This article was first published by InvestigateWest. Prosecutor Ben Gauen recognized all the signs. When police found her in the SUV, with mascara running down her face and bruises on her skin, she insisted she wanted no help. Prosecutors knew that her attacker, Christopher Jamison, had a history of rape and domestic violence charges. But Jamison was not charged with trafficking. He pleaded guilty to the assault charge in October and was released without supervision a few days later.
Jamison declined to comment for this story through his attorney. InvestigateWest was unable to reach the victim. Gauen, a King County senior deputy prosecuting attorney, has seen situations like this before. Prosecutors like Gauen, along with law enforcement, service providers and survivors, say they are increasingly desperate to hold traffickers accountable and protect victims from further abuse.
Kids are openly trafficked online and on city streets in Portland and Seattle, they say, and some end up selling sex into adulthood. Located along the Interstate 5 corridor, a major highway running from Mexico to Canada that links many West Coast cities, Washington and Oregon are recognized as hubs within a national and global sex trafficking circuit.
State legislators across the region have tried to crack down on trafficking in recent years, and Washington has some of the toughest laws against sex trafficking in the country. In contrast, neighboring California — which holds the largest share of trafficking cases of any state — has seen improvements in this area. While Meanwhile, sex trafficking of minors in King County has become more visible within the last three years following a dip at the start of the COVID pandemic, said Debra Boyer, a cultural anthropologist who has conducted studies on commercial sexual exploitation of youth in Washington.
Yet trafficking convictions in Washington and Oregon have remained low. But survivors say law enforcement and policymakers can make more investments that would allow police to be proactive in investigating traffickers while providing increased funding for social services, like housing and specialized treatment for trafficking victims, to enable survivors to safely participate in the prosecution of their traffickers if they choose to do so.
