Sex Trafficking and Abuse in the Marijuana Industry: An Investigation Centered in Humboldt

The home at 16380 Bluejay Lane, where human trafficking victims were allegedly held, is seen in Willits, CA, on May 12, 2016. Andrew Burton for The Center for Investigative Reporting

A home on Bluejay Lane in Willits where human trafficking victims were allegedly held. [Photo by Andrew Burton for The Center for Investigative Reporting]

Redheaded Blackbelt received permission to reprint the following article in full. This story was produced by Reveal from The Center for Investigative Reporting, a nonprofit news organization based in the San Francisco Bay Area. Learn more at revealnews.org and subscribe to the Reveal podcast, produced with PRX, at revealnews.org/podcast.
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By Shoshana Walter

The trees towered above them, limbs etched in black against the night sky. He steered his pickup down a narrow path of mud and rocks and parked in front of a trailer. He tried to kiss her. She froze.

What are you doing?” she asked.

I have to get up early,” she said.

He began groping her body.

Don’t you have a wife?” she asked.

The woods seemed to crawl with creatures; the ground was slick with rain. As wilderness pulsed around them, she ran through the possibilities.

If she fled, would she find her way out? If she fought back, would he hurt her?

Would anyone hear her if she screamed?

***

In the Emerald Triangle, trees are ever present. They peek over small towns and dip into valleys, sheathing this cluster of remote Northern California counties in silence.

For decades, the ancient forests here have provided cover for the nation’s largest marijuana-growing industry, shielding pot farmers from convention, outsiders and law enforcement.

But the forests also hide secrets, among them young women with stories of sexual abuse and exploitation. Some have spoken out; a handful have pressed charges. Most have confided only in private.

Students from the nearest college, Humboldt State University, return from a summer of trimming marijuana buds with tales of being forced to give their boss a blow job to get paid. Other “trimmigrants,” who typically work during the June-to-November harvest, recount offers of higher wages to trim topless.

During one harvest season, two growers began having sex with their teenage trimmer. When they feared she would run away, they locked her inside an oversized toolbox with breathing holes.

Contact with law enforcement is rare and, female trimmigrants say, rarely satisfying.

trimmigrant

Emily Rothman of Florida throws her pack into a truck that will take her to a friend’s pot farm in Garberville, Calif. She said all the women she knows have been warned of things to watch out for when coming to the area for work. [Photo by Sarah Rice for Reveal]

Verifying their stories is as difficult as finding your way through the forest at night, down twisty dirt roads, to one of the backwoods marijuana farms. During months of reporting in the region, Reveal from The Center for Investigative Reporting unearthed dozens of accounts of sexual exploitation, abuse and trafficking. Victims’ advocates say the problem is far larger and, with every harvest, continues to grow.Women believe they are getting hired for trimming work, and then they’re drugged and raped,” said Maryann Hayes Mariani, a coordinator for the North Coast Rape Crisis Team. “Everybody looks at (the region) like it’s the Land of Oz. I’m just so tired of pretending like it’s not happening here.”Yet law enforcement repeatedly has failed to investigate abuse and sexual violence in the industry. Instead, officers focus mostly on what they view as the root cause of the problem: the drug trade.In the rural counties of Northern California, marijuana is still a largely underground industry, worth billions. Last year, legal California sales alone were valued at $2.7 billion, according to The ArcView Group, a marijuana market research firm. Sales are projected to balloon to $6.4 billion by 2020 if marijuana is legalized for recreational use. It’s big business, drawing busloads of job seekers.

Ads for trimmers tacked up on a bulletin board in Garberville, Calif., on Sunday, October 18, 2015.

Ads for trimmers are tacked to a bulletin board in Garberville, Calif. Female trimmers often pair up, even form trimming collectives, counting on safety in numbers. [Photo by Sarah Rice for Reveal]

The number of trimmigrants who go missing alone is overwhelming for law enforcement, fueling an epidemic of the lost. In 2015, Humboldt County reported 352 missing people, more per capita than any other county in the state.

When an artist from San Francisco disappeared in the Humboldt County town of Garberville last harvest season, her mother and roommate filed a missing persons report. Months later, she resurfaced to tell her family she had been held against her will on a marijuana farm, drugged and sexually abused. She never formally reported her abuse.But at the time of her disappearance, the Humboldt County Sheriff’s Office had labeled her a “voluntary missing adult.” They flagged the case as a low priority.

Many people come to Humboldt each year to work on the marijuana farms,” the deputy who took the report told her roommate in an email. “So far she is falling into the same category as many others have.”

In addition to women and girls who come of their own volition to trim, others are brought in specifically to provide sex services. Come harvest season, escorts flood these rural areas, drawn to the large population of male growers and laborers who spend months at a time alone on isolated mountain farms.Ron Prose, an investigator for the Eureka Police Department, said sex traffickers know law enforcement agencies have little interest in cracking down on them. None of the county agencies surveyed by Reveal have investigators assigned to human trafficking. Prose himself is semi-retired; he investigates trafficking cases when he has time.

The table in the trim room on a cannabis farm in Redcrest, Calif., on Monday, October 19, 2015.

Some growers prefer to keep trimmers in the dark about where they are working, blindfolding workers before driving to remote plots deep in the mountains. [Photo by Sarah Rice for Reveal]

For women, the dangers are due in part to the gender dynamics in the industry. Growing is a male-dominated field, and many growers prefer to hire female trimmers. Several told Reveal that they believe women are more dexterous, making them more efficient workers. Others are looking for company.Some of these younger guys don’t have regular relationships because they’re out in the hills growing weed, but they still want a girl,” Prose said. “It sounds kind of crude, but they seek female companionship.”

Of course, many marijuana farms are responsible operations. Most workers describe good experiences, including excellent pay, food and shelter. Many also welcome the unusual working conditions of an industry long at odds with mainstream culture and the law. Drug use on the job, for instance, is common. In November, California voters will decide whether to fully legalize recreational marijuana. But such use remains illegal under federal and most state laws, and the culture of silence is so embedded in the state’s industry – the nation’s top black market supplier – it seems unlikely that legalization alone will dramatically alter the landscape for women toiling deep in the Emerald Triangle.

There’s a lot of wilderness here, and dirt roads and acres of forest,” said Amy Benitez, a victims’ advocate in Humboldt County. “There’s a lot of nooks and crannies you can hide in. You add this criminal element to it, where there’s money, and there’s just more ways that you can abuse power and control.”

***

Saturday, Oct. 18, 2014

That power imbalance is what ensnared a 22-year-old environmentalist and musician who arrived in one of the mountain towns in the middle of the 2014 harvest season looking for trimming work. In Petrolia, Terri – not her real name – found a world apart from her hometown in the Los Angeles Basin.

Petrolia sits beneath the King Range mountains at the edge of Humboldt County, hidden behind a curtain of redwoods and Douglas fir trees. With a population of about 400, it has one general store, one bar, no cellphone service and no police. It’s about two hours down crumbling cliffside roads to the nearest highway. Most locals live in the surrounding mountains, overlooking the forested valley and black sand beaches of the last undeveloped stretch of California known as the Lost Coast.

The town of Petrolia, CA, which is known for it's marijuana production and proximity to the Lost Coast of California, is seen on May 24, 2016. Andrew Burton for The Center for Investigative Reporting

The town of Petrolia, CA, which is known for it’s marijuana production and proximity to the Lost Coast of California, is seen on May 24, 2016. [Photo credit: Andrew Burton for The Center for Investigative Reporting]

I like to think of Petrolia as this little town hanging off the edge of the world,” said Jenoa Briar-Bonpane, a former resident who became Terri’s therapist. “At night, you’ve never seen so many stars.”Nearly everyone in Petrolia knows each other. Most are involved in marijuana growing to some degree. But like other small towns dotting the Emerald Triangle, in the past decade, more and more people have moved in. Greenhouses have sprung up, enabling industrial-scale marijuana growing. Larger farms have drawn more workers from outside the area.At first, Terri did not have a job. An acquaintance introduced her to Cedar McCulloch-Clow and Emily Herman, a married couple with two children, a horde of chickens and goats, and a bicycle-strewn junkyard. Terri set up a tent in the couple’s yard, plunked down her violin and camping gear and began looking for work.

Cedar Mcculloch-Clow, a goat farmer and volunteer firefighter, a poses for a photo outside his home in Petrolia, CA, on May 25, 2016. Andrew Burton for The Center for Investigative Reporting

Cedar McCulloch-Clow, a goat farmer and volunteer firefighter, owns the property where Terri pitched her tent while doing trim work in Petrolia, Calif. [Photo by Andrew Burton for The Center for Investigative Reporting]

She also set about working her way into the community. She went to the weekly farmers market at the community center and ran and biked in the annual Rye and Tide, a 7 1/2-mile race that begins with a swig of whiskey outside the town bar.Terri found a couple of trimming jobs, including for Sam Epperson and his partner, Rachel Adair. Their operation was far smaller than the region’s newer marijuana fields – known as grows – and had a vegetable garden and turkey coop. Terri and three other trimmers sat in a row of swivel office chairs in a wood-paneled trimming shack. They wore aprons to keep from tracking loose leaves into the house and carefully tallied the weight of their work – they would be paid $200 a pound – with pencil and paper.

In this posed photograph, marijuana buds are displayed on a table where marijuana is usually trimmed by immigrant workers, in Petrolia, CA, on May 24, 2016. Andrew Burton for The Center for Investigative Reporting

Terri sat in an office chair in this cramped shack, trimming marijuana buds. She and three other trimmers were paid $200 for every pound. They wore aprons and tracked their work with paper and pencil. [Photo by Andrew Burton for The Center for Investigative Reporting]

Epperson, quiet and bespectacled with a mop of graying curls, prepared fresh food and drinks for the workers. Every day, he offered them an organic chocolate bar.One night, on the concrete patio of the town bar – the Yellow Rose – Terri met a grower named Kailan Meserve. He was twice her age, tan and muscular, with a swagger and salt-and-pepper hair. Meserve mentioned he needed trimmers and bought her a beer. A friend of Terri’s, Katie Finnegan, went inside to buy another drink. When Finnegan returned, Terri had disappeared.

