Clark County sex trade operates mostly online

This woman had juvenile arrest warrants across the western United States, which led police to believe she was being worked by a pimp who pushed her along what is called “the circuit.” The most popular West Coast route pushes girls from Seattle through Vancouver and Portland to Los Angeles and Arizona. (ZACHARY KAUFMAN/The Columbian)

Vancouver youths may make up more than a third of juvenile prostitution cases in Portland, but teens who live along the Fourth Plain corridor say there’s an underground sex market here, too.

Workers at Vancouver’s Janus Youth — which runs homeless and runaway youth programs — concur and say that prostitution is mostly operated through free online sites such as Craigslist. Last weekend, there were 30-some posts on the erotic services section of Craigslist under the Clark/Cowlitz counties section.

Though Vancouver’s market is smaller than Portland’s, the format is the same, with pimps luring girls and forcing them to work. Self-proclaimed pimp Santiago, a 15-year-old from Vancouver, was candid and almost proud as he described how he ropes in girls.

“You wait for a nice girl to come by,” he explained. “Instead of trying to throw game at them, you say, ‘Hey girl, you pretty.’ Sometimes, they go, ‘Hey, I go to this school,’ or ‘I don’t even go to school.’ You get their number and you hit them up a week or two later. And you talk about if they want to be with you.”

He said he might buy the girl some cute clothes and take her to an apartment where there are men he knows.

“The guys drink and the girls flirt,” Santiago said. “And then they say, ‘This ain’t for free because I met you on the first night. Homies try to talk her down but that usually doesn’t work.”

Shrewd and smooth, Santiago fits the profile of a wannabe pimp, says former U.S. Congresswoman Linda Smith, founder of Shared Hope International, the Vancouver-based anti-sex trafficking organization.

Wannabe pimps work beneath the main pimp and rarely make it to the higher status, Smith says. Having a minor stand guard is part of the pimp’s operation, she said, because the minor would go to juvenile detention if arrested and not to prison.

But, Smith said, “they’re not going to let a stupid kid manage their product.”

Santiago, who asked to be identified by his middle name, said his age allows him to work with girls his age. Girls as young as 12 have sought his advice.

On a recent afternoon in a convenience store parking lot on Fourth Plain Boulevard, a young man stood with his hands pushed into his baggy jeans pockets. He talked with girls who ran between him and a parking lot across the street. When approached, he wouldn’t divulge whether he was a pimp, but he said Vancouver police either don’t know about prostitution in the area, or they don’t make it a priority.

Vancouver Police Cpl. Duane Boynton, a neighborhood police officer, said residents say prostitution isn’t very visible.

“It’s probably a bigger problem than we police think it is,” Boynton said. He paused. “I know it’s a bigger problem.”

Portland Police vice squad Sgt. Doug Justus, who lives in Vancouver, doesn’t doubt there’s prostitution in Clark County.

“Nobody works it on that side of the river, they’re so short-staffed,” Justus said. “But if you went to the hotels in Vancouver, went up to the gals or guys who work at the counter and ask them, ‘Do you see women who you think come off Craigslist?’ they’d probably tell you ‘Every day.’ ”

Santiago, though thoughtful and self-aware, is at a loss to explain how he got involved.

“I just wanted to,” he said. “I met a couple people.”

But later he remembers that he had wanted to impress a girl.

“I seen a girl that I wanted, but she said that I wasn’t enough,” he said. “I wanted to make myself look better.”

Girls may leave him, he said, but “if they owe you money, you get your homegirls, and I pay them to beat the other girl’s ass,” he said.

He doesn’t like to get to that point, though. A good prostitute, Santiago said, is one who works “without you sweating them.”

“Certain girls you keep for yourself, and some girls are not too good at business,” he said. “Some people try to bump down the prices, and some girls are just looking for sex.”

Last summer, Santiago monitored two girls and he was trying to teach his younger sister to pimp with him, continuing the trend of roping in youths to traffic each other.

“I’m having her watch me,” Santiago said.

His sister says she’d rather focus on school. She said her brother has promised that he’ll be in the prison cell next to hers when they’re adults, but she’s not so sure. She has other dreams.