Oree Freeman was 11 years old when she became a victim of sex trafficking.
The now 24-year-old, and mother of a four month old daughter, talked about her experience being trafficked from 11 to 15 years old.
“I actually grew up right down the street from here [USC], off of Adams and 22nd street,” she begins.
Oree’s memories of her early childhood are warm. Although she refers to the area she grew up in as a “gang infested neighborhood”, Oree feels that she was still sheltered as a young child. She was raised by a single mother, who worked days and nights to provide for Oree and herself.
“My mother, she did the best she could for me,” Oree says. She remembers being a good student, attending school regularly, and staying out of trouble.
Then, at eight years old, Oree was molested by a much older, family friend. The Los Angeles Department of Child and Family Services intervened, but the case was eventually dropped from lack of evidence.
Oree went to counseling after the incident, but feels she didn’t receive the emotional help she needed.
“There was lack of conversation with my mother or anyone,” she explains. “And I started to be, at eight years old, I started to become very distant.”
Despite the traumatic event, Oree continued to attend elementary school and tried to resume a normal life.
A year and a half later, at ten years old, she was sexually assaulted. This time, by a teenage minor. The case also ended up being dropped in the future due to lack of evidence.
As Oree continued to feel further and further isolated from her mother and friends, she found out during Christmas that same year that she had been adopted at 2 months old.
“So, that was the tip of the iceberg,” Oree says.
“[It was] like a light went off, right? Because I’d already been sexually abused. I had been molested by this family friend. By the time I was 10, I was sexually assaulted and now I find out that I’m adopted, that I don’t belong here. I was already dealing with identity issues of trying to figure out why me? Why this had happened to me?”
After finding out she was adopted, Oree became resentful and angry. She slowly started to act out in school and to come home later every night.
“I [was] searching for love and attention the whole time.”
The following year, Oree was charged with an assault and battery charge and was put on temporary probation. The judge ordered her to complete 174 hours of community service, and Oree signed up at a local library to complete them there.
During her community service, she meet a girl around her age who befriended her.
“She was the pretty girl, the pretty eyes, long hair. She seemed popular. She had a good life. She had the Jordan’s, she had the better clothing and everything that I had wanted.”
So one evening, when she was 11 years old, Oree decided to run away from home. Her first stop was the girl she had befriended during her community service at the library.
Her friend persuaded her to go to another house, where she was left alone with an older man.
The following events that would take place that evening would lead her to the first night that she would be forced to sell her body for sex.
Oree was taken, with another experienced woman, to Figueroa Street in Los Angeles first, and then Long Beach Boulevard. She was told to watch as the woman gave sex acts for money to men until she was instructed she would be doing the same.
“I just started crying and crying because I was scared and he dragged me up the street and then nobody did a thing. And then finally, it was just like he said it. He said, ‘who was gonna come for you? Nobody’s going to come for you and you don’t have no home to go’.”
From that point on, Oree was trafficked for four years.
“You were said to make a quota every single night, and if you didn’t make that quota, you was beaten.
If you had to go without food for a couple of days, you were going to do whatever you had to do in order to make daddy’s money.
And for four years it became normal, from 11, from 11 to 15 and a half years old, in order to be raped every night from seven to 15 times.
By the time in one year alone, like you’ve probably been raped over 4,000 times, right? You will work seven days a week: rain, snow, or shine.
Whether you’re menstruating or not, you’re going to work, and you’re gonna to make the money.”
Oree had run away when she was still on probation, and eventually got a bench warrant placed out for her arrest. She was placed in juvenile hall a short while after, being the youngest there before she turned 12 years old.
Following the incident, Oree’s mother decided she did not want to take her daughter back and she was placed in the foster care system.
Eighty five percent of youth picked up by law enforcement in sex trafficking raids have had history with child protective services and 12-14 is the average age a victim is first trafficked.
“What better place to find a broken child, but in the broken place,” explains Oree. “We’re all coming [to the foster care system] with all of our insecurities and trauma.”
Oree continued to go in and out of foster care homes, with her criminal record building up.
“From that point on, that was my window of continuing to be arrested. I probably been arrested over 11, 11 to 13 times, within a time frame. The way it was when, eight years ago and even until just recently, children were still being charged as prostitutes and were looked at as prostitutes.”
And [then] there was this paradigm shift where we started realizing [children] were victims.”
In September of 2016, California Governor Jerry Brown passed a law that “children will not longer be classified as prostitutes in the U.S state of California after a new law decriminalized prostitution for minors in a move praised by child rights campaigners” and that “crimes of solicitation and prostitution will no longer apply to anyone aged under 18.”
Victims are now referred to child welfare agencies instead of arrested and there are more programs available to help children who are taken in.
Jim Carson, Program Manager at the Orangewood Children Foundation, a recovery program designed to help victims of sex trafficking in Orange County, talked about the impact the law has had.
Before the 2016 law passed, children were held in juvenile detention centers, returned to the homes from which they fled, or placed in non secure facilities, creating a cycle of repeated episodes of getting back into what they refer to as ‘the life’ of sex trafficking.
“There was a lot of controversy with people identifying us as prostitutes, and we were treated as such. We were treated exactly how we felt: dirty and scummy and unwanted in love,” Oree says.
“And when you think about the men purchasing sex: they’re fathers, they’re married men, they’re teachers, they’re counselors. They are law enforcement. They are.. they’re men. They’re men who buy sex and there’s no certain look or certain ethnicity or religion, you know, it’s a man willing to buy sex from a child.”
Human trafficking is a $150 billion a year global industry, one of the most profitable criminal activities just behind drug trafficking and currency counterfeiting.
“A lot of times people think, ‘well they want to go out there and they want to make the money’. You don’t keep a dollar, you don’t keep anything down there. So the average right now we’ll say it, if a girl was working seven days out of the week, a pimp alone could make in a year $200,000 tax free right off of one child. So if they have multiple [children], you can only imagine.
And when you’re out there, you’re going to be asked to do whatever you will do, whatever that man tells you to do because he’s paying. So at 12 years old, if I was asked — whether it was oral, whether it was anal, I was going to give it.
I had to, there was no other choice. Or if I don’t, and I don’t make this money, I can catch a beating because I’m turning away money. Right?”
Los Angeles County continues to be identified as a major hub for the commercial sexual exploitation of children; however, the lack of awareness and statistics is startling.
Orange County has recently just released it’s 6th yearly Human Trafficking Victim Report for 2019. Los Angeles County does not have one.
Kristi Boogaard, a child service social worker for the Los Angeles County Department of Children and Family Services, spoke about the importance of bringing more awareness and especially how to be more proactive with children in schools.
Oree is now working with Saving Innocence, a Los Angeles based organization that provides intensive case management for children recovered from sex trafficking.
She has dedicated her time to helping children who are going through what she is all too familiar with.
“And it’s just there are so many rules to the game, and to this lifestyle that comes with it.
And people think it doesn’t happen here and it does, and it’s right in front of us. I have so many photos of being a normal kid. Even going back and forth to school at times and being trafficked after school.
These kids don’t have a sign on their forehead that says: hi, I’m a sex trafficking victim.
No, it hides in plain sight.”
