Navigating past the junkies and hustlers in San Francisco's
Tenderloin district, You Mi Kim found the metal security door
she was looking for, and pressed the buzzer.
Inside Sun Spa massage parlor, the manager saw You Mi on the
surveillance camera and threw some sea salt over the threshold
-- a Korean practice to ward off bad luck.
It was July 2003. It had been five months since You Mi was
lured from her home in South Korea by international sex
traffickers, who had tricked the debt-ridden college student
with promises of a high-paying hostess job in America.
After forcing her into sex work to pay them nearly $20,000,
the traffickers had finally let her go. But freedom was elusive.
Traffickers had taken all her earnings, yet she still faced a
$40,000 shopping debt back home -- the reason she left for an
American job that promised big pay. Now, no fewer than six
creditors were circling her family in South Korea.
Any kind of job she could get as an illegal immigrant --
cleaning homes or washing dishes in a restaurant -- wouldn't pay
her debts in time. She wanted to protect her family from the
shame of bankruptcy. She wanted her life back.
You Mi felt she had no choice.
On her first day of freedom, she took an unlicensed Korean
taxi from Los Angeles to another illicit massage parlor in San
Francisco.
The door of the Sun Spa opened. The manager, a Korean woman
in her 50s, led You Mi inside and quickly handed her off to the
masseuse with the most seniority.
For the next four months, You Mi would become a person she
never imagined. She and five other sex workers would share a
dingy apartment on O'Farrell Street across from the Mitchell
Brothers O'Farrell Theatre. She'd spend her waking hours at Sun
Spa, having sex with more than a dozen men a day, six days a
week, and scurrying into secret hideaways during police raids.
She would find the rumors about San Francisco to be true: It
was a booming stop on the international sex-trafficking route.
There was lots of money to be made. Customers plentiful, tips
great.
But first, she would have to surrender her last shred of
dignity.
The first stop on the Sun Spa tour was the five rooms on the
bottom floor, used for the regulars. They were tiny, less than
50 square feet and bare except for a cot with one white sheet, a
shower and a small painted nightstand in one corner. A mirror
covered most of the wall near the bed. A fluorescent ceiling
light cast a pallid green glow over the room.
Upstairs, You Mi saw four rooms decorated to look like
legitimate Chinese acupressure and massage rooms. They were
cleaner, with massage tables instead of beds. The condoms were
hidden.
"This is where we bring the new customers," You
Mi's guide explained.
Next was the kitchen. The woman showed You Mi an empty water
cooler bottle where she was to dispose of the used condoms.
Off the kitchen there was a changing room with lockers. You
Mi put on a long, sleeveless Korean dress that sex traffickers
had made her wear in Los Angeles.
"That's not sexy enough," her new co-worker said,
instructing her to put on a bikini top and a sarong slit all the
way to the waistband.
The last stop on the tour was the bell, in a back room off
the kitchen, used to summon the women when customers arrived.
Within earshot, You Mi saw a half-dozen Korean women lounging,
watching TV and eating.
Suddenly, a loud ring cut through the noise of the TV. The
women dropped their chopsticks and hustled out to the lobby,
arranging themselves on an L-shaped sofa so the customer could
make his choice. You Mi followed the pack.
She sat on the sofa, feeling like a dog that had responded to
its master's whistle.
What You Mi knew of San Francisco was limited to the two blocks
between Sun Spa and the cramped studio apartment she shared with
her co-workers. It was in the heart of the Tenderloin, the end
of the line for San Francisco's most desperate: the addicted
looking for a street-corner fix, the homeless looking for a
cheap motel, the men looking to buy sex.
It's here where the bulk of San Francisco's 90 illicit
massage parlors are concentrated, identifiable by double metal
security doors, surveillance cameras and windows that are
blocked out with aluminum foil, plastic garbage bags or paint.
To You Mi, the area seemed grittier and scarier than the
open-air sex markets in her South Korean hometown of Busan.
