- Defenders USA outside Saturday’s Northwest Conference Against Trafficking
As I rolled my bike toward the parking lot of the Jantzen Beach Red Lion Inn last Saturday, heading to the Northwest Conference Against Human Trafficking, a man waving an anti-prostitution sign on the corner called out to me, “God bless you! We are going to win this fight! It’s David versus Goliath but we are going to win!”
That fervor to end prostitution in Oregon was matched inside the Red Lion’s bland conference room, where advocates and politicians (including City Commissioners Amanda Fritz and Dan Saltzman) took to the podium demanding the state work harder to curb prostitution and develop a way off the street for underage victims.
As we reported on in the fall, anti-prostitution advocates have been hoping to open a shelter for human trafficking victims in Portland for years. Though an FBI sting in Portland last February picked up seven underage girls in the city in four hours (and a routine traffic stop in Beaverton last week ended in the rescue of a 14-year-old prostitute) the estimated $2 million pricetag of a trafficking-victims shelter has so far been too high a hurdle.
- Senator Wyden on Saturday
But the local advocates may soon get a big federal boost. On December 23rd, Oregon Senator Ron Wyden introduced the Trafficking Deterrence and Victims Support Act. The bill would allot $2.5 million annually in federal dollars to establish a shelter for trafficking victims and cover some costs of investigating and prosecuting human trafficking cases. As the bill’s lead sponsor, Wyden says he is “in a good position” to argue that the shelter should be built in Oregon.
Wyden’s speech at the trafficking conference this weekend was laced with rousing, go-get-em-rhetoric. “The young people who are being exploited are some of the most vulnerable in our country. We are going to push back and we are going to beat the pimps!” Wyden told the large crowd to applause. Wyden says that in the last decade, Portland has become a hub of human trafficking due to the state’s large number of runaways, high unemployment and location along I-5.
Right now if police pick up an underage prostitute on the streets, the state’s only real options are to send them back to their families or into foster care, explains Keith Bickford Deputy Director of the Oregon State Human Trafficking Task Force. The young victims are not guaranteed emotional therapy or, if they go back to their families, a secure home. “It’s almost like we’re trying to survive until we get a shelter built,” says Bickford. Under a new local law, arrested prostitutes over 18 can receive counseling or go to jail in Portland.
Jeri Williams, a survivor of prostitution who speaks often in Portland about her experiences in the sex industry, says getting into a shelter was the key to turning her life around. She spent 14 months in a Portland women’s shelter during 1993 and 1994 and went through therapy to deal with post-traumatic stress of living on the street. “That was the biggest part of my recovery,” says Williams. “That was my saving grace.”
I wonder who the models were in those protest signs. Rescued prostitues, who just happen to look like models? Actual models, who believe in the effort and are willing to risk people thinking they were underage prostitutes? Random pictures that the protestor took off the internet?