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Vancouver conference discusses fight against sale of humans

Foes of prostitution, other trafficking share their strategies

By Scott Hewitt, Columbian staff writer
Published: January 17, 2015, 4:00pm

In November 2013, Clark County law enforcement officials, always busy working with victims and potential victims of sex trafficking, decided to gather some data about the demand side. They posted some Internet ads hawking sex for sale and borrowed a couple of motel rooms for a sting.

“We were bombarded by people coming to buy sex,” said John Chapman, chief criminal deputy at the Clark County Sheriff’s Office. One by one, men seeking prostitutes would show up and promptly get handcuffed; before long, there was a small mob of johns cooling their heels in the bathroom in back while more and more kept arriving out front.

“We had guys stacked in the bathtub. It’s funny — and it’s really sad,” Chapman told a conference session of the National Women’s Coalition Against Violence & Exploitation, a nonprofit agency started in Vancouver by members of Soroptimist International.

Hundreds of local officials from all sorts of agencies as well as volunteers and other interested people — including survivors and their families — turned out for the conference Saturday at the Hilton Vancouver Washington.

Chapman and other local panelists described the Clark County Human Trafficking Task Force, a team of officials from different agencies that work closely together, and with national law enforcement including the FBI and the Department of Homeland Security, to locate runaways and others who have gone missing and may have ended up in prostitution.

Plus, they’ve got an eye out for the red flags that indicate someone may be headed for that kind of trouble.

Victims and potential victims of violence and sex trafficking “don’t always trust us, they don’t want to disclose” what’s been going on, said Jason Mills, a detective with the Vancouver police. It can take many contacts and interviews to establish trust, he said.

Laurie Schacht of the YWCA Clark County’s sexual assault program said she takes the oblique approach when interviewing possible victims. She doesn’t demand answers; instead she offers, “Want to see a stupid drawing?” And she sketches the cycle of domestic violence and tries to start a dialog.

Panelists were excited to note that there’s a Washington program, Businesses Ending Slavery and Trafficking — online at http://bestalliance.org — driven largely by hoteliers in cooperation with police. That’s because so much sex trafficking happens in hotels, Mills said.

Housing is an important aspect of the issue, according to Eric Anderson of the state Department of Social and Health Services. Especially when children run away from foster care, they need someplace else to go when they’re found. There’s never enough space for them, and returning them to the same foster situation or a homeless shelter is obviously “not the best,” he said.

Mills said a website called humantraffickingwa.org will go live soon as a place to report tips and concerns; meanwhile, use the Facebook page https://www.facebook.com/CCHTTaskForce.

Predator mindset

Earlier in the day, Kathie Mathis, a California psychologist who works with sex predators and victims, gave the super-quick version of a presentation about the mind of a predator. She emphasized that predators feel that they are different from others and that right and wrong — which they do understand — simply don’t apply to them.

They’re “master manipulators” who are completely intentional in their grooming of victims, Mathis said; they know how to “bond” with those victims through a combination of intimidation and creating dependency, both physical and emotional, as they manage to convince victims that they’re on the side of goodness and hope; they’re often incredibly charismatic and found in respectable leadership positions — in pulpits and classrooms, on judicial benches and even in police cars, she said.

“They are friendly, nice, likable,” she said. “They are professional con artists” and so good at what they do, they can often con judges and police and psychologists — let alone young victims. Real predators don’t look like TV “bad guys,” Mathis emphasized. They look like all of us.

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