An Oregon House bill passed earlier this month aimed at discouraging false reporting of child abuse would have a chilling effect on an area of crime that is already under-reported, child abuse experts say.
House Bill 2183 would make it a violation — punishable by a $720 maximum fine — to knowingly make false allegations of child abuse to police or the Department of Human Services.
“The intent is good. But the unintended consequences could be very dangerous for some children,” said Marlene Mish, executive director of the Children’s Advocacy Center.
Proponents of the bill include House Judiciary co-chairman Wayne Kreiger, R-Gold Beach, and Rep. Sal Esquivel, R-Medford.
The bill is designed to discourage adults from using malicious allegations of abuse in bitter divorce or child custody cases, supporters say.
Esquivel did not return phone calls to the Mail Tribune on Wednesday. Rep. Dennis Richardson, D-Central Point, said he did not promote the proposed legislation. But Richardson voted in favor of the bill on May 3, along with all 30 House Republicans and seven Democrats, in part because he has personal knowledge of a case in which a man was falsely accused of child abuse during a divorce, he said.
“This happens more frequently than we would want,” Richardson said.
Mish said holding people accountable for false reports is “a good thing.” But the bill could have the unintended consequence of keeping children trapped in abusive situations because adults are fearful of making a report that, while true, might not be able to be proven, she said.
“The message we don’t want to give is to dissuade people who need to do the right thing and report,” she said.
Ashland resident Randy Ellison is an adult survivor of child sexual abuse and board president of Oregon Association of Adult Sexual and Incest Survivors.
Ellison has been meeting with legislators, encouraging them to kill the bill in the House. Now that it has passed in the House, Ellison is hoping the bill will die in the Senate.
“We do not need people worrying about being wrong when deciding to report or not,” Ellison said. “We want people to report suspected abuse. If people are in doubt, we want them to err on the side of reporting.”
The bill has the support of at least one Oregon senator. According to news reports, Sen. Jeff Kruse, R-Roseburg, testified he was once the victim of a trumped-up claim of child abuse.
Ellison said he had sympathy and empathy for anyone victimized because of a false report of abuse. But statistics show child abuse is the most under-reported crime next to domestic abuse, he said.
“This is a pointless bill that harms the current trend in society of eradicating child abuse and is a slap in the face of every agency that works with child abuse,” Ellison said, adding there is already a law on the books that deals with false reporting.
ORS 162.375 states initiating a false report is a class C misdemeanor, punishable by a $1,250 fine and 30 days in jail.
Jackson County District Attorney Mark Huddleston said the proposed law is similar to the current statute, but focuses more on those who initiate false reports to DHS or a mandatory reporter with knowingly false intent.
Huddleston said his office has proceeded against adults for filing false reports under the ORS in only a few cases. Huddleston added he had not seen many cases he thought would be applicable under the proposed law.
Others who testified against the proposed legislation include the Oregon District Attorneys Association, the Oregon Network of Child Abuse Intervention Centers, the Oregon School Employees Association, Children First and the Child Advocacy Section of the Oregon Department of Justice, Ellison said.
Reach reporter Sanne Specht at 541-776-4497 or email sspecht@mailtribune.com.
KIDS Center Hosts Annual ‘Healing Hearts’ Luncheon
By Homa Quazilbash
May 5, 2011
KTVZ.COM
BEND, Ore. — More than 500 community members gathered in Bend Wednesday afternoon to speak out against child sex abuse — and hold the biggest fund-raiser of the year for an organization that tackles the problem every day.
It was the third annual ‘Healing Hearts’ luncheon hosted by the KIDS Center at the Riverhouse Convention Center.
Guests heard from speaker — and sex abuse survivor — Randy Ellison about his experience, and what he now calls his mission.
