EGN NEWS DESK
The 3.5-mile stretch of Figueroa Street stretching from Gage Avenue to Imperial Highway has been a hub for underage intercourse employees for many years. Women and women in varied states of undress will be seen strolling the infamous “stroll” day and evening whereas “johns” drive across the space trying to choose them up. Dozens of YouTube movies present the exercise.
Since final yr, a multi-jurisdictional job pressure has been targeted on the epicenter of human trafficking and legal exercise, aiming to find and help trafficking victims, determine, arrest and convict pimps and traffickers, and disrupt consumers of intercourse companies from minors and trafficking victims.
The effort just isn’t geared toward prosecuting industrial intercourse employees, officers mentioned.
During a information convention, U.S. Attorney Martin Estrada mentioned that whereas human trafficking is a world drawback, “you don’t have to look to some far-off nation to seek out it. It exists proper right here … a brief distance from downtown Los Angeles and a stone’s throw from USC.”
Estrada added that most of the youths working the streets are “from the foster care system. These victims are as susceptible because it will get. What we see is a human rights tragedy taking part in out each evening.”
Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass mentioned the difficulty “is a scourge on our society. This drawback reveals a niche within the security web that needs to be defending these youngsters.”
Roughly 100 younger adults go away foster care in Los Angeles County every month as a result of they’re turning 21. At that time, they’re regularly susceptible to pimps, “and the following factor they know is they’re being trafficked across the nation,” in keeping with Bass.
When an adolescent in a gaggle dwelling turns 21, for instance, “we actually pack their luggage and put them on the street,” Bass mentioned.
She mentioned the Mayor’s Fund for Los Angeles, primarily a homelessness prevention program, has expanded to serve younger adults ageing out of the foster care system.
An absence of housing is likely one of the causes younger individuals are victimized by pimps alongside the Figueroa hall — as a result of they haven’t any place to go, Bass mentioned.
The Figueroa hall initiative is designed to assist the younger girls and women who carry out intercourse work within the space discover alternatives and get them off the streets, Estrada mentioned.
Los Angeles City Attorney Hydee Feldstein Soto described “appalling” avenue scenes witnessed throughout a latest night-time ride-along with Los Angeles police.
“Women and women in varied states of undress and a particular stroll for kiddies — a kiddies stroll,” she mentioned. “In the daytime, it was almost as unhealthy.”
Federal prosecutors in Los Angeles additionally introduced or mentioned a number of instances Wednesday involving the intercourse trafficking of minors.
In one, suspected pimp Christian Brandon O’Neal, 21, of Moreno Valley, AKA Christian Brandon O’Neal Scurlock, was linked to minors working as industrial intercourse employees within the Figueroa hall. In March, police digital camera footage on Figueroa Street confirmed O’Neal showing to yell at a 13-year-old sufferer, take her garments, and depart the realm, leaving her fully bare on the road, in keeping with the U.S. Attorney’s Office.
A file verify of two women within the case revealed that each had been reported as lacking juveniles out of California. Both victims instructed police that O’Neal had introduced them to Las Vegas to supply prostitution companies as minor industrial intercourse employees and that they normally labored on “Fig,” brief for Figueroa Street. O’Neal required each minor victims to provide him the cash they earned from prostitution, prosecutors allege.
Last month, a federal grand jury returned an indictment charging O’Neal with two counts of intercourse trafficking of a minor and two counts of transportation of a minor in interstate commerce to interact in prostitution and legal sexual exercise. O’Neal was arrested on Aug. 7 and was ordered jailed with out bond by a federal Justice of the Peace judge. He has remained in federal custody since then and pleaded not responsible to the costs in opposition to him on on Aug. 27
In one other case introduced by prosecutors, Nanci Jasmin Castillo, 31, and Jonathan Gonzalez-Reyes, 38, each of Anaheim, are charged in a six-count federal grand jury indictment alleging they befriended a 13-year-old woman, supplied her with alcohol, and sexually assaulted her, taking images and making movies of the assault.
Castillo and Gonzalez-Reyes mentioned serving to the sufferer run away from dwelling and probably looking for her work on “Fig,” prosecutors mentioned. Castillo and Gonzalez-Reyes have pleaded not responsible and are scheduled to go to trial in March 2025. They have been in federal custody since June.
In one other case, Donavin Dwayne Bradford, 33, of South Los Angeles, is serving a sentence of life in federal jail after being convicted of recruiting and attractive teenage women for whom he acted as a pimp and offering them for industrial intercourse work, prosecutors mentioned.
From the summer time of 2021 to February 2022, Bradford prompted one of many minor victims – a then-15-year-old woman – for use for industrial intercourse acts. As the sufferer’s pimp, Bradford anticipated the woman to earn him $1,000 per evening.
The Los Angeles Daily News contributed to this story.
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