You Mi worked until 1 a.m. each morning, and after eating a
last meal at Sun Spa, walked back to the studio apartment,
ignoring the "Hey, babys" and drug offers that came
out of the dark. Inside the apartment, she'd find space on one
of the floor mattresses and crash until about 10 a.m., with just
a few minutes to spare until she was due back at the massage
parlor. On her one day off a week, she slept.
At first, You Mi was not making much money. Her constant
frown made it obvious she didn't like the work. None of the men
chose her from the couch on her first few days of work.
The money she earned in tips was also getting eaten away by
little fees and costs structured into You Mi's working
arrangement. Her share of the rent on her apartment was $300 per
week. You Mi would also have to pay $50 a day for food, a $40
weekly tip to the cook, plus a $70 weekly tip to the Sun Spa
manager.
Sun Spa gave her a cell phone so her bosses and customers
could reach her, and You Mi was responsible for the bill.
She even had to pay for her wardrobe. Each week, an elderly
South Korean woman came by Sun Spa with imported sex-worker
clothes in the back of her trunk -- the kind worn by prostitutes
in South Korea. The woman charged $100 per bikini top or bottom.
You Mi spent $300 for an off-white wraparound skirt no bigger
than an unfolded napkin, and a yellow and blue cheerleader-style
skirt with matching halter top. The top had a logo, the word
PORN spelled backward. She had no idea what the English word
meant.
Given all the incidental costs, sometimes You Mi walked home
with as little as $100.
As the new girl, You Mi got most of the new customers. This
was bad for two reasons: Newcomers sometimes didn't understand
they had to tip at least $100 for sex. It also was risky,
because an unfamiliar visitor could be an undercover cop.
After several weeks on the job, You Mi heard an unfamiliar
buzzer inside Sun Spa.
It was the signal that police had made their way inside the
massage parlor. You Mi followed the women running to the kitchen
with boxes of condoms in their arms.
They made their way to a secret door near the refrigerator
and slipped into a dank basement of the adjoining apartment
building, filled with bags of rotting garbage and broken
furniture. They ran barefoot in their lingerie, dodging puddles
and broken glass, and ducked into a musty alcove with a rusted
boiler and a water heater. You Mi squeezed in with the pack
behind a huge metal fan, and trembled in the sticky heat.
She knew what kind of trouble could come from getting
arrested for prostitution. When it happened to her in Los
Angeles, she wound up in a jail cell and had to be rescued by
her trafficker. She remembered telling her story inside the
police station to a Korean-speaking officer, who made no effort
to help her.
You Mi listened to the police officers searching Sun Spa, as
she crouched in the ventilation room. Her feet were bleeding.
Finally, the manager came to the hiding spot.
"It's safe. Come back and get to work," she said.
You Mi finally summoned the courage to call to her mother for
the first time since she'd landed in California. Her mother was
furious. By now she had figured out that You Mi was in the
United States. You Mi suspected her sister couldn't keep the
secret.
"I'm so sorry about all the trouble I put you
through," You Mi said.
Her mother had been able to pay the Samsung credit card with
a $10,000 bank loan. But You Mi still owed about $30,000 to the
moneylenders, and now her mother was frightened the family might
lose the house.
"I've failed as a parent," she cried into the
phone. "Come home."
"Mama, don't worry, the U.S. is a rich country, and I
can pay the debts working here," You Mi said.
There was silence on the other end of the line. Finally, her
mother asked You Mi what kind of work she was doing.
You Mi paused.
"I have two jobs. I work in a restaurant in the day and
a bar at night. I'm only getting five or six hours of sleep, but
I'm making good money," she said.
You Mi's mother didn't know very much about the United
States, yet You Mi wasn't sure her mother had been fooled.
Her mother didn't ask any more questions. You Mi didn't offer
any more details.
After You Mi said goodbye, she thought about her situation
and got angry. She made up her mind to work as hard and fast as
possible, even during her period, just so she could get out.
After hearing her mother's voice, You Mi became an actress.
She smiled at every customer from the couch, hoping to be
chosen. She learned a little more English: "How is your
wife, how old is your son, what did you do today?" to feign
interest so the man would become a regular.