“I was abused by my minister as a teenager and it went on for several years,” Ellison said. “Then I kind of buried it away and went on with my life — got heavily involved in alcohol, drugs, those distortions.”"I wasn’t the kind of husband I would have liked to have been, the father I would have liked to been. You bury something that major, it distorts everything in your life,” Ellison added.
Volunteers and workers at the KIDS Center were busy counting pledge cards well into the day. In the past, the event has raised more than $50,000 for the KIDS (Kids Intervention and Diagnostic Service) Center, which is a 21 Cares for Kids partner.
The non-profit is not funded by the government and gets only a small portion of its budget from the state, so most of it is from community outreach, like Wednesday’s event.Just this year, the KIDS Center has already seen nearly 500 kids come through its doors in need of medical evaluations and therapy.
The Oregonian
Saturday, March 5, 2011
By Harry Esteve
SALEM — Part of the public fury that grew over former Gov. Neil Goldschmidt’s admission that he sexually abused an underage girl was that he could not be prosecuted for the crime — the statute of limitations had expired long ago.
Now Oregon lawmakers are considering a change that would eliminate the time limit on when someone accused of abuse or assault of a minor could be prosecuted.
“I just think there is no rationale that we deny children the ability to seek justice later on in life,” says Rep. Dave Hunt, D-Gladstone, who is pushing the proposed change in the law.
The proposal, contained in House Bill 3057, gets its first public hearing Monday and will likely generate a fight pitting prosecutors against defense attorneys. Some district attorneys say young sexual assault victims need extra protection. Defense lawyers say the change would make it far more difficult for people to make the case that they’ve been wrongly accused.
Oregon has a six-year statute of limitations on most sex crimes. However, the law allows a longer time period if the victim is under 18. In that case, the crime can be prosecuted any time before the victim turns 30, or within 12 years after the crime is reported to police or the Department of Human Services.
But even those extended time periods aren’t always enough, says John Foote, Clackamas County district attorney.
“Child abuse is a lifelong event,” he says. “It stays with people their whole lives. Sometimes society ends up paying for it. Sometimes the victim does.”
The bill offers one more layer of protection if abusers understand they could be prosecuted long after the crime, Foote says. “When you’re in the work we’re in, protecting children, you realize these kids need all the protection they can get because the effects are so devastating.”
Innocent defendants need protection, too, says Gail Meyer, lobbyist for the Oregon Criminal Defense Lawyers Association. Completely removing an already lengthy statute of limitations stacks the deck against them, she says.
In criminal cases, as opposed to civil ones, the defense has no right to depose witnesses, Meyer says. Most of the crimes fall under Measure 11′s mandatory sentencing guidelines and it takes a 10-2 jury verdict to convict.
“Add that to a delayed report of 20, 30, 40 years, it’s just too much,” she says. “It just spells a disaster for justice.”
Goldschmidt offers the most high-profile case in Oregon of a crime that went unreported until it was too late to prosecute. In May 2004, the former governor and Nike executive confessed that he had sex with an underage girl when he was Portland mayor in the 1980s. He kept the crime secret for years, in part by making payments to the victim as part of a court settlement.
Despite the criminal nature of his abuse, Goldschmidt faced no chance of prosecution. The bill Hunt is pushing would apply to offenses that occurred before or after the law’s effective date, but would not allow prosecutors to open old cases.
Goldschmidt has since disappeared from public life, but community outrage hasn’t let up. It flared again over reports of the recent death of his victim, and a story in The Oregonian in which the victim gave several interviews to former columnist Margie Boule that offered grim details of her abuse by Goldschmidt.
Hunt says the Goldschmidt case is far from the sole reason he introduced the bill. It’s as much about reports of abuse within the Catholic Church and Boy Scouts as it is about Goldschmidt, he says.
Hunt’s wife, Tonia Hunt, is executive director of the Children’s Center of Clackamas County, which works with young abuse victims. As a result, he says, he hears stories on a daily basis about the terrible things that some adults do to minors.
