♪♪♪
female operator: Hello,
this is a free call from--
James Gary: James.
operator: An inmate at--
female operator:
San Diego Central Jail.
operator: This
call is being recorded.
operator: You may
start the conversation now.
James: Hello?
female: Hello?
James: I don't
love nobody but you.
I just really want
to get out of jail, like, now.
James: Now, now.
♪♪♪
♪♪♪
James: Can you do me a favor?
female: What?
James: Can you bail me out?
'Cause I don't wanna be here.
female: I know.
I've been trying.
Patrick Dudley:
James Gary, well,
when I met him,
was 19 years old.
He ended up making
some calls from jail,
which are all recorded.
All jail calls are recorded.
And he was calling several
young women that he knew,
girlfriends of his.
He was 19 years old, and
these girls were 15 and 16.
♪♪♪
Patrick: James was trying to
convince these young women to
get money together for him
to be able to post bail.
♪♪♪
female: Hey, I'm
about to make a Backpage.
How do you do that?
James: You go on, you
know, Craigslist and Backpage,
and you take some
cute little pictures.
Hey, you deleted all
those young pictures though?
Like, you know, ones
that make you look--
female: Yeah, James Gary.
James: Okay, all right, baby.
female: I'll send
the pictures on Facebook.
James: My baby is at
Starbucks handlin' business.
♪♪♪
James: You feel me?
I'm sending you somewhere
where the well ain't dry,
my--so, you know, you should
be good with that mouthpiece.
And don't put my
mother--lips on nobody.
female: Why would I do that?
James: Unless--all right,
if that's what you gotta do,
you gotta get me out.
Kathleen Thomas: Has there
ever been a time where you made
a decision in a
relationship that,
you know, you didn't
think you would ever do,
but you did it because you cared
about that person or you
loved that person?
female: Love you.
James: I love you too.
Kathleen: Or you made a
decision out of a space of fear?
James: When I get back,
you better have some dates.
If not, I'm takin' the phone.
Kathleen: You chose to make
this decision because you were
worried about what might happen
to you or what might happen to
other people, but you
compromised your values in some
way, shape, or form because you
were motivated by the fear
of your own personal
safety or others.
James: Well, I
had a slap her.
Summer Stephan: I call
it "psychological kidnap."
Kathleen: There is no one
thing that isolates you or
insulates you from
experiencing trafficking.
Anyone can
experience human trafficking.
♪♪♪
Monica Dean: For
more than a year,
we've been investigating the
complicated issue of the sex
trafficking of
children in San Diego.
We've reviewed
hundreds of records,
talked with survivors.
Jessica Kim: My
exploitation started at 12.
male: Seventeen.
Yeah, she was 17 years old.
I'm not gonna quit.
I'm not givin' up
on my daughter.
Monica: We've
heard from traffickers.
James: I heard
that you make a email,
and then you go on,
you know, Craigslist,
the Backpage, and you take
some cute little pictures.
Monica: We're taking you into
a dark underworld that operates
in broad daylight.
Patrick Dudley: Here was a
74-year-old man who was having
sex with minors, who had success
in the corporate America.
He got a "Get out
of jail free" card.
Charisma De Los Reyes:
There is no such thing
as child prostitution.
What you are
buying is child rape.
female: It isn't--to have
but there is hope.
Monica: And showing you
how we all can be
part of the solution.
This is "Stolen."
male newscaster: So in a
sex trafficking investigation--
female newscaster:
This sex trafficking--
female: Face of
human trafficking.
Monica: You've
seen it in the news--
female: Oh, my
God, they got Amanda.
announcer: In movies.
male: They're
going to take you.
Monica: But
what's happening here,
what we're talking about,
doesn't look like this.
Jessica Kim: Think about
your daughter or your sister,
or somebody
that--or your brother.
This is happening to
both girls and boys.
Jessica: You don't
have to be physically held.
You don't have to be
physically constrained.
It is all a mental manipulation.
It's a mental
brainwashing that takes place.
This is one of the most horrific
injustice we have in our
communities right now.
My exploitation started at
12, so it started really,
really young.
The grooming process where the
trafficker begins to gain
the trust of the victim
started before that,
so it took about
four or five years.
It's not the "stranger
danger" kind of situation.
It's usually somebody that is
close to the youth and that
has direct access to them.
