Four people were arrested or cited Thursday in a sting operation targeting prostitution at several Bend hotels, with police saying one year-old woman had been a victim of sex trafficking since she was Wednesday at various unidentified hotels, said Lt. Clint Burleigh.
Several suspects were contacted at several hotels and one, Rennell Buen, 23, of Portland, was arrested on six counts of promoting prostitution trafficking as well as one count of methamphetamine possession. A Bend man, Patrick A. Spear, 52, was cited and released on a charge of soliciting prostitution.
Two Portland women also were charged, one arrested on a charge of prostitution and an out-of-county DUII warrant, while the second was cited and released, Burleigh said. Bend police and the Deschutes County Commercial Sexual Exploitation of Children CSEC Response Team facilitated resources for the year-old to help with her recovery, with the ultimate goal of getting her out of human trafficking, the lieutenant said. He said a similar operation was done a few years ago, though it might not have been similarly publicized.
She provided this statement to NewsChannel 21 on the area police operation:. I have heard personal stories of sex trafficking happening in Central Oregon for decades. Women who are now in their 50s and 60s have come up to me after local presentations to ask for help coping with the scars after having been trafficked here when they were in their teens. Make no mistake, traffickers are the ones making money, not the victims. During the grooming process, traffickers learn who is most important to their victim, be it a sister, brother, mom, dad, best friend or whomever.
Traffickers then threaten to harm those who mean the most to the victim if they try to leave. Belles says. Perpetrators have capitalized on that, and locate their victims online and groom them with flattery and then develop an online relationship which involves BDSM websites. Once these predators have gained access to and the minimal trust of your child, the grooming and coercion begin with the sole purpose of enslavement and human trafficking.
