Juvenile girls are being sold for sex, right here in Portland.

Keith Bickford with Oregon’s Human Trafficking Task Force has watched the number of exploited juveniles quietly reached epidemic proportions.

“The problem is overwhelming; there are just so many girls. You’ve really got to look at these kids as kids. They’re just children,” Bickford said. “They need help. There is a reason they’re doing what they’re doing.”

One young prostitute, whose identity is being withheld, says that once pimps manipulate young girls like herself into selling their bodies, there isn’t “any safe way out.”

“I tried to leave but I haven’t had no help whatsoever. No resources, nothing,” the girl said.

In a tiny apartment hidden inside a local church a young prostitute hides from her pimp, hoping to protect her two young children.

Her pimp has kept her babies away from her, forcing her to work the streets.  This hiding place is not a program to help her, just a generous pastor looking to help a family desperately in need

 Also: Combating child sex slavery in Oregon, Pt. 1

James Pond, director of the local charity Transitions Global, says this isn’t a prostitution issue.

He says it’s a human slavery issue, resulting in the wholesale exploitation of a generation of girls.

Pond and his charity work with prostitutes in order to help “get their lives back.”

KGW first reported on Transition Global six months ago.

Pond and his family had just moved back to Portland from Cambodia, where they created shelter and rehabilitation center for teenage sex slaves.

The center has since become an international model for saving exploited girls.

The original story aired by KGW exposed Portland’s sex trafficking, Pond says.

“The Oregon Human Trafficking Task Force is a result of the story you guys did, contacted us and said we really need your help in establishing a shelter here,” he said.

Bickford said the issue stems from “this huge whole in our system.”

“The girls need help, but they are so high risk and so difficult to deal with that we don't have anyone trained to deal with them,” he said.

But that’s about to change. Oregon authorities are now helping Transitions Global create a safe secure facility right here in the Portland area.

The rural property is located at a secret location near the city.

Work is underway to transform this large home on acreage into a safe, peaceful place to help exploited girls heal. He said it will be unlike any shelter of rehabilitation program ever seen in Portland.   

“It's not a correctional environment. It's really more of a home shelter, where the girls will have a fairly normal life, but it's a secure facility as far as keeping bad guys out,” Pond said.

Pond has a security background and once worked for the U.S. Special Forces. The Portland facility will have a staff including counselors, therapists and doctors to help with the girls medical and psychological needs.

The shelter will also include vocational training so the girls can transition back into society. 

Some 70 percent of the girls who enter the Transitions Global shelter in Cambodia have successfully reentered society, according to Pond. He hopes to bring that same success to the forgotten girls of Portland.

Local authorities hope the program will eventually help the girls feel safe enough to testify against their pimps. It’s something Oregon state attorneys say they can’t get the girls to do.

“Hopefully, in time, they're going to want to cooperate with police and understand that we are here to help -- move it up to the court system and put these bad guys away,” Bickford said.  

Pond was shocked to see the problem he’s spent years fighting overseas is out of control right here at his home in Oregon.

“I think the United States in working on this human trafficking issue globally, has started to look internally, and said, ‘Wow, we really have issues here that we need to begin evaluating and addressing in a serious way,’” he said.

But to truly save these girls, experts say the public needs to view prostitution from another perspective.

“These are not delinquent kids volunteering to be in prostitution. There are young girls that are being exploited, taken advantage of and abused,” Bickford said.

Terry Williams is a former prostitute who managed to escape without any programs to help her. 

“You need to see (young prostitutes) through your human lenses. What do you see? A little girl -- you see little girls out there. You see people suffering and they need help now,” Williams said.

 More information about: Sex slave problem

For more information about Transitions Global and how you can help these girls heres a link to the charity website and the founder's blog.