Summer Stephan: Why don't we
start telling our kids the truth
about that 80% of the harms
that are gonna come
to them are not
gonna be from a stranger who
pulls them off on the streets?
It's gonna be from someone
trying to befriend them or
someone who is
posing as a friend,
or a family or a coach or
a teacher that comes in
and tries to exploit them.
Monica: Why do you think
we have such a problem here?
Summer: It is unfortunately a
very easy crime to perpetrate.
It involves human
deception, human exploitation,
and it can take on any form.
Drugs are the first criminal
industry everywhere in the
world and right
here in San Diego.
Second, is the selling and
buying of human beings
for purpose of profit.
That's human trafficking.
Kathleen: You may
hear "human trafficking."
They think of, you know, someone
coming over in a shipping
container in the middle of the
night or a young girl kidnapped
off of the streets.
Here in San Diego,
it's our neighbors,
trafficking our neighbors.
It's our middle
schoolers trafficking
our middle schoolers.
Susan Johnson: It's not out
there away from us
across the border.
It's our own girls and our own
boys from our own neighborhoods.
male: We do have
the border to our south,
and that's not where we see a
large majority of our
victims coming from.
These--large
majority are citizens.
They live here in San Diego.
They're the ones
that are being bought.
They're the ones being sold.
They're the ones
being recruited.
Kathleen: People don't have
an awareness of what the issue
looks like because it kind
of hides in plain sight.
Monica: "Human trafficking"
is "the commercial exploitation
or selling of a person for sex
or labor and often by force,
fraud, or coercion."
By California law, anyone under
18 who has sex for money is
considered a victim
of sex trafficking.
Charisma De Los Reyes:
There is no such thing
as child prostitution.
What you are
buying is child rape.
Summer: The target,
the target-rich victim is a
teenager, and that's why the
average age in San Diego County,
when somebody is first lured
into sex trafficking, is 16.
♪♪♪
Monica: How old was
she when she met this man?
male: Seventeen.
Yeah, she was 17 years old.
The guy was, like, nine
years older than her.
She is the type of
person that would,
just, you know, always
just care about others and,
you know, to the
point where, like,
it almost, like, hurts herself.
Monica: This single dad
never thought he'd be
part of this story.
He asked us to disguise his
identity because he fears
for his family's safety.
He says the trouble started
at his daughter's first job
in high school.
male: She got
a job at a local,
like, hamburger joint.
What I didn't know is that,
when she was workin' there,
there was gonna be a predator
there who was actually out there
to "boyfriend"
these young women,
and, unfortunately, my
daughter got caught up in that.
It's not somethin' that happens
where it's some dramatic
"I'm gonna just snatch the kid
and take 'em away"--
that kind of thing.
No, like, it happens,
like, slowly over time.
I would say a year and a
half had gone by because,
at this point, she
ended up leaving the house.
Well, my ex-wife
basically, like,
said, "Hey, I found
pictures of, you know,
our daughter, your
daughter, on, you know,
this sex site, you know,
and she was tellin'--
you know, she told me basically
what she discovered.
I was just, like, closed off,
just thinking on how I could
rescue my daughter.
Monica: Now two years
later, his daughter is an adult,
and she's still in a
relationship with
her alleged trafficker.
male: You are
basically in a riptide.
Like, I'm over here.
I see you in a riptide.
The only thing that I'm thinkin'
is "How am I gettin' my daughter
out of this riptide?
Am I gonna get a Jet Ski?
A boat?
Am I gonna just paddle on
my surfboard and get you?"
Like, I don't know.
And you're just like you
don't know what to do.
You're stuck.
You're scared.
You don't know what to do.
She's gettin', like,
taken out to the ocean.
Summer: I call it
"psychological kidnap."
That is what they use.
That's the simplest
way to think about it.
They're not
kidnapping the person, the body.
They're kidnapping their mind so
the person believes that they're
going along voluntarily
when they're really not.
They never had a chance.
Monica: Psychological kidnap,
held hostage in your own mind,
trapped, but unaware
you've been tricked.
Kathleen: Our brain isn't
fully formed or developed until
we're 25 years
old, so, let's say,
a 30-year-old perpetrator who
is manipulating a 16-year-old,
it's a completely unfair playing
field because she doesn't even
have the same cognitive
structures that he has.
