A 20-year-old woman who was a victim to sex trafficking was rescued from a Buena Park motel after family reported her missing, the Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department said.
"Our victim was apparently targeted, kidnapped, assaulted and transported through Los Angeles and Orange County and all the way up to Oakland, California," Sheriff Jim McDonnell said.
Chad Miller, 27, Rico Clayton, 28, Monique Butler, 22, and two other women who were not immediately identified to the public were arrested in connection with the case.
Detectives said the family came to them when the woman was discovered missing on March 1. She had left on Feb. 26 with friends to go to a birthday party.
But authorities later revealed that was a ploy: Butler invited her to a birthday party, then Miller and Clayton took the scheme from there.
"The suspects, true predators, then gave the victim a moniker — a nickname — and began posting her on 'Backpage,' the website, for the purpose of commercial sexual exploitation," Capt. Merrill Ladenheim, of LASD's human trafficking bureau, said.
Her mother didn't see any posts on social media, and she grew worried.
She received a phone call from the victim, who said she was in Oakland. Her mother was puzzled by the last-minute trip, and when she inquired further, the woman said she couldn't talk and hung up.
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On March 1, she was in a Buena Park hotel room in the 7100 block of Beach Boulevard. She managed to call her mom for help and tell them she was taken by two men driving a red SUV.
Investigators rescued her and later made the three arrests.
The victim as treated at the hospital.
But believe this could be just the beginning.
Officials said "the suspects may operate as far north as Portland, Oregon, and Oakland ... as well as the Los Angeles/Orange County area."
"As soon as you rescue one, there's three more that are being recruited I would say within the same 24-hour period at least," Kyla Smith, of the Dream Center, said.
Smith works with victims of sex trafficking at the center and said they do not enter that world of their own free will. The Dream Center is one of dozens of nonprofit organizations that assists the area task force in seeking out victims and rescuing them from the life most have been forced into.
"I've seen girls come in and their traffickers have burned them up and down their arms," Smith said. "It's physical, emotional, they're sad, they're angry and they've been through psychological torture."
The LA regional human trafficking task force launched last November. Since then, they claim to have made 93 arrests, rescued 60 victims between the ages of 14 and 17. And the McDonnell said the need is substantial.
"The more we look, the more we find and that's very unfortunate," McDonnell said.
City News Service contributed to this report.