Gone was the sullen young woman who kept her eyes down and
spoke only when spoken to. She told jokes. She flirted.
She turned her brain off.
You Mi asked for massage technique tips from the other women
and learned how to give such good rubdowns that most of the
customer's allotted 45 minutes would slip by before he would
realize it and demand sexual attention.
For the first time, she had repeat clients.
They were divorcees, single men unlucky in love, married men
having trouble with their wives, and men who simply preferred to
pay for sex. They paid $50 to get past the front desk, and then
tips ranging from $100 to $300, depending on whether they wanted
to be stimulated manually, orally or through intercourse.
Their requests sometimes struck her as perverted. Every once
in a while, they were violent. Once, You Mi was saved only by
her screams, when the manager interrupted a customer trying to
choke her to death. The attacker was refunded his $50 and sent
on his way, and You Mi was ordered to get back to work.
You Mi was thankful to the johns who were kind. Her most
devoted visitor was an unmarried inventor in his 40s, an
immigrant from India. He came every weekday night -- so often
the manager gave him every fifth night on the house.
You Mi pretended to enjoy the iced coffee he always brought
in a thermos. She acted enthusiastic about his promises to
patent a portable shower for surfers, and to use the riches to
make her his pampered Presidio Heights wife.
Soon You Mi was making money faster than she ever had in Los
Angeles. The tips were much greater in San Francisco. In a
month, she sent $10,000 home.
You Mi charmed each man into thinking he was her favorite.
Many considered themselves her boyfriend. They all wanted her
cell-phone number.
"Hey, You Mi, come check your score," said one of her
massage parlor co-workers, beckoning her over to a computer
screen. They were in the co-worker's apartment one evening in
September. Like many of the women You Mi worked with, the friend
was "independent," meaning she had paid off her
trafficking debt and contracted out her sexual service, keeping
most of the money for herself so she could afford things, like
her own apartment and computer.
You Mi looked over her friend's shoulder and saw a Bay Area
Web site -- myredbook.com -- dedicated to reviewing and ranking
sex workers on a 1-to-10 scale.
At Sun Spa, You Mi eventually learned that the Internet was a
major player in San Francisco's sexual underground.
The Bay Area's tech culture was good for the sex-trafficking
industry, providing a fast, anonymous way for first-time
customers to comparison shop before venturing out into a sex
parlor.
Sex workers relied on the Internet, too, to generate
customers and develop a following. A good review could bring in
more money; a bad one could put a girl out of business. You Mi
couldn't believe it when she heard that some girls had sunk so
low that they were even giving men free sex in exchange for good
reviews.
But to survive, You Mi had to learn the sexual code used on
the Web site.
Male bloggers, calling themselves "hobbyists," with
handles such as "inthenameofsnatch," rated female
"providers." One score for her body and one for her
sexual technique. Each woman was described by her ethnicity,
age, eye and hair color, height, build, tattoos and piercings.
Even a woman's breasts ("34B, perky, implants") and
"kitty" (shaved, trimmed or natural) were critiqued.
Used by sex customers and monitored by law enforcement since
1997, the site has more than 50,000 reviews of Northern
California escorts and masseuses. The chat rooms are full of
sexual braggadocio among men, and conversations about how to
keep their "hobby" a secret from their wives.
Some typical postings: "Adequate if you're horny."
"With a little seasoning she'll be an all-star."
"She took one for the team in five different
positions."
A few clicks could pull up a list of 90 San Francisco massage
parlors and descriptions of the kind of sex that can be had
inside each. Maps are provided. Most of the city's illicit
massage parlors are clustered in the Tenderloin and Chinatown,
with a scattering in the Richmond District, Union Square, the
Marina, the South of Market area and North Beach. Thirty-seven
of the sex parlors described on myredbook.com are licensed as
massage establishments through the San Francisco Department of
Public Health.