“We want victims to come forward, whether they’re still children or whether they’re adults,” Hunt says. “Ultimately, they’re not going to heal or move on until justice has been promised and achieved.”
by David Krough, kgw.com Staff
kgw.com
Posted on August 3, 2010 at 2:27 PM
Updated Wednesday, Aug 4 at 8:08 AM
PORTLAND, Ore. — Child sex criminals were put in the cross hairs by the federal government Tuesday with new tools for law enforcement in Oregon.
Department of Justice officials on Tuesday released a report on the National Strategy for Child Exploitation Prevention and Interdiction.
Law enforcement wants to focus on prevention of child pornography, online enticement, child sex tourism and sexual exploitation on Native American reservations.
U.S. Marshals Service targeted the top 500 most dangerous, non-compliant sex offenders in the country. In Oregon, a full-time deputy marshal was added as the Sex Offender Investigations Coordinator.
“Sometimes an investigator needs to step back and take a look and communicate with other agencies that are also working on it. The goal in the end is to bring all these individuals to justice,” said Deputy U.S. Marshal Cory Cunningham.
The agency also created a new database to coordinate efforts statewide. The department also re-launched a website to combat sex crimes against children at ProjectSafeChildhood.gov.
Multnomah County Commissioner Dianne McKeel applauds to the focus on child exploitation, but believes the Portland Metro is also in desperate need for a shelter to house and treat the victims of the child sex trade.
“The shelter is a safe place for them to be and it’s also learning the skills that you need to go out into the world,” said McKeel.
McKeel believes newly approved federal funding could have a local shelter open within a year.
If you or anyone you know need help recovering or escaping from the child sex trade, the Sexual Assault Resource Center can be reached 24 hours a day. 503-640-5311.
by Teresa Blackman
KGW.com
August 2, 2010
VANCOUVER, Wash. – A high school band teacher in Vancouver was arrested Sunday for allegedly having sexual encounters with a 17-year-old girl who had been his student since her freshman year.
Tyler Benedict, 30, was charged in court Monday with two counts of sexual misconduct with a minor.
Benedict was working as a band teacher at Heritage High School in Vancouver when the sexual acts occurred, according to Sgt. Kevin Allais with the Clark County Sheriff’s Office.
Police were alerted by the teen’s parents who said they became suspicious after noticing inappropriate messages on her cell phone and computer that turned out to be from Benedict, Allais said.
The teen later told police that her relationship with Benedict was romantic and sexual. The detectives also said that when they interviewed Benedict, he admitted that he had a sexual relationship with his student.
Court documents obtained by KGW said that Benedict had performed oral sex on the teen on two occasions.
Jerry Piland, Executive Director of Human Resources for the Evergreen School District, released the following statement via email on Monday: “The district is waiting for the police report. The allegations are very serious and the district will take extremely strong actions if this has occurred. Those strong actions will be that he would no longer have a job.”
Benedict has worked at Heritage for the past three years.
Bail at the Clark County Jail was set at $10,000. The court documents also said that Benedict was placed on suicide watch while in custody.
Benedict is married and lives in Ridgefield, Wash. with his wife.
by KGW.com Staff and Anne Yeager
August 2, 2010
VANCOUVER, Wash. – A Vancouver man who police described as “violent” was arrested for allegedly raping a 13-year-old girl and also forcing her to commit sex acts on his friend, according to investigators.
Samuel Chapman, 28, of Vancouver was charged with kidnapping, rape, burglary and harassment, according to police spokeswoman Kim Kapp.
Court documents obtained by KGW said that the girl told investigators Chapman has assaulted her 10 times in the past, but she was afraid to tell police because he threatened to hurt her family.
The girl said she met Chapman at a park in January and had since engaged in a “fear-based” relationship. She said he told her that he would kill her mother if she told anyone about what was happening.
The girl said that Chapman told her he loved her, but at the same time, forced her to do things sexually she didn’t want to do.
