"I'll tell you exactly what happened to that girl," said D'Lita Miller, 38, a former prostitute and gang member who now conducts trainings for police, district attorneys, and judges about sex trafficking through the nonprofit organization Saving Innocence, based in Los Angeles. "She got caught between some guerrilla pimps and her regular pimp. She was probably scared out of her mind."

Just because a pimp and prostitute have what seems on the surface to be a consensual business or sexual relationship, there is a clear victim and victimizer, Miller said: "Prop 35 reflects that." In other words, even if a prostitute doesn't see herself as a victim, the law does. However, Miller argued, in order to get girls to escape this life, the state has to not only be willing to prosecute the victimizers, but also to treat the victims.

"Who went to that motel room to make sure [Jay] was OK before she testified?" Miller asked, indignant. "What services or counseling was she offered? What did they say for her to expect when she walked into that courtroom?" Miller herself has been part of two human trafficking cases — one involving her daughter. The experience demoralized Miller when, in the lead-up to the trial, she and her family were given no support to transition her daughter out of the life.

Two years ago, Miller's 16-year-old daughter was a lookout for another teenage girl who was in a car with a john. Miller's daughter was in love with her friend's pimp, who was also a gang member. Miller says her daughter changed her story several times before prosecutors were able to get the facts of the case straight. "She was scared or in love or both," Miller said, sighing. Miller's daughter was offered no services, no counseling, and no victim's support. The 21-year-old pimp posted $1 million bail and began to threaten Miller's family, forcing them to relocate. The Millers scraped money together from friends and family to live in a motel room for close to half a year before the trial began.

"Before my daughter went to court, I sent her to two weeks straight of therapy so she could heal and get her head together," Miller said. Miller believes that Prop 35 is a step in the right direction — especially because those convicted are forced to pay restitution to victims — but argues that the law the will not make enough of an impact on victims' lives unless the girls are provided with real services.

Dr. Lois Lee is the director of Children of the Night, a 27-bed shelter and school in Los Angeles for teen prostitutes trying to escape the life. "Lots of these girls show up thinking they are going to marry their pimp," Lee said. "These are girls would be lucky if they were even in foster care — that would mean they were in the system. Most these girls have never seen a social worker in their lives. They have been neglected their whole lives and then here comes a man who says, 'I will take care of you, I will buy you things, and show you affection.'" That's an irresistible offer for girls who have been neglected and abused by their families, Lee said. "Life with a pimp is better than their life at home."

In fact, Lee said, the new trafficking laws don't go far enough, because they do nothing to dissolve the toxic emotional bond an abused woman feels toward her pimp. She said it's easy for politicians and "do-gooders" to come out in favor of something like Prop 35 — it received unanimous bipartisan support — but funding social services at a county level for young prostitutes trying to escape their life is "off limits."

"These girls don't believe they can change their lives to become doctors or lawyers," Lee said. "Their johns are doctors and lawyers, and they go home to their families, while [the girls] are left on the corner."

If Lee could have her way, the biggest policy change she would make for victims of sex trafficking would be eligibility for a 72-hour psychiatric hold, like the kind that was placed on Amanda Bynes and Britney Spears when family members believed the young women were a threat to themselves. (Psychiatric holds can be put into effect only with the recommendation of a police officer or a mental health clinician.)

"These girls are the victims of trauma under great emotional stress," Lee said. Once in a psychiatric facility, Lee said, women trying to escape the life would be able to receive care, observation, and a treatment plan from doctors. Perhaps from there, they could enter a long-term residential facility so they could begin to undo the damage. At Children of the Night, young girls are enrolled in school, given counseling, and taken on field trips; Lee also tries to buy girls the outfits they want or splurge on trips to upscale salons, out of her own pocket.

The girls also go through a kind of re-education training, learning the ways men manipulate and trap women into prostitution, often through a lot of early attention, affection, and promises that descend into abuse and coercion. Eventually, Lee said, the girls almost always break away from their pimps.

"We have to prove to these girls that there's a commitment to make their lives better," Lee insisted.

But that's assuming girls even find their way to Children of the Night. Or they are still young enough to qualify to get in. Even though Children of the Night is less than a mile away from "Ho's Row," half of its beds are empty. The hourly motels along Sepulveda Blvd., however, are completely full.