BAKERSFIELD, Calif. (KERO) — California has the biggest problem with human trafficking in the nation, so 23ABC's Dominique LaVigne took an in-depth look at how this issue impacts places like Bakersfield.
- Video shows an in-depth look at the sex trafficking problem in Kern County
- 23ABC'S Dominique LaVigne breaks down the problem of human trafficking by speaking with survivors, law enforcement, and legislators about the state of human trafficking in Kern County.
Whether for labor or sex, the unending demand for bodies in America continues to plague the nation, so suppliers engage in the illegal work of selling people to meet that demand.
The Bureau of Justice Statistics reports the number of people prosecuted for human trafficking has more than doubled from 2011 to 2021.
Across the country, the Human Trafficking Hotline identifies California as the state with the highest number of signals received and cases identified in 2023, so I took a look at the problem in Bakersfield, speaking with survivors, law enforcement, and local legislators to show you the state of sex trafficking in Kern County.
Some might say this is a picture of innocence.
"Trick or treat!" says a child at the front door of a house in Bakersfield.
Dozens of children dress up in costumes, walking house to house all in pursuit of candy.
"Say thank you!"
This is the childhood Odessa Perkins never had.
“We skip the ones that don’t have no light on,” Perkins said to her grandchildren.
But when you watch her with her grandchildren, you would never suspect the tragedies in her past
“There was never a stop where to me there was peace and I was able to live as a child,” Perkins said.
Growing up in a troubled home was normal for Perkins.
“What was that first experience like? Do you remember that?” I asked Perkins.
“I don’t think you can ever forget.”
When she was in junior high, she says winning her mother’s approval and love was all she wanted as a young girl.
When her mom asked her to help the family, the answer was easy.
“She took me in the house one day, had me shower, take a bath something like that, and then she put perfume on me, and we walked down the street.”
I visited the site where Perkins said she was first trafficked.
"There used to be a Seven Eleven gas station at this spot across the street from Bakersfield High School and Odessa tells me the first time she was sold for sex, her trafficker picked her up here."
Perkins says her mom made the exchange for drugs.
“When I went to that hotel with him, he had me do things to him and he did things to me, and then he turned around and dropped me off down the street from my house because he didn’t want to be seen in front of my house, dropping me off, and I went the house and mom told me take a shower and she said you did good.”
For years her trafficking continued, her mother would sell her to drug dealers, sometimes for money other times for drugs.
“I was told that I would be nothing more than a mattress for men to lay on.”
For years, she endured the same ordeal, and with no where to turn Perkins says she ended up in a physically abusive relationship
“You learn to literally just deal with what you’re given. I didn’t believe in anything or anybody, and I didn’t believe anybody cared about me either.”
As the sun sets on Union, you can see the problem, clear as day.
“I hear something new every single time," said Kameron Bailey, a former detective in the human trafficking unit with the Bakersfield Police Department.
Sergeant Kameron Bailey, took me on a drive around The Blade, a term to describe where commercial sex work and human trafficking happens.
“Typically, I have like 5 to 10 girls standing out right here, and then there’s a girl walking right here,” Bailey said.
Under the cover of night, this may appear like a choice.
“See, there’s one girl standing out there right now.”
But, he tells me more often than not exploiters force these women and girls through threats and manipulation to work the streets.
“Having to ask to take breaks, having to ask if they can go somewhere else, having to ask if they can get food, being denied food and breaks because they haven’t made enough money and having a quota before they can start working, those are the kinds of things that are commonly happening to the girls you see out there working every night that look like they’re having a good time.”
This area is known as Bakersfield’s blade, or the block, and spans down Union Avenue between 2nd and 4th streets.
“This will look like traffic at Disney Land sometimes. It’s just car after car after car, and it’s a little wild how busy it gets over here.”
Bailey says officers commonly find workers, buyers and exploiters on popular back streets like V Street.
“So, you’ll have cars that are pulling over like this with girls walking in the middle of the road waving to people.”
If you’re driving down Union in the evening you’ll probably see several women walking down the block just like this. Bailey says the johns who pick these women up for sex dates don’t usually face prison time, because in California, solicitation is a misdemeanor which usually means a couple of days at Lerdo. Purchasing a minor for sex though, is a felony, punishable by prison time.
“Good things don’t happen out there on the streets with kids,” said Ofelia Flores.
As a teenager in Wasco, Ofelia Flores says she grew up in a physically abusive home after her parents separated to, so she turned to her sister.
