To continue UHS News’s exploration of the phenomenon of sex trafficking, journalist Rylie Barber interviewed Travis Meeks, a Mendocino County resident and advocate for victims of sexual violence. Meeks works at Project Sanctuary, a domestic violence shelter for individuals seeking support in the Mendocino County region. Meeks told us he has worked at Project Sanctuary for five years and first became involved in advocating for victims when he interacted with a sexually trafficked seventeen-year-old woman.
The following is a condensed transcript of our interview with Meeks
UHS News asks, “How would you define sex trafficking?”
Meeks said,
- Trafficking is anytime that somebody is forced to work without pay.
- This isn’t completely for sex trafficking.
- They can be forced to work in the sex industry without pay and against their will.
- There are people working in the sex industry by choice.
- People who work pornography or people who work in Nevada in the illegal brothels, but this is being forced to work against your will in the sex industry.
- We sometimes think of trafficking as victims being moved from one place to another.
- That’s not how we define sex trafficking.
- It’s just being forced to work against your will in the sex industry.
- There are people who are brought from other countries who work in the industry, but mostly, it is people taken from small communities.
- Humbolt County’s problem with sex trafficking.
- Mendocino County has a problem with a lot of our foster youth being targeted.
UHS News asks, “How would you view sex trafficking?”
Meeks said,
- It’s a huge issue.
- It’s a really devastating problem for the people who are affected by it.
- It affects the people who are the most vulnerable already.
- Some of the communities that are affected the most are already at risk for other problems.
- People who have mental health disorders, people who have drug and alcohol issues, foster youth, etc.
- These populations are the most apt to buy into the illusion that a pimp might provide.
- For instance, there was a young woman from Humboldt county who started talking to a guy online. She was from a single-parent household, no money, very poor, struggling. This guy that she was talking to had everything. He had cars, he had money, he was very interested in her He would talk to her for hours and hours, send her a little kiss. So, the illusion that he was providing to her was: I am going to take you out of this struggle that you’re going through and provide you a really nice life.
- The reality was when he picked her up, he threatened her family, and basically forced her into prostitution.
- Do pimps often feign close relationships with potential victims to gain their trust and more easily manipulate them?)
UHS News asked, “Do pimps often feign close relationships with potential victims to gain their trust and more easily manipulate them?”
Meeks said,
- I think that a lot of pimps are sociopaths who are incapable of forming real emotional bonds with people.
- They’re good at pretending to do that.
- Often times victims of trafficking will say they love whoever the pimp is.
- Very rarely will they (trafficked girls) ever actually cooperate with law enforcement or tell them who is the pimp.
- I’ll just tell you a little bit about how it works with them. So, they are gathered from all over the place to a central location, whether that be the Bay Area or Sacramento, the big metropolitan areas. That’s where the pimp will be located at. They will bring them there. From there, they will travel, not the pimp, the girls, in a group. Whether it be three, two, twenty, they will travel in a group on a set route. Mendocino County is part of that route because of Highway 101.
- Highway 101 is a huge thoroughfare for prostitution. So, they basically just drive up through California, up into Oregon, up into Washington, come back down through Nevada, and just do the loop. They do it non-stop.
- They stay in each little town like Ukiah for two or three days, set up appointments to have sex with people for money, and then they move on before anybody really notices something is amiss.
- They have one woman who is in charge of the other girls. She often will be the prostitute that has been with the pimp the longest. She tries to be motherly to them, she’ll be like a friend to take care of all their needs, but also she will act as an enforcer for the pimp as well. So, she’s the one that is actually in charge of the girls day to day.
UHS News asks, “How does sex trafficking affect its victims’ mentality?”
Meeks said,
- As you can imagine, a pimp will break someone down and erase their personality in a lot of ways, whether that’s them getting them addicted to drugs or just through fear or through manipulation. Selling yourself to strangers has a pretty devastating effect on your mentality, on the way you look at relationships, the way you look at sex, the way you look at your own self worth. It is definitely the cause of PTSD for, I would say, every single person who is trafficked.