Friday morning she said he forced her into a van where he punched her with a closed fist 30 to 40 times, then forced her to perform a sex act.
On Friday morning at 2:30 a.m., the girl’s family called 9-1-1 for help after they said Chapman came to their home, grabbed the girl by the ponytail, slammed her against a wall and then dragged her into a van.
“He showed up my house at 2:45 and pulled me out of bed by the hair,” the girl said. “Pulled me out of bed, threw my little sister into the entertainment center, and then pushed me back into bed.”
“It kind of hurts because I haven’t had that much of a childhood.”
By SCOTT K. PARKS / The Dallas Morning News
sparks@dallasnews.com
Saturday, July 24, 2010
Pedophilia has dogged the Boy Scouts for decades, and the issue shows no signs of going away. No one knows how many men have infiltrated the organization for immoral sexual purposes.
News organizations and child advocates are awaiting an Oregon court’s ruling on whether thousands of internal files documenting suspected pedophiles in Scouting should be released to the public.
The so-called “ineligible volunteer” files are kept at the Boy Scouts’ national headquarters in Irving.
Spanning two decades between 1965 and 1985, they tell unspeakable stories.
The files were entered into evidence during a civil court case pitting former Boy Scout Kerry Lewis against the Scouts’ national council and its Portland-area branch.
Lewis alleged that a Scoutmaster had sexually abused him repeatedly when he was a Scout during the 1980s – even after the Scoutmaster had been identified as a pedophile.
The case ended in April when a jury returned an $18.5 million verdict against the Scouts.
Kelly Clark, one of Lewis’ attorneys, successfully argued that the BSA had reacted defensively to allegations that it hadn’t done enough to identify and prosecute pedophiles in its ranks, preferring instead to quietly expel them.
Evidence showed that Scout leaders often did not tell parents that pedophile Scoutmasters had abused their children. The Oregon jury’s verdict sent a clear message to Scouting, Clark said.
“The short version is that you cannot put the mission of the organization above the safety of kids, no matter how divinely inspired you think it is,” Clark said.
The Scouts plan to appeal the Oregon verdict, but they face similar pedophile cases around the U.S.
Virginia Starr, a spokeswoman for the Scouts, addressed the issue in e-mailed answers to questions from The Dallas Morning News. She said the organization established a Youth Protection Program in the late 1980s and has repeatedly improved it during the last 20 years.
Scout leaders are no longer allowed to meet one on one with boys. Mandatory youth-protection training for all Scoutmasters and other adult volunteers was adopted just last month. Criminal background checks for volunteers are required.
In addition, Scoutmasters and Scouts cannot sleep in the same tent unless they are father and son. Separate shower arrangements are made for adults and children on campouts.
Jim Brunner, Scoutmaster of Troop 300 in Plano, is among the many adult volunteers watching the pedophile cases as they go to court. He said the allegations are decades old and do not reflect today’s reality.
He praised chief Scout executive Bob Mazzuca and the national office for adapting to the times, even to the point of including warnings against pedophiles in the legendary Boy Scout Handbook.
“The Boy Scouts are on the cutting edge of youth protection,” Brunner said. “They’ve led the way.”
Pedophiles present one problem for the Scouts. The ban on gays presents another challenge. It essentially forces families to decide whether it’s ethical to belong to a group that discriminates against people based on sexual orientation.
Mazzuca said his organization’s position is essentially synonymous with the U.S. military’s “Don’t ask, don’t tell” policy.
“The issue only becomes an issue when a person makes it an issue,” he said in an interview with The News. “Sexuality has no place in Scouting in any context.”
In a two-page document titled “2009 Report to the Nation,” Mazzuca makes no mention of youth protection or any of the other issues that threaten to distract Scouting from its mission.
Instead, the report is filled with facts: Scouts collaborate with 118,000 educational, faith-based and community organizations; 52,470 Scouts earned the Eagle rank in 2009; Scouts contributed more than 700,000 hours to projects beneficial to streams, lakes, oceans and other bodies of water.
