human trafficking in california

I was reading The California Progress Report today and came across a post from December 2007 The California Alliance to Combat Trafficking and Slavery Task Force released its final Report on trafficking in California.  Take the time to review some of it.  It's an issue that is right under our nose!

• "In July 2005, the federal government arrested more than 40 people in LA and San Francisco and seized more than $3 million in illicit proceeds in Operation Gilded Cage.  This operation involved more than 100 Korean women told investigators that they were taken from their country against their will and forced to work as erotic masseuses."

• "In 2004 a women who was lured from the Philippines under false pretenses, then forced to work 18-hour days at the home of an executive at Sony Pictures.  She had to sleep on a dog bed and was threatened with never seeing her family again if she complained".

• "In 2001 a Berkeley landlord and restaurateur was sentenced to more than 8 years in federal prison for smuggling teenage girls from India in a sex and labor exploitation ring spanning 15 years.  He repeatedly raped and sexually abused his vicims and forced them to wrk in his businesses".