The Yellow Rose bar and restaurant is seen in Petrolia, CA, on May 24, 2016. Andrew Burton for The Center for Investigative Reporting

Marijuana trimmer Terri met local grower Kailan Meserve one night at the Yellow Rose bar in Petrolia, Calif., in 2014.[Photo by Andrew Burton for The Center for Investigative Reporting]

Inside, the bar is a bright, airy space with pristine off-white walls and a polished beige floor – a contrast with its often grungy clientele. One side of the bar is lined with light metal cafe tables, the other with pool tables and arcade games. The darkest part of the bar is to the left of the dartboard, a long dim hallway to the single-stall women’s restroom.About 45 minutes after Finnegan lost track of Terri, court records show she found her unconscious in that bathroom, her pants around her ankles. Terri appeared to have fallen and hit the sink on her way down.

Terri remembered almost nothing about the night. She was concerned something had happened with Meserve. But back on the grow, Epperson and Adair put her at ease: Meserve was a captain of the volunteer fire department, the son of a prominent local environmental activist and politician. Meserve, they said, was married with toddler twins.He’s a good guy,” Epperson recalled telling her.

The couple still had work for Terri, but on their small-scale grow, the harvest wouldn’t last long. They encouraged her to take up Meserve on his offer of a trimming job.That was advice Epperson now says he deeply regrets.

***

Conservative ranchers and loggers dominated the small population of the Emerald Triangle when hippies began arriving en masse in the late 1960s. They were a diverse bunch, from tree-sitting activists to disillusioned Vietnam veterans.

Kailan Meserve’s father came to Humboldt County as part of the “back to the land” movement. His first home was a teepee on the Mattole River. Later, he built a house in Petrolia, where he, his wife and children lived on wind and solar power, grew produce and raised their own goats, cows and chickens.

At first, marijuana was a recreational drug, grown mostly for personal use. It didn’t stay that way for long. Growers realized they could better support themselves and their families by selling pot on the black market. The climate was ideal, the woods and mountains isolated enough to conceal the illicit crop. The American-grown marijuana industry was born.

Sunshine Johnston with some of her cannabis plants at her farm in Redcrest, Calif., on Monday, October 19, 2015.

Sunshine Johnston with some of her cannabis plants at her farm in Redcrest, Calif., on Monday, October 19, 2015. [Sarah Rice for Reveal]

From the outset, the children of these growers had more difficulties than their parents. The Summer of Love was over. Across the community, alcohol and drug abuse was rampant. So was law enforcement.The threat of raids constantly loomed over the Meserve household, threatening to pull the family apart. According to Meserve’s sister, Amy, their parents began using cocaine and alcohol and exploded into constant fights.It just got really crazy,” she recalled. “Kailan pretty much raised us.”When federal Operation Green Sweep touched down in Petrolia in 1990, soldiers flew helicopters overhead and officers confronted families in their homes with M16 rifles. Children learned to lie about the reality of their lives.I still have PTSD,” said Sam Epperson, who grew up on a marijuana farm in eastern Humboldt County. “I can hear choppers flying from miles away.”With law enforcement crackdowns came higher black market prices and greater risks. To protect their crops from theft, many farmers began to carry guns and booby-trap their properties. Residents dealt with crime themselves, avoiding law enforcement whenever possible.In 1996, California became the first state in the country to legalize medical marijuana. But the law failed to limit the amount of marijuana that could be grown, and law enforcement had no way to determine which plants were cultivated for medical purposes or for profit. Crime and black market growing in the Emerald Triangle soared, including by growers with connections to organized crime, vastly eclipsing local law enforcement’s efforts to stop it.

Lt. Wayne Hanson of the Humboldt County Sheriff’s Office put it simply: “We lost the drug war many years ago.”The turmoil prompted some of the children to leave. Kailan Meserve was among the many who stayed. He became a stonemason, specializing in fireplaces, and grew pot on the side. The “green rush” hit Petrolia in 2010. With California voters considering full legalization, new growers poured into town hoping to get rich. The hippie haven was about to go mainstream.

The law did not pass, but according to friends, Meserve decided that if anyone was going to make money peddling pot, it was going to be him.He viewed himself as having that hometown advantage,” Cedar McCulloch-Clow said.

Locals noticed the change. At a party a few years ago, therapist Jenoa Briar-Bonpane recalls looking over the edge of a mountain ridge and spotting two new grow operations below. “Where did those come from?” she wondered. Someone said they belonged to Meserve, and he became the talk of the party. There was a sense of, ‘Wow, he’s really blowing things up,’ ” Briar-Bonpane said.

As a big employer in town, and a local, Meserve enjoyed a trust not afforded to outsiders, including a freedom from consequences, according to friends. He’d always had a brash demeanor and a reputation for hitting on women – even after he married in 2001. Over time, those who knew him said he seemed to sink deeper into drugs and alcohol. He was convicted three times for driving under the influence, according to court records, and got into a car crash that seriously injured him and his wife.

He “got a little big for his britches,” Amy Meserve said, “and lost his filter completely.”

None of it seemed to slow down Meserve. His business expanded, and the trimmigrants who showed up in Petrolia looking for work were thankful for it.

***

Sunday, Nov. 9, 2014

Terri saw Kailan Meserve again at a pingpong tournament. It was a fundraiser for the fire department, and staff said Meserve was one of the few entrusted with a key to the community center. He and Sam Epperson had set up the tables.

Meserve offered to buy Terri drinks several times, according to investigators – and each time, she declined. Around 10 p.m., he asked if she had to time to talk, she recalled, “to clear things up.” He offered to give her a ride home. It was rainy, and without sidewalks and streetlights, a walk home in Petrolia could be treacherous. She agreed. She figured she might also ask him about a job.

The Mattel Valley Community Center is seen in Petrolia, CA, on May 24, 2016. Andrew Burton for The Center for Investigative Reporting

One night after a fire department fundraiser at the Mattole Valley Community Center in Petrolia, Calif., 22-year-old trimmer Terri got a ride home from local grower Kailan Meserve. But home isn’t where he took her. [Photo by Andrew Burton for The Center for Investigative Reporting]

Terri was staying about 2 miles from the community center. But Meserve went the opposite direction, turning right toward a dark mass of trees. Where are we going?” she asked.I just want to show you where my property is,” she remembers him saying.Terri started to get a “weird feeling,” according to court records. She told him she had to get up early. He ignored her and continued down the road, turning right again at a metal gate and entering a narrow dirt path into a thicket of towering eucalyptus. Finally, they came to a trailer and stopped. He tried to kiss her. She froze.
This is the entrance to the isolated property in Petrolia where local grower Kailan Meserve took Terri after a fire department fundraiser. [Photo by Andrew Burton for The Center for Investigative Reporting]

This is the entrance to the isolated property in Petrolia where local grower Kailan Meserve took Terri after a fire department fundraiser. [Photo by Andrew Burton for The Center for Investigative Reporting]

What are you doing?” she asked. “Don’t you have a wife?”Her mind spun through the possibilities. Could she find her way back if she ran? Would he chase her? Hurt her? Would anyone hear her if she screamed?It was happening so fast and she could hardly see. Everything outside the beam of the headlights was flooded in black.Terri declined to be interviewed for this story, but she encouraged friends and community members to open up and gave permission for her therapist, Briar-Bonpane, to speak as well.Taking her to a place that was dark, forested, unknown to her,” Briar-Bonpane said, “it’s the most terrifying situation for a woman who’s with a scary man.”Meserve asked her to go inside. Terri climbed out of the truck and walked into the trailer. She remembers a small kitchen and a bedroom with a bare mattress. Over the next few hours, according to records, Meserve repeatedly penetrated her and forced her to perform oral sex until she gagged.

He held down her arms and at one point throttled her neck. When she began gasping for air, he told her she was “weak and couldn’t take it.” She didn’t scream. The more violent he was, she’d later tell the investigators, the more excited he seemed to become.I’m going to make you my bitch,” she recalls him saying, according to court records. He threatened to kill her, freeze her body and throw her to the animals if he ever found out she had slept with anyone else.

***

Many trimmigrants begin their journey about two hours southeast of Petrolia, in a small strip of a town at the hub of California’s outdoor growing economy. Garberville is surrounded on all sides by mountains of towering redwoods and lined with the kinds of businesses sustained by disposable income, including a spa and a motorcycle dealership. Next door, in Redway, there’s even a pet salon.

Come harvest season, trimmigrants arrive from all over the country and world – college students and artists, working professionals and tourists, homeless hippies and other wanderers. Without connections, they crowd the sidewalks as though on the floor of an auction house, jockeying for jobs with homemade signs. Others camp along the river or in the woods until they find work or try to meet potential employers by frequenting local bars or volunteering at one of the area’s many marijuana-funded nonprofits.

Maya, right, her boyfriend Carsten, left, both of Germany, and Beaver, back, of London, head out after a free lunch at the Mateel Community Center in Redway, Calif., Tuesday, October 20, 2015. They came to the area to work as trimmers to fund their travels, but haven't gotten any work.

Maya, right, her boyfriend Carsten, left, both of Germany, and Beaver, back, of London, head out after a free lunch at the Mateel Community Center in Redway, Calif., Tuesday, October 20, 2015. They came to the area to work as trimmers to fund their travels, but haven’t gotten any work. [Photo by Sarah Rice for Reveal]

With marijuana fetching black market prices, they expect wages far higher than typical migrant farmworkers – as much as $300 a day, depending on how fast they work. A successful season can fund months of travel, and the experience itself can be an adventure, harkening back to the drug-infused journeys of Grateful Dead fans.A lot of cocaine, a lot of Ecstasy, a lot of meth, a lot of heroin,” said Terri’s former employer Rachel Adair. “It’s like a big party.”But trimmigrants also stumble into a treacherous landscape, both on and off the job. Many locals despise their presence, the trash, the carousing on sidewalks – and the negative impact on tourism. Members of a Garberville group called Locals on Patrol take photographs, check identification and tell people to move on. Anti-trimmigrant bumper stickers have proliferated. “No Work Here, Keep Moving,” they read.

Trimmigrants also serve at the mercy of their bosses, who are themselves vulnerable to the risks of operating in the black market – ranging from robberies to law enforcement stings. As a result, some growers prefer to keep trimmers in the dark about where they are working. Workers and advocates say growers sometimes blindfold trimmers before driving to plots deep in the mountains, locations so remote that they often lack cell service and public transportation.