Concluding his interview with The News, Mazzuca said, “We plan to be here for another hundred years.”
By MAUREEN DOWD
July 16, 2010
TheNewYorkTimes
If the Vatican is trying to restore the impression that its moral sense is intact, issuing a document that equates pedophilia with the ordination of women doesn’t really do that.
The Catholic Church continued to heap insult upon injury when it revealed its long-awaited new rules on clergy sex abuse, rules that the Vatican spokesman, the Rev. Federico Lombardi, said signaled a commitment to grasp the nettle with “rigor and transparency.”
The church still believes in its own intrinsic holiness despite all evidence to the contrary. It thinks it’s making huge concessions on the unstoppable abuse scandal when it’s taking baby steps.
The casuistic document did not issue a zero-tolerance policy to defrock priests after they are found guilty of pedophilia; it did not order bishops to report every instance of abuse to the police; it did not set up sanctions on bishops who sweep abuse under the rectory rug; it did not eliminate the statute of limitations for abused children; it did not tell bishops to stop lobbying legislatures to prevent child-abuse laws from being toughened.
There is no moral awakening here. The cruelty and indecency of child abuse once more inspires tactical contrition. All the penitence of the church is grudging and reactive. Church leaders are merely as penitent as they need to be to protect the institution.
Can you imagine such a scene in the confessional?
“Forgive me, Father, for I have sinned. I am as sorry as my job or school requires me to be.”
“But my daughter, that is not true penitence. That’s situational penitence.”
After the Belgian police bracingly conducted raids on the church hierarchy, inspired in part by the horrifying case of a boy molested for years by his uncle, the bishop of Bruges, a case that the church ignored and covered up for 25 years, the pope did not applaud the more aggressive tack. He condemned it.
In a remarkable Times story recently, Laurie Goodstein and David Halbfinger debunked the spin that Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger had been one of the more alert officials on the issue of sexual abuse:
“The future pope, it is now clear, was also part of a culture of nonresponsibility, denial, legalistic foot-dragging and outright obstruction. More than any top Vatican official other than John Paul, it was Cardinal Ratzinger who might have taken decisive action in the 1990s to prevent the scandal from metastasizing in country after country, growing to such proportions that it now threatens to consume his own papacy.”
If Roman Polanski were a priest, he’d still be working here.
Stupefyingly, the new Vatican document also links raping children with ordaining women as priests, deeming both “graviora delicta,” or grave offenses. Clerics who attempt to ordain women can now be defrocked.
On Beliefnet, Mark Silk, a professor of religion at Connecticut’s Trinity College, suggested that the stronger threat against women’s ordination is not “a maladroit add-on” but the medieval Vatican’s “main business.”
After the Vatican launched two inquisitions of American nuns, it didn’t seem possible that the archconservative Il Papa and his paternalistic redoubt could get more unenlightened, but they have somehow managed it.
Letting women be priests — which should be seen as a way to help cleanse the church and move it beyond its infantilized and defensive state — is now on the list of awful sins right next to pedophilia, heresy, apostasy and schism.
Archbishop Donald Wuerl of Washington, the chairman of the Committee on Doctrine of the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops, asserted, “The Catholic Church, through its long and constant teaching, holds that ordination has been, from the beginning, reserved to men, a fact which cannot be changed despite changing times.”
But if it was reserved to celibate men centuries ago simply as a way for the church to keep land, why can’t it be changed? If a society makes strides in not subordinating women, why can’t the church reflect that? If men prove that all-male hierarchies can get shamefully warped, why can’t they embrace the normality of equality? The Vatican’s insistence on male prerogative is misogynistic poppycock — enhancing American Catholics’ disenchantment with Rome.