You Mi clicked on her brothel name, "Nana," and saw
she had been ranked a 7 out of 10. She had only a few postings,
describing her as cute, friendly and having a nice smile. As
embarrassing as it was to have her body analyzed in a chat room,
her overriding emotion was relief. A good review meant she could
get out of the sex trade faster. Her body ached and her faith in
humanity was gone. She was only 23, but she felt like an old
woman.
The backroom bell rang. The Sun Spa women hustled to line up on
the couch for a customer who had just walked in from the October
night.
Moments before, the women had been laughing about who had the
ugliest regular customer. You Mi was still suppressing a giggle
when she sat on the couch.
The 28-year-old man, who had weaved in from a nearby bar
where he was drinking away a bad breakup, thought her smile
looked more genuine than the others. He pointed at You Mi.
In private, the man's eyes softened. He was the first
customer You Mi ever had who didn't grab at her. His touch was
gentle, respectful.
When he asked for her phone number, she gave it.
He called, and asked whether he could take her to an Italian
dinner in North Beach. Although it was against house rules to
date a customer, North Beach was far away and You Mi picked a
night she was the only woman off the schedule to minimize the
risk of getting caught.
At the restaurant, she pecked at the mussels on her
spaghetti. She had never had Italian food, and thought he had
said Thai food when he invited her out.
But their conversation made up for what was lacking in the
meal. Using an electronic Korean-English dictionary and the
rudimentary phrases she had learned in Korean schools, she was
able to talk with him about their families, their lives and what
brought them to San Francisco. You Mi wasn't ready to tell him
everything, but she knew she would someday.
Another night they went to sing karaoke at Do Re Mi in
Japantown. This time, You Mi skipped the makeup and the sexy
clothes. He looked at her in her sweatshirt and baggy jeans, and
thought she was simply beautiful. He asked her that night to
leave Sun Spa.
In November, four months after her first day at Sun Spa, You Mi
had enough money to pay off the credit card debt. She gave
$30,000 -- plus a $1,200 fee -- to a Sun Spa manager who drove
to Los Angeles every two weeks with bags of cash.
Once in Koreatown, the Sun Spa manager gave the money to an
underground Korean money changer, who called his people in South
Korea and told them to deliver the cash to You Mi's mother.
All the women working at Sun Spa sent money home this way.
Within the sex-trafficking ring, the rule of thumb was to trust
no one, but there were a few unbreakable codes of conduct.
Trusting a stranger to send tens of thousands to your family in
South Korea without stealing it was one of them.
The day You Mi left Sun Spa, she had just her passport, some
money and some clothes. The other women in the brothel assumed
she was getting married -- the main reason most women left sex
work.
The manager gave her $1,000 on her way out the door. While it
could have been interpreted as a fleeting moment of kindness,
You Mi knew better. Most girls don't make it on the outside and
come back, to work as a masseuse or as a recruiter in their
hometowns for the trafficking ring. It's a smart business
strategy to leave on good terms.
You Mi directed the taxi to drop her off at the home of the
one person who had shown her some kindness during her ordeal --
the boyfriend she had secretly been meeting for dates outside
Sun Spa.
For the first time, she got to see what California looked
like on the outside. He took her to the Golden Gate Bridge and
Baker Beach, and bought her first pair of hiking shoes after she
broke a heel on one of their nature walks.
You Mi couldn't believe she had been living amid such a
breathtaking landscape for months, yet had never seen it. She
had forgotten that beauty even existed.
In South Korea, You Mi's mother went to court with the money,
to settle with all the collection agencies.
Then she called her daughter.
"It's over," she said.
You Mi wanted to believe her mother, but her heart wasn't in
it. She now knew the cold truth -- that her life would never be
simple again.
Epilogue
Inside a Korean restaurant in San Francisco, You Mi ran
between the kitchen and the tables with little white bowls of
appetizers.
Korean dinner always starts with numerous small plates:
kimchi, fish cake, daikon radish, black beans, anchovies,
sesame-soaked cucumber and acorn jelly. It's sweaty apron work
for minimum wage.
With the Korean custom of not tipping, she was lucky to take
home $30 a night from the customers.
