‘It’s Our Kids’: Solving Santa Barbara’s Sex Trafficking Problem

When Alia Azariah thinks back to her early years in downtown Santa Barbara, she remembers the scene the way many runaway teenagers of that era might: groups of homeless youth gathering among the shops and tourists on State Street, looking for belonging wherever they could find it.

What she found instead was exploitation. As the Santa Barbara Independent reported in a cover story this month, Azariah was introduced through friends to men who traded food, shelter, and other basic needs for sex acts. By 14, she had met a man on MySpace who promised love and care. He groomed her, gained her trust, and gradually pushed her into exploitation — including sex with others to "help pay his bills."

She did not recognize herself as a trafficking victim until years later. Today, at 35, she is the director of Collective Impact and a survivor leader with the national Safe House Project, working to shorten the time between when a girl is trafficked and when she gets out.

Her story, advocates say, is what trafficking in Santa Barbara actually looks like — and it is closer to home than most residents want to believe.

A Corridor With a Hidden Problem

Santa Barbara may postcard itself as paradise, but law enforcement sees something else: a corridor. The FBI has identified the city as a hub for human trafficking, citing its position along Highway 101 between major metropolitan areas and its busy tourism economy.

The Santa Barbara County District Attorney's Office has data to back the concern. Between 2017 and 2024, officials identified 261 survivors of trafficking — roughly 40 percent of them county residents. Many were between 12 and 17 years old, and children as young as 11 have been targeted and groomed. Most identified victims are girls, though boys are trafficked as well.

Even those numbers, officials caution, are only a snapshot. The DA's Office has pointed to some 27,000 online ads for purchasing trafficking victims in Santa Barbara County. Nationally, trafficking is described as the fastest-growing criminal industry in the United States, with one of the youngest average ages of entry for victims: 12.

"It's our kids," Tiffany Carty, supervisor of the Victim-Witness Assistance Program at the DA's Office, said at a Sex Trafficking Awareness Forum held at All Saints-by-the-Sea Episcopal Church on July 19. "It's our community's kids that this is happening to."

The Grooming Playbook

The enduring myth of trafficking — masked strangers snatching children off the street — does not match the reality advocates describe on the Central Coast. Instead, trafficking typically begins with relationships.

Sally Cook, executive director of the Olive Crest Hope Refuge Campus, a treatment program on a secluded mountain west of Goleta serving girls who have survived sex trafficking, laid out the pattern: a predator poses as the perfect partner or a source of support, love-bombing the victim with attention and gifts and meeting her needs. Then the relationship flips into exploitation.

Girls often become deeply dependent on a trafficker they see as a boyfriend, Cook explained — which is why victims frequently don't recognize their own abuse.

"He's not the bad guy — she's the bad guy," Cook said of the victim's internalized view. "She doesn't see herself as a victim."

That dynamic makes intervention extraordinarily delicate. Rescuers can be perceived as the threat — the people "separating them from the love of their life." This is where survivor mentors like Azariah matter most, Cook said, because they know how to talk to victims and name the "game" that has been played on them.

Any child can be targeted, but homeless youth, children in foster care, and LGBTQ youth are especially vulnerable — a fact that gives the work particular urgency in a community where youth homelessness remains visible downtown.

Finding a Way Out

Azariah escaped in her twenties, after finding resources largely on her own. What made escape conceivable, she said, was hearing about another girl who had gotten out. Knowing it was possible changed everything.

That insight now drives her work. Survivors she meets often want just one thing first: someone who can say they've been there.

"That's my 'why': my presence could actually make a difference," Azariah told the Independent. "I want to make the time between a girl getting trafficked and getting out shorter."

Her trajectory — from runaway to national advocate — is the hopeful thread in a story full of hard truths. But the Independent's reporting also highlighted a system full of gaps: many young victims, in what advocates call commercial sexual exploitation of children (CSEC), fall through the cracks of institutions meant to protect them.

What the Community Can Do

The forum at All Saints-by-the-Sea, and the coalition of voices behind it — prosecutors, victim advocates, treatment providers, and survivors — reflect a growing local consensus that trafficking cannot be addressed by law enforcement alone. It requires recognizing grooming when it starts, supporting the programs that serve survivors, and confronting the vulnerabilities — family instability, homelessness, isolation — that traffickers exploit.

For Santa Barbara residents, the takeaway from advocates is both sobering and actionable: the danger is not a stranger in a van. It is a boyfriend who seems too good to be true, an adult meeting a teenager's every need, a young person on State Street with nowhere safe to sleep.

"It's our kids," as Carty put it. Recognizing that — and acting on it — is where the community's role begins.