When conflicts arise, trimmigrants may find themselves fired without pay. Even those who complete the job might never get paid.At 38 years old, Amy Jarose is among the most experienced trimmigrants. One time, she was working on a farm in the mountains when, she said, the grower began to pressure her for blow jobs and sex. She immediately left on foot, without pay. You hitchhike,” Jarose said. “You pack up your bags and hit the road and hope to God a really good person will pick you up.”

Growers often target women for trimming jobs; male trimmers told Reveal they repeatedly were passed up or let go to make room for female workers.

In Craigslist ads, aspiring female trimmers sometimes include photos of themselves in bikinis or low-cut tops, exploiting the demand for female workers. [Photo by Shoshana Walter]

In Craigslist ads, aspiring female trimmers sometimes include photos of themselves in bikinis or low-cut tops, exploiting the demand for female workers. [Photo by Shoshana Walter]

Some women exploit the demand. On Craigslist during the last harvest season, aspiring trimmers posted photos of themselves in bikinis or low-cut tops, accompanied by winking emoticons. One advertisement, offering “Oriental female trimmers,” included the phone number of a sensual massage parlor in Los Angeles. On a community bulletin board in downtown Garberville, a pink lace garter belt adorned one ad, while another read, “We love to cook … and much more.”Deanna Hirschi once worked as a trimmer but said she soon realized she could earn more by offering sex for pay. She met growers at motels in Garberville or sometimes hours into the mountains. The guys on the hills pay $500 an hour,” she said, three or four times the amount she might get in a city. “They’re stuck up on a hill and they come down from the hill for one day, and they’ve got hundreds of thousands of dollars in their pocket.”The demand for female companionship has contributed to sex trafficking in these rural areas from all over the country and world, including from Mexico and Eastern Europe, according to social service providers and victims.One local trafficking survivor, who goes by the name Elle Snow, started a nonprofit organization to spread awareness in Humboldt County called Game Over. To measure the demand, she posted fake escort advertisements on the classified ad website Backpage.

A Backpage ad offers escort services in Humboldt County. To measure demand for such services, local trafficking survivor Elle Snow, who now runs a nonprofit, posted a fake Backpage ad. Within two months, she said, she had accumulated calls and text messages from 437 phone numbers.

A Backpage ad offers escort services in Humboldt County. To measure demand for such services, local trafficking survivor Elle Snow, who now runs a nonprofit, posted a fake Backpage ad. Within two months, she said, she had accumulated calls and text messages from 437 phone numbers.

Within two months, Snow said, she had accumulated calls and text messages from 437 phone numbers. Many came from southern Humboldt – where Garberville and Petrolia are located – an indication to Snow that many of the potential clients were involved in the marijuana industry.

Traffickers call Humboldt County not just green for the weed, but green for the bitches,” she said, referring to the money traffickers can make selling women and sex.

Many trimmers welcome the attention, but others do not. Women pair up, even form trimming collectives, counting on safety in numbers.

Paige Radcliff and Emma Less came last season for trimming work, hoping to make enough to fund their own future harvest. During nearly 14-hour days, the two listened to Israeli folk music and bent over plastic tubs in their laps, rotating the buds with the tips of their fingers as they clipped off the stems and curly bits of leaf. “Give it a little haircut,” Radcliff said again and again, until they had piled up 6 pounds of smooth round nuggets and their fingers were coated in potent, sticky brown resin.

If a girl comes here on her own, I wouldn’t recommend it,” Less said. Prior to finding this job, they encountered growers who hit on them – and they simply walked away.

Radcliff agreed. “Unless you can super defend yourself, or you just give off a super-intimidating vibe where dudes are scared of you.”

Like a truck driver.”

Or a pirate.

Exactly, just come across as, like, super peg leg.”

Think about it,” Less said, over the steady snip of her scissors. “None of this is monitored. No one knows you’re here, not here. It’s easy for people to go missing. It’s easy for people to take advantage.”

A Craigslist ad offers “Oriental female trimmers” in Humboldt County.

A Craigslist ad offers “Oriental female trimmers” in Humboldt County. [From Shoshanna Walter for Reveal]

***

Monday, Nov. 10, 2014

Terri showed up for work in a daze the morning after she was assaulted in the forest. Bruises covered her chest and the back of her head. As she picked up her clippers, her boss remembers, she began to cry. She told Rachel Adair that “something inappropriate” had happened with Kailan Meserve and that she was scared.

Adair – an emergency room nurse and midwife – sent Terri to Jenoa Briar-Bonpane, a therapist and friend. Terri told the therapist the rest of the story.

This is a predator,” Briar-Bonpane recalls thinking. She had treated child sex abuse and rape victims for years, but she was especially struck by how calculating Meserve sounded. “He must be stopped.”

A week later, some of Terri’s former employers called for a meeting, inviting town elders, the local doctor and friends. On a crisp November morning, about a dozen people joined Terri in the home near where she had pitched her tent. They gathered in a somber circle around a heavy oak dining table.

Cedar McCulloch-Clow, 38, with perpetual dirt under his fingernails and a baseball cap on his head, recalls feeling conflicted about the meeting. He had become friends with Terri during her many nights camping on their property. But he also had known Meserve since he was 15.

The room was tense and quiet, except for the sounds of children playing down the hall. Adair remembers wanting to ensure, first and foremost, that Terri was safe. Dr. Dick Scheinman was adamant that they call the police. Most others wanted to find an alternate solution.

The home of Cedar Mcculloch-Clow, where community members decided to encourage rape victims to press charges against Kailan Meserve, is seen in Petrolia, CA, on May 25, 2016. Andrew Burton for The Center for Investigative Reporting

A week after Terri’s rape, community members gathered around this table in Cedar McCulloch-Clow’s home, trying to decide what should be done about her assault. [Photo by Andrew Burton for The Center for Investigative Reporting]

Greg Smith, whose family has long grown marijuana, was among the town elders there. “There’s a lot of people who grow pot, and they have a resistance to calling the law,” he said later. “It’s kind of the Wild West in some ways.”The ideas came in quick succession and were rejected just as quickly. Bring Meserve before a community tribunal. Send a large contingent of men to his doorstep. Gather Petrolia’s population of elderly women and have them chase after him with their shoes. Smith decided to pay Meserve a visit at home. He urged him to admit he had a problem, show remorse and enroll in therapy and drug and alcohol treatment. Meserve refused, he said, describing the night in the trailer as consensual. Next, Smith approached Fire Chief Travis Howe about kicking Meserve out of the volunteer fire department.That’s when the group learned this wasn’t the first time Meserve had been accused of rape. A year earlier, a young woman was visiting a friend of Meserve’s. After a night of partying at the Yellow Rose bar, the 31-year-old woman said, Meserve came into her room while she was sleeping and forced himself on her. When he couldn’t maintain an erection, he left, but soon came back and tried again. The woman never filed a police report, and only a few people in town knew. Howe was one of them.Howe said he had confronted Meserve, who told him it was consensual. “He messed up terribly, cheating on his wife,” Howe said. “He needed to get spanked.” When Meserve promised to do better, Howe kept him on as a fire captain.Now the group realized Terri’s experience was not an isolated incident. It was a pattern of behavior.One week had passed since Terri’s assault. She had expressed little interest in contacting law enforcement. But the group thought something had to be done for the safety of other women.They asked her to take a step many rape victims dread: Would she call the police?

***

For victims of sexual assault, the answer often lies beneath layers of fear and shame. Rape usually goes unreported, but trimmigrants face particular pressure to avoid law enforcement. Calling police may rule out future jobs in the industry, especially if that contact alerts police to an illegal grow.

Hell no, you don’t call the cops on anybody for anything if you want to work in Humboldt,” said Karen Bejcek, a trimmigrant who usually lives in a teepee in Siskiyou County when she’s not trimming.

Other conditions in pot country prevent victims from seeking any kind of help. Trimmigrants often lack the local connections or even the know-how to successfully navigate their way out of the wild, wooded terrain.

Because many work on illegal grows, they suspect law enforcement won’t do anything anyway. And because the industry attracts a young and transient workforce, victims ­– who may come with their own troubled histories – do not always recognize they are being abused.

Khaled Mourra, of Mexico, left, and Mayssan Charafeddine, of Montreal, look for a ride in Garberville, Calif., on Thursday, October 1, 2015.

Khaled Mourra, of Mexico, left, and Mayssan Charafeddine, of Montreal, look for a ride in Garberville, Calif., on Thursday, October 1, 2015. [Sarah Rice for Reveal]

One teen from Humboldt County said she started working for a local grower when she was 12. He gave her methamphetamine to speed up her trimming work, she said, and passed her around to pay off his debts.If you’re tweaking, you’re good,” she said, touting her trimming prowess. “I did, like, a couple pounds in like one night.”The girl eventually ran away, reaching a youth homeless shelter in the county seat of Eureka, only to discover that pimps were using it as a hunting ground. At 14, she said, she became their recruiter. She wasn’t the only one. At least two other shelter residents said men used them to recruit other teens, according to a report later submitted to the state Department of Social Services. The shelter’s executive director, Patt Sweeney, said he was aware teens in the program had been trafficked for sex. We’ve made reports to law enforcement,” he said. “It’s just very hard to prosecute.”In exchange for alcohol and marijuana, the girl brought other teens to parties at local motels, where they were given drugs and alcohol and had sex, sometimes by force. She said the parties drew growers and gang members involved in marijuana distribution. Because she brought girls, she said she was never assaulted – and the music and dancing could be fun. But she doesn’t remember much.I was always drunk,” she said with a shrug. “And then we’d just go buy more drugs.”

Many of the girls she met at the shelter and parties also traveled south to trim on marijuana farms. Once there, she said, some found they were expected to do more than trim.The sales pitch to young girls is common in pot country, according to Leah Gee, the director of a group home in Eureka that housed the girl. “They’ll give you weed, alcohol and food, and all you have to do is trim.”

