By David N. Young
Opal Singleton is a woman on a mission. Every moment of every day, she matches wits with some of the smartest, filthiest and diabolical people on earth in her role as a human trafficking expert and training officer the Riverside County Sheriff’s Department.
Working in human trafficking since 2010, Singleton has authored two popular books on the subject, she’s written courses for the Safe Communities Institute, the University of Southern California and she also consults for the Los Angeles Police Department.
Also partially funded by the U.S. Justice Department, Singleton trains lawyers, judges, probation officers and parents.
“We are living at one of the most important times in all of history,” Singleton told her audience at the Grace Christian School in Cypress Thursday. Because of technology, said Singleton, “we live in world without borders” and in “homes without walls.”
With six billion users expected to be connected to the internet by 2020, Singleton said we are approaching the “first generation ever when someone with a smartphone can reach everyone in the world,” she said. More worrisome, said Singleton, “and everyone can reach them.
“I’m here to help people understand how this works,” she said, explaining that human and sex trafficking has become a multi-billion business run by “gangs and cartels” using social media.
History will eventually show, said Singleton, that the online revolution will have been “more important than the industrial revolution.”
In rapid fire succession, Singleton laid out for the audience of parents how human trafficking was more “a crime of psychology” rather than the more popularized version of being taken.
Singleton quickly pierced the more common notions of human trafficking. “Ever see the movie Taken,” she asks the audience, “that isn’t generally how it happens.”
Her first book, “Seduced: The grooming of America’s teenagers,” describes how gang members mask themselves on the internet through various dating sites to capture the attention of young girls, mostly whom “have a very big hole in their hearts.”
The gang members promise “a fantasy” to these young girls who are not old enough to have the cognitive skills required to understand the ruse.
In fact, her latest book is entitled “Societal Shift” and in it, she outlines many of the social changes occurring in a transformative world dominated by escalating technologies.
She said research indicates that 87 percent of today’s children and teenagers sleep with their phones, making it easier for perpetrators to come into a child’s bedroom at night “right through the sheets,” never opening a door.
More alarming, Singleton said these gang members have been incredibly successful at learning how to lure these young girls into the promise of a new life, only for the victims to learn too late they have been delivered into a new life of turning tricks for pimps.
“Their lives can be changed forever in ten seconds.”
Once trapped in the “sex circuit”, said Singleton, they are captive to a market for sex with underaged girls that is huge. She said girls locked in the sex trade make $800 per session for their pimps, many of whom are driving Bentleys, Mercedes and other luxury cars. Each girl could be worth as much as $1.5 million per year to the network.
“Pimping is not about sex,” she said. “It’s about control and power.”
Singleton provided real world examples of cases she has personally worked on in the past, saying the shadowy figures on the web are the “worst people ever.”
As obvious as it may seem, Singleton said sex trafficking is “one hard crime” to prove in court. New technologies such as encrypted messaging, vaporware (disappearing video) and crypto currencies are making the tasks even harder.
Letting kids use “adult devices” can produce disastrous results. New outlets like “Live.me” allow any kid with a smartphone and a network connection to “start monetizing” selfies and videos of themselves, making the situation exponentially more challenging.
Singleton gave an example of a 9-year-old twerking naked on the site. She explained how networks of pedophiles on the dark web use the “surface web” to lure unsuspecting girls into commercial sex work or sending a naked photo. Once they do, they in many cases fall victim to “sextortion” and many of them eventually tumble into the world of captive sex.
Sadly, according to Singleton, here are the facts: More than 18,000 kids a day send a naked photo of themselves; 9,000 kids a day then fall victim to sextortion because of the photos sent and 58 percent of them to go meet their sextortionists and “it becomes a virtual superhighway for sex trafficking.”
Foster kids are at very high risk, she said, and the ratio of girls to boys is 5-1.
Singleton says most victims average about seven years on the commercial sex circuit with a variety of reasons for them leaving, including disease, drugs or death.
She said the gangs in Southern California have a pattern of moving the girls around in hotels, motels and other locations that are known to law enforcement.
Under California law, any teen caught in the commercial sex trade below 18-years-old cannot be charged with a crime. They are automatically considered victims, except in very special circumstances.
More tragically, when these experiences occur at a very impressionable age, it negatively affects their views of themselves in multi-dimensional ways for the remainder of their lives.
She urges parents to use the most powerful four words in the English language. “I believe in you.” Parents should not only monitor how their kids are using social media and technology, but also use common sense arguments if confronted by a child. “If a parent gets in a tug-of-war with a child over a fantasy, the parent is going to lose every time.”
She briefly explained literary and social devices parent could utilize if this happens to them. “You have to learn to unpack the fantasy.”
Moreover, she says the fact that the technology changing every 6-9 months makes the job of a parent incredibly more difficult. As the internet widens its grip on a collective society, the dilemma becomes “the DARE program of this generation.
Parenting has become more difficult, she said, adding that luring of America’s kids over the internet represents the “greatest societal challenges of all times.”
Singleton was introduced by Selina Mullaney, Director of Recruitment as Grace Christian School Superintendent Don Pettinger thanked Singleton for sharing a compelling message that “every parent should hear.” Cypress Mayor Stacy Berry and Chief of Police Rod Cox also attended the presentation
Editors Note: Singleton has started her own “Million kids” nonprofit foundation (www.millionkids.org), she appears on “The Answer” every Saturday at 3 p.m. (AM 590) and she said hundreds of hours of free human trafficking instruction is available on www. exploitedcrimes.com.
