Awareness of human trafficking growing in San Diego

BALBOA PARK —  Hazel Fasthorse said when she was forced into prostitution in San Diego, the last thing she would have imagined was a group of people rallying to support her in Balboa Park.

The 23-year-old woman told a crowd of roughly 350 people that she was in high school when she was kidnapped and pushed into a human-trafficking ring. After escaping, she works to humanize victims and the challenges they face.

“The traffickers are going in and attacking them based on love or money, and it’s a manipulation process that is really hard to break,” she said at the annual human trafficking awareness rally Saturday.

In its third year, the rally drew nearly 150 more people than 2015 and is a far cry from the roughly 50 people that showed up its first year.

Organized by the Junior League of San Diego, politicians gave speeches about trafficking and participants marched through the park with signs that read, “Not in Our City!”

Growing awareness of human trafficking can be at least partially attributed to a three-year study from the University of San Diego and Point Loma Nazarene University that came out in October.

It found up to 11,700 women and girls are victims of sex trafficking each year in San Diego County. Funded by the National Institute of Justice, the study said the trafficking industry is run by gang members and worth up to $810 million.

The universities’ study was collected through extensive interviews with 1,205 people.

The study said a trafficker could earn up to $536,000 a year, and the average age of a victim of sex trafficking is 15.

“The enslavement of people is an evil thing,” said Summer Stephan, the chief deputy district attorney. “... It is a crime that hides in plain view.”

U.S. Attorney Laura Duffy told the crowd that human-trafficking victims face rape, threats of violence, beatings, confinement and false promises.

“In this district, Southern California, we have seen a 1,000 percent increase in sex trafficking in the last five years,” she said.

State Sen. Marty Block, D-San Diego, said he introduced a new bill, SB 823, last week to wipe clean records of human-trafficking victims arrested for petty crimes — besides prostitution — to help them return to society. Some examples he gave were loitering and vagrancy.

Roughly 100 students who attended were in town for the Encuentro, an annual event for high school and community college students, at Point Loma Nazarene University.

Andrew Maya, 17, of Chief Hill Learning Academy in Chandler, Ariz., said he was baffled why anyone would try to enslave young girls.

“Who would want to sex traffic kids, right?” he said.