But she was free.
It was June 2006. It had been a little over two years since
she stepped out of Sun Spa for the last time.
Not long after You Mi quit sex work, two Korean women escaped
from a brothel near the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art and
went to the police.
Soon afterward, the people who trafficked You Mi into
California fell under federal surveillance, and by summer 2005,
they were in handcuffs.
The men who arranged You Mi's trip from Korea, her brokers in
Los Angeles, and the madams and taxi drivers who controlled her
movements were among those named in Operation Gilded Cage, a
federal indictment of 45 Koreans in Los Angeles and San
Francisco.
Although two dozen masseuses agreed to testify in San
Francisco, none of the 29 people charged in connection with
Korean sex trafficking in the Bay Area has gone to trial. Ten
have pleaded guilty to lesser alien-harboring or
money-laundering charges, and most of them were sentenced to
less than a year in custody and fined less than $5,000. The
woman who operated Suk Hee, where You Mi refused to work in
North Beach, was ordered to forfeit $1.2 million.
The two suspected San Francisco ringleaders -- the only two
charged with sex trafficking -- are still awaiting trial.
News of Operation Gilded Cage spread quickly through the
Korean community. You Mi learned that some of the women taken
from the massage parlors might qualify for a T-1 visa for
trafficking victims, allowing them to stay in the country for
three years and then apply for a green card. Only those who
could prove they were enslaved by "force, fraud or
coercion" would receive the special visa.
Congress created the T-1 visa in 2000 as part of the Victims
of Trafficking and Violence Protection Act, along with 20-year
prison terms for sex traffickers. Prosecutors have used the law
to send 109 sex traffickers to prison nationwide -- compared
with just 20 in the five years before the law.
On the victim side of the equation, only 1,000 T-1 visas have
been issued, although 5,000 are available each year, in large
part because victims must testify against their captors in
exchange for the visa.
You Mi wants to imprison the people who imprisoned her. She
offered to testify for the government, but prosecutors turned
her down because she was not part of the Operation Gilded Cage
crackdown.
Ivy Lee, an attorney specializing in human trafficking at
Asian Pacific Islander Legal Outreach in San Francisco, helped
You Mi apply for the T-1 visa. After a five-month investigation,
the government concluded that You Mi was a sex-trafficking
victim and granted her the visa on July 25.
You Mi is ready for her new life in California. She has
fallen in love with the landscape and the relaxed attitude about
gender roles. It amazes her to see women running companies or
running errands in ponytails and sweats.
And she has fallen in love. The relationship between You Mi
and her boyfriend lasted outside the artificial environment of
the massage parlor. (Her boyfriend asked to remain anonymous in
this story so they can maintain a private life together.)
But she never truly can escape her past.
She keeps her head down when serving food at the restaurant,
in case someone at the table is a former customer who would
recognize her.
It's been hard for her to start over, to make new friends.
She doesn't like to say much because even the most innocent
questions about where she came from force her to change the
subject.
Sex work has left her with lingering health problems. A
gynecologist told her that she is at high risk for cervical
cancer.
And she knows the Korean criminal syndicate could easily find
her.
You Mi got a terrible scare earlier this year, when a
moneylender in South Korea sent her a threatening e-mail,
claiming that she still owed him $7,000 and that she'd better
wire it immediately to a certain account. Whoever sent the note
discovered her American e-mail address through her home page on
Cyworld, the Korean equivalent of myspace.com.
You Mi wrote back, telling the sender that she would keep his
threatening e-mail with her attorney. She hasn't heard from him
since.
She goes out of her way to avoid certain streets in San
Francisco where the trafficking networks operate.
Today, seven of the 10 alleged San Francisco brothels raided
in Operation Gilded Cage are still open for business, including
Sun Spa.
Despite increased federal and local attention, sex
trafficking still thrives in the Bay Area. Sex traffickers stay
one step ahead of law enforcement by becoming more clandestine,
taking their operations to suburban homes and apartments. Madams
are accepting new customers only with referrals from regulars.