- Often times it will be what’s called complex PTSD which is PSTD from more than one traumatic event.
- There’s the trauma of actually being forced into prostitution by a pimp, there’s the trauma that comes along with selling yourself to strangers, and there’s the trauma that comes with… not all of these dates go well, right? Women are often raped, they’re often beat up, hurt. People are murdered. They know that. They hear stories from the other girls.
- And so, there’s this constant fear and loathing that goes into their everyday existence. As you can imagine, whether it’s one month or ten years, people don’t leave this industry in a very healthy state.
UHS News asks, “How does sex trafficking affect a victim’s physical health?”
Meeks said,
- Well, that all depends, right? They’re at risk of violence. They’re at risk of transmitted disease. A lot of them are going to end up with some form of STDs. Even if they’re using protection, there are forms of STDs that you can’t protect against like herpes and genital warts. Even with condoms, you are at risk of contracting those diseases.
- For the most part, they do make sure that that person is eating just because they make more money that way. If someone looks healthier, they’re going to make more money. I will say, though, that most of the girls I’ve had direct interactions with looked pretty raggedy because they were also on drugs. Drugs and trafficking are pretty hand-in-hand.
- So, for the first year, the victim will look fairly normal, but then after that year, it starts to become pretty obvious that they are not as healthy as they could be.
UHS News asks, “Are these drugs used mainly to break down their mental state? How are these drugs used most? “
Meeks said,
- The drugs are used for a variety of reasons. I think pimps encourage drug use to make the girls reliant on them. They’re always in a different town, so it’s hard for them to find the drugs. So, if they were to run away, let’s say they’re on heroin. If they’re going to run away, now they’re sick off of opioids. They don’t know where to get any at. It just makes it so that they end up going back to the pimp, who can provide that heroin for them.
- It’s also a coping mechanism. As with other drug addicts, it’s used to deal with things you don’t have control of. It’s kind of a self-medication for a lot of these victims. I think also it’s a tool to control and manipulate the victims.
- How are the victims affected long-term by their experiences?
UHS News asks, “How are the victims affected long-term by their experiences?“
Meeks said,
- I’ve actually had the chance to speak with a woman who was a trafficking victim from the nineteen-eighties. She was actually trafficked by her husband and the father of her children. Her and a variety of other women as well. This was back in the East Coast, like in New York. She had a problem when she tried to leave being a prostitute. She found that she just could not reintegrate into society. She felt like she had a stigma from being a former sex worker, even if people didn’t actually know. She felt like everyone knew. She had a lot of trouble reintegrating. She also felt a lot of shame and guilt over something that really, she had no control over.
- It’s hard to go back to life. It’s hard to talk to people about, “I have been working in a sex industry for ten years.” Literally, never having a home. Living in hotels, never staying in a town for more than two days. “I don’t know what the world is like anymore.” So, how do you have a conversation with a normal person? That was a really hard thing.
- Also, “How do I go from making $1,000 a day to working at McDonald’s?” Victims often have no skills. They come into a shelter like ours or anywhere in the country, they show up with no skill sets. They’ve never had a real job, they don’t have any credit, they don’t have a house, an apartment, or a car in their own name, so basically, they come like they’ve never existed. It’s extremely hard.
- The temptation is for them to just go work as a prostitute. They’ll say, “I’ll go for like two nights just to make enough money to pay for an apartment.” But usually, they will then fall back into working as a prostitute. The problem is there are women who work as a prostitute on their own. They can be independent. But, pimps don’t really allow that to happen. If they find out that you’re working and you don’t have a pimp, they’ll find you and force you into working for them. Just putting yourself back into that risk of being in the hands of a trafficker.
UHS News asks, “Generally, what would a typical day look like for a sex trafficking victim?“
Meeks said,
- A lot of people have this idea of women walking down a street corner, standing around waiting for someone to pick them up. In some areas, that is what it’s like, but for the most part, now, in today’s age, it is not done like that. Obviously, when you’re walking around Ukiah, you don’t see women standing on the street corner selling themselves. So, it’s all done online. There’s different websites where the girls will take pads and have their phone number so people can call and set up appointments.
