Washington’s trafficking prevention mandate: Let’s take it seriously | Op-Ed

Bellevue police recently raided a luxury rental home known online as an “OnlyFans house,” where investigators allege young women were recruited with promises of income before some experienced coercion, abuse, and trafficking.

A 15-year-old Snoqualmie girl was allegedly groomed online by another teen who prosecutors say sought to traffic her and later murdered her.

Meanwhile, Seattle continues to grapple with violence and child sex trafficking along Aurora Avenue.

These stories occupy different corners of our region, but they point to a similar pattern: the public conversation about trafficking only begins after the violence has occurred and remains largely centered around consequences.

How it begins

Most exploitation does not begin on Aurora Avenue and can’t be prevented in the courtroom.

It begins with promises, validation, and attention.

It begins when trust is earned and then weaponized.

It begins when someone offers belonging, opportunity, romance, or financial success.

Exploiters are skilled at identifying and leveraging vulnerabilities, testing boundaries, and creating dependence. By the time exploitation becomes visible to parents, schools, neighbors or law enforcement, the grooming process likely began weeks or months earlier.

Stop it before it starts

As local leaders debate how to address trafficking and its consequences, we should spend at least as much time implementing real world strategies to prevent young people from ever being exploited in the first place.

In King County, the average age that commercially sexually exploited (CSE) minors are first exploited is 14. That is one reason Washington now requires school districts to provide trafficking prevention education beginning as early as seventh grade. If exploitation often begins during early adolescence, prevention education in middle school is not only far from premature, in many cases it may be too late.

The environments young people navigate today are fundamentally different from those of previous generations. Today’s risks travel through smartphones, gaming platforms, social media, and private messaging apps that reach nearly every adolescent regardless of ZIP code. Relationships can be formed with strangers in seconds. Trust can be built in an instant. Young people can be targeted, manipulated, and recruited through platforms that didn’t exist until recently.

Kids need information to stay safe

Young people need more than warnings about what to avoid. They need practical skills to recognize manipulation, understand healthy relationships, navigate digital environments safely, and identify when someone is attempting to exploit their vulnerabilities.

Parents, educators and youth-serving professionals need better tools as well. Too often, they are expected to address modern risks with outdated approaches that fail to reflect how exploitation actually occurs today.

Schools are one of the few institutions that can reach nearly every young person before exploitation begins. Yet a mandate alone does not protect young people. The challenge is implementation. Districts, educators, and community leaders must ensure that students receive meaningful prevention education. That means providing professional development for educators, implementing safety protocols that clarify and standardize staff responses to disclosures, and adopting evidence-informed curricula that reaches every student—not just those already identified as at-risk.

Demand, increase, fund

We should absolutely hold traffickers and buyers accountable for the violence they cause. We should demand regulatory safeguards for the technology companies that knowingly platform abusers and exploiters. We should increase social safety nets, fund survivor housing, and invest in long-term recovery services.

But it is time to get ahead of the problem. It is time to treat prevention with the same urgency we bring to the visible consequences of exploitation.

It’s happening

Right now, somewhere in Seattle, a fifth grader is receiving a private message from a stranger on a gaming app. Right now, somewhere in Renton, a seventh grader is watching a tutorial on TikTok about making fast cash online by selling pictures. Right now, somewhere in Bellevue, an eleventh grader is getting in the car to meet her online boyfriend for the first time in real life.

The next trafficking case that captures our attention may already be happening. Prevention is our opportunity to intervene before exploitation becomes a headline. Washington has created that opportunity. Now we need to use it.