“I would run away to my sister’s, and they would call law enforcement, and I was labeled an out of control teenager.”
But the place of refuge from her mom’s home soon became her first exposure to exploitation.
“She said that I had to help hustle and I didn’t know what that meant, but I said sure.”
Flores says when she was 16-years-old, her sister got her addicted to heroin and forced her to participate in sex acts to get money to support their addiction.
“I didn’t realize it was wrong. I realized I didn’t want to do that. I was supposed to be. She gave the heroin to try. I didn’t want to be addicted to it, and I didn’t like everything that came with it, and I wanted out. I had wanted out for a long time.”
After a falling out with her sister, Flores says she started hustling on her own.
“And I met this man who was in his 30's. He was married, had children, and I thought he was my boyfriend and he was my second trafficker.”
Dr. Angela Look with the Department of Human Services says traffickers like that, also called the "boyfriend" or "Romeo Pimp," target the most vulnerable women and girls, making them believe they love them.
“The really sad reality is the child doesn’t even realize they’re a victim yet, and so they’ll be saying no, he’s my boyfriend. I’m fine. I’m doing this because I want to. All the while, what’s really happening is they’re being trafficked, and they’re brainwashed,” said Look.
United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime statistics indicate that children account for one in every three detected victims of labor and sex trafficking worldwide.
It’s an industry the International Labor Organization estimates generates more than $172 billion dollars from forced commercial sex exploitation with an estimated 6.3 million victims in forced commercial sexual exploitation across the globe.
For context if you add the entire populations of Los Angeles and Chicago, you get 6.3 million people
The Bureau of Justice Statistics reports women make up an overwhelming number of sex trafficking victims (94%) with disproportionate impacts on women of color
“There’s like a hierarchy in trafficking, and a lot of people don’t like talking about this because all races are trafficked, but young black girls and brown girls are trafficked at a much higher rate than any other race, and in the hierarchy for traffickers, we are also worth the least," said Ashley Faison.
The study identified 40% of sex trafficking victims identified as black compared to 26% of victims who identified as white
"It reminds me of slavery,” Faison said.
Ashley Faison says she grew up in an abusive home in Sacramento.
She would run away and met a man who would traffic her for the first time at 16-years-old.
“At 16, it seemed like this man was helping me because I didn’t want to go back to an abusive space, but what he introduced me to was a evil that completely took over my life for the next few years.”
For the next three year, Faison says she was sold by five different traffickers and forced to meet a quota through sex work and stealing.
“There was times where I was just completely grossed out, and that was how I wanted to meet my quota.”
She told her story to her local assemblyman when Senator Grove introduced Senate Bill 1414 to target the buyers, making it a felony to solicit or engage in sex with a minor under 16 years old and a felony for minors under 18 years old if the prosecutor can prove they were victims of human trafficking.
“I went to assemblyman Josh Hoover’s office to talk to him about my story and ask him for his support for SB1414, which increases the penalties for buyers, and when I was sharing my story with him I had no idea what was to come after that.”
In this moment, Faison says she realized the impact of sharing her story
“Ashley and I are the same age, and yet she was trafficked as a teenage girl, and while I was in high school, playing little league and going to summer camps, she was being exploited by people who were never held accountable for their crimes,” said Assemblyman Josh Hoover on the assembly floor.
“Hearing him say that on the assembly floor, it was like tears just pouring down my face, and it’s like this is the impact,” Faison said.
SB 1414 makes it a felony for adults who are soliciting, attempting, or engaging in sex with a minor under 16-years-old, punishable by up to 3 years in county jail and requires those with a 10 year age gap to register as sex offenders, and for 16 and 17-year-olds, the prosecutor must prove they were victims of trafficking.
This comes after Senate Bill 14 which classifies child sex trafficking as a felony and increases penalties for repeat offenders.
“When we first started, most people thought it was in foreign countries. Not here in California, and it is,” said Shannon Grover, California's 12th District senator.
This issues extends far past the assembly floor in the state capitol.
In 2023, the Human Trafficking Hotline identified nearly 17,000 victims in the U.S. with 2,045 of the victims or survivors in California
In 2024, the Kern County District Attorney’s Office tried 6 human trafficking cases, resulting in 5 convictions, making it the most trial and convictions in the last 5 years
“California has the highest numbers of cases across the nation. How is that going to be fixed?" I asked Grove.
