When Sandy Esparza was growing up in South Central Los Angeles, she didn’t have a stable home life. She grew up without a father, ended up in foster care and ran away, making her an ideal target for human traffickers.
After running away from foster care, she was trafficked from the age of 14 until she was 21. She was introduced to drugs and forced into prostitution and later strip clubs. She knew she could leave, but was consumed by shame and guilt, and felt emotionally trapped and unworthy of love.
“I was trafficked in [the San Fernando] Valley for three years as a young adult,” shared Esparza, now a prevention program manager for ZOE International, a nonprofit dedicated to ending human trafficking and child exploitation. Esparza was one of four panelists who spoke at a Human Trafficking Awareness event last week, hosted by the City of San Fernando in the council chambers.
“I live five minutes from here, and can drive any [direction] for five or 10 minutes and find a place [where I was] trafficked or exploited,” she recounted, noting that human trafficking can affect both children and adults, and can include sex trafficking, labor trafficking, forced criminal activity and other forms. “Every child has vulnerabilities. Adults have vulnerabilities, too.”
Human Trafficking Awareness
“Human trafficking is not a distant problem. … It is happening across the United States, even in communities like ours, according to ZOE International,” said San Fernando Vice Mayor Victoria Garcia, who spearheaded the event. “Nearly 50 million people worldwide are living in situations of modern slavery. … Those numbers are staggering, but behind every statistic is a child, a son, a daughter, a family whose life has been forever changed.”
Ester Yu, regional director for ZOE, described human trafficking as the use of force, fraud or coercion to exploit a person for labor or commercial sex. Adults can be trafficked if they were tricked or threatened into providing labor or commercial sex. In some cases, they might be undocumented immigrants who were smuggled across the border and forced to “pay” via labor.
If a victim is underage, any situation involving the exchange of sex or labor for drugs or money would be deemed as human trafficking because a child cannot legally consent. Even if they claim it was their choice, in most cases it would be considered exploitation, explained Yu.
If an adult says they’re involved in similar activities willingly, then it would not be considered human trafficking. However, Yu pointed out, in many cases adults may lie if they’re being psychologically manipulated or they’re being controlled by or fearful of their trafficker.
“Sex trafficking can occur even in legal businesses, like the pornography [industry],” said Yu.
In addition, legal massage and spa businesses – as well as private homes – sometimes operate illegal prostitution rings involving sex trafficking of adult or underage victims, she added.
“Lately, we have been joining law enforcement on operations in residential brothels … and we’ve been able to recover victims who were being commercially sexually exploited,” said Yu.
What Does Human Trafficking Look Like?
Megan Montes, a manager with the LA County Department of Children and Family Services (DCFS), works in a specialized section dealing with human trafficking. She said it’s important for the public to differentiate between real-life human trafficking and inaccurate portrayals in television or movies, such as the “Taken” series or the film “Sound of Freedom.”
In the vast majority of cases, “that’s not really what happens to our kids,” explained Montes. Most kids trafficked in the U.S. aren’t kidnapped or held captive by strangers. Instead, they’re typically lured by people they already knew or have recently gotten to know their traffickers, so the usual warnings about “stranger danger” very often don’t apply in most real-life scenarios.
“The reason why that’s dangerous is because when we have trafficking victims who see those movies and they don’t relate, they don’t understand that their situation is trafficking,” she said.
Montes said child traffickers target vulnerable youth from marginalized communities, including minorities, undocumented youth, LGBTQ+ kids, youth with learning disabilities or mental health issues, homeless kids and runaways, youth in foster care and kids who were previously violated.
Esparza, who was a foster kid that was sexually abused as a young child, was targeted by a trafficker who was a “blue-eyed, blonde, middle-aged woman in the middle of South Central.”
“I had a very abusive mother who surrendered me to foster care. I didn’t know my dad [and] I desperately needed love, [so] my first trafficker came in the form of a motherly figure,” she recounted. “It wasn’t a hard sell for me. When someone showed up and said, ‘I’ll love you, I’ll take care of you,’ I gravitated towards it – I ran to it – because I so desperately wanted it.”
Potential red flags that could indicate a child is being trafficked (or experiencing other issues) include running away from home; significant changes in their physical appearance; substance abuse; tattoos or burns (as a possible form of branding); frequently missing school; having money or expensive items not provided by the family; unexplained physical injuries; repeated pregnancies or STDs; and unhealthy or controlling friendships or romantic relationships.
Making a Difference by Being Present
In addition to sharing her own personal journey to help raise awareness about human trafficking via ZOE, Esparza is also the mother of two teenagers, a boy and a girl, ages 15 and 17. She makes sure to routinely monitor their online activity, using a parental control app called Bark, because many would-be traffickers utilize social media platforms to try to lure young victims with false promises of love, friendship, jobs or other opportunities, explained Esparza.
But, above all else, said Esparza, she focuses on being present in her kids’ day-to-day lives.
“It matters [to have] people who are present, people who show up, people who ask questions, people who are consistent in their lives,” she emphasized. “One thing I always remember is when I was being trafficked – and I’ve heard this from youth I’ve worked with as well – [is that] my trafficker was the most consistent person in my life, and that just kills me, because how dare we allow a trafficker to outwork us in consistency in a child’s life?”
Predators who have been interviewed about their crimes have admitted they look for children who are latch-key kids or who don’t have regular family support in their lives, said Esparza.
“They’re intentionally looking for these vulnerabilities. They’re looking for you to not be there … to not care, to be too busy, to be too tired,” continued Esparza. “We’re all tired … but as a parent, I’ve made it my business – and my husband does the same – to be annoyingly present with our children. I’m [there] asking them all the questions, and they’ll thank me one day.”
To help a potential human trafficking victim, learn and watch for the signs, call 911 in an emergency situation or call local law enforcement to report suspected trafficking activity.
For help or information, text “help” or “info” to 233733, call the National Human Trafficking Hotline at 1-888-373-7888 or call the California Department of Justice Victims’ Services Unit at 1-877-433-9069.
To learn more about human trafficking, go to www.humantraffickinghotline.org or www.oag.ca.gov/human-trafficking.