We Love Our Work: Exposing an epidemic of exploited girls

When Barbara Grady began reporting on the sexual trafficking of underage girls, she was disturbed by the extent of this epidemic in urban neighborhoods of the East Bay. Young men were chucking drug sales and moving into pimping with a frightening aggression; the girls were younger and more vulnerable than law enforcement officials were used to seeing.

In her most recent reportage, an eight-part series for Oakland Local, Grady and two colleagues gauge the recession’s effect on sexual trafficking. She was staggered by what they found: As the economy has tanked, trafficking has boomed, claiming ever younger victims with ever more violent means.

“There are more families in trouble, so more kids run away,” said Grady, a member of GuildFreelancers. “And there is less money going into foster care. In addition, government has less money to fight crime.”

The editors at Oakland Local had followed her coverage of sexual exploitation of minors for the Oakland Tribune, which netted Grady and colleagues Kamika Dunlap and Tammerlin Drummond a 2009 Sigma Delta Chi award from the national Society of Professional Journalists.

At the urging of Oakland Local, Grady and partners Sarah Terry-Cobo and photographer Alison Yin secured a grant from G.W. Williams Center for Independent Journalism, a project of the Tides Center, to follow the story.

Some things hadn’t changed: The exploited girls were primarily foster youth or runaways, homeless and struggling to survive, she said. But the recession had brought sobering changes. A law passed in 2008 to help victims of sex trafficking is a legislative hull without the resources necessary to implement it fully. Without adequate funds, Oakland’s plans for a safe house idled (a faith group has helped fill the breach). And as funds have vaporized, the Internet has fueled a take-off in commercial sexual exploitation, Grady said.

“If you look at the erotic section of Craigslist, a lot of those women are actually underage,” she said. “The police recognized some of the kids from their pictures. The pimps all use laptops to sell these children.”

Interviewing the girls as they waited for customers — men from all walks of life, classes and races — was the biggest challenge Grady’s team faced.

“They’re being watched all the time,” Grady said. “It’s dangerous for us, but taking time to talk to a non-customer really puts the girl in a dangerous position. We would have very quick conversations. We had a few 15-second conversations. Or we talked with them when they were in a police staging. A couple of times we had interviews set up, but then they wouldn’t show up.”

The team negotiated some police ride-alongs, which helped connect them with the girls in a safe setting. “We worked on (the series) for several months,” Grady said. “We did way more reporting than we could use in this series … We were all working on other projects, but then at the end, I’d say for the last two or three weeks that’s all we were doing. “Emotionally, it was very difficult. At the end, we felt burnt out. It was traumatic in some ways.”

Before her tenure at the Oakland Tribune, Grady reported for Reuters New Service and wrote for magazines during the dot-com era. Today, as a freelancer, Grady covers environment and community affairs.

“I very much enjoyed working with another reporter and a photojournalist on this project and much prefer working with others than working alone,” she said. “Sarah, Alison and I made a great team. We all saw eye-to-eye on things and all shared an ambition to go all out on this, taking physical risks in order to get the story and working many more hours than was originally envisioned.

“Freelancing can be lonely. So, joining up with another reporter or photographer on a project is a great way to get around that inherent aspect of freelancing. Also, as journalists we know that brainstorming is always useful and that two sets of eyes reading copy is always better than one.”

–Rebecca Rosen Lum, freelance unit chair