“It needs to be fixed with punishment. If you buy or sell a human being for whatever purpose, sexual exploitation or labor trafficking, there needs to be a punishment.”
While SB14 has already become a law, SB 1414 hasn’t taken effect yet for people found guilty of purchasing a minor.
Penalties won’t change for people found buying adults for sex.
“Current state law is a misdemeanor, two days in jail, like long enough to explain to your wife where you’ve been,” Grove said.
The increased penalties won’t take effect until January 2025.
“If you’re selling a child, you deserve to be in jail, and if we have to fill up the jail with pedophiles, then that’s what we need to do,” Grove said.
For some survivors it takes more than justice in the court to remedy the impacts…survivors like Perkins and Faison say they go to therapy regularly to rebuild their self esteem and unlearn the responses they developed as a kid.
“There’s so many different pieces that come. The psychological trauma is very, very profound, so it takes a while to heal through all those different pieces,” said Dr. Angela Look.
For Faison, advocating for legislation makes up just one piece of her healing journey.
With solo travel, support groups, and restorative experiences through her organization, Diamond Collective, Faison hopes to help women heal and build a new life after trafficking.
“What I want to do is celebrate survivors who have boldly and couragously stepped forward to start their healing journey,” Faison said.
That’s the same kind of support Ofelia Flores hopes to share with women and girls who are in the place she was years ago.
Flores' life started to change for the better when she says she decided to confess at the Kern County Sheriff’s Office and was booked into Juvenile Hall for being under the influence of heroin.
“That is where I needed to be,” Flores said.
Years later, Flores would drive by Juvenile Hall, remembering all the times she spent in the facility.
“Some really not so nice staff would say ‘Okay, well next is Lerdo,’ but the nice staff outweighed the jerks, and next for me is Lerdo, but I go in as a speaker not an inmate,” Flores said.
She visits both Lerdo Pre-Trial Facility and Juvenile Hall to show up for the women and girls in hopes of building a safe space for other survivors in Kern County.
“I was there many many times, and nobody came. Nobody came, and so I go into juvenile hall, and the kids ask me why I come. ‘Do you have a family? Do you have a job?’ and I say yes. ‘Why do you come? Why do you come and see us?’ I said because I was here many times, and nobody came, so I’m gonna come. I’m gonna come for you.”
In the facilities, Flores passes out these cards to educate the women and girls on terms like boundaries and scapegoat so they can identify their trauma and begin to heal when they’re ready
“There are so many children that are being trafficked, and they don’t even know it. They think they’re in love and we don’t understand,” said Flores.
Each time she visits the girls and tells her story, she says she heals little by little, aiming to support the kids who were like her so they can create a life beyond these walls just like she did.
“That’s like years and years and years of thinking that all this was my fault, being told that I was mature. I was an adult. I was not like other children, and so with that you carry blame like ‘oh, I was an adult, so I knew what I was doing,’and that’s not the truth. The truth is I was a kid, and it wasn’t my fault,” Flores said.
Perkins leads her grandchildren around on Halloween night.
While this may not have been the life Perkins had as a kid, she says she’s made it a point to give her kids and grandkids the life she wanted.
“I don’t think you ever really come out of it, though. You learn to deal with it. ”
Only 1% of victims survive human trafficking, according to the United Nations.
Despite having her childhood innocence stolen, Perkins defied the odds, earning an associates degree, a bachelor's, and three masters, becoming an author, a high school counselor, and an advocate for survivors by founding her organization, emPOWERMENT: The Dess Perkins Foundation to support at-risk youth impacted by trafficking.
“How I’m here today? I really don’t know, so I’ll have to say it must have been God.”
She speaks at events, telling her story to raise awareness about human trafficking and domestic violence, and while life after trafficking isn’t easy, she says her inner child can rest knowing her work protects other kids who were just like her
“I want to give youth and adults what I didn’t have. I want to show them that you are worthy. You do deserve love, and no matter what your life was doesn’t mean that’s what it has to be.”
If you or someone you know may be a victim of human trafficking, you can contact the human trafficking hotline at 1-888-373-7888.
If you need help, you can reach out to these local organizations.
- emPOWERment: The Dess Perkins Foundation
- Alliance Against Family Violence and Sexual Assault
- Kern Coalition Against Human Trafficking
- Open Door Network
- Human Trafficking Hotline
Stay in Touch with Us Anytime, Anywhere:
