Why there’s growing concern about human trafficking in Sonoma County

In the past year, Verity, Sonoma County’s only rape crisis and healing center, has served 153 human trafficking survivors, 56 of whom were children.

In 2023 alone, 86 survivors disclosed their stories to Verity for the first time.

Because of inconsistencies in the way cases are tracked, and because of service interruptions during the pandemic, it’s difficult to identify a trend, but one thing is clear:

“Human trafficking can happen to anyone, at any time,” said Lisa Diaz-McQuaid, Verity’s lead human trafficking caseworker.

Verity’s human trafficking department was created in 2019, when leaders saw a rising need for dedicated support, though the issue had long been identified as a problem in Sonoma County, Diaz-McQuaid said. Since 2019, they’ve served 430 survivors.

Diaz-McQuaid, a survivor of trafficking herself, is often out in the community, speaking to survivors who have experienced, or are experiencing trafficking, and referring them to Verity’s network of support.

The sheer number of survivors accessed through her outreach team last year shows the trafficking presence in the county has not gone away, and may also speak to the ways exploitation through trafficking has changed in recent years.

It happens in all forms

“Families are trafficking their own — their kids or grandkids — and foster youth are very, very susceptible to it … there is also what we call ‘Romeo:’ boyfriends pimping out girlfriends,” said Christina Gomez, Verity’s human trafficking outreach worker. “It happens here in all forms.”

By definition, human trafficking refers to anyone who is exploited for the financial gain of another person.

Knowing the signs that a teen is being taken advantage of is crucial to stopping trafficking before it goes too far, she added, but it’s important for residents to recognize signs for all forms of trafficking.

Traffickers use social media to lure Sonoma County teens into sending inappropriate pictures or videos in exchange for money, Gomez said.

Social media platforms like Snapchat and Instagram have presented platforms for trafficking to flourish, and for teens to be the biggest targets.

Snapchat is particularly dangerous because the photos and videos disappear after they are opened, said Lisvet Nuñez, the county’s Commercial Sexual Exploitation of Children liaison at Verity.

When teens send pictures or videos in exchange for money, more often than not, the trafficker saves the videos and uses them as future exploitation, she said.

“Then they will start harassing them, or using the (photos and videos) against them,” Nuñez said. “And that’s where youth come forward.”

Nuñez works with exploited youth, offering them support through Verity or serving on multidisciplinary teams for at-risk youth, alongside social workers, probation officers, advocates and caseworkers.

Many of these teens are in foster care.

Struggles with trust

Developing trust with these youth often presents the biggest challenge, she said, as many of the youth have struggled with trusting adults their entire lives.

“It’s just trying to build that rapport with them and letting them know that we’re here for support if they need anything,” Nuñez said. “And they do come to us — it may take three, six months, a year — but they will come to us and at one point they will disclose something.”

Once a survivor has disclosed that they’ve been trafficked — or when a mandated reporter files a suspected child abuse claim — a multidisciplinary team including Nuñez, police, and other child welfare agencies get together.

We always investigate (the cases) whether they're wanting to prosecute or not,“ said Detective Tanya Wagner, who investigates domestic violence and sexual assault. ”Team meetings to see how we can assist the victims and if there is, in fact, a criminal aspect to it, and how we would proceed with a criminal investigation. And then of course, also with assisting the victims or getting resources that they need, which is most important.“

In Wagner’s first year as a domestic violence and sexual assault detective, most of the cases she’s managed have involved minors.

And the most common cases she’s seen are either through social media, or “Romeo trafficking,” which affects both teens and adults in Sonoma County and describes when someone is trafficked by their romantic partner.

“A lot of times, the youth that are being exploited are coming from backgrounds that are traumatic,” Diaz-McQuaid said. “That’s a perfect opportunity for a trafficker to come in and say ‘I’m going to help you, I’m going to take care of you … I’m the only one that loves you.’”

This form of manipulation, called love bombing, will happen months before the trafficking actually begins.

“It’s the connection that they’re searching for: the shelter, the love they never got at home, somebody that’s providing protection,” Gomez said. “And then that’s when the coercion starts.”

Typically, the trafficker will then convince their partner to do sexual acts in exchange for money. This type of trafficking is prevalent in the county’s homeless encampments as a form of survival, Gomez and Diaz-McQuaid said.

The two often visit the encampments as part of Verity’s outreach work, providing basic needs while also educating women on the signs of an unhealthy relationship.

“Sometimes they’ll come across youth that are in these encampments and they don’t present the age that they really are,” Nuñez said. “So you’ll have someone who’s with an adult, and who says they’re an adult, but at the end of the day it’s a 12 year-old boy or girl.”

Familial trafficking, where a parent or caregiver gives their child to someone to be abused or exploited for personal gain, is the most common form of trafficking nationally.

“Whether it’s for money to pay rent, to pay bills or to buy drugs to feed their addiction … it’s exploiting a child for their own personal gain,” McQuaid said.

And while it’s not reported much in Sonoma County, that doesn’t mean it isn’t happening, she said.

Another form of trafficking, labeled “CEO trafficking” starts with fake advertisement for modeling opportunities and targets women in particular. When someone is trafficked this way, it doesn’t always start immediately with sexual favors.

"While you're living with the trafficker and all this is happening, they’re paying for your clothing, they're paying for your pictures … so you acquire this debt,“ said McQuaid, who is a survivor of this form of trafficking. ”When it's time to leave, or you're like, ‘I don't want to do this anymore,’ (the trafficker says) you can't leave because you owe me $10,000 for all the money used to help you do this modeling.“

Paying off that debt is where the sex trafficking actually begins. What was a call for models posted in Sonoma County ended in McQuaid being trafficked to the East Coast.

“When a trafficker can see that there's a vulnerability in you or that you are in a tough spot, or you're desperate to make money, or that your needs are pretty great; that's a perfect opportunity for them to come in,” she said. “It’s a reality for us here at Verity because we work with it on a daily basis, but then being a survivor for me is definitely an every day reality because I was trafficked here in this county.”

Identifying and preventing trafficking

Recognizing what the physical signs of trafficking are is essential for the Verity team to intercede and provide a survivor with resources, which include mental health care and counseling, Gomez said.

Red flags among youth would be an excess of new materialistic items, large amounts of money on hand, not wearing appropriate clothing, having two phones, being under the influence, or having a depressed demeanor, Nuñez said.

Adults in the Romeo trafficking relationships can also have some of these identifiers. But it’s also common that these victims have tattoos from their trafficker as a form of “branding,” or they are without physical forms of identification, often withheld by the trafficker as a means of control.

School officials and medical professionals have the most opportunity to catch the early red flags, McQuaid and Gomez said.

“If they go to a doctor's appointment, they're accompanied by somebody else, and that person is talking for them,” — that’s a major identifier, Nuñez said.

But ultimately, the biggest way to stop trafficking is to equip people with the tools to spot the manipulation that often precedes the sexual component.

For youth, being safe online and not interacting with people you don’t know on apps like Snapchat and Instagram is crucial. Once a teen is involved with a trafficker, it could quickly snowball into extortion.

"Even if we rescue Sally and get Sally from her trafficker, the long-term trauma, the generational trauma, the likelihood that she might be going into an abusive relationship later … there's just so many things that once it's already happened, you're hurt and you've got to heal from it,“ Gomez said.

Report For America corps member Adriana Gutierrez covers education and child welfare issues for The Press Democrat. Reach her at Adriana.Gutierrez@pressdemocrat.com.