Vista, San Diego County, United States

United States · Vista, San Diego County · 1996 (location generalized to protect survivors)

Sheriff's Dept raided several houses in Vista. Two of the brothers were detained. The 3rd, the ring leader, was still at large at that time. Sheriff's Dept. raided houses in 2003. Women's shelter Bilateral Safety Corridor Coalition for the Prevention of the Commercial Sexual Exploitation of Minors-Marissa Ugarte Marissa began to hear rumors about the trafficking of children, fake adoptions and the sale of children when she worked in the DIF (Desarrollo Integral de la Familia-The State System for the Full Development of the Family) in Tijuana in 1997. She heard that these children where being taken to San Diego to be exploited to make pornography. That was until 2000, when she began her work as a sociologist with EYE, an agency aiding children in crisis in San Diego, where she began to be certain about what was happening here. In this county, from Escondido to Point Loma to Balboa Park, in the heart of the city, all forms of illegal sexual exploitation exist: child pornography; trafficking in mostly underage male and female sex workers; and high risk homeless children who prostitute themselves to survive. This is due, says Marissa, to the fact that this is one of the most important military communities in the United States, in addition to the fact that there is a strong market for sexual services from farm laborers. We began to hear that an American 'corridor' for the trafficking of children utilized for commercial sexual exploitation existed, and, together with the University of San Diego, Children's Hospital and the legal counsel's office for San Diego County, we created the Bilateral Safety Corridor Coalition for the Prevention of the Commercial Sexual Exploitation of Minors, which is now composed of 35 Mexican and American organizations. Marissa is the organization's Executive Director. In 2001 the commission informed the Mexican consulate about what was occurring in the farm labor camps. Mexican girls and adolescents were being sexually exploited by their own fellow countrymen. "They ignored me, believing that the story wasn't true, and that it was exaggerated. I decided to go to UNICEF in Mexico to denounce the abuses that were occurring. I was later called by the Mexican consulate and they asked me for a formal complaint supported by concrete evidence." The consular official contacted Rick Castro of the San Diego Sheriff's Department, who had been investigating the Salazar brother's gang during the past three years. The Mexican Consulate made its formal complaint directly to the U.S. Government, and demanded an investigation. "Three weeks later, we got our first case," recalls Marissa. We were called by a child protection network in San Diego. We were informed that the network had a girl who did not fit within the criteria used by the Polinsky Children's Center, because the case involved a girl who was a sex trafficking victim, and they didn't know where to send her. Marissa contacted deputy sheriff Castro because the case was from the neighborhood of Vista. The local police department had received an emergency call reporting that a young girl had escaped from prostitution in the farm labor camps and had been beaten by her pimp, Arturo Lopez, who worked for the Salazar brothers.