DESERET NEWS - IN LOS ANGELES SEX TRAFFICKING NOT LIKE IN THE MOVIES
DESERT - LANE ANDERSON - SEX TRAFFICKING REALITY
EXCERPT: This is Skid Row, where 2,000 homeless take up a 54-block radius, forming what is the largest homeless encampment in the United States.
It's a warm summer evening in July, and Lt. Andre Dawson of the Los Angeles Police Department is steering his blacked-out SUV across South Los Angeles Street. Skid Row is an emblem of L.A.’s notorious designation as the nation's unsheltered homeless capital: the city has 82,000 homeless on any given night, and most people don't realize that up to one in eight of the homeless are unaccompanied minors, according to the Institute for the Study of Homelessness and Poverty at the Weingart Center.
While headlines tout stories of women and children trafficked from overseas, Dawson says you need look no further than the streets of Los Angeles to find America’s sexually exploited kids. Over 90 percent of children under 18 rescued by his team are “domestic cases,” he says, meaning they are kids born and raised in America. And they have not been kidnapped and stuffed into the back of a van, which is Hollywood's version of sex trafficking.
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