“They’ll give you weed, alcohol and food, and all you have to do is trim,” Leah Gee says of the sales pitch to underage girls looking for work on pot farms. But Gee, the director of a group home in Eureka, Calif., says they sometimes find they’re expected to do more than trim. [Photo by Andrew Burton for The Center for Investigative Reporting]

“They’ll give you weed, alcohol and food, and all you have to do is trim,” Leah Gee says of the sales pitch to underage girls looking for work on pot farms. But Gee, the director of a group home in Eureka, Calif., says they sometimes find they’re expected to do more than trim. [Photo by Andrew Burton for The Center for Investigative Reporting]

In 2013, federal prosecutors said two growers picked up a 15-year-old runaway in Hollywood and took her to their farm in Lake County, near Humboldt. They directed her to trim marijuana and have sex with them, sometimes while chained to a metal rack.In interviews with police after a raid of the farm, the girl described the sex with one of the men as consensual. Sex with the other grower was “not as consensual.”But she was not free to leave: To keep her from fleeing, the men put her inside an oversized metal toolbox with breathing holes for several days, according to court records, using a garden hose to clean out her waste. The men also shocked the girl with a cattle prod and told her she would be shot by neighbors if she attempted to leave, an employee later told police.Local prosecutors charged the men with human trafficking, the first case of its kind in the county. But when federal authorities took over the case, the trafficking charge was dropped. The men are expected to plead guilty later this year on charges of illegal marijuana cultivation and employing a minor in a drug operation.

***

Sunday, Nov. 23, 2014

A deputy sheriff from Humboldt County, Michael Hass, had Terri recount the entire story of her assault over the phone before telling her she had to come in person to make a report – a nearly two-hour drive. The community group that had encouraged her to report made the arrangements. Jenoa Briar-Bonpane went along.

When they arrived at the county sheriff’s office in Eureka, they walked through the metal detector, down a beige cinder-block hallway to a dimly lit window in the waiting room, Briar-Bonpane recalls. They told the receptionist they were there to see Hass.

After several minutes passed, Hass swung open the door, barely making eye contact with Terri. He told her to follow him, but barred Briar-Bonpane from joining her. She told him it was common practice for an advocate to accompany a sexual assault victim to make a report. According to Briar-Bonpane, Hass refused.

Asked about the account, Hass said he did not know that Briar-Bonpane was an advocate and he objected to the many complaints the sheriff’s office later received about his work.

There were the same complaints that we weren’t taking it seriously and the investigation wasn’t up to the people of Petrolia’s standards,” he said. “From my standpoint, it got handled very seriously.”

Terri agreed to make the report anyway. Hass took her into an empty room and pushed a typed statement based on her telephone account in front of her, Briar-Bonpane said. Terri signed it, and five minutes later, they returned to the waiting room.

Can you tell us when you’re going to pick him up?” Briar-Bonpane remembers asking, referring to Kailan Meserve.

To file her report, Terri was told she had to come in person. It turned out the same trip was not required of Meserve, Briar-Bonpane said. To her surprise, Hass told her deputies already had interviewed Meserve in Petrolia. Meserve had told them the same story he had told others: The night in the trailer was consensual.

Reveal could not find any record that the deputies ever searched the trailer, and Meserve’s sister, Amy, confirmed that they never did.

No one in town seems concerned about him,” Hass said, according to Briar-Bonpane. “We’re not going to arrest him. There’s no evidence.”

The news left the group back in Petrolia shocked – and Terri terrified. While she moved from home to home and finally to a motel outside of town, the group began to deluge the sheriff’s office with emails and phone calls. Terri’s friend Katie Finnegan took a day off work to file a complaint with the office about its handling of the case. Residents sent letters to the district attorney, complaining about Hass and urging that Meserve be prosecuted.

Please do not let this go without a thorough investigation and arrest,” Dick Scheinman, the town doctor, wrote to then-District Attorney Paul Gallegos in December 2014.

A month passed, and he emailed again: “i am not a legal beagle and am not trying to tell you how to do your job, but i feel it is most important for you to try your hardest to find out what happened.”

Meanwhile, Meserve remained in Petrolia. “I am very concerned about the safety of women in the Mattole Valley while he is present there,” Briar-Bonpane wrote to newly elected District Attorney Maggie Fleming in March 2015. “Young boys/men in the valley are watching and learning about whether or not you can sexually assault women without consequences.”

Word of Terri’s allegations reached the woman who had said Meserve raped her the year before. She felt nauseous, then angry. She blamed herself for not reporting it, “because maybe she could have prevented it from happening to the other girl,” an investigator later wrote. About a month after Terri visited Hass, the second victim decided to report her rape. Records show Hass told her to call the district attorney’s office.

The case landed on the desk of Kyla Baxley, the district attorney’s investigator responsible for child abuse and sexual assault cases. She has a reputation for being thorough, going beyond the case information filed by local law enforcement. In 2014, Baxley gathered evidence that allowed the district attorney’s office to prosecute its first human trafficking case.

Time and again, Baxley had seen victims in Humboldt County “not met with the respect they deserve,” she told Reveal. In the Petrolia case, she said, both victims felt blown off by the sheriff’s office.

It was already a big step for her to take, for her to report it,” she said of Terri. “I was really frustrated, honestly. I felt awful for the poor thing.”

Baxley immediately launched her investigation, making plans to meet Terri in person. She brought in community advocates to support Terri as she shared her story yet again.

I tried to show her there were a lot of people who supported her and wanted to hear her truth,” Baxley said.

On April 14, 2015, prosecutors filed charges against Meserve for raping both women. Two weeks later, he surrendered.

***

As the marijuana industry has grown and the trimmigrant population with it, service providers have encountered increasing numbers of human trafficking victims. Humboldt Domestic Violence Services answered more than 2,000 crisis calls last year, an increase of about 80 percent in four years. Executive Director Brenda Bishop attributed the increase to a surge in sexual abuse and trafficking on marijuana grows.

Trimmed marijuana buds dry at a farm. Trimmers serve at the mercy of their bosses, who are themselves vulnerable to the risks of operating in the black market. When conflicts arise, trimmigrants may find themselves fired without pay. [Sarah Rice for Reveal]

Trimmed marijuana buds dry at a farm. Trimmers serve at the mercy of their bosses, who are themselves vulnerable to the risks of operating in the black market. When conflicts arise, trimmigrants may find themselves fired without pay. [Sarah Rice for Reveal]

Other organizations have noticed a problem, too, including the Eureka Police Department. In a survey of about 200 local homeless people, Police Chief Andrew Mills said his department discovered many were former trimmigrants who had been forced to work on marijuana farms without pay, including women who reported being required to perform sex acts.Despite evidence of a growing problem, law enforcement has put few resources into investigations of trafficking and sexual exploitation. Instead, police have conducted stings targeting prostitutes and sometimes their pimps. And the Eureka police chief recently posed as a grower online to attract trimmers, only to warn them not to come.One reason is that, in this spread-out rural region, there are not enough detectives to go around. In Humboldt County, the sheriff’s office is so overtaxed that many deputies are responsible for investigating crimes – a job typically left to detectives – in addition to responding to 911 calls.We have a detective bureau to handle the bad of the bad crimes, and they can’t even keep up with that. So our deputies are more like detectives,” Lt. Wayne Hanson said. “It’s triage.”

A Humboldt native with a bushy gray mustache, Hanson has raided marijuana farms for more than two decades. On the walls of his office are framed photographs and news clips, including one from the day after voters legalized medical marijuana in 1996. In the photograph, Hanson – with a dark brown mustache – stands next to towering piles of marijuana plants.This was a warehouse in downtown Eureka, where people were growing marijuana for money. That’s why marijuana is grown – for money, not for medical reasons,” Hanson said. “People are greedy.”

Hanson and other local law enforcement officials see the greed that has amplified California’s marijuana industry as a common denominator in violent and organized crimes. Hanson said many grows also cause environmental damage. As a result, marijuana has remained a high priority for them, even as federal and state authorities have pulled back.

Richard Mansfield trims cannabis on his daughter's farm in Redcrest, Calif., on Monday, October 19, 2015.

Richard Mansfield trims cannabis on his daughter’s farm in Redcrest, Calif., on Monday, October 19, 2015. [Sarah Rice for Reveal]

Marijuana raids also have become a large source of revenue for local law enforcement agencies. During raids, officers have confiscated not just harvests, but also money, guns and even farming equipment.Humboldt County law enforcement agencies made 100 seizures of property and funds last year, including from farmers who had legal permission to grow. The value of the assets totaled more than $2 million – more per capita than was pulled from the state’s 15 most populous counties combined, state data shows. Mendocino County’s marijuana eradication team receives a finder’s fee from a pool of seized funds for every case it initiates, in addition to a nearly 50 percent cut of any confiscated funds.

The result is tantamount to tunnel vision, said Kyla Baxley, the district attorney’s office investigator. “They’re going in to eradicate marijuana, and they would probably tell you nothing else is happening but the drugs.”That perspective seems to pervade law enforcement agencies across the Emerald Triangle.In 2014, the year Terri arrived in Petrolia, a young Mexican woman arrived in nearby Mendocino County, ready to start the restaurant job she was promised. Instead, a grower – Baldemar Alvarez – put her to work on several marijuana farms, she said, and forced her to cook, clean his house and have sex with him.

The woman said Alvarez, twice her age, called her a prostitute and said she belonged to him until she reimbursed him for hiring a coyote to bring her into the country illegally. He stoked her fear, telling her she’d get lost in the woods and a bear would feast on her body if she fled.All the time, I had fear,” said Carmen (not her real name). “Fear, thinking, ‘If the police catch me, they’re going to arrest me. They’re not going to let me explain, they’re not going to believe me.’ ”Eventually, Carmen persuaded Alvarez to take her to the doctor for stomach pains, she said. Once there, a nurse-midwife told her she was pregnant, and Carmen shared her story of abuse. When she returned to Alvarez, she left her address behind. Mendocino County sheriff’s deputies picked up Carmen and the grower a few days later. Carmen was relieved. But at the station, things changed. A detective asked her whether she had made the claims just to get immigration documents, she said. Victims of sexual assault are eligible for a special kind of visa, known as a U-visa. Trafficking victims are eligible for a T-visa.

Carmen’s abuse allegations are documented in police dispatch records, a restraining order and other documents, but the full extent of the investigation is unclear. The detective involved did not respond to interview requests, and the sheriff’s office declined to provide a copy of its investigation, saying it was not yet complete.

