Child Sex Trafficking Victims As Young As 13 Rescued In Massive CA Operation

 

"This is a multi-billion-dollar industry. It is nothing less than modern slavery," LA County DA Nathan Hochman said.

Chris Lindahl, Patch Staff

More than 600 people have been arrested and over 160 victims — including children — were rescued as part of a statewide operation targeting human trafficking, authorities announced Tuesday.

The weeklong operation, dubbed Operation Reclaim and Rebuild, involved more than 80 law enforcement agencies across the state. In total, 611 suspected "johns" and traffickers were arrested, while more than 150 adult victims and 14 child victims were rescued — including one who is just 13 years old, Los Angeles County Sheriff Robert Luna said at a news conference.

The investigation involved human trafficking task forces in Contra Costa, Los Angeles, Orange, Placer, Riverside, Sacramento, Stanislaus, San Bernardino, San Diego, San Luis Obispo, Santa Barbara, Santa Clara and Ventura counties, among other law enforcement agencies.

"How embarrassing that I could actually say that we have corridors of human sex trafficking throughout Los Angeles County," District Attorney Nathan Hochman said. "It's also a dubious distinction that Los Angeles County is one of the epicenters of human sex trafficking in the entire nation. This is a multi-billion-dollar industry. It is nothing less than modern slavery."

The investigation was launched after a resident complained about a house being used as a brothel in the LA County city of Walnut, authorities said.

“A coordinated, multi-location search warrant operation involving multiple law enforcement agencies … identified several residential brothels in the city of Walnut, which resulted in the arrests of six traffickers," Luna said, according to KTLA.

Authorities also focused their investigation on the Figueroa Street Corridor in South Los Angeles, the Western Avenue Corridor in Koreatown and the Sepulveda Corridor in the San Fernando Valley.

"We have traffickers that are putting barely teenage girls on the streets of Los Angeles to be victimized, repeatedly, over and over again," Los Angeles Police Department Deputy Chief Alan Hamilton said. "These children did not come from one place. They came from Chicago, from Oklahoma, from Missouri, tribal lands ... and from communities right here in the state of California."

City News Service contributed to this report.