Portland observer., July 28, 2010, Image 1

C areer
‘City o/
Roses’
&
SPECIAL
& EDUCATION
see page 8
see pages 4-5
:
e jSortíanh (Observer
Volume XXXX, Number 30
Established in 1970
Committed to Cultural Diversity
:
Of
community service
www.portlandobserver.com
Wednesday • July 28. 2010
Modern
Sex traffick in g in
th e C ity o f R o ses
D rew D akessian
T he P ortland O bserver
by
When Sherry Dooley was 16, her life was at a crossroads.
She had been in and out o f 12 foster homes before being
adopted at age 3. Two years later a female babysitter mo­
lested her. Teenage boys sexually abused her at age 10. She
spent the next 6 years railing against the straight-laced,
conservative attitudes o f her adoptive parents, spending
time in juvenile detention and in and out o f a group home.
That’s when she met him. He drove a red Cadillac and told
her something she desperately wanted to hear: She was
beautiful; she was perfect.
Dooley had no idea that her boyfriend was in fact a pimp
and she spent the next 16 years o f her life walking Northeast
Martin Luther King Jr. Boulevard, then Union Avenue, to
support herself and the son that she had by her second pimp.
Dooley’s story isn’t unique. In 2008, a national FBI sting
o f 30 cities determined Portland to be second only to Seattle
in prolificacy o f domestic minor sex trafficking, better known
as child prostitution. The Portland Police Bureau reports five
cases o f trafficking each week. And these figures may not
accurately reflect the problem because they take into ac­
count only the victims that have been rescued.
Most experts and stakeholders say that Portland’s loca­
tion on the 1-5 corridor is to blame for its reputation as a hub
for domestic minor sex trafficking. But other factors are at
work as well.
“Port cities typically [have a] higher incidence o f traffick­
ing. A landlocked state...won’t have that population,” says
James Pond, founder o f Transitions Global, a Hillsboro-
based non-govemmerftal organization that provides reha­
bilitation services to survivors o f sex trafficking.
Visitors are not the only ones who are soliciting sex from
underage girls.
Linda Smith, founder o f the anti-sex trafficking non-profit
Shared Hope International, believes that Portland’s permis­
sive attitude toward the sex has incited the desire for new and
illicit forms o f sexual activity among citizens.
continued
on page 18
photo by
D rew D akessian /T he P ortland O bserver
Sex trafficking survivor Sherry Dooley looks out at Northeast Martin Luther King Jr. Boulevard where she
prostituted herself for years.
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