released its final report. The 18 month study found that California is a top destination for for traffickers bringing women and girls in for forced prostitution. Over 80% of the trafficked people discovered were women and children.

• The country of Sweden has done a complete turnaround based on the government's policies of gender respect and equality. Sweden does not criminalize prostitutes, but does outlaw pimps and johns. They have also focused on providing women viable alternatives to prostitution which most prostitutes say they want. As a result of this policy, they have almost completely eliminated the huge sex trafficking problem that had come along with legalization.

The problems of trafficking will only get worse if prostitution is decriminalized in San Francisco.

Resources:

Research on Prostitution
http://www.prostitutionresearch.com/c-prostitution-research.html
http://action.web.ca/home/catw/readingroom.shtml

San Francisco and California are already trafficking centers
http://www.safestate.org/index.cfm?navID=442

The City of Amsterdam spends $22 million to shut down brothels
http://www.iamsterdam.com/press_room/press_releases_0/2007/red_light_district
http://afp.google.com/article/ALeqM5ivGoSHCL-ZbA7_GIWwT48gOTlLMg

Can this city be saved?

This is what happens when a city loses its way. Tragedy starts when a city stops caring about individuals, doesn't value education and mentoring, turns the streets over to crime and thugs. San Francisco leaders should take the sad story of our neighboring city as a cautionary tale.

Many young black men in Oakland are killing and dying for respect.
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2007/12/09/MNS1RBLQ5.DTL&hw=prostitution&sn=018&sc=220

Preying on agricultural workers

As reported by the S.F. Chronicle

The director of a Half Moon Bay charity has pleaded no contest to a charge of soliciting prostitution after offering a jobseeker $500 to have sex with him.

Sixty-five-year-old Michael David Niece — director of the Coastside Catholic Worker charity — faces up to 10 days in jail when he's sentenced later this month.

He is accused of offering to pay a 35-year-old woman for sex after she sought his help finding a job.

The woman went to the police, who asked her to set up a meeting with Niece.

They recorded the phone call and arrested Niece when he showed up at the rendezvous point.

Niece and his wife founded the charity in 2000.

It focuses on helping agricultural workers and their families.

MSNBC Undercover: Sex Slaves in Detroit & San Francisco

On Dec. 3, MSNBC aired MSNBC Undercover: Sex Slaves in America."

The first part of the program focused on college students from Ukraine who thought they were coming to the U.S. for summer jobs in Virgina, but found themselves forced into stripping and prostitution at a Cheetah's club in Detroit. They managed to escape after a year, and their traffickers are now in jail.

The second part of the program featured "inspections" of massage parlor brothels in downtown San Francisco near Union Square. Various city health and building inspectors visited brothels and noted violations. Gavin Newsom was interviewed and was quite proud of these inspection teams. But the although the brothel owners seemed cranky at the fact they had to pay a fine, the status quo seemed to be maintained. The pimp got a fine and stern talking to, the inspectors left, the women resumed. Not a good day for San Francisco. It would have been so much more powerful if one of those places had been SHUT DOWN! Clearly the inspection teams need translators and transportation to get those women out of there and into services. And why are these pimps just allowed to continue pimping in plain view?

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/22083762/
Read the transcript at:
http://today.msnbc.msn.com/id/22056066/page/5/

California a top destination for human traffickers

The California Alliance to Combat Trafficking and Slavery Task Force released today its Final Report. The report contains descriptions of what can only be called modern-day slavery and makes extensive recommendations for dealing with the horrors of human trafficking. The full report can be downloaded at http://safestate.org/index.cfm?navID=442.

Research by the UC Berkeley Human Rights Center identified 57 forced labor operations in involving more than 500 people from 18 countries between 1998 and 2003. The Task Force held public hearings in 2004 and 2005 on human trafficking and continued researching and hearings which led to new legislation in the California legislature and to the release of this final report. Here are some excerpts from the report involving San Francisco.

• In July 2005, the federal government arrested more than 40 people in Los Angeles and San Francisco and seized more than $3 million in illicit proceeds in Operation Gilded Cage. This operation involved more than 100 Korean women, many of whom told investigators that they were taken from their country against their will and forced to work as erotic masseuses.
• California Regional Task Forces Funded by the U.S. Department of Justice:
  In 2004 and 2005, the U.S. Department of Justice awarded grants of $450,000 to five California law enforcement agencies in San Diego, Los Angeles, San Francisco, Oakland and San Jose to establish human trafficking task forces to aid in the identification and rescue of human trafficking victims and in the investigation and prosecution of traffickers. These grants require strong working relationships between law enforcement, other government entities and NGOs that provide direct services to victims of trafficking. The San Francisco Police Department, the lead agency for the North Bay Human Trafficking Task Force, is "committed to end the demand for human trafficking through investigations and strong enforcement procedures against perpetrators. The Task Force trains law enforcement and creates partnerships with federal agencies to build successful cases against traffickers, collaborates with NGOs to educate the community about human trafficking, and conducts human trafficking assessments and referrals for all potential victims encountered during code enforcement inspections and investigations. It also collaborates with the FBI Child Exploitation Unit to identify and build cases against traffickers of U.S. victims and supports the Girl’s Justice Initiative to provide education to girls at the Juvenile Justice Center."
• The Asian Pacific Islander Legal Outreach Immigration and Trafficking Project in San Francisco represents victims of human trafficking for immigration and other civil legal relief and provides community outreach and technical assistance and training on human trafficking to NGOs and law enforcement.
• The Standing Against Global Exploitation (SAGE) Project, also in San Francisco, is a collaboration between law enforcement, public health, social services and private agencies with the goal of bringing an end to the commercial sexual exploitation of children and adults.
• “Rescue and Restore” Campaign: In conjunction with the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services’ “Rescue and Restore” campaign to raise public awareness about human trafficking, several coalitions have been established in California. These include coalitions in Los Angeles, San Francisco and Sacramento, which in July 2007, became the 18th city in the nation to form such a collaborative effort.
• In 2005, the Board of Supervisors of the City and County of San Francisco passed a “Sweatfree Contracting Ordinance,” with a goal of encouraging responsible contracting and reducing any inadvertent support of contractors who use sweatshop or other forced labor.

San Francisco District Attorney Kama Harris was widely quoted in the media coverage of the release of this report. She is listed as a sponsor of new legislation in the California Legislature (Assembly Bill 1278) designed to make it easier to make cases against traffickers and put them out of business for good. In many cases California laws are even weaker than the incredibly inadequate federal anti-trafficking law. AB 1278 seeks to provide stiffer penalties and addresses pimping as a specific crime among other changes.