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A new billboard campaign from the Alameda County District Attorney's Office is aimed at combatting youth sex trafficking. (Photo courtesy of the Alameda County District Attorney's Office)

Oakland introduces new billboard campaign to combat human trafficking

on January 9, 2014

Alameda County District Attorney Nancy O’Malley announced Thursday morning the launch of a billboard campaign aimed at combating human trafficking and the sexual exploitation of minors in the Bay Area.

“If you see something in the community, say something,” O’Malley said. “It is time that we come together as a community to stop this epidemic.”

More than 100 girls are sold for sex each night on the streets of Oakland, according to the WestCoast Children’s Clinic, and the FBI designated the Bay Area as a “high intensity child prostitution area” in 2009.

January is National Slavery and Human Trafficking Prevention Month, and Oakland’s campaign looks to reframe the issue of prostitution by stressing that prostituted children are not criminals but rather victims of sexual abuse and domestic human trafficking.

“Law enforcement, the advocates, the policy makers, we can’t do it alone,” O’Malley said. “So we are engaging the community and educating the community and sending strong messages to the community that human tracking is against the law– that those who are trafficked are victims of crimes– that we need to hold the perpetrators of trafficking accountable.”

Partnering with MISSSEY (Motivating, Inspiring, Supporting and Serving Sexually Exploited Youth), one of the first advocate programs set up for Commercially Sexually Exploited Children (CSEC) in the Bay Area, and media advertising company Clear Channel Outdoor, the message will be plastered on more than 65 billboards and bus shelters.

“The city of Oakland is known across the state and the nation as a red light city district”, said Nola Brantly, the Executive Director of MISSSEY.  “We must come together as a city and a community to stop this.”

Oakland’s awareness campaign kicks off a broader campaign statewide. Prop 35, the most successful ballot initiative in California history, approved by 81 percent of voters in 2012, increased the penalties for human trafficking. As part of that rollout, this year there will be a campaign to put posters in designated businesses throughout the state of California. Advocates hope that this will expand the reach of Oakland’s campaign.

O’Malley said the central message is, “Buying a child for sex is human trafficking. Ignoring that epidemic is negligence.”

For more information on the campaign, go to: www.protectoaklandkids.org

The campaign was designed, pro bono, by Genice Jacobs, Producer; Suzanne Boutilier, Creative Director/Copywriter; Jed Davis, Art Director; Tom Page, Photographer  for the general public ads.

Correction: A previous version of this article did not specify that Nancy O’Malley is the District Attorney for Alameda County, not just Oakland .

Image: A new billboard campaign from the Alameda County District Attorney’s Office is aimed at combatting youth sex trafficking. (Photo courtesy of the Alameda County District Attorney’s Office)

1 Comment

  1. Alice Walker on January 24, 2014 at 5:20 pm

    Yeah, the city of Oakland, like all the Cities in the Bay Area are really serious about combating sex trafficking, that’s why they allow so many massage parlors to open up who primarily use Chinese illegal immigrants needing to work off their passage to the US. They also turn the other way and ignore sweatshops which secretly operate all over the Bay Area. Going after sex traffickers means going after those who smuggle in illegal immigrants – No one cares about illegal immigrants, in fact local politicians, lazy people who wont clean their own houses or mow their own lawns love the cheap labor and services hey provide. So tough luck if your a sex slave in the Bay Area.



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