Photo credit: Monnee Tong

While slavery is often not thought of as a contemporary issue, sex trafficking is a form of modern slavery that affects some 4.5 million people globally. Since 2007, the National Human Trafficking Resource Center hotline has received more than 14,000 reports of cases inside the United States. According to the FBI, San Diego is one of the 13 highest child sex trafficking areas in the nation (Los Angeles and San Francisco are also on the list). Run mainly by local gangs, sex trafficking is an $810 million industry in the city, representing its second largest underground economy after the drug trade. The San Diego Public Library (SDPL) is working to reduce these statistics with Out of the Shadows, a comprehensive sex trafficking awareness campaign. Out of the Shadows, funded by a $25,000 grant from the Rancho Santa Fe Women’s Fund (RSFWF) matched with funds from the San Diego Public Library Foundation, began as training for the more than 800 staff members throughout the system’s 36 locations, providing information on how to recognize a possible victim of sex trafficking, ways to initiate a conversation, and appropriate resources and support services to offer those in need. Since its launch in August 2015, the campaign has expanded to include a teen peer advocate program and extensive community outreach.

A CHANCE ENCOUNTER

The program’s genesis came from an encounter between a teenager and Ady Huertas, then teen services manager at SDPL’s Central Library (a 2015 LJ New Landmark Library winner). Huertas, now manager of the Logan Heights branch, noticed the young woman sleeping in one of the study rooms, and approached her. She looked apprehensive and paranoid, said Huertas, and insisted on checking in with her “boyfriend”—eventually revealed to be her pimp. A week later she was back, asking to use the phone, this time to call her parents. She had been missing for months. San Diego community members were already aware that sex trafficking was a problem. "So when we found out that this was happening in the library,” SDPL director Misty Jones told LJ, “it seemed like a logical step for us to take, even though it's a little out of the ordinary for libraries to do this. But because we're an educational institution and because we're so involved in the community—and the safe place for our community—we felt that we could take the lead on this." Jones, Huertas, former public information officer Marion Hubbard, and the library staff put together a proposal for RSFWF in early 2015, and received the grant in May.

TRAINING FOR ALL

The program was launched with a live, system-wide training session at the Central Library in August for frontline employees. Training materials were developed with the help of the Bilateral Safety Corridor Coalition (BSCC), an alliance of government and nonprofit agencies in the United States and Latin America working to combat slavery and human trafficking. At the first session BSCC executive director Marisa Ugarte gave attending staff members an overview of the subject, including local statistics—a three-year study of gang-related sex trafficking showed that as many as 11,700 girls, on average 15–16 years old, become victims of sex trafficking in San Diego County every year —general safety guidelines, tips for recognizing potential victims, and local resources. Quizzes were issued both before and after the two-hour program to gauge its effectiveness, and an online feedback form was provided. The session was videotaped, and a PowerPoint presentation added, so that the training could move online. By the fall, 95 percent of the system’s staff, “from librarians to custodians,” had received training. While the training program met with approval throughout SDPL, it also touched nerves among employees—some of whom found the difficult content to be uncomfortable or triggering. “We really learned from that,” said Jones. “We talked to every single staff member who had issues, or who was upset by the content, to find out…what we could do to make it easier for them to digest; was there anyone they needed to go and speak to. We put them in contact with the employee assistance program as well.” A warning was added to the beginning of the video, adding that the library would redirect anyone who felt uncomfortable with the content to a different information source. SDPL also provided contact information for the city employee assistance counselor if they needed to talk, which was uploaded to the staff module online. Having the resources in place and knowing how to start a conversation—even simply asking “May I help you?”—is a crucial step for all employees. During the same week the first training sessions took place, a young woman’s parents came to Huertas after filing a police report. The girl was communicating sporadically with family members through Facebook. Her parents suspected she might be using library computers, and she had been spotted outside the library. Eventually she did return to the teen center, and with the help of local police was reunited with her parents. "I also connected the parents with the [BSCC] director because…the father was very concerned,” Huertas said. He told her, “I'm afraid that my daughter might not stay home, or this might happen to my other daughters. What resources do you have?” Huertas was able to work with the police force because the woman’s parents had filed a missing persons report, but most at-risk young people at the library need to be approached without assumptions, she noted. Jones concurred: “What we really want to do, and this was one of the concerns from the [RSFWF] when they were funding the grant, is make sure that we remain neutral. We want people to feel safe to come to us, and to know that they can come to the library." She added, "We're not going to be the agency that calls the cops if we think we see someone who's a victim. We don't want to jeopardize anyone coming in."

