While Oakland has many service providers for children recovering from sexual exploitation, few offer them a safe place to sleep at night if they are able to leave their trafficker. Currently, there are 12 beds for all homeless youth in Alameda and Contra Costa counties. None of those beds are exclusively for CSEC, and none of them are for long-term placement. “At Claire’s House, they can stay as long as they need to,” says Kimble-Price.
Alameda County District Attorney Nancy O’Malley first envisioned the house several years ago, and after buy-in from the Diocese of Oakland, the project was handed over to Catholic Charities of the East Bay. That organization brought in Kimble-Price to direct Claire’s House and CESC services program last March. Builders began renovation of an existing building in September, and are currently “fully in construction” according to Kimble-Price. The facility, which she hopes will open in mid-January, will house a dozen teenagers.
Technically, Claire’s House will be labeled a “short-term residential therapeutic program,” or STRTP, which is the new licensing term for all group homes since January. “So in the name it says ‘short-term,’ but short-term is relative. Every six months a child needs to be re-evaluated by the county to see whether they continue to need this high level of care that we’ll be providing. The thing about CSEC youth is that they always meet medical necessity,” says Kimble-Price. She is hoping to work with girls at the house for at least nine to 18 months, depending on the person’s individual goals. “Potentially, a youth could be with us for a couple of years,” says Kimble-Price.
In the past, child trafficking victims picked up on the streets by law enforcement officers were brought to Juvenile Hall and prosecuted. Most would eventually end up back in their original situation: a foster home, group home or with their biological families. But soon after their return, they would often run away or be lured back onto the streets by their exploiters. Some would end up homeless, living with their exploiters, or couch-surfing, which sometimes comes with its own problems when teens feel pressure to exchange sex or labor for a place to stay.
“Sometimes kids are running away from something that seems more dangerous. So they don’t intend to engage in sex work, but they are running away from abuse or neglect at home or just a lack of resources,” says Kimble-Price. “Trafficking comes out of that. Someone says I can offer you resources, I can offer you shelter, clothes that kind of thing.” Other times, Kimble-Price says, the trafficker manipulates a teenager with attention and affection. They may say they want to take care of her, or initiate a romantic relationship. “Then it goes into, ‘If you really loved me you would do this thing for me,’” says Kimble-Price. The person the teen thought was her boyfriend or caretaker has become her trafficker, but by then the psychological bonds are strong.
Kimble-Price has even seen youth trafficked by their family members: their uncle, their older brother, a cousin. A lot of traffickers are young boys who would have otherwise sold drugs to make money, but, she says, “gangs don’t really sell drugs anymore. They sell people.”