Underscoring the he-said, she-said obstacles for law enforcement, Alvarez told Reveal that Carmen fabricated the story to get immigration papers. He told detectives he had planned to marry her. Even though she hasn’t paid him back for her illegal border crossing, he said, he has sent her money on a couple of occasions for the baby.This was a big misunderstanding; she’s a backstabber is what I call it,” he said, denying he had abused her or anyone else. But another woman who had a relationship with the grower and gave birth to one of his children said he repeatedly has brought women, including herself, into the United States from Mexico and abused them. Investigators never contacted her, she said.

As the sun began to rise the morning after deputies took Carmen into custody, she said the detective told her that he had one last request. He put her in a room with Alvarez and had her confront him, to get him to confess. It didn’t work.

Unfortunately, at this time, we do not have any evidence to detain him,” she recalled the detective saying. “Everything you say, he denies.”

Deputies charged Alvarez with felony marijuana cultivation in August 2014, his third arrest for the offense in three years. Jail records show he bailed out within 20 minutes. The prosecutor never took the case to court.

***

Thursday, April 30, 2015

The case against Kailan Meserve was unprecedented – the first time a marijuana grower in Humboldt County had been charged with raping a trimmigrant. In Petrolia, it had created a rift, causing many to question the trust they had placed in the community. Yet outside Petrolia, it captured little attention.

Aside from a local blog, no media outlets covered Meserve’s arrest.

He remained in jail briefly while the prosecutor’s office argued against allowing him to post his $2 million bail. Investigator Kyla Baxley had seen large greenhouses on several of Meserve’s properties and argued that his income had been derived illegally from the cultivation of marijuana. In the end, Meserve’s family and friends pooled funds, and he was released.

Over the next year, he enrolled in treatment for alcohol abuse, according to court records. Facebook photos show he and his family also enjoyed a Disney vacation.

Kailan Meserve of Petrolia, Calif., shown in his mugshot. He was sentenced to 23 years in prison. [Humboldt County Sheriff's Office.]

Kailan Meserve of Petrolia, Calif., shown in his mugshot. He was sentenced to 23 years in prison. [Photo from the Humboldt County Sheriff’s Office.]

Sam Epperson fell into a deep depression. He couldn’t shake the feeling that he was responsible for Terri climbing into Meserve’s truck that night. With harvest season over, Terri had left Petrolia.Finally, on April 4, 2016, the trial date arrived. Meserve sat next to his lawyer in a courtroom in downtown Eureka, dressed in a button-down shirt and slacks. Terri had returned to take the stand.Is this your first time testifying in court? How do you feel about being here?” prosecutor Brie Bennett asked.OK,” Terri replied.She described the night in detail. The feeling of panic, the sexual acts, the violence. She answered questions from the defense attorney about her sex life in Petrolia and a shoplifting conviction from years ago. At one point, her voice began to crack, and she wiped tears from behind her black-framed glasses. Her voice grew faint.The judge leaned over. “Please speak up,” he said.The other victim described waking up the morning after the assault, crying and sore. She told her friend she had to go, according to court records, and began the long drive back to San Francisco, making stops to throw up along the way.On the stand, Meserve denied having a drug problem and called his encounters with Terri and the other woman consensual. Everyone was drunk, he said. No one ever told him to stop.

Did she say she wanted to go to the trailer?” the prosecutor asked about Terri.She never said she didn’t,” Meserve responded.From her seat in the courtroom, Meserve’s sister, Amy, remembers watching an image take shape that she did not recognize.He’s being portrayed like some monster,” she said later. “Obviously, he did not think he was raping anyone. I just don’t think he did. That’s not who he is, that’s not what he’s capable of. I just know if they would have said no or stop or anything, he would have stopped.”

While Meserve’s family attended the trial, most of the group that had supported Terri remained behind in Petrolia. It was a far distance to travel, but it also was painful to watch. Many believed it had been a mistake to contact law enforcement.I am friends with his sister and his dad and his mom,” said longtime local grower Greg Smith. “It feels like we’re carrying a big weight on our chest.”

Nearly everyone in the tiny town of Petrolia, Calif., knows each other. Most are involved in marijuana growing to some degree. It’s where Terri, a 22-year-old environmentalist and musician, arrived in the middle of the 2014 harvest season looking for trimming work. [Photo by Andrew Burton for The Center for Investigative Reporting]

Nearly everyone in the tiny town of Petrolia, Calif., knows each other. Most are involved in marijuana growing to some degree. It’s where Terri, a 22-year-old environmentalist and musician, arrived in the middle of the 2014 harvest season looking for trimming work. [Photo by Andrew Burton for The Center for Investigative Reporting]

The community of Petrolia was changing, but residents weren’t sure it was for the better. California Gov. Jerry Brown had signed a package of laws that would further regulate the medical marijuana industry, beginning with state-issued licenses in 2018. Many Humboldt County growers have refused to participate. They would not sign up for county permits, the first step toward legal compliance.To complicate matters, under the new regulations, counties can ban growing altogether, and many have, preserving a highly profitable black market. Competition is increasing, and prices are likely to drop.In this new future, it seemed, small farmers would struggle financially. Success would mean going big or continuing to sell on the black market. Before his arrest, Meserve had found that success growing marijuana, accruing land, money and power. But some wondered, at what cost?On April 19, a jury found Meserve guilty of 15 felony counts, including rape and false imprisonment. His wife began to cry as deputies handcuffed him and took him into custody.When the news reached Petrolia, many in the group that had supported Terri felt deflated instead of relieved. They knew the conviction meant Meserve could end up spending the rest of his life in prison.Smith and Epperson agreed to write letters to the judge urging a lenient sentence.

I would rather have rehabilitation than punishment,” Smith said. “Some people think it’s impossible with him, but I don’t know. I just have hope that people can change.”On July 28, the Meserve family and their supporters filed into the courtroom. Meserve’s mother, sister and wife cried as he stood motionless, awaiting the judge’s sentence. Each read from a prepared statement.These charges are extreme and overboard,” said his father, David. “These charges are from an enthusiasm for prosecuting people in the marijuana industry.” Kailan wants to start an AA group in Petrolia,” said Monica, his wife. “He wants to give back.”

Terri was not there. An advocate read a statement from the second victim.Every morsel of self-confidence has left me,” she read. “Humboldt is my home, and I cannot bring myself to visit my friends or family there.”The judge sentenced Meserve to 23 years in prison.He did not make a statement in court that day. Through his family, he declined to comment for this story. Terri has since moved out of state.

An ad that starts off by saying "We are two beautiful friends from Spain and Germany looking for work," on a bulletin board in downtown Garberville, Calif., on Thursday, October 1, 2015. [Photo by Sarah Rice for Reveal]

An ad that starts off by saying “We are two beautiful friends from Spain and Germany looking for work,” on a bulletin board in downtown Garberville, Calif., on Thursday, October 1, 2015. [Photo by Sarah Rice for Reveal]

And, as the harvest season swings into full gear, a new crop of trimmigrants is streaming north, thumbs out, pointing toward the thickly forested mountains of the Emerald Triangle.This story was edited by Amy Pyle and copy edited by Stephanie Rice and Nikki Frick. Shoshana Walter can be reached at [email protected]. Follow her on Twitter: @shoeshine.

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Eastside
Guest
Eastside
7 years ago

Kym , was there ever any info on that bust by Twin Trees that was supposedly human trafficking ?

Eastside
Guest
Eastside
7 years ago
Reply to  Kym Kemp

Happened last year I’m pretty sure. It was a fed bust so no press release. Neighbors said there were women there living in tents, some were pregnant. Rumor was it was busted for sex trafficking , they also got their weed taken . Bulgarians.

Anon Forrest
Guest
7 years ago
Reply to  Kym Kemp

Thanks for this, Kym. Which episode is it? af

Someone
Guest
Someone
7 years ago
Reply to  Eastside

I heard from an acquaintance who has done some work for them that they get women from overseas sent to them to trim. All women.

Eastside
Guest
Eastside
7 years ago
Reply to  Someone

And conviently have anchor babies while they are here?

Anon Forrest
Guest
7 years ago
Reply to  Eastside

Conveniently? You’re even colder than I thought…. af

Eastside
Guest
Eastside
7 years ago
Reply to  Anon Forrest

Oh, really?

Honeybee
Guest
Honeybee
7 years ago
Reply to  Eastside

Try forcibly, asshole.

Eastside
Guest
Eastside
7 years ago
Reply to  Honeybee

That’s what I meant. Don’t everyone get in an uproar.

To true
Guest
To true
7 years ago
Reply to  Eastside

I’ve seen some Bulgarian women with scorpion tattoo’s on their neck. Means they are “property” to some scumbag. I dislike the Bulgarians more and more. I’m a local and I cannot afford to buy property and all the creeks are dry. Where we used to go fishing is nothing but rocks now.

Someone
Guest
Someone
7 years ago

There are certain situations that are very unsafe and stupid to walk into. Please use your brains ladies. Trimming for a complete stranger in the middle of a huge forest on an illegal grow site …… cant see how you wouldnt foresee this kind of thing happening. Make safer choices. The actions of these men is unexcusable. So is your own disregard for your own safety.

Honeybee
Guest
Honeybee
7 years ago
Reply to  Someone

Nonononono! So its fine for men to take these jobs and not get raped? How about lets hold men accountable and NOT rape! Victim blaming is not helping the problem and only feeding into rape culture.

Someone
Guest
Someone
7 years ago
Reply to  Honeybee

Men take these jobs and end up getting killed. Its not safe for anyone. Im not victim blaming. This area has a bad reputation for these kind of things. Knowing these risks and still taking them is unsafe. For men and women. Like the article said. ” im way out in the middle of nowhere, do i even have a chance of escape?” Bad decisions that put you in jeapordy. Thats like letting a pedophile babysit. Pretty poor choice to make. And reading the article the girls going on about always being drunk treating this industry like a party really doesnt raise my confidence. We know there are creeps out there everywhere waiting to take advantage and they dont have morals. Make safe choices. Women have been getting raped since the cave man days. If youre relying on morals to keep you safe from rape its time to stop being a idiot. If some one wants to blindfold you and drive you god knows where to trim please say fuck no.

Honeybee
Guest
Honeybee
7 years ago
Reply to  Someone

That’s not the point here. Yes, women should be smart. However, that in no way justifies rape if a woman has had a drink or decides to take a job in the woods. This mentality perpetuates rape culture.

