Deceased/Not Found CA - Sierra LaMar, 15, Morgan Hill, 16 March 2012 #14 *A. Garcia-Torres guilty*

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OldSteve said:
Well said, agree! Add to that, weren't the photos she upload traceable to where she lived?
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BBM

No. The only shot that was traceable to her area was the photograph of a picture on the screen of her laptop. That photograph was taken by LE.
 
Pensfan said:
All those teens are in Seattle, WA. ;) If you vacation there, remember to take your shoes off outside your hotel room. There is urine from the homeless teens everywhere.
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In the summer, you may be correct. But I am pretty sure most of those homeless teens make their way to Venice Beach in time for the winter. :what:
 
Why does everyone think (because it is not public knowledge) that the police do not know about the owner(s) of the car? That is very easy to find out. Also, maybe they are asking for info about sightings of the car around the day Sierra went missing, for corroboration. Anyone with experience in trials and circumstantial trials knows the more corroboration you can get, the better.
 
melley said:
Why does everyone think (because it is not public knowledge) that the police do not know about the owner(s) of the car? That is very easy to find out. Also, maybe they are asking for info about sightings of the car around the day Sierra went missing, for corroboration. Anyone with experience in trials and circumstantial trials knows the more corroboration you can get, the better.
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I think they know the owner but perhaps not the driver on that day...not sure what to think, though.
 
Pensfan said:
All those teens are in Seattle, WA. ;) If you vacation there, remember to take your shoes off outside your hotel room. There is urine from the homeless teens everywhere.
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Wow, you have been at a hotel like that?
 
itsashame said:
I guess the way I took it was that it is a known fact that it is occurring....and your statement tells me too that we should be knowing about it. I've seen the movies and I have seen documentaries from other countries about it, but here is harder for me to believe. Maybe I'm naive, but how come we don't see more information from the media on it. It seems like it would be big headlines or great news stories and what journalist wouldn't go after that? Just really confuses me. So have you heard too that there is a known trafficking ring in CA? Someone has to know something about it, or details about how they work? LE knows about this too? Why aren't they alerting the public more if this horrible criminal activity is occurring?
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A big part of the problem was that until relatively recently, LE treated prostitutes as criminals, no matter how old they were. Johns were charged for soliciting prostitution rather than for child sexual assault, etc.

And then someone in Portland Oregon had one of those brilliant insights that seem completely obvious after the fact: a minor caught in a prostitution sting is a child who has been repeatedly sexually assaulted, not a criminal.

So they stopped treating prostitutes who were minors like criminals in Portland and all of a sudden, these girls started trusting LE and talking to them. And what they had to say curled the hair of even the most hardened officers.

LE in Portland started learning about how minors were trapped into prostitution, how they were moved up and down the west coast, how gangstas and pimps interacted, etc.

For awhile, there was an impression that it was just Portland that had a problem. Because no other city was reporting such things.

But when other cities started following Portland's lead and treating prostitutes like they are victims rather than criminals... well, they found out it wasn't just Portland.

And ever since then, the lid has been slowly blowing off.
 
Pensfan said:
Yeah, and it was over $235/night (dh's company paid). Have you been to Seattle lately?
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I was in Seattle for a week recently, did not experience what you have. Just wondering if you talked to any of these homeless teens about what was going on.
 
GrainneDhu said:
A big part of the problem was that until relatively recently, LE treated prostitutes as criminals, no matter how old they were. Johns were charged for soliciting prostitution rather than for child sexual assault, etc.

And then someone in Portland Oregon had one of those brilliant insights that seem completely obvious after the fact: a minor caught in a prostitution sting is a child who has been repeatedly sexually assaulted, not a criminal.

So they stopped treating prostitutes who were minors like criminals in Portland and all of a sudden, these girls started trusting LE and talking to them. And what they had to say curled the hair of even the most hardened officers.

LE in Portland started learning about how minors were trapped into prostitution, how they were moved up and down the west coast, how gangstas and pimps interacted, etc.

For awhile, there was an impression that it was just Portland that had a problem. Because no other city was reporting such things.

But when other cities started following Portland's lead and treating prostitutes like they are victims rather than criminals... well, they found out it wasn't just Portland.

And ever since then, the lid has been slowly blowing off.
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Most of these teens were not kidnapped from their driveways. These teens are caught in the death trap known as heroin addiction. They entered prostitution and are unable to leave because they need money to buy their fix. They refuse to undergo the severe withdrawal symptoms. When the government pays for their methadone (so they can quit heroin), over half of these teens will continue to take heroin with their government purchased methadone. :(

Pensfan
verified psychiatric mental health nurse
 
itsashame said:
But aren't they referring to people being brought over from another country to America to be trafficked? Not saying that I'm not completely appauled at that, but there is no way to confirm all these victims bc most of the countries they come from don't either care that their missing or don't even know. This is America, when someone goes missing it's usually a big deal. SL is an american and for a trafficker to bother with her when they could kidnap, easily (apparently) anyone else from somewhere else, just sounds stupid? I am still bothered though that all these underage are "supposedly" here hidden and being trafficked. What is going on in this world???
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Have you ever heard of the term "throwaway kid"? It refers to kids, usually teens, who have been kicked out of the family home or whose parents don't care whether the kid shows up at home or not.