TEEN ADVOCATES

Teen peer advocate Isabella Niewiadomski at Freedom NOW Fair
Photo credit: Monnee Tong

A second round of training was developed for SDPL’s teen peer advocates, a group of teenagers from high schools throughout the city. All received personal training from Marissa Cardwell, program coordinator for Project Concern International, a nonprofit organization working for community health and sustainability worldwide. The teens, under the guidance of current teen center manager Monnee Tong, work six hours a week for the library. In addition to completing the training, all help with SDPL resource centers in various branch libraries. Several are preparing a presentation for all grades at e3 Civic High School, the charter school housed on floors six and seven of the Central Library, and developing a middle school–appropriate presentation. "They've done the research, they have a PowerPoint presentation, and they also rehearsed the presentation with the [SDPL] public information officer and a representative from the San Diego Public Library Foundation," said Tong. Another has created a brochure with infographics and resources. Teen peer advocates have also attended outreach events, including working the library table at the Freedom NOW Fair, an anti–human trafficking awareness event, and have done a CAST (Community Assistance Support Team) walk with members of the police force, going from door to door with community and library information. Their work is recognized throughout the community, said Tong, including formal recognition from State Assemblywoman Lorena Gonzales’s office.

POPULATING PARTNERSHIPS

A major component of the campaign is its community rollout. Out of the Shadows will eventually have resource centers in seven branches—City Heights/Weingart, Linda Vista, Logan Heights, Mira Mesa, Mountain View/Beckwourth, San Ysidro, and the Valencia/Park Malcolm X—as well as the Central Library. The branch managers have been tasked with starting conversations in their communities around sex trafficking awareness—anything from holding a resource fair to showing a film with a panel discussion. Logan Heights has piloted two community conversations, in December 2015 and February 2016, inviting a variety of community stakeholders such as the police department, educators, clergy, and health centers and other nonprofits. "They had over 20 folks at the Logan Heights Branch Library come to the table to understand what it meant, what San Diego Public Library's mission was in this initiative,” recalled Eileen Labrador, the program’s supervising librarian. “We invited them to join forces, to help us build our resource centers, and also share their resources." The response was overwhelmingly positive, and the most recent led to a meeting with the local district attorney’s office in early March. Members of the DA’s office, who are already dealing with the issue of human trafficking, were appreciative of the library’s solid planning and implementation. “They said, 'We're on board 100 percent,'” Labrador told LJ. “They're the experts—they have all the connections to getting the services [for] victims. They want to be present at our community conversations." Local discussions also serve to raise staff awareness of what their communities’ needs are in general, noted Labrador. The program’s reach also extends beyond the San Diego community. Through SDPL’s ongoing partnership with Instituto Municipal de Arte y Cultura (IMAC), which oversees the public libraries in Tijuana, Mexico, SDPL was able to provide training and has been working closely with IMAC to implement the program in Tijuana. (As much of the San Diego community is Spanish-speaking, all of the material and publicity for the campaign are produced bilingually.) SDPL has packaged the training and information materials so that they can be easily replicated in other library systems and community organizations, and Los Angeles Public Library has also requested materials and training. The grant also covers two billboards and several bus ads in multiple languages. A dedicated website and a social media initiative are in the works, and eventually SDPL hopes to lead a summit around the subject. Out of the Shadows’ expansion has been impressive, given that its initial motive was simply, as Jones explained, “to get the word out” and to make sure the library had a plan when confronted with at-risk teens and young adults. "We just wanted to make sure that no one was ignoring this, or putting on their blinders,” Jones told LJ, “that they were paying attention. We were seeing [sex trafficking victims] in here every day and we didn't realize it, so we knew...the public didn't realize it." She added, "It just has become this community-embraced issue. Now I feel like we're working all together, and we have so many opportunities to take this to a really high level.”