Someone
Guest
Someone
7 years ago
Reply to  Honeybee

Im not saying it justifies it. But the fact that so many people think money or drugs justifies taking that risk is disappointing. My mother and aunt were severely sexually abused as children so i have had caution hammered into my brain. It wont always help. But going into the deep woods with strange men for work is right up there with taking candy from the creepy guy in the van…..we shouldnt have to worry about it, but its just not so. We will always have to worry about this form of abuse. In the trimming field if you are a woman this should be a situation that you at least consider. No amount of positive mentality is going to stop a rapist. They know what they do is horrible and they enjoy it. This romantic notion of mentality that predators will just stop raping someday if people disapprove is silly. Wouldve stopped centuries ago if that were the case.

Leilani
Guest
Leilani
7 years ago
Reply to  Someone

It’s not that they’ll stop raping because people will disapprove. It’s that they’ll stop raping because people who rape are systematically held accountable for their crimes, instead of people ignoring it, or making excuses for them, or taking the responsibility out of the rapists’ hands by blaming the victim.

Someone
Guest
Someone
7 years ago
Reply to  Leilani

Noone ever blamed the victim. Rapists are held accountable every day, for decades they have been, and it doesnt make a difference. Most are given a second chance to rape. Most take that second chance. Even men who have voluntarily undergone castration have gone back out and raped a women with an object. The thing to realize is these people cant be fixed just like gay people cant be “fixed”. They are what they are. Women should know these jobs arent safe. I know people wanna think im victim blaming but im giving the same common sense advice your parents gave you to stay safe. Rapists are not appropriately held accountable. The rape/ murder of my class mate from willits two years ago by a registered sex offender set free is proof of that. Its time to realize that these creeps are not properly held accountable and yes women need to be far more cautious than they are especially young women who think its cool to go into the woods and get drunk high and doped up with groups of men and then surprise you were raped! Not surprising at all. I am asking these women to hold their well being at a higher priority and steer clear of obviously potentially risky situations such as these.

Huh ?
Guest
7 years ago
Reply to  Honeybee

Rape culture ? God , shouldn’t you be on tumblr or reading jezebel right now ? Rape culture doesn’t exist .

Someone
Guest
Someone
7 years ago
Reply to  Huh ?

The only people who perpetuate rape culture, are sexual predators. Maybe way way way harsher punishments might make a difference?…

Joe
Guest
Joe
7 years ago
Reply to  Honeybee

Sit down. Geez. I hear you “someone” he isn’t justifying or okaying. It’s just plain stupid to put ur self in that situation. Like he said men and women.

Eastside
Guest
Eastside
7 years ago
Reply to  Joe

I see this issue has people ready to jump down people’s throats. Calm down everyone . We can all agree that sex trafficking and rape are unspeakablely terrible traumatizing acts.

Someone
Guest
Someone
7 years ago
Reply to  Eastside

And on a different note, anyone expecting the illegal drug trafficking industry to be an ultimately safe working environment probably ate a bucket full of lead paint chips……

Eastside
Guest
Eastside
7 years ago
Reply to  Someone

Watch out , someone will call you “cold”.

Anon Forrest
Guest
7 years ago
Reply to  Someone

Sadly, this is so possible. af

Someone
Guest
Someone
7 years ago
Reply to  Joe

Thank you. I am a woman by the way.

guest
Guest
guest
7 years ago
Reply to  Honeybee

1.”do not stand on train tracks when you can hear a train coming”
2. “do not go blindfolded into the woods alone with armed strangers involved in criminal activity”
please tell me which of these statements perpetuates rape culture or victim-blaming

Huh ?
Guest
7 years ago
Reply to  Someone

Exactly, what even happened to being a responsible person . Remember when your parents said ” don’t talk to strangers ” ? Well these women are letting strange men drive them out to the back hills to trim , drink beer , take pills and smoke weed , wonder what’s going to happen ?

Someone
Guest
Someone
7 years ago
Reply to  Huh ?

Seriously! I firmly believe only the rapist is responsible for their actions of rape but when you get so intoxicated you couldnt defend yourself from a mosquito around a group of men in even a “safe environment” your not safe. The fact that people feel they shouldnt have to worry about rape doesnt make it so……

Alpha
Guest
Alpha
7 years ago
Reply to  Honeybee

‘Victim blaming’…
When the appropriate measures are sought after and implemented, in combination with the first and foremost recommendation of be smart, it’s not victim blaming. When it’s just “Don’t be stupid” and no further action, then you have victim blaming.
An individual has an absolute duty to protect themselves through defensive thinking, safety first.
It’s called self accountability.
If there’s a dangerous situation and an individual sticks themselves into it, weather it is this situation, or walking into the freeway to help someone while traffic is still moving, or perhaps something more cliché like going into a dark scary neighborhood at night such as “Murdertown” in Oakland, you can’t expect it to be safe just because you’re righteous and know the danger elements aren’t fair and should be remedied.
Yes work towards a solution, but first alleviate the immediate danger, be safe, be smart.

hmm
Guest
hmm
7 years ago
Reply to  Honeybee

Males have to be careful as well but males are typically MUCH larger and MUCH stronger than females. If you are a small males or a large strong woman, things may be differant for you than most people.

rebel w/o a pause
Guest
rebel w/o a pause
7 years ago
Reply to  Someone

yes lets keep limiting our lifes choices to pander to rapists who should be the jerks separated from society,not us

Jorge Cervantes
Guest
Jorge Cervantes
7 years ago

Meserve got what he deserved! Without the labor force of seasonal trimmers growers wouldn’t be successful. Twisters are cheap but the trim job lacks the precision of hands. Treat your trimmers with respect. There really is a lot of evil people here. There also is a lot of great folks also. Be careful who you work for. Stay safe.

Kathynkali
Guest
Kathynkali
7 years ago

Hallelujah

sharon
Guest
7 years ago

Wow.

Anon Forrest
Guest
7 years ago

” Mendocino County’s marijuana eradication team receives a finder’s fee from a pool of seized funds for every case it initiates, in addition to a nearly 50 percent cut of any confiscated funds”

ANYONE ELSE HAVE A PROBLEM WITH THIS? af

Just another momma
Guest
Just another momma
7 years ago
Reply to  Anon Forrest

YES, I have a problem with this. Sheesh!

tugboat
Guest
7 years ago
Reply to  Anon Forrest

Anon , of course I have a problem with this , and everybody should have a problem with this underhanded evil system. This course of action with the sheriff means they are having Pot laws at the front of their agenda, and leaving other crimes without interest as the ” other ” crimes do not pay money to the sheriff`s office.
Why is there no major outcry from the citizens ?
If you get paid a handsome sum for prosecuting one type of crime, and get nothing for other crimes, you are going to move with the money, Which leaves other crimes unsolved, like rape, robbery, domestic violence, drunk driving. etc.
The cops will continue to do this evil system until the people rise up against this crooked law enforcement !!

Marcia Mendels
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Marcia Mendels
7 years ago

It all breaks your heart.

j
Guest
j
7 years ago

I really love that this article brings to light a huge issue in this county. People automatically assume that locally raised people are good people. “Meserve was a captain of the volunteer fire department, the son of a prominent local environmental activist and politician. Meserve, they said, was married with toddler twins.“He’s a good guy,” Epperson recalled telling her.” He was raised without laws and consequence. Raised to not follow the norms of society. Unfortunately when you raise your kids too hippy like, i.e. teaching them not to feel bad about themselves and be free always you forget to teach them their freedom stops when it tramples other freedoms and you should feel bad about yourself when you do bad things. Discipline is such a crucial part of parental love and it has clearly been lacking in the southern region of this county as the parents party in peace and love.

Disillusioned
Guest
Disillusioned
7 years ago
Reply to  j

Hallelujah! Seems to me for every decent Namaste hippy there’s at least a dozen hippycrits and drainbows. Even the so-called conscious festivals are less and less about respecting elders, transforming paradigms, and creating better communities; and more and more about girls, drugs, and self-indulgence. Things like respecting women, focusing on earth-centered values, and creating alternatives to capitalism and patriarchy have been overshadowed by self-centeredness, obsession with image and appearances, and of course, treating women like commodities and sexual objects. This doesn’t bring health or happiness, it brings brokeness. We need the Indigenous First Nation people to lead us back into sanity.

BAB
Guest
BAB
7 years ago
Reply to  Disillusioned

This whole thing is a revelation for me. I did trimming in willow creek for my first time two years ago. I was 40 years old at the time, born and raised in Nor Cal, and thought i was no stranger to this culture because some of my best friends and family were always connected or involved in this scene (not big wigs, but trimmers, rainbow, and such). I had no idea how naive I was until I started researching all of this stuff this past week. HOLY SHIT.
The farm I went to was really nice, good people, fair, and felt more like a resort than a place to work. They treated us well.
BUT… I felt strange over there. There was a vibe up in those parts that felt very void of something … A lack of something… but I couldnt put my finger on what it was. Now I know. And of course it all makes perfect sense now.
Anyway, I ended up feeling so bugged-out by the vibe up there in those mountains (I dont smoke weed, or take drugs of any sort, so it wasnt paranoia) that I had to leave the farm early, getting a ride off CL, something I would usually be too cautious to ever do. The woman who drove me back to the bay area was a sex worker. AND I STILL DIDNT MAKE THE CONNECTION! I still thought that she was up there to trim! Ha!! Its only now that I realize she wasnt up there trimming like me.

All the missing people, all the weird vibes, all the bones up there in the woods, all the money, all the lawlessness… All hidden under a veneer of peace, love and morally correct anarchy. A total facade hiding utter bloody brutality.

I will tell you… It was after I worked up there that I became more supportive of unions and socialism in general. I was always a libertarian… all my life. But seeing first-hand what can happen (and will happen) when business owners have no one to answer to, lots of money, and all the control… I realized how important certain regulations are. Greed is a truly evil thing. It leads to evil, evil deeds.

Id like to say this: I am not a stupid person. A bit naive (somehow… not sure how because I was raised around dysfunction, and poverty)… If I didnt know anything about this stuff at age 40… The younger people dont realize what they are stepping into either. They just dont know. I didnt know, and I should have. No one talks about it.

Liz
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Liz
7 years ago

This article needs to be published in High Times where it can reach the people who need to know of the dangers of trimming.

I feel High Times brought a whole lot of trouble to Humboldt when they published their article back in 1980? 1981? Whenever it was it brought trouble on it’s heels.