My BFF was a throwaway kid back in the 1980s. I've read about throwaway kids going all the way back to the Colonial era of USAn history, so it's not a new phenomenon.

Many of the kids being sex trafficked started out as runaway kids or throwaway kids. If a teen is a runaway, it is incredibly difficult for their parents to get LE to devote any sort of investigative resources into looking for them.

That's one of the things that makes Sierra's case so unusual. The way things usually go, LE would have taken a missing report and asked Marlene to notify them when Sierra contacted her again (I'm not joking).

The thing is, the vast majority of teens who disappear *are* voluntary runaways initially. The problem is that they don't keep their freedom for long if they get tangled up with pimps aka human traffickers.
 
Pensfan said:
Most of these teens were not kidnapped from their driveways. These teens are caught in the death trap known as heroin addiction. They entered prostitution and are unable to leave because they need money to buy their fix. They refuse to undergo the severe withdrawal symptoms. When the government pays for their methadone (so they can quit heroin), over half of these teens will continue to take heroin with their government purchased methadone. :(

Pensfan
verified psychiatric mental health nurse
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Many of those teens also started out looking for love in all the wrong places. They didn't have strong, supportive families and they were easily hooked in by anyone who expressed an interest in them, even if the interest was only to get them hooked on heroin to grow the client base.
 
Pensfan, as a "verified psychiatric mental health nurse" why would you wink/smiley about homeless teens urinating around the hotel? That sound horribly sad to me.

A group of friends and I are preparing for the search on Saturday. I bought some new and more appropriate pants :)
 
melley said:
Pensfan, as a "verified psychiatric mental health nurse" why would you wink/smiley about homeless teens urinating around the hotel? That sound horribly sad to me.

A group of friends and I are preparing for the search on Saturday. I bought some new and more appropriate pants :)
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Please read the entire conversation.
 
GrainneDhu said:
Many of those teens also started out looking for love in all the wrong places. They didn't have strong, supportive families and they were easily hooked in by anyone who expressed an interest in them, even if the interest was only to get them hooked on heroin to grow the client base.
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This is soo so true. To add fuel to the fire they're then pampered with lavish gifts (purses, ipads, iphones, jewelry, expensive clothes, and so on). At such a young age too many of them bite, hook, line and sinker.
 
Slightly OT- But wonder if the handcuff box/condom were checked against the recent arrest. Timing would make sense.
 
I've known about the human trafficking problem in the US for a while and I'm from Europe...
But honestly after spending some time on WS I'm shocked at the number of attempted (and successful) kidnappings over there. It's not something that happens in my country, well it does sometimes but it's always for ransom.

The most confusing thing about Sierra's case is the bag in my opinion. I can understand a perp getting rid of her phone (so LE wouldn't be able to trace their movements), but why dumping the bag so close to home?
 
If SL was picked up by gang members for trafficking - WHY toss the bag? Unless, as someone else mentioned, the bag was put by the (tagged) shed to prove the deed had been done.

I think LE already knows this isn't the case or they'd be cracking down on every Hispanic teenager in Fremont wearing black and red instead of dragging lakes.
 
diamond12 said:
I've known about the human trafficking problem in the US for a while and I'm from Europe...
But honestly after spending some time on WS I'm shocked at the number of attempted (and successful) kidnappings over there. It's not something that happens in my country, well it does sometimes but it's always for ransom.

The most confusing thing about Sierra's case is the bag in my opinion. I can understand a perp getting rid of her phone (so LE wouldn't be able to trace their movements), but why dumping the bag so close to home?
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The bag is the thing with me too...that is why I think it is possible it was put there on the way back into the area after leaving Sierra elsewhere, as in the guy suddenly saw it was still in his car and he had to do something with it. And if so, he probably does live in or near Morgan Hills, first, to know about the dead-end street, and secondly, to be coming back thru there and needing to get rid of it before he got home.
 
Why would you DUMP a bookbag? It's not a body - there are a dozen easy ways to get rid of it forever. You could burn it in a fireplace. You could put it in a normal plastic garbage bag and have it picked up with the rest of the trash - it would be gone forever. Tossing a phone (ripping it out of someone's hand and throwing it) is plausible. But evidence? It had to be deliberate.

Unless SL was harmed AT the shed and they forgot the bag. But dogs would have found a trace already.
 
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