"These sex traffickers are totally brazen," said
Chuck DeMore, head of investigations for the Department of
Homeland Security's Immigration and Customs Enforcement office
in San Francisco. "We arrest them, they stop for a few
weeks and start up again. They have hundreds more waiting to
take their place."
During the past two years, suspicious neighbors in Livermore,
Concord, San Mateo and Santa Clara have tipped police to
underground Asian brothels in their neighborhoods.
The explosion of sex trafficking in California led lawmakers
this year to make the state one of the few with its own
human-trafficking law.
So far, no one has been prosecuted under the new California
law.
For You Mi, her time as a sex slave has left a permanent
bruise on her soul. A year of her life was taken away. Her
innocence is gone. Her trust obliterated. Tension is woven into
her personality.
You Mi misses her family. She misses her life before it went
so wrong. The T-1 visa has given her a sense of justice, but she
wants men to know what really goes on inside a massage parlor.
"Most customers come into a massage parlor thinking
nothing is wrong; that it's a job we choose," she said.
"It doesn't occur to them that we are slaves."
The Series
Friday
Global sex trafficking is making inroads into the Bay Area
Sunday
"Diary of a Sex Slave," Part 1: Fooled by
traffickers in South Korea
Monday
"Diary of a Sex Slave," Part 2: Trapped in Los
Angeles
Today
"Diary of a Sex Slave," Part 3: Trying to break
free in San Francisco
The Story
How we reported the series
San Francisco Chronicle reporter Meredith May and
photographer Deanne Fitzmaurice reported this story from South
Korea, the U.S.-Mexican border, from Koreatown in Los Angeles
and from San Francisco.
The story was told by You Mi Kim to May through a Korean
interpreter, and is You Mi's version of events. The shadowy
nature of the sex-trafficking industry made it difficult to
locate traffickers and co-workers who were willing to go on the
record to corroborate You Mi's story.
The Chronicle verified the locations of the apartments and
brothels where You Mi said she worked, and confirmed the story
of her prostitution arrest through court records.
May went into Sun Spa massage parlor in San Francisco to
check You Mi's description of the layout, secret passageway and
hiding spot where the masseuses hid during police raids. May was
able to describe You Mi's outfits because You Mi showed them to
her. You Mi's conversations with Sun Spa workers, police,
massage parlor managers and her mother were based on You Mi's
recollections.
In an interview with May, You Mi's boyfriend confirmed her
story of how they met inside Sun Spa and fell in love, and how
she left the sex trade.
You Mi's attorney shared her knowledge of You Mi's case.
This year, You Mi also recounted her story for the U.S.
government, which granted her a special visa for trafficking
victims, given only to those who can prove they were enslaved
through "force, fraud or coercion." The government's
decision was based on interviews with You Mi's attorney, and on
You Mi's written story, which was translated into English by the
same interpreter who worked with The Chronicle.
You Mi's story was bolstered by May's interviews with more
than 100 people over a 10-month period, including female
sex-trafficking victims, current and former sex workers, men who
pay for sexual services, federal sex-trafficking investigators,
owners of sex establishments, U.S. Border Patrol agents, customs
agents, U.S. and Korean government officials, university
researchers, attorneys and numerous social workers who provide
shelter, support and legal aid to trafficking victims.
May's reporting was supplemented by numerous court documents
and research papers. She attended sex-trafficking conferences,
sat through court hearings and attended a Bay Area police
training seminar on human trafficking. She went inside alleged
San Francisco brothels with Mayor Gavin Newsom and city
health-and-safety inspection teams, and witnessed customers,
brothel managers and sex workers answer police questions.
May met You Mi Kim in September 2005. Over the course of 10
months, May interviewed You Mi with the help of a professional
Korean translator provided by Asian Pacific Islander Legal
Outreach in San Francisco. May and Fitzmaurice spent time with
You Mi in the Tenderloin neighborhood in San Francisco where she
used to work in a massage parlor, accompanied her to English
classes, spent time in her restaurant while she worked and
visited her at home.