Eel707
Guest
7 years ago

Meserve is a worthless man, thank God that he actually got what he deserved, I can’t believe his wife even stood by him, even if hadn’t been rape, he’s out picking up women from bars and cheating on her!
This whole article is an eye opener, I had some idea this was going on, but not this much and I’ve never heard actual factual stories. All the growers I know have families and hire only people they know, I wonder who these monsters are that are doing this horrible stuff, are they people we see everyday and never suspect? There is so much going on that we don’t know about.. Kym, Thanks for sharing this with us

Chris
Guest
Chris
7 years ago

Jesus. Some real moral folks down there in Petrolia. What would they have said if it was their daughter? Dude was a rumored rapist and you guys left him on the fire force? You people are fucked up. Who covers up rumors of rape? Putrid.

Carol
Guest
7 years ago

Wow, I am speechless. Let’s keep shining the light on this subject!

Janice
Guest
Janice
7 years ago

I was looking at Petrolia on Street View and saw something that I’ve never seen before, and I’ve used SV extensively since its inception. On the corner of Grant & Lincoln, there’s a building that’s completely blurred out. You can’t see it from any angle or from satellite view. Does anyone know what it is?

mendocino mamma
Guest
mendocino mamma
7 years ago
Reply to  Janice

Images on Google that are blurred can be a government office, school, church or something that could be a terrorist target. Also weird stuff ie naked folks, people with guns, vulger or obscene acts caught by accident. Then also the owner of the building or the home can ask to have their place blurred out for personal reasons they will blur your place out on request.

mendocino mamma
Guest
mendocino mamma
7 years ago

I think that is Petrolia Post Office.

lauracooskey
Guest
lauracooskey
7 years ago

Nope. It’s an individual’s house. Nothing weird or secret about it. Knowing that person, i’m guessing a request for privacy was made. It’s a pretty public location anyway, right on the corner and in the headlights of oncoming traffic circling the Square, so i would imagine the extra peering-in of the world’s eyes was not welcome. And NOT because of some grow scene, i might add.

lauracooskey
Guest
lauracooskey
7 years ago
Reply to  Janice

I think the owner requested privacy. It’s a normal residence.

trackback

[…] Kym once again shows us why she deserved the Chamber honor the other night. […]

Shari Hyatt
Guest
Shari Hyatt
7 years ago

Just going to throw out a question? My husband worked in humboldt county for awhile. He helped set up green houses’ plant’ harvest and trim. He was to be paid $800 per week. Well he worked 10 weeks and this was at the end of 2015 and they still owe him $4000.00. Does anyone know of a solution for us. We have repeatedly told it would just a few more weeks. They have now blocked our calls. It has now been a whole year. If we report them to the local police do you think they would even care? They have trafficked their product all over the US. Just asking is all.

Anon Forrest
Guest
7 years ago
Reply to  Shari Hyatt

Yep. One answer is to repeat the calls, and solicit the $ it takes to save them. It can be done, “in house” without the cops. Yes; without the cops. af

Anon Forrest
Guest
7 years ago
Reply to  Anon Forrest

Sorry: wrong post. (sigh) af

anon
Guest
anon
7 years ago
Reply to  Shari Hyatt

loos like his wages were actually 400/Wk. be happy.

rolling hills
Guest
rolling hills
7 years ago
Reply to  Shari Hyatt

By all means, Humboldt County BOS, let’s encourage bigger and bigger grows in Humboldt so we can perpetuate this sad and dangerous lifestyle.

mendocino mamma
Guest
mendocino mamma
7 years ago

Sex and drugs that connection is older than the hills themselves. Having experienced some of the sexual inequity and general your expected to do…( insert word (s) here) or??? Bullshit in my life. The MM trade fosters a machismo attitude that doles out this crap. Know of several “wives” they say had it worse in other countries. Tell me I’ll take what happens here it is far better than home ( insert country name).
Of another subject same venue watch out seems like one or several serial killers are lurking in these parts folks. Damn don’t travel or hitch hike alone if you can help it. There seems to be some truly evil folks out there!

Saucy
Guest
Saucy
7 years ago

Story is too long so didn’t read it all, but good time of year to post it.

Anon Forrest
Guest
7 years ago
Reply to  Saucy

Please, Saucy, read it all. With respect, I think you may be missing the Point. af

Bobby G
Guest
Bobby G
7 years ago

Very important article, and it’s obviously exposing just the tip of the iceberg. Kudos to the writer and thanks to all those who were interviewed. Most disturbing is the blase approach of the Sheriff’s Dept., but the inbred “anti-law at any cost” culture of the grow communities is also to blame. It’s all pretty fucked up and a classic case of reaping what you sow. The downward spiral continues and I don’t know what it’s going to take to turn it around.

As for Merserve, what a fucked up piece of shit. How could anyone defend that creep?!?

Equalizer
Guest
Equalizer
7 years ago

Think of how many others Merserve has taken to that ” trailer” over his lifespan that didn’t come forward. He didn’t ever take them home to where he lived. This was his ” dumping ground”. Hopefully it’s been destroyed by his family.

Guest
Guest
Guest
7 years ago
Reply to  Equalizer

Hopefully the police will dig up the ground all around it.

C
Guest
C
7 years ago

Thank you for posting this, Kym. I do media monitoring in the cannabis industry space and wouldn’t have picked up this story had it not been for your blog post. The fact that these stories are not exposed to the mainstream is horrific to me – almost consuming. There’s a dark side to the industry that is so fragmented, the big picture isn’t being seen by people not touched by it (such as white, educated urbanites who associate marijuana with peace and happiness) and it’s very upsetting to me.

I cried after reading this story and it made me feel helpless. Those girls could be our daughters, sisters or other loved ones. Hopefully my daughter will focus on what she has and not what she has not when she leaves home and be sensible enough to recognize and stay away from high-risk situations.

The crimes associated with greedy people – regardless of industry – should be exposed until more people actually take seriously these issues and really consider what their vote means.

Will Prop 64 really remedy the multiple issues outlined in this article (aside from human sex trafficking, abuse, and rape)? It’s hard for those with their hand in the green pot to face the realities of what this industry has really produced and how harmful it has been to generations of people…and growing. Yes, people are greedy.

Thanks again, Kym, for great work!

Anon Forrest
Guest
7 years ago

A very long time ago, a naked youngster of about 14 or 15 – no more, hammered on my door at 3am…
She was scared to white, we rustled up enough $ to buy her a plane ticket home to Brooklyn after clothing her decently enough to make it. None of us had any idea of what was leading up to this, but the neighborhood coalesced and we started to take more notice…. up shot was, the perp had to move.
Moral: Pay attention, watch for this. It’s closer than we [may want to] think. af

hmm
Guest
hmm
7 years ago
Reply to  Anon Forrest

How about call the fucking police next time.

Polo
Guest
Polo
7 years ago

Wow I have to say I have never ever seen anything close to this after being at many many scenes over many years. What I usually see is young women hooking up with older rich pot grower guys and breaking up marriages.
Of course there are bad apples in every bunch,but this stuff is not the norm in any community I’ve lived in.
On the flipside perhaps this, valid or not,will scare folks from coming here. I used to tell women on the street with their looking for trim work signs that anyone who doesn’t know you and picks you up to work is not someone safe to go with. Not because they were growers but because there’s sleazy dudes everywhere.

Kailan Meserve is scum bag, regardless of whether he was in the pot industry or not. He would have done these things regardless, a person like that will assault women whether hes their boss or not. Also he already knew one of the women he assaulted, so i dont follow your logic in regards to “sex trafficking”.
You state that many escorts “flood” the area looking to make money, which is their choice. The idea that women are being kidnapped off a street, or lured with a job, then forced to come here just is not the norm unless youre talking cartel scenes like Mexican and Bulgarian them sure it def is true for both male and female victims. Cartels will traffic whatever makes them money.

The trafficking of women for sex is a huge deal that unfortunately runs rampant in almost every industry. Awful brothels surround most US military bases around the world. Many wealthy people in this country have been caught keeping women as slaves for sex and housework.

I have to disagree that pot is a completely male dominated scene. I, along with lots of other women, grow our own kick ass gardens, hire workers, etc.
Pot is one of the few jobs that a woman can make as much,or more, than her male counterparts. Sure you hAve to work hard and have some muscles to do the physical labor, but I can think of soooooooo many women I know all over the hills of mendo and humboldt who are growers, and damn good at it too.

I guess don’t like the targeting of the pot industry as “sex traffickers”. I do believe these issues are atrotious and deplorable. I would gladly run anyone doing anything close to it out of town and off a cliff in a heartbeat.
But why did you choose to target the pot industry and not look at multiple industries,like the CEO scene and the Congressional scene that loves young male prostitutes? Or even better the huge amount of sexual abuse on college campuses, including HSU? I saw and felt way more scared as a woman at parties while attending HSU than any trim scene I encountered.
A woman was held down by 4 rugby players in the backyard of a party and gang raped while I was there in the late 90’s.
How about the young boys bodies dug up, finally, in blue lake? Or the findings that a man in fieldbrook kept a woman chained inside a redwood tree hollow for years and made his son feed her? Those incidents had 0 to do with pot. Just saying you can’t blame the pot industry as the worst perp in the story of human trafficking. I find your article not well researched and biased. It points out only the bad parts, and really only 2 examples where again, those idiots would have prob kept a woman as their slave whether they grew pot or not. When you report on a story as a good journalist you dont start with a bias towards one side as you will then only seek out and find one side of the situation.

Anon Forrest
Guest
7 years ago
Reply to  Kym Kemp

Zackly! af

C
Guest
C
7 years ago
Reply to  Polo

Very interesting points and insight, Polo – and in my mind, quite valid and important. I think you should contact Reveal from The Center for Investigative Reporting (who wrote the story) to share your experiences and your point of view. Maybe they’ll publish a Part 2. It would be interesting to see both sides.

I’m also curious to know the stats around how many people turn up missing or criminally abused in association with the Humboldt/Mendo pot industry vs. other industries/venues (Congress, military bases, etc.). From the article, it doesn’t sound like anybody’s really keeping track because it’s “not a priority” and if people aren’t talking… So how can we really know the truth?