- So, their typical day is basically, “What town am I in? I’m putting up an ad into…” whatever website they are using. There used to be a really popular one called Backpage.com, but the FBI shut that down. So, now there is a variety of different sites. The FBI shutting down that site actually actually hurt our efforts to help these women because it was an easy way to track the women. So, we would see Sarah Jane (made up name) was in Bend, Oregon. So, we could actually track them, day-to-day, where they were. But now it’s scattered across dozens of different websites and it’s really getting harder and harder to track the girls.
- So, they get up, they check their ads. Basically, a day for them is nonstop dates. They are having dates back to back to back. As many as they can put into one day. They will often have a quota of money that they need to make for that day.
- So, as you can imagine, they don’t get a lot of downtime. That’s basically their whole life. Just having sex.
- They’re used like a commodity and are not really allowed to have any kind of real relationship or friendships. Just sex.
UHS News asks, “What have you learned from working with sex trafficking victims?“
Meeks said,
- I’ve learned a lot about the sex industry in general. I didn’t know a lot about prostitution and sex trafficking within our community until more recently. I learned how the problem works and what the solution looks like. I believes that there is no solution.
- Originally, I told everybody about my discoveries regarding sex trafficking until I realized that it was being handled.
- When I realized that it takes place all around Mendocino County. I started a group called “Communities Against Human Trafficking.”
- Law enforcement has a hard time investigating the crime. Detectives have a hard time finding pimps because the girls’ phones are scrubbed . They buy a new phone every couple of days. They don’t have any direct communication with the pimps except for when they go back to the hometown. The only one who does is the main girl and she’s just as liable for prostitution as the pimp is. They will prosecute those girls for pimping. The police don’t want to arrest the girls because the girls are victims. Law enforcement basically said that they have very little chance to access the pimps.
- What we decided to focus on was just education and making sure that people know this is happening. Making sure that men know that paying for these services, the money is not going to these girls and that you are actively participating in hurting a woman’s life.
- California, actually, in 2016, added human trafficking as a key component to sex education. So, now all schools twice in a student’s lifetime, once in middle school and once in high school, have a conference about sex education. As part of that education, they have to recieve education about human trafficking, which is really good.
- .What I’ve learned is that there’s not a lot we can do to stop it per se, but we can educate the public and hope that we can stop it through community action and not law enforcement.
UHS News asks, “What is the process of rehabilitating victims of sex trafficking? ?“
Meeks said,
- It’s getting them housing, gainful employment, more education, and really extensive psychiatric intervention. Intensive therapy is probably the number one thing.
- What we’ve had a lot of luck with is women living in shared housing with other women who have been trafficked. They will form kind of a tight knit community around that shared trauma because they have a lot of trouble relating to normal people. So, being in that community helps because when you’re feeling isolated, you often go back to the things you know, which might be for them drugs and prostitution.
- Do you have anything to add?
UHS News asks, “What is the process of rehabilitating victims of sex trafficking?“
Meeks said,
- I hope that people, especially young women, are vigilant online and are very careful about who they interact with online because someone who might seem like your knight in shining armor might be someone who utterly destroys your life. We call these guys Romeo pimps because they will make you fall in love with them. They’ll be everything you want them to be. Most often, they say that they know someone who can help. If it’s too good to be true, then it is not true.
- I want people to be wary of both accessing these services and your online interactions with people who you might feel drawn to, but who might just be trying to persuade you into a life that might be devastating to your well being.
UHS News asks, “What is the general age range for people who are trafficked the most? ?“
Meeks said,
- The average age of entry into prostitution is like sixteen but it can be much younger than that depending on the region. It can be as young as thirteen all the way up until seventeen or eighteen.
If you or someone you know is a victim of human trafficking call the National Human Trafficking Hotline at 1(888)373-7388.
