By Robert J. Hansen | OBSERVER Staff Writer
A summit on human trafficking awareness at Cal Expo last week showcased three survivors of human trafficking who shared their experiences with roughly 100 people, many of whom were women and teenagers.
Hosted by Project Take, an interactive trafficking prevention program that educates teens and young adults on how to navigate through dangerous situations and how to locate support systems, the survivors were joined by the Sacramento County District Attorney’s office, the Sacramento Sheriff’s office and other community organizations who support youth victims of trafficking.
Leia Schenk, founder of the community organization EMPACT and creator of Project Take, didn’t know how severe human trafficking in Sacramento was until about four years ago when she started driving around the city helping parents look for their missing children and saw it for herself.
“I regularly got these calls for missing women and children and we would go out there to look for them and they (parents) always took us to trafficking locations,” Schenk told the OBSERVER.
This led Schenk to create Project Take, which in addition to its program, conducts routine outreach to individuals who potentially are currently being sex trafficked.
Schenk said that she began seeing sex workers who would sometimes be children or young adults in areas throughout the county.
“It’s different to see it,” Schenk said. “When I saw the amount of women out there, that is when the inception of Project Take took place.”
Human trafficking happens every day in every major city in the United States and is an injustice anybody could fall victim to.
In 2021, about 16,500 likely victims of trafficking were identified in the U.S., according to data from the National Human Trafficking Hotline. The same data showed 2,000 of those victims were from California, the highest of any state.
Even though the majority of Sacramento County, 70%, is unaware that human trafficking is happening, the city of Sacramento has one of the highest rates of human trafficking in the country. A 2022 report estimated more than 13,000 potential victims of human trafficking between 2015 and 2020.
“After talking to victims and even traffickers, I knew that people do not know about this. When we hear about this, we think it happens somewhere else,” Schenk said. “The average person in Sacramento has no idea how bad it is.”
One survivor, Amber Lewis, found that hope emerges from unexpected places.
“With solitary footsteps in my journey, I found a different kind of resilience,” Lewis said. “No one person or moment in time stood out as a beacon of hope, instead hope emerged as a silent companion, a resilience discovered inside myself.”
Lewis discovered that finding herself was a lonely journey yet not devoid of friends who, like her, face the shadows alone.
“Though the solitary journey is long and dark, the newfound resilience and strength is a force to be reckoned with and can be a flame that lights the path of others lost in the darkness,” Lewis said.
Courtney Martin, a prosecutor with the Sacramento County District Attorney’s office, noted how important it is to have organizations like EMPACT provide support for the youth in the fight against human trafficking, an estimated $5 billion industry.
“You can imagine why traffickers try to recruit into this industry when that’s the kind of money at stake,” Martin told the audience.
Martin, who has prosecuted over 100 cases that involved trafficking since 2019, said there are three groups of people law enforcement and prosecutors look to identify when handling a human trafficking case, traffickers, victims and people who buy sex.
“The people who buy sex are driving the industry and driving demand for trafficking,” Martin said. “That’s why we have victims.”
Martin said that the Sacramento Police Department regularly conducts operations targeting “sex buyers.”
Martin emphasized that victims are often groomed and trafficked by someone they are in a relationship with.
“This is something few know and that the media too often overlooks,” Martin said.
Those who are interested in the Project Take educational program can contact volunteers at (916) 801-3890 or projecttakeca@gmail.com.
Victims in need of support can contact Capital Star Community Services at www.starsimc.com or (916) 584-7800.