In San Francisco, May made unannounced visits to five alleged
brothels with a city team of inspectors including: the
Department of Public Health, the city attorney's office, the
Department of Building Inspection, San Francisco police, the San
Francisco Fire Department and the mayor's office. One of the
visits was to Sun Spa, where You Mi worked.
May and Fitzmaurice met with U.S. Immigration and Customs
Enforcement officers who investigate sex-trafficking rings. May
spent time at the San Francisco International Airport, and
watched investigators arrest and deport a South Korean woman who
had entered illegally to work in the sex trade. May and
Fitzmaurice spent several nights parked outside Asian massage
parlors to watch the foot traffic.
May attended federal court hearings in San Francisco stemming
from the Operation Gilded Cage indictment of June 2005, when 50
brothels were raided and 45 people arrested statewide in what
amounted to California's largest sex-trafficking bust.
May interviewed city officials in Oakland and San Francisco
who grant permits to massage parlors, and attended a permit
revocation hearing for a San Francisco massage parlor accused of
hiring trafficked women for sex work.
May met with attorneys who specialize in sex-trafficking
cases for Asian Pacific Islander Legal Outreach, District
Attorney Kamala Harris, Newsom and advocate Norma Hotaling of
the Standing Against Global Exploitation Project, who has
traveled to South Korea to try to break the sex-trafficking link
with the Bay Area.
Finding help
Sex-trafficking resources
International
Coalition Against Trafficking in Women, www.catwinternational.org
Global Fund for Women, www.globalfundforwomen.org;
(415) 202-7640
The Protection Project, www.protectionproject.org;
(202) 663-5894
Human Rights Watch Campaign Against the Trafficking of Women
and Girls, www.hrw.org; (212)
290-4700
Global Alliance Against Traffic in Women, www.gaatw.net
Free the Slaves, a nonprofit based in Washington, D.C.,
working to end slavery worldwide, www.freetheslaves.net;
(202) 638-1865
U.N. Global Programme Against Trafficking in Human Beings, www.unodc.org/unodc/trafficking_human_beings.html
National
U.S. Department of Justice Human Trafficking Hot Line; (888)
428-7581
U.S. Department of Justice, Office for Victims of Crime,
Trafficking in Persons, www.ojp.usdoj.gov/ovc/help/tip.htm
Freedom Network Institute on Human Trafficking, www.freedomnetworkusa.org
U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, Campaign to
Rescue and Restore Victims of Human Trafficking, www.acf.hhs.gov/trafficking;
trafficking referral hot line; (888) 373-7888
California
Coalition to Abolish Slavery and Trafficking (CAST), a Los
Angeles nonprofit providing legal, social and advocacy services
to human-trafficking victims. CAST opened the nation's first
shelter for trafficking victims in fall 2004, www.castla.org;
(213) 365-1906
The Standing Against Global Exploitation Project (SAGE), a
San Francisco nonprofit working to end criminal sexual
exploitation of children and adults, www.sagesf.org
; (415) 905-5050
Asian Pacific Islander Legal Outreach, a San Francisco-based
legal and social assistance center that helped form the Asian
Anti-Trafficking Collaborative, which brings social workers,
police, prosecutors and immigration officials together to combat
human trafficking, www.apilegaloutreach.org;
(415) 567-6255
Asian Women's Shelter, San Francisco, www.sfaws.org;
(415) 751-7110
Cameron House, San Francisco, www.cameronhouse.org;
(415) 781-0401
The Jewish Coalition to End Human Trafficking; (415) 346-4600
Reports
U.S. State Department Annual Report on Trafficking in
Persons, www.state.gov/g/tip
Victims of Trafficking and Violence Protection Act of 2000, thomas.loc.gov/cgi-bin/query/z?c106:H.R.3244.ENR:
Story by Meredith May and Photographs by Deanne
Fitzmaurice Chronicle Staff E-mail Meredith May at mmay@sfchronicle.com.
Original link: http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/c/a/2006/10/10/MNGN9LFHRO1.DTL