I agree: A criminal is a criminal no matter the setting. It also makes sense to me that a criminal who is able to get away with his crimes because of a feeling of freedom to do so – because he knows many are also doing illegal things and won’t speak up in order to preserve their own lifestyle or are afraid – can flourish in ways that someone operating in the mainstream cannot (Whew! Sorry, longgg sentence!). So a backwoods pot grower may be less fearful of being exposed after raping & murdering a girl and tossing her in the river – and repeating it – than a sick urban cop who has sex with a minor or a corrupt politician might be.

I have to admit that somehow, the idea of these crimes being committed on women in a desolate, vast, disconnected forest makes for an especially chilling story – much more sinister than a D.C backdrop or military base. Even when I was 20 and stupid, I’d never think to put myself in such situations no matter how desperate I was for money (and boy, there were times…). I’d feel awful if my own illegal activity, fears, and focus prevented me from recognizing and helping someone who’d been violated or abused.

Obviously, greed and desperation don’t usually bring out the best in people.

Obvious
Guest
Obvious
7 years ago

I have a question for parents:
At what age do children start trimming ?

It is shameful for a parent to not consider they are raising a child immersed in the drug culture and robbing their preteens of their innocence just so you, the parent, can cash in on the green rush. Indifference, neglect.

In cast you didn’t hear that:
Shame on you for being so selfish!

A few days ago on these pages someone stated to me it is like Little house on the prairie in the hills of SoHum.

In the same thread someone else said there should be roadblocks checkpoints to insure everyone has a legitimate reason to be in that area. I suppose with weaponry.
I think this is already a reality to a degree.

lauracooskey
Guest
lauracooskey
7 years ago
Reply to  Obvious

It’s actually kind of like Little House on the Prairie to have your kids help in the family business at a young age. Think about it! Robbing kids of their innocence? Television/internet, boredom, and overindulgence might do that, but not eager work. A century ago kids started helping around the farm as soon as they were able. Small cottage industries, kids wanting to be part of something bigger…that’s what i saw. Little ones i knew begged to help. It didn’t turn them into anything… minus the “forbidden fruit” allure, weed is just like any other thing someone’s parents do, and half the time, not interesting or appealing at all.

Sparklemahn
Guest
Sparklemahn
7 years ago

Excellent article with a happy ending: Meserve should rot in prison. Of course, I understand his friends and family feel his punishment is too severe. But it isn’t.

Green monster
Guest
Green monster
7 years ago

My family moved to southern humbolt in 1897 for the logging industries ,my grandfather was born in weott ca in 1917 , my grandmother was born in patrolia ca. In 1922 my family has a lot roots in humbolt co. I witnessed all the hippies moving into humbolt to grow weed ,mushrooms , opium , all of the roads you people are using today around sohum , in alder point,island mountain, China creek , the lost coast , needle rock were built by my grandfather to log the timber , he would by the timber and they would give him the land in 1940’s he owned a lot of land it is all sold now that they are both gone, I was born in garberville in 1961 delivered by the same Doctor that delivered my dad kyme did a great job with this article and it is about time someone noticed this shit , I watched the humbolt I new and loved disappear into the abiss of criminal activity , this was happening in the 1980’s murders , rapes , people hanging from tree’s , people with there heads smashed under a truck wheel rotting in the woods , there has been nothing but death and destruction in the influx of the pot growers , all of you on here are inablers for this criminal behavior the rapes , murders, kidnappings , growing weed is not a life style it is a criminal enterprise , I am amazed that there are people so proud of there talent in growing a weed you people don’t even know what hard work is ,growing weed ain’t shit any pussy can do that shit , I have lost a lot of friends to the weed growing business all of you turn a blind eye to what is really going on in humbolt and you do it for money , most of my frends are either dead or in prison for the rest of there natural lives and yeah for me I got a front row seat , one of my friends in the 80’s him and his wife were found dead from and over dose out in the woods behind there house naked and bloted to 3 times there size , the heroine came from the lost coast , and other guy was found dead in the middle of the street in whitthorne and some of the locals drew a circle around his body and arrows to the dealers house , the cops did nothing they don’t care any more unless they are forced to do something ,like in the rape case in petrolia , there were people running whores up there back then it’s nothing new so don’t be shocked , one of my family members was found floating in the mat tole river with 2 broken legs I know who did it and had a bullet with his name on it but I got smart and got the hell out of there and never went back , that killer is probably still out running around threating people with a gun and stealing there gardens that piece of shit came for the weed and was from la , all of you are responsible for what is happening there and you are the only ones that can stop it none of you are law abiding citizen give me a fucking brake all of you brought the death and distraction with you I feel sorry for all the hard working people that use to live there that worked in the logging woods ,drove truck, were fishermen at cove they had to leave , what are all of you going to do when the water runs out or is to contaminated with fertilizer to drink I mean shit man the mat tole river is dry in the summer now and the eel isn’t looking so good either I remember when we would catch 55 pound king salmon in those rivers all of you are sucking up all the water and poisoning it with fertilizer wake up humbolt growers you are the problem you are the reason there are rapes murders and kidnapings there are dead bodies all over those woods and mountains if there was a way to locate bodies from the air all of you would be surprised how many there are . i liked humbolt better when it was all saw mills and logging and fishing and hunting , you assholes ruined all that , right before for I escaped the grip of humbolt I used to go visit some people I knew in island mountain they told me they had a drug deal go bad and had a shoot out about a month later I was driving up there and got close to the ranch and there were helicopters and fbi cars all over the place so I drove on by those cats killed a guy in that shoot up and drug his body over to the grave of the original owner of the ranch with the little white Pickett fence and dug the ole boy up and threw the body in on top of him and covered him up then laid flowers on his grave every year wtf ,one of the ranches close to there’s some cat drove up to buy a cord of wood and the guy selling the wood thought he was getting ripped off and killed him and buried the dude in the back of his house in a shallow grave dumped lime on him and beat a trail back and forth to see if the body was gone yet I went up there after they arrested him and looked at the grave to get some of his fire wood tweak ears are dangerous I have seen more than I want to see.

Obvious
Guest
Obvious
7 years ago
Reply to  Green monster

@ Green Monster
Thank you for your post. Everyone here is defensive when you point out the truth. Even when you rub their nose on it and say “BAD DOG, NO, NO” they refuse to acknowledge reality.

homegrown
Guest
homegrown
7 years ago

I am very glad that this problem is being exposed. In my town there are very well known sexual predator growers who no one will ever stand up to because their grows fund some of the most elaborate parties around. However, they are far from the only sexual predator growers out there. It’s very common. These men act as if the law does not apply to them because for the most part it doesn’t. They grow big, make big money and take advantage of women, they treat them like b*tches like they are hip hop stars or something. Not all growers are gross but I would say that the majority are. Morally corrupt and surrounded by like minded earth destroying, money grubbing, sexist bros. This is not a problem that you can blame on the Mexicans or the Bulgarians, this is a homegrown problem. Those hills are dangerous for women but I will add, that lots of young men head out there with a dream and are taken advantage of too because they don’t have legal recourse like their powerless female counterparts. That’s part of the problem, that was highlighted in this article, no one wants to call the cops.

Emily Jimenez
Guest
Emily Jimenez
7 years ago

Thank you thank you thank you Kym for posting this, it’s also been shared on the canabist. Hoping Dope Magazine and High Times will follow along. This problem needs to be exposed and I’m glad awareness is being raised.

So happy my friend who went missing in humbolt was able to escape and get help, I just wish the police there had treated her missing persons case with better respect.

John
Guest
John
7 years ago

Response to “Green monster”

1. So sorry for all of your losses

2. You are incorrect to blame everyone

3. Run your comments through spell and grammar check before posting

4. Everyone, take note of “Green monster’s” comment. It is not an isolated experience. We all need to work together to improve this complicated situation

Fred
Guest
Fred
7 years ago

@greenmonster- dude that is hard to read, please spell check or proof.

As far as your comments, where to start…. You giving people to much credit for steering their own lives, unfortunately this isn’t the way things work. I would relate this to the right wing vs left wing government aurgument. In a perfect world a small government right wing system would work,mbut people are inherently going to do what’s best and easiest for them, hence why we need bigger government for the greater good. To blame the growers for the lack of timber industry, fisherman in the cove, and lack of fish in the rivers is a joke. People in a capitalistic based society are going to take advantage of opportunity. You want to blame something blame hard drugs, and the sheriff spending resources on eradicating weed and turning blind eye to most meth and heroin problems.

Jim
Guest
Jim
7 years ago

Thank you Kym for posting this.

Guest
Guest
Guest
7 years ago

“He threatened to kill her, freeze her body and throw her to the animals if he ever found out she had slept with anyone else”

Funny, I only saw 2 people besides myself who’s first thought was “serial killer”. Why is that? First kidnapping- bringing to a location against her will, then rape, then threatening dismemberment. Doesn’t that seem like a classic? Over 300 people missing in Humboldt county in 2015 and hardly anyone is thinking there may be serial killers? Why didn’t they SEARCH & DIG THE GROUND UP NEAR THAT PLACE? Check for blood and DNA? Because he was their buddy in the fire dept? Disgusting.

Please people, if you find out about a very good possibility of a serial killer in your neighborhood call the frickin cops. If there are people over time who disappear from one place call the cops. If there are women (or men) who repeat things that were said that involve dismembering and feeding trimmers and innocent people to animals call the cops. Call the FBI if the cops won’t take it seriously. Or deal with it. Seriously, this makes me sick. Can you think of a better place for a serial killer to hang out than a community that is too scared to face itself?

This is the 4th time I’ve heard a story like this and the only time I’ve seen a story like this in print. I am all for not calling the cops for almost any reason but serial killers are NOT included in those reasons. NOTHING excuses not calling the cops when you know something like this is going on. Nothing.

Thank you for re-printing this article.

And thank you to the people in Petrolia who had the courage to face up.

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[…] in the cannabis community came out earlier this month in a number of media outlets ranging from this one to Cosmopolitan, condemnation of the industry was swift. And the response continues to grow. […]

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[…] hillsides; contaminate rivers, spill diesel, and create serious fire hazards.; and incidents of abuse among unregulated, migratory cannabis workers climbs, even as many cases go […]

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[…] hillsides; contaminate rivers, spill diesel, and create serious fire hazards.; and incidents of abuse among unregulated, migratory cannabis workers climbs, even as many cases go […]