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Emily Kaiser

North Dakota sex trafficking: The exploitation of Twin Cities girls

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As the population of men working the Bakken oil region of North Dakota skyrocketed, the sex trade boomed too.

A recent investigation by Forum News Service found ties to Twin Cities' trafficking activity, with local women and children ending up in North Dakota. MPR News with Tom Weber looked into the latest efforts to stop the trade.

"Whenever you've got population — they've had a huge population boom and a lot of men living and working in western North Dakota — this type of activity is going to occur because all of this trafficking is funded entirely by men who are willing to pay for sex from a human being," Ramsey County Attorney John Choi told MPR News. "Forty percent of that are going to be children."

Katherine Lymn, a reporter at Dickinson Press and co-author of the "Trafficked" project, said law enforcement agencies use sites like Backpage.com to look for Twin Cities girls in North Dakota. The site, while hosting the ads, is also a helpful tool for police to run undercover stings in the oil region.

In order to stop trafficking, demand needs to go away, Lymn said. Law enforcement agencies are hopeful that word of stings will get around the towns and scare men away from pursuing opportunities to pay for sex.

A caller asked if legalizing prostitution would help regulate the industry and prevent underage and abusive situations.

Joy Friedman, a training outreach director for Breaking Free and a survivor of sex trafficking, said that doesn't diminish demand and ultimately protects it: