‘It can happen to anyone’: Yuba College to host human trafficking conference

Feb. 28—Yuba College will host a symposium on Friday to raise awareness and discuss the physical, legal and mental impacts of human trafficking.

According to the Department of Homeland Security, human trafficking involves the use of force, fraud, or coercion to harbor or transfer people in order to obtain some type of labor or commercial sex act. Millions of men, women and children of all races, genders and communities are trafficked worldwide each year.

Presented by Jenna McKaye of the Jenna McKaye Foundation, the symposium will be her first public human trafficking event. McKaye is a sex trafficking survivor and began her work as an advocate for human trafficking survivors in 2016 by training health and law enforcement officials to understand and identify trafficking in their communities.

“I wasn't someone who you think would be at risk for human trafficking. I was on track to play college volleyball. If it can happen to me, it can happen to anyone,” McKaye said.

The event will feature panelists from a variety of legal and advocacy backgrounds to discuss ways to educate the community about human trafficking. McKaye said that the panelists will cover topics such as the different ways people can be trafficked, who is at risk for trafficking, what it looks like in a community, how law enforcement responds to instances of human trafficking and the use of trauma informed care for victims.

“Education is important when discussing this because people's understandings of what human trafficking looks like are often from movies, which is not how it looks domestically. There are missing kids and adults in our communities who we can help with this information,” she said.

McKaye said she has helped over three dozen victims of human trafficking locally, across the state and internationally.

Local members of law enforcement will also speak during the event including Detective Scott Rounds from the Yuba City Police Department and Undersheriff Scott Smallwood from the Sutter County Sheriff's Department.

Other guest panelists include public health specialists, United Nations delegates and representatives from human trafficking advocacy groups such as the Sacramento Regional Family Justice Center and the International Rescue Committee.

Senator Shannon Grove, R-Bakersfield, will also serve as a fellow panelist. McKaye is currently working with Grove to platform legislation that would make human trafficking a violent felony as well as a strike in California's Three Strike Law. Grove introduced the bill in February 2022. If passed, the bill will help strengthen protections for millions of sex and labor trafficking victims, Grove said in a statement.

The symposium will be held between 8:30 a.m. and noon on Friday at the Yuba College theater on its Marysville campus, located at 2088 N Beale Rd. in Marysville. The event is free and open to the public.