How can you fight sex trafficking? Washington County group has suggestions

"It is so haunting for me," said Larson, of Oakdale, the president of the recently formed Citizens Against Sex Trafficking. "It breaks my heart to think of someone like my daughter or my friends' daughters being abused."

Citizens Against Sex Trafficking, or CAST, is an auxiliary to the East Metro Human Trafficking Task Force, a partnership of Washington County and other suburban law enforcement and prosecutors.

The task force deals directly with lawbreakers. CAST will work on public awareness.

"The two groups are completely separate," said Imran Ali, the task Force's director and an assistant Washington County attorney.

Both groups are new, with CAST holding its first fundraiser Jan. 28 and the task force becoming "fully operational" next month, according to Ali.

'Bigger deal than we thought'

Kathy Woxland could hardly believe sex trafficking was a local problem — until she sat down at a computer in 2015 and started looking for juvenile sex ads.

Woxland, Washington County's victim services advocate, quickly found a 16-year-old in Cottage Grove advertising on Backpage.com.

Her reaction? "Hmmm — this might be a bigger deal than we thought," said Woxland. A few recent examples:

• A veterinarian in Baldwin, Wis. — Brian Lee Kersten — was convicted in 2017 of sex-trafficking Chinese immigrants out of a Woodbury hotel.
• Five local men were arrested in Woodbury in September on charges of soliciting children for sex.
• Shaun Maubach of Mahtomedi was arrested in June in Woodbury's La Quinta Inn and eventually was charged with crimes related to sex trafficking in Minnesota, Washington and Colorado.
• Active approach

The task force, which includes police officers from Woodbury and Oakdale, sheriff's deputies, and four employees of the county attorney's office, is part of a new attitude to address trafficking.

The old approach — waiting for complaints to come in — wasn't working. "Victims do not identify as victims," said prosecutor Ali. "It's likely that they won't call for help."

So the county adopted a new approach, aggressively seeking out the crime.

That's why criminal analyst Aimee Schroeder spends much of her workday combing through the flood of online sex-for-sale ads.

"I am looking for the ones that look young," said Schroeder. "Or with bruises on their face, or track marks from taking drugs."

Last year, she looked at 99,000 ads, a 33 percent increase over the year before.

One recently led her to a 13-year-old girl being sold for sex in Washington County. She will sometimes come across missing people, runaways and crime victims from elsewhere.

Rallying the public

The old image that trafficking is a big-city problem is false. The internet can deliver the issue to any suburban hotel, parking lot or doorstep, notes CAST's Larson.

Washington County, which didn't prosecute a single sex-trafficking case in 2015, has had 23 in the past two years. The task force also identified 60 trafficking victims in 2016 and 2017, including many children.

The task force struggles to publicize the problem and held 100 community outreach events in two years. Said director Ali: "People always ask, 'What can we do?' "

CAST answers that question. The group is dedicated to making presentations in churches, clubs, schools — anywhere it can find a willing audience to hear about sex trafficking.

Group president Larson is determined to help in any way he can. "It is such a nightmare," he said.