Although the human and sex trafficking industry tends to evoke images of places like Eastern Europe and Southeast Asia — far away and with more rampant poverty or lax human-rights protections — Santa Barbara County is not immune.
A task force convened three years ago by the District Attorney’s Office found in a 2015 report that there were 45 child survivors of the industry in the county between 2012 and 2014.
In addition, there were 80 more suspected child survivors of domestic sex trafficking here, and 461 more who were considered “extremely vulnerable.”
Santa Barbarans got a haunting and in-depth look into the global industry Friday night at First Baptist Church with a screening of Nefarious: Merchant of Souls, a documentary by filmmaker Benjamin Nolot.
Nolot is the founder of Missouri-based Exodus Cry, an anti-trafficking and victim-restoration organization. Both the nonprofit organization and the film — which Nolot wrote, directed and produced — tackle the underground sex industry through a Christian worldview.
“We just really wanted to help tell this story when we found out the horror of what is happening,” Nolot told some 200 viewers before the screening.
The 2011 documentary, which won numerous honors on the film-awards circuit, explores the underbelly of an industry that often operates in the open, sometimes with help from authorities turning a blind eye, according to Nolot.
Nolot and his crew traveled the globe to reveal the machinations of sex trafficking’s various incarnations: girls kidnapped in Moldova in Eastern Europe, the inherent dangers of legal prostitution in Amsterdam’s red-light district in the Netherlands, parents selling their daughters in Southeast Asia and haunting experiences of former Nevada prostitutes.
During the 90-minute film, Nolot speaks with sex-trafficking victims and former prostitutes, an investigative journalist, psychologists, former sex traffickers and individuals working to free and rehabilitate girls trapped in the industry.
He uncovered a host of causes for how girls and women — and boys — find themselves trafficked and prostituted: poverty and hopeless economic conditions, kidnapping, the illusion of a glamorous lifestyle, being duped by pimps, a history of sexual abuse and parents who sell their children for financial gain.
Banning and cracking down on prostitution is a key to stamping out trafficking, the documentary said. It highlighted strict Swedish laws that the film said have gone a long way toward thwarting the industry there.
“I think that we can follow their example here locally in Santa Barbara through the using of our voices and an organized effort to shift mindsets, and then to see if that kind of legislation passes,” Nolot said during the post-screening Q&A.
Exodus Cry, he said, is beginning to build an awareness- and activism-based grassroots campaign intended to end sex trafficking in the United States.
Bob Ryan, one of the founders of Hope Refuge, a local nonprofit organization that serves the developmental needs of girls affected by trafficking, explained that the industry even has a foothold in Santa Barbara County.
“Santa Barbara is a major tourist destination,” he said. “And with that comes a lot of people who are often traveling away from their homes, traveling away from their normal environment. There’s a level of anonymity that comes with that.”
When people are vacationing away from home, they tend to feel more comfortable partaking in illicit activities like buying sex, Ryan said, which fuels the industry and enables traffickers.
There is, however, reason for hope, he added.
“Santa Barbara is really moving on this,” he said. “There’s this culture, this mindset that these girls are just juvenile delinquents, that these boys are just runaways.”
Santa Barbara is “really changing the mindset to really realize these are kids and individuals who are being sexually exploited and victims of a sexual crime,” Ryan said.
The documentary’s screening also served as an opportunity to highlight Hope Refuge, which runs a contribution-funded wellness retreat for survivors of sex-trafficking. The organization is hosting a free tour of the retreat in the Santa Barbara mountains on Oct. 15.
The documentary was brought in by the local group of the Associates of the Franciscan Sisters of the Sacred Heart.
— Noozhawk staff writer Sam Goldman can be reached at sgoldman@noozhawk.com. Follow Noozhawk on Twitter: @noozhawk, @NoozhawkNews and @NoozhawkBiz. Connect with Noozhawk on Facebook.