Rachel Hestmark grew up in Portland. She says she was a gullible 19-year-old. Just out of high school, she met a couple of girls - one of them a friend of a friend. And on the spur of the moment she and the two girls decided to go California for a few weeks and make some fast money at strip clubs down there. The girls came to her house and met her parents.
In California, when they got to the door of what she thought was her new friends’ apartment in Anaheim, a man opened the door. And her world shattered.
"When he told me what was going to happen to me, I knew I was in trouble. I knew that there was a problem. I didn't know how I was going to get out of this, I didn't know who to contact. Right off the bat, I was told, this was going to happen, if I wanted it or not, because they knew my family. The girls had met my parents. They knew where I lived," Hestmark says.
Social service worker Anna Williams says she hears stories like Rachel Hestmark’s as part of her work at Haven in The Dalles. The organization tries to help victims of domestic and sexual violence of all kinds - including sex trafficking. Williams says the threats Hestmark describes are made routinely by pimps and abusers.
"Maybe they've taped her being raped, they've videotaped it, so they might show that to the family, they might injure the family. Sometimes they have a child that they'll be holding as a hostage," Williams says. "We've had clients where their children are being held hostage by other perpetrators. So we can't get to that child, we can't make sure that child is safe."
Williams says that’s a big reason survivors refuse to even report their experience to an officer. "One woman, as soon as I said 'I'd like you to talk to law enforcement,' she ran out of the office."
And because many victims won't inform law enforcement, she says the statistics on the crime are low. That matters because it's hard to get resources to combat a problem that isn’t reflected in the official numbers.
So, is sex trafficking happening in the Gorge area, in rural counties like Wasco?
The District Attorney there, Eric Nisley, says no cases have crossed his desk, but he absolutely suspects it’s happening. "Especially during the harvest times. And that's probably true all across the country. Oregon, Washington, Idaho, where you have the migrant workers coming through, at specified periods of time. And I know that happens during harvest, it's catching the people is the most difficult part."
Catching the people is what Chad Opitz does. He’s a Beaverton police detective and he’s also on the FBI's child exploitation task force. He says it's critical that any attempt to curb sex trafficking touches law enforcement AND resources for victims.
They’re inextricably linked, Opitz says. "I've had one victims with three pimps lined up in the court system but she keeps running away. Because in the Portland metro area we don't have any place to keep these victims if they're not on probation."
Rachel Hestmark, the Portland survivor, was taken to Boston and trafficked there. When she managed to get back three months later, she kept the whole experience a secret from her parents and friends. That was 20 years ago. She never spoke to law enforcement about the pimp who beat her and threatened her family if she didn't allow herself to be sold. "I often say you don't have to die to go to hell, you can be in hell, here."
Now she says she hopes to be heard by lawmakers who are making decisions about funding and priorities.
One of representative John Huffman’s bills would rename the crime of patronizing a prostitute to “commercial sexual solicitation.” Another would allow prosecutors to use some evidence - that defense attorney’s currently call hearsay - to convict sex traffickers. The third proposal would set up a fund to help survivors, though it doesn’t actually allocate any general fund money.
The state has just created a new position in the Department of Justice, for somebody to coordinate anti-child sex trafficking efforts across the state. That person will start later this month.
Anna Williams, program manager for Haven in The Dalles
Wasco county District Attorney, Eric Nisley, sits in front of front door that's being held as evidence in a drug-related, violent crime.
Chad Opitz, Beaverton police detective, also on the FBI Child Exploitation Task Force
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