In The New Republic, Garry Wills wrote about his struggle to come to terms with the sins of his church: Jesus “is the one who said, ‘Whatever you did to any of my brothers, even the lowliest, you did to me.’ That means that the priests abusing the vulnerable young were doing that to Jesus, raping Jesus. Any clerical functionary who shows more sympathy for the predator priests than for their victims instantly disqualified himself as a follower of Jesus. The cardinals said they must care for their own, going to jail if necessary to protect a priest. We say the same thing, but the ‘our own’ we care for are the victimized, the poor, the violated. They are Jesus.”
A version of this op-ed appeared in print on July 18, 2010, on page WK8 of the New York edition.
CourthouseNewsService
By Travis Sanford
PORTLAND, Ore. (CN) – "Secrecy is the fertilizer of sexual abuse!" attorney Kelly Clark thundered in his opening remarks, urging Multnomah County Judge John Wittmayer to vacate a protective order on nearly 20,000 pages of evidence documenting sexual abuse in the Boy Scouts of America. The trial ended in May with the jury awarding Clark’s client $18.5 million in punitive damages. The documents, the so-called "perversion files," were admitted after the Boy Scouts lost a long legal battle to keep them out of court. The issue went all the way to the Oregon Supreme Court.
But Judge Wittmayer ordered that access to the files be restricted to attorneys for both sides and their employees, and the jury, during the course of the trial.
Clark wants the secrecy order vacated. He cites Article 1 Section 10, the Open Courts section of the Oregon Constitution, which states: "No court shall be secret, but justice shall be administered, openly and without purchase, completely and without delay, and every man shall have remedy by due course of law for injury done him in his person, property, or reputation."
Clark says that means that the public has the right to see the evidence upon which the jury reached its decision.
But Rob Albiset, representing the Boy Scouts, claimed that Article 1 Section 10 merely protects the right of the public to have access to court proceedings, but does not grant the public the right to see evidence that was admitted but not shown or reproduced publicly during the trial.
In the case at hand, involving the molestation of plaintiff Kerry Lewis, parts of the files were read to the jury by both sides and extractions of text were projected onto screens for the jury to read. Albiset said the public had the right only to this representation of the evidence.
But Clark said that that would mean the public had a right to review only whatever was small enough to be read aloud or projected in a comprehensible way, and that the state constitution did not intend to discriminate against evidence because it was unwieldy.
A third group, news organizations, including Courthouse News, seeking access to the records, was represented by Daniel Lindahl. He noted that Article 1 Section 10 was subtitled "Administration of Justice" and that this suggests that every activity and item that was presented or entered into evidence was covered by the Oregon Constitution. Lindahl cited case law holding that even evidence or testimony later found to have been admitted in error was a mater of public record.
All three attorneys answered Judge Wittmayer’s questions on other points of law. During one exchange Albiset said the plaintiff lacked standing to challenge Wittmayer’s order because his access to the files was not restricted, and he had been able to successfully make his case.
Albiset told the judge that he should balance the possible prejudice that public release of the documents could have on several molestation trials still on Wittmayer’s docket, involving from the same abuser.
Wittmayer responded, "Isn’t the solution to prejudicial pretrial publicity the voire dire process?"
Albiset answered that it would unnecessarily complicate the selection process because the Oregonian newspaper had a circulation of 300,000 in a potential jury pool of 700,000.
"Couldn’t that be remedied by a change of venue?" Wittmayer asked.
Albiset persisted, saying potential jurors had become sophisticated at hiding their biases in the face of pervasive media coverage.
Clark angrily suggested during his rebuttal that elimination of the jury system and open courts might serve the Scouts as a solution to any perceived prejudice.
"The Boy Scouts of America still doesn’t get it that for healing to begin, the evidence must be made public," Clark said. "Plaintiffs believe abuse thrives in secrecy and it is time to get rid of the secrecy."
On the public interest in making the files public, Lindahl said, "The public wants to judge the merits of government-sanctioned liability, especially in damages cases, and how can the public judge fairness if they can’t review the data?"
