OAKLAND — Pam, a 17-year-old high school student, was hanging out with friends in a grocery store parking lot when a well-dressed young man pulled up in a Hummer. He knew some of the other teens so Pam thought it was OK to accept his offer of a ride home.
After dropping off her two girlfriends, he drove Pam to his parents’ house and forcibly raped her. She was then sold on Craigslist and for the next seven days forced to have sex with various men 15 to 20 times a day until the FBI rescued her.
This true story of one California teen’s ordeal serves as a cautionary tale. It’s part of a curriculum called PROTECT that teaches children to recognize the signs that someone is trying to lure them into the sex trade or forced labor. In January, a new state law goes into effect that requires all public schools to provide human trafficking prevention education to students at least once in middle school and once in high school.
“The whole idea was let’s look at teachers as first responders in the classroom,” said Ashlie Bryant, president and co-founder of 3Strands Global Foundation, a coalition of nonprofits that created the curriculum and sponsored the Human Trafficking Prevention Education and Training Act. Assemblymen Rob Bonta, D-Oakland, and Evan Low, D-San Jose, authored the bill.
“The goal is not only to identify students who are actively being trafficked, but also to reduce the number of students who could become victims, buyers or traffickers,” Bonta said.
In 2016, the California Healthy Youth Act made comprehensive sexual health education in middle and high school compulsory. Topics include age-appropriate information about HIV/AIDS prevention, reproductive health, sexual assault, healthy relationships and human sex trafficking. But now teachers will be required to receive training to help them identify children at risk for both sex and labor trafficking, and learn where to refer them for help.
The San Francisco Bay Area is home to one of three “High Intensity Child Prostitution” zones designated by the FBI. The epicenter is a stretch of International Boulevard in Oakland known as “the track” — some three dozen blocks where skimpily clad minors approach potential customers in plain view. Some 100 children are sold for sex in the city on any given day, according to the West Coast Children’s clinic, which provides trauma services to victims. Minors are on average 12 to 14 when they are coerced into performing sex work.
“If you ask a child do they want to grow up to be a prostitute, the answer is no,” said Karen Monroe, Alameda County’s superintendent of schools. “It’s a gradual courting process that our young people really need to see and understand and it can be a long one.”
Monroe, a former principal at International Community School located on International Boulevard, said it was a challenge to keep K-5 students from being exposed to the sex trade on the school’s doorstep. Like other supporters of AB 1227, she said education in the schools is key to a multi-pronged community approach to interrupting the vicious cycle.
School districts can develop their own program, as the Oakland Unified and West Contra Costa school districts say they have already done, or adopt PROTECT, which provides lesson plans tailored to sixth-, seventh-, ninth- and 11th-graders. Along with 3Strands Global Foundation, it was conceived by Love Never Fails and the Frederick Douglass Family Initiatives, organizations that work to combat human trafficking and help victims rebuild their lives. It started as a pilot in a handful of rural California counties in 2015 and is looking to expand statewide.
Younger kids are first taught about safe choices, safe places and appropriate personal boundaries. In ninth grade, students learn about “Romeo” pimps who trick vulnerable girls and boys by feigning a romantic interest, “guerilla” traffickers who use force and coercion, and fake businessmen who promise bogus modeling careers that lead to sex slavery. Former victims give chilling testimonials such as one girl who said her pimp broke her jaw when she didn’t earn enough money.
Tiffany LaVoie, a high school math teacher in Sacramento who helped create the training, said her mission is to teach other teachers to survey their students for signs something is wrong. LaVoie has a survivor’s perspective that she shares in the training video. When she was growing up in Oakland and San Pablo, she said she was sexually exploited.
“Nobody ever asked why in warm weather I had long sleeves on and was covered up hiding bruises, I had no lunch and was dirty, or why whenever a man walked into the room my eyes hit the floor and I didn’t move,” LaVoie said. “These were such giant red flags but nobody was paying attention.”
The East Union High School District in San Jose is working with Planned Parenthood and other organizations to develop training that can be incorporated into the ninth-grade sexual health education classes taught by biology teachers.
“This is a challenging curriculum that requires a lot of sensitivity around it,” said Teresa Marquez, director of instruction and curriculum for the 22,000-student district. “It can be highly triggering for a student who may have had that experience, so we need a lot of training for our teachers so they’re equipped to deliver the content and be prepared for what happens if a kid acts in a certain way.”
