Jury selection is scheduled to begin Tuesday in the federal trial. According to the indictment, the defendants, many in their 20s and 30s, were members or associates of three gangs called the Somali Outlaws, the Somali Mafia and the Lady Outlaws who are accused of forcing teenage girls into prostitution and operated in Columbus, St. Paul Minneapolis, and Nashville.

The indictment says one girl was under the age of 13 at the time.

For Ohio Public Radio, Sarah Buckingham takes a look at Ohio’s child sex trafficking problem, and what activists, law enforcement, and lawmakers are doing about it. Click the play button above to hear her full report.

Sheriff Zach Scott says the investigation targeted traditional street-based prostitution, as well as people using hotels along the I-270 and Route 23 corridor to meet clients.

Scott says charges include promoting prostitution, soliciting for prostitution, and drug possession.

In one case, investigators reportedly found a three-year-old child waiting in a car while her mother was inside a hotel meeting with a client.

It’s a typical Thursday afternoon in courtroom 12-C at the Franklin County Courthouse. Two dozen or so women sit at a large, semi-circle desk facing Judge Paul Herbert’s bench. They’re eating homemade food.

“Today I have some kind of chicken casserole, which is awesome. I think it has some Mexican bean in there somewhere. A salad with ranch dressing. I got some chocolate chip cookies. There’s M&M cookies in there.”

The women are part of a unique program for convicted prostitutes called CATCH court. Instead of going to jail, the women participate in two years of intensive addiction rehab and therapy programs. They have to show up to court every week. Also in court every week are Diana and Paul Smathers, otherwise known as Grandma and Grandpa. Diana made the casserole.

The Smathers first were introduced to the program by Vanessa, one of the first women to take part. Vanessa dated the Smathers’ grandson during high school and they think of her as family.

“When she got out of jail she was telling us about the CATCH program. We started coming here with her the first day,” Mrs. Smathers said.

Not long after their first visit…

“We were going home and those girls in there kept saying they were hungry and they didn’t have anything. And I said, Paul, let’s surprise them next week and bring them something up to eat. He said OK. So, gosh, I can’t remember what we brought, but me and him stayed up most of the night and made it. And we brought it in and they were really shocked,” she said.

Vanessa said the Smathers’ have helped teach her about unconditional love.

“Like real, real friendship, real love. Things that I am just learning about and just really getting the real taste of because I have always been in positions where people had motives — motive after motive. It just really feels like they bring it because they want to care for us and they want to help us and to show us that we deserve it,” Vanessa said.

And Vanessa does not mean deserving of the food, she’s talking about love. Many of the women were abused as children and then abused by pimps and drug dealers. So for many, the Smathers offer the only real love they’ve known.

Rita Lynch has been in the program about a year-and-a-half. She said she’s immensely grateful to the Smathers’ humble gestures. “It kind of felt like they were loving me when I couldn’t love myself,” Lynch said.

Paul Smathers’, a retired bus driver, is quiet and unassuming.

“I mean they really appreciate it, and we appreciate bringing it,” Mr. Smathers said.

Mr. Smathers’ is humble about the help he and his wife provide. But Judge Herbert does not hesitate. He said Mr. Smathers bought and donated a school bus for the women to have transportation to different events.

“I tell you what, they are probably the best examples of the indomitability of the human spirit that I can think of. They inspire me to want to be a better person,” Herbert said.

In nearly two years, Diana and Paul Smathers have missed only one or two days at CATCH Court.

“We don’t miss because all these other girls are our girls, too,” Mrs. Smathers said.

And if a nearly two-hour trip each week wasn’t hard enough, Mrs. Smathers is seriously ill. Her diabetes caused cirrhosis of the liver and she’s waiting for a transplant. She has been for two years. But she said making the drive to Columbus each week helps.

“When I can come in here and not feel good at all, I walk through that door and it’s just like a miracle hit me. I just start feeling better. And look at all of them smiling at us and they’re all running up to give us a hug. And it’s just an unconditional love you can’t explain,” Mrs. Smathers said.

Vanessa, the woman who dated the Smathers’ grandson, soon will graduate from the program. But the Smathers said they plan to continue to feed the women who help nourish their souls.

It’s about a quarter after one on Thursday afternoon, and about 20 women sit around eating pot roast with potatoes and carrots.

One woman turns around and introduces herself. She says she’s new to this program … only a week. She’s 29 years old and has been on the streets, and a prostitute, since she was 14.

The program is called CATCH Court. It’s a real court of law at the Franklin County Courthouse, albeit a unique one.

CATCH stands for Changing Actions To Change Habits. It tries to help prostitutes restore their lives.