Lindahl said that constitutional mandates allow no consideration of prejudice to parties in future litigation and that no balancing of prejudice versus access is allowed. For or the public to have faith in the system, he said, the evidence on which the jury adjudicated the case must be made public.
Judge Wittmayer aid he would rule the motion as soon as possible.
Human trafficking industry thrives in Portland metro area
By Nicole Hanna-Jones
January 9, 2010
Oregonlive.com
Six posters of missing children from the metro area — five girls and one boy — were tacked to the wall of the Jantzen Beach hotel banquet room, a silent reminder of why more than 500 participants from 10 states had gathered Saturday.
One of three missing teens who ends up on the streets will be lured or forced into prostitution within 48 hours, according to national estimates. The annual Northwest Conference Against Human Trafficking hoped to bring a sense of urgency to the problem and capitalize on a recent local and national push to fight domestic human trafficking.
Oregon, advocates and law enforcement officials say, is a growing hub for forced prostitution and servitude. Just last week, a Portland man was arraigned in Multnomah County Circuit Court on suspicion of prostituting a 14-year-old relative.
Still, many Americans believe human trafficking to be an international phenomenon.
“I, like so many others, thought that trafficking was a problem that plagued other countries like Thailand and India, but was oblivious to what was happening right here in our backyard,” said Multnomah County Commissioner Diane McKeel, who is spearheading the county’s efforts to combat human trafficking and open a shelter for sexual trafficking victims.
Portland has become a center for human trafficking for several reasons, said Keith Bickford, a Multnomah County sheriff’s detective who heads the Oregon Human Trafficking Task Force.
The city’s proximity to Interstates 5 and 84 as well as two rivers is attractive to traffickers, as is lax sexual trafficking enforcement laws, a legal sex industry, a large population of street kids and Oregon’s dependence on seasonal farmworkers, Bickford said.
Yet, the state keeps no data on victims of sexual trafficking, Bickford said, making it difficult to accurately assess the depth of the problem and get adequate resources.
About 300,000 American youths are trafficked for sexual exploitation, according to the U.S. Department of Justice. During a one-night national sting involving 29 cities last February, law enforcement officers picked up seven underage girls involved in prostitution in Portland — more than any other city besides Seattle. They also picked up six adult pimps in Portland and cited 14 adult prostitutes.
Still, many at the conference said a collective national denial of the issue remains.
“What we’re about in the U.S., we’re willing to jump out there and save the world but we won’t look under our own rocks because it’s embarrassing,” Bickford said after giving a presentation on the work he’s doing with the task force.
Multnomah County has hundreds of human trafficking cases involving both people born in the United States and immigrants often brought or coerced here from other countries. His caseload is divided equally between those trafficked for sexual exploitation (mostly people from the U.S.) and those trafficked for labor (mostly immigrants), he said.
Other speakers at the conference said public officials are starting to take notice of the long-hidden crime.
Last month, U.S. Sen. Ron Wyden, D-Ore., introduced a bill along with Sen. John Cornyn, R-Texas, to help victims of sexual trafficking and provide more enforcement power against traffickers. The bill would fund pilot projects in six states to establish shelters for victims and provide counseling, legal aid, education and job training, as well as fund additional police officers and prosecutors.
“I want to see us start a national mobilization,” Wyden said after giving a brief speech about his bill. “It’s fair to say that in the past there’s been the sense that Oregon is not the kind of place you would see this. There’s no denial now and people are ready to go.”
A shelter to help victims escape exploitation is the greatest need in Portland, said Esther Nelson of the Sexual Assault Resource Center. The lack of a safe place makes it difficult to help people, she said, and impedes law enforcement efforts because victims often disappear.
Multnomah County and Portland officials have committed to finding money to open a shelter here, though they have no time line.
“We can’t do much more without a shelter,” Nelson said.