by Barabara Grady and Sarah Terry-Cobo

This is Part 5 of an eight-part, four-day Oakland Local investigative series on youth sex trafficking.

In Alameda County, Deputy District Attorney Sharmin Eshraghi Bock has been on a hard-fought campaign to change California law.

Together with state Assemblyman Sandre Swanson (D-Oakland), Bock has crafted laws that switch the criminalization in prostitution to the pimps and johns and away from girls. They successfully drafted and pushed through law AB 499, which recognizes that youth who are traded are victims in this crime who deserve services. They also drafted, introduced and ushered into law AB 17, which toughened the sentencing of and restitution required from convicted pimps.

However, the biggest challenge is convicting the pimps. It's difficult for police even to have grounds to arrest them...

by Sarah Terry-Cobo

This is Part 4 of an eight-part, four-day Oakland Local investigative series on youth sex trafficking.

"I admit it: I'm a john."

The image of a john, "someone looking to pay for sex," often evokes the idea of a man in a car, trolling a street at night in a gritty neighborhood. But what most people don't realize is that johns are often just another face in the crowd.

One evening in early February, after a San Francisco panel on human trafficking in the Koret auditorium of the city's main library, an unnamed man confessed his story, disclosing his past to people who likely were strangers...