Judge Paul Herbert leads the court. And at one time, he thought the women were the problem. But one day after a string of domestic violence cases, a woman was brought before him.

“She looked exactly like one of these victims that I’d been seeing. I mean, I was in that state of mind where I could see that. And I looked at her. She was a prostitute? Yeah, I looked down at the folder and it said solicitation. And I thought to myself, how could that be?” Herbert said.

Research into the criminology behind prostitution startled Herbert. He found one-third of prostitutes begins before they’re 15; two-thirds before they’re 18. And nearly all of them are runaways.

For the judge, a light bulb went off.

“And so that’s part of my mission in life now is to change the culture of people that were thinking like I was to people thinking like I am now; to start to help protect the women and girls right here in Columbus and as far as we can get it,” Herbert said.

Herbert developed CATCH Court in 2009. Instead of spending time in jail, the women take part in a two-year program. They’re on probation and go through intensive addiction rehab and therapy programs at Maryhaven or Amethyst.

Forty-year-old Rita Lynch said the program turned her life around. Lynch’s addiction to heroin took her to the streets of Columbus where she faced beatings by pimps or dope boys. She was arrested 14 times for solicitation along with various drug charges. Lynch has been a part of CATCH for a year.

“We get arrested, we go to jail, we get let back out, we have nowhere to go, we have nowhere to turn. So we go back to the streets. Judge Herbert has changed that in tremendous ways,” Lynch said.

“I really do believe in you, so if you ever need anything,” Vanessa said.

Vanessa is a 26-year-old woman whose pimp forced her to have oral sex with more than a dozen men a day. She’s telling the newcomer to the group — a 29-year-old who was on the streets for half her life — to be cognizant of the addictions’ head games.

“Because our disease will tell us it’s not a big deal, it’s just a fleeting thought. My disease tells me that all day. But I have to tell on it. Did you hear that? Listen to the whisper before you hear the scream. I’m proud of you. Thank you,” she said.

Vanessa, who was one of the first CATCH women, has been sober for 496 days.

“How does that feel? Unbelievable,” she replied.

Vanessa said she’s grateful for the program. Otherwise she said she likely would still be caught in the arrest cycle Lynch described.

Last year, between January and August, police made about 1,000 solicitation arrests in Columbus. Only five Johns were arrested the entire year. Those kinds of numbers are typical. For years, law enforcement saw prostitutes as the problem. But the Central Ohio Rescue and Restore Coalition’s Kae Denino thinks that’s changing.

“So this year, we’re thinking we’re going to have a lot more reverse stings, we’re thinking we’re going to have a lot more Johns school programs,” Denino said.

The coalition also helps educate police on human trafficking.

Other changes are coming soon. Later this month, Ohio’s human trafficking law takes effect. It took five years to get it passed, making Ohio one of the last states to have one. Democrat State Representative Teresa Fedor sponsored the bill which allows for the prosecution of traffickers and it makes it a felony.

“I heard many, many times prostitution is the oldest (profession). Everyone knows it. That’s why you filled it in. But no, prostitution is the oldest oppression in the world. So that mindset is now going to change and we’re going to prevent what’s been happening,” Fedor said.

Soon Fedor will introduce legislation to keep children from being charged with solicitation. Instead they would receive services like other victims.

Advocacy groups like Gracehaven and Doma International are finding unique ways to help local sex trafficking victims. Gracehaven soon will open a home for girls who have been trafficked, the first of its kind in Ohio. And Doma will open a residential pretreatment center for women in the CATCH program. Doma’s Julie Clark said women sometimes have to wait three months for a bed at one of the treatment centers, and she said that’s too long.

“It’s a very small window to get them into this treatment. And so the longer they’re in jail, the less motivated they are to work on their recovery,” Clark said.

Vanessa said she continues to work on her recovery. And she’s looking forward to more precious moments with her three-year old son.

“But mommy, I wanna pop. We’ll go get one in a minute, OK.”

Vanessa went on to say, “I want to grow and I want to help people grow. I don’t know. I want to live. Like I’m excited about actually living. I haven’t done that in a, I’m not sure I’ve ever done it. For real.”

“I’m hanging out with you. And you!”

Vanessa laughs as her little boy gets a kick out of hearing himself talk into a microphone. Vanessa is a 26-year-old brunette with dimples. And unless she told you, you’d never guess there was a time when she did not laugh with her son or even laugh at all.

WOSU has agreed only to use Vanessa’s first name. She’s in recovery for sex trafficking and drug addiction. The numbers are tough to get at, but local human trafficking advocates estimate about 1,200 minors in Ohio are victims of the crime, and likely thousands upon thousands of women are forced to have sex for someone else’s profit.