She doesn't have the ability
to read and understand the
situation appropriately because
her brain is not functioning
properly yet.
Jessica: So it begins with
love and attention and saying,
"Oh, you deserve so much more.
I'm always here for you."
And after the trust is
built, then things shift.
Summer: One of the favorite
lines is "Just this one time."
But once that
first time happens,
they've been transformed.
They feel lesser.
They feel cheap.
They feel like a
product to be sold.
Jessica: This is like a cult.
It's kind of the same mind-set
where they are brainwashing you
to think that
there is no way out.
I did not feel I could get out.
He had told me that there was
people that didn't care about
me, there was nobody
that I could trust.
I didn't know
there was a way out.
Kathleen: We often refer
to it as "trauma bonding."
Some people refer to it as
"Stockholm syndrome," which is
kind of a old
version of that idea.
Jessica: It's the trauma
bonding that takes place between
the victim and the perpetrator,
where there is this love and,
at the same time, hate,
and you are confused.
You don't want this
pain to continue,
and, yet this person is
telling you that they love you.
Kathleen: It's
a stolen identity.
It's a stolen agency.
♪♪♪
James: Hello?
female: Hello?
female: I think God
loves you, James.
James: Hmm?
female: I
think God loves you.
James: God loves me?
Yeah, I know he does.
I just be f--up sometimes.
God'll love me.
He kept--man, he kept you
with me through thick and thin.
Kathleen: One of the things
that's really common with trauma
bonds is that the victimizer
will create a space where the
victim and the
victimizer move through,
kind of, these three
different roles: the victim,
the victimizer, and the rescuer.
So all--both of them move
through all three of those
roles, kind of, over
and over and over again.
James: I care about
everything you say and about how
you feel about
everything and all that.
Kathleen: And as they
move through those three roles,
it puts the victim in positions
where maybe she feels like she
has a little bit more power
because she's the victimizer
or she's the rescuer.
James: Baby, we
can go anywhere.
I don't even care.
Like, I'll just--I'll
leave the country with you.
Kathleen: "He's sad.
He's feeling depressed.
He called me
because he was suicidal."
James: Yeah, you probably
a little tougher than me.
female: Oh, I'm going to cry.
James: No, no,
no, no, no, no,
don't cry.
Get me out.
Kathleen: "He needs me.
There's a uniqueness in this
relationship that no one else
has this connection
with him like I do."
female: Hello?
James: Hello?
female: Yeah, I'm gonna
bail you out today 'cause Ron,
he's supposed to be
giving me the money.
Monica: Ron is that wealthy
sex buyer we mentioned earlier.
You'll see him and even hear
from him in a later episode.
Monica: A year after he
called the girls from jail,
James Gary was convicted on
two felony counts of human
trafficking of a minor.
He appealed that ruling,
but an appellate
court ruled against him.
Monica: The justices said
these jailhouse calls were
substantial evidence that Gary
took advantage of his position
of trust with the 15-
and 16-year-old girls.
Gary is now serving a
ten-year term in state prison.
He's eligible for
parole in 2022.
[phone line ringing]
James: My birth
name is James Gary.
I'm currently incarcerated.
I'm in prison as we speak.
I made mistakes, poor choices.
I had bad judgment.
People are gonna call it what
they want, you know?
I'm not a--in my heart, I don't
feel like I'm a trafficker.
You know, people
might feel differently.
I wish I could go
and change what I did,
hop in a time machine and
fix everything that I've done.
I can't, you know.
All I can do is
recognize my mistakes,
recognize what I've done
wrong, and be a better man,
correct those mistakes,
and move forward from there.
I don't wanna see my young
brothers and sisters goin'
through the same thing.
You know, it doesn't--it's not a
mistake that is over that day.
You know, this carries this
weight--you carry this weight
with you for the
rest of your life.
Monica: The girls in
this case were in high school,
but this problem isn't
just in their school.
It's in nearly every school
district in San Diego County,
and we can prove it.
male: Hello,
look to your right.
Monica: On the next
episode of "Stolen"--
female: She cannot be 18.
Monica: We look at what makes
San Diego a hotspot for
sex trafficking and the
scope of the problem.
female: And I
would say, like,
seven out of ten of my clients
today we're probably military.
♪♪♪