Vanessa was one of those women.

She grew up in Athens and around a lot of partying.

“That’s when people were laughing and smiling and dancing. And to me that was normal,” she said.

By age 14, Vanessa said, she started drinking alcohol. It was an immediate addiction.

“And it just progressed. I was smoking weed, doing pills, it went from coke to crack to heroine,” she said.

By her early 20s, Vanessa discovered Columbus was the place to get cheap drugs fast. For a while, she bought drugs in Columbus and sold them in Athens to make some cash, used to fuel her own addiction. But then she moved to Columbus permanently. Soon she had nothing. She sold her car, her clothes, everything she owned, for drugs.

“It was kind of a blink-of-an-eye kind of thing. So now what am I going to do? Well, everybody around me was turning tricks and it was so easy’ and it was just so quick,’” Vanessa said.

Physically hurting from drug withdrawals, Vanessa said she walked down the street one day and gave a nod to a man in a car.

“And he pulled over. And I got in the car. I had never done it in my life. I didn’t know what I was doing, and I felt absolutely horrible. But only for a brief moment because that thought of damn that was so quick, like I could just do that so quick, get it over with and move on,” she remembered.

But after brushes with the law — she’s been arrested five times for solicitation — a friend introduced Vanessa to a man, a pimp or dope boy as they’re often called.

“He just kind of sucked me right in with the money, the glamour, and the big thing, he would already have me something so I wouldn’t be sick. He’d already have me dope. So it was nice not to have to turn a trick while I was sick,” Vanessa said.

But it wasn’t glamorous. And soon, Vanessa was being trafficked, forced to have sex with as many as a dozen men a day who answered Craig’s List ads for an erotic massage.

“When I wanted to stop, I wasn’t allowed to stop. Like, you cannot stop. Gotta get that money, gotta get that money, you gotta get that money. Like all day. It was horrible,” she recalled.

Vanessa said she was beaten so badly one time she believes her ribs were broken. She never saw a doctor.

“Like if I didn’t come back with enough money, like I knew it, and he would really beat me and it was horrible. And other girls had it even worse than I did,” she said.

Kae Denino chairs the public awareness committee for the Central Ohio Rescue and Restore Coalition or CORRC. Denino said stories like Vanessa’s sadly are common.

While there’s a minute percentage of people who choose prostitution as their trade, Denino said most prostitutes are being trafficked as a result of an addiction or because they were pimped out at an early age and know no other life.

“The lines do get really blurry because people are brainwashed and so addicted to drugs. But yes the majority of sex workers we meet are desperate to get out of the business, whether they’re in a brothel or a massage parlor or a strip club. Often in a strip club, it’s not the strip club that’s pimping them out. It’s like a boyfriend at home who makes them go to work, get pimped out at work, come back and give him the money,” Denino said.

Vanessa was desperate to get out. And so was 40-year-old Rita Lynch. Lynch recalls being the child of an all American family, sheltered is how she puts it. As a young woman, life was good. Lynch managed a go-go bar and made good money. She had a great live-in boyfriend who helped raise her daughter.

But when Lynch’s mom became gravely ill, the pressures of work and family life were difficult to balance. And she found prescription drugs gave her a quick pick-me-up. Like so many prescription opioid abusers, Lynch found heroine was much cheaper.

“That was the beginning of the end. The very first time I did it,” Lynch said.

Lynch also had a dope boy to answer to. And like Vanessa, she endured beatings.

“I had to pay for the motel room for the dope boy to sell out of, or I owed the dope boy money. So I knew I couldn’t go back until I made that money,” she recalled. Many adult prostitutes, Denino said, are first trafficked between the ages of 12 and 14. And in most cases, the girls are fed drugs like crack and cocaine which lead to addictions. She said runaways and children in foster care are at highest risk for being recruited. Part of CORRC’s mission is to educate students.

“We find a lot of kids that way, just by going to schools.”

Rampant is how Denino describes child sex trafficking in Central Ohio. And she said it’s more prominent in minority communities. Police recently were called after a 16-year-old Somali immigrant was overheard telling her story to two Hispanic girls. A Mexican man had propositioned her, offered her $50 for oral sex.

“The two 10-year-olds were looking at each other, and the one said, ‘That’s a deal. It’s usually $20.’ So for this entire community, as far as we can tell, of children, that was normal and even a deal,” Denino said.

Tuesday we’ll hear how Vanessa and Lynch made it off the streets of Columbus. And what local lawmakers and advocates are doing to help combat the issue and the efforts being made to help these women regain their lives.

But Statehouse Correspondent Karen Kasler reports, there was no real child involved…