Twenty years ago, Kamala Harris, the newly elected district attorney of San Francisco, urged California lawmakers to crack down on child sex trafficking and warned her fellow prosecutors that they were doing it all wrong.

Minors should be arrested as “child prostitutes” and not charged with their own abuse, but treated as victims in need of support, she said.

As one of her first acts in elected office, Harris The bill was submitted Republican Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger signed into law a law that increases penalties for adults who coerce minors into sex acts, a move seen as a breakthrough that will transform children from criminals to victims.

It marked an often-overlooked but significant moment in the political career of Harris, now the Democratic presidential nominee, marking a rare early stand by her on an issue that would later be followed by many Democrats and Republicans alike.

Lawmakers were moved to tears at the California Capitol as they listened to testimony from teenagers who had been sold into prostitution and jailed for it.

“This is a big change given how this issue has been handled in the past,” Harris said in celebration when the state Legislature approved the bill in 2004. “We finally have black and white law that says adults cannot purchase children for sex.”

A year later, Schwarzenegger signed another bill he sponsored into law, making human trafficking a felony and making it easier for victims to receive compensation.

Arresting minors for prostitution in California was not officially prohibited until Gov. Jerry Brown signed the law in 2016. How the state handles child sex trafficking remains a contentious topic under legislation being written in Sacramento, but is now increasingly led by Republicans.

But supporters across the political spectrum in California credit Harris with helping to create the “big change” they predicted decades ago, bringing a once-under-the-radar crime issue into the bipartisan mainstream.

“Everyone's trying to show what they're doing about human trafficking now, but she was there when it started,” said Maggie Krell, a former state prosecutor who worked with Harris to shut down Backpage.com, a classified ads site that allegedly facilitated sex trafficking.

“She was really the architect of a legal framework that would hold perpetrators accountable and treat victims as victims, when, frankly, that framework didn't exist before.”

Harris was a cautious politician in many other respects, refusing to support police accountability measures and refusing to take a position on some criminal justice reforms during her time as governor of California.

She broke barriers as the first woman and the first Black person elected as San Francisco district attorney and California attorney general, but she never emphasized her race or gender. Her focus on sex trafficking, whose victims are primarily girls and women of color, was one of the few times her identity was reflected in public policy priorities.

In 2016, as California's attorney general, Harris was the first in the country to bring criminal charges against the operators of Backpage, a site that had made millions by offering “adult services.” She called the site an “online brothel” and alleged that some of its victims were children, and sought to indict the site's leaders on prostitution charges. Republican Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton quickly followed suit.

The complex case stalled amid legal disputes over internet and free speech protections, but the government removed Backpage from the internet in 2018. New charges have been filed, last month, Founder Michael Lacey was sentenced to five years in prison and fined $3 million for money laundering.

But long before Backpage came along, Harris was actively pushing law enforcement to reform underage sex work — a major break from the status quo, which required her colleagues to admit they'd failed.

She oversaw child abuse cases at San Francisco City Hall, focusing on child sex labor. In 2005, a shelter for former child prostitutes was established.she, Anti-Human Trafficking Task Force He became the San Francisco District Attorney in 2007 and then Did the same thing As Attorney General, she Supported bills This has made it harder for traffickers to hide the money they make from their crimes and has increased the need to train first responders to recognize whether they are victims of trafficking.

While working in city hall, she refused to use the term “child prostitution,” a term that officials such as Los Angeles County Sheriff Jim McDonnell would insist on more than a decade later.

“If a victim of trafficking is a girl under the age of 18, the law should not require her to prove she was coerced,” Harris said at the Commonwealth Club of San Francisco. 2010“Her age and youth alone should suffice.”

As concern about human trafficking began to grow nationwide, Republican President George W. Bush First national training conference held It spoke out on the issue in 2004, warning that women and children were being forced into “new forms of slavery”.

But Harris' stance is so unusual in California that Latifah Simon remembers trembling when she got a call from Harris while working as San Francisco's city attorney in the early 2000s, fearing it meant someone was in trouble.

Simon worked at the Young Women's Freedom Center, which helps trafficked girls get off the streets of San Francisco, and said that under then-District Attorney Terrence Hallinan, police were arresting minors for prostitution and sending them to juvenile detention instead of helping them.

But to their surprise, Harris, who succeeded Hallinan in 2004, was on their side.

“Latifa, these women are being raped,” Harris said in that first phone call, Simon recalled. “I raised my eyebrows a little bit and thought, she knows.”

Latifah Simon, a current Democratic congressional candidate, has worked with Harris to help victims of sex trafficking in San Francisco.

(San Francisco Chronicle via Getty)

Simon agreed to meet with Harris and brought him some sex trafficking victims, including a pregnant 14-year-old girl. Harris leaned down, cupped the girl's face in his hands and kissed her forehead, Simon said.

“I remember that moment, the shock she felt when she saw her.”

While Harris' work on sex trafficking was a rare example of her taking a stand ahead of her time and sticking to it throughout her long career, she has been criticized by both Democrats and Republicans for dodging and toying with issues such as: Marijuana and Fracking To garner support in an ever-changing political zeitgeist.

“She played it safe almost every step of the way,” said Rob Stutzman, a Republican strategist who worked for Schwarzenegger when he was governor. “She jumped between positions and backtracked and twisted desperately. … She's more consistent now than she was then.”

Her activism also proved to be a smart political strategy, making her record seem more moderate as she took a tough stance on a crime that her progressive colleagues seeking shorter sentences could not argue against: child abuse.

Fifteen years after Harris supported a California bill to help trafficked children, her political opponent, Donald Trump, issued a similar executive order As president, he declared human trafficking a federal priority and reiterated his concern about “modern-day slavery.”

Kathleen Kim, a professor at Loyola University Law School and a national expert on human trafficking, said Harris' balance of compassion for victims and anger toward perpetrators, as well as her background as a prosecutor, helped her win bipartisan approval on a politically tricky issue at a time when Democrats have resisted tougher sentencing and come under pressure to address prison overcrowding.

“There's no denying that her support helped pass the bill. Her support was essential.” AB22Schwarzenegger called the bill, which he signed in 2005, “an incredibly progressive civil rights law” despite its tougher penalties.

Courtney Baldwin doesn't know Harris personally, but gave a speech in Chicago last month in support of her work to fight sex trafficking.

Youth activist and human trafficking survivor Courtney Baldwin speaks at the Democratic National Convention in Chicago.

(J. Scott Applewhite/The Associated Press)

Baldwin, 31, spent time in the foster care system and was sold into prostitution around California as a teenager before suddenly finding herself homeless at 17. Desperate to survive, she turned to sex work at the urging of a friend.

But she said a pimp, who made money by using people like Baldwin on Backpage.com, eventually controlled her every move, “tormenting” her and forcing her to fulfill sex work quotas.

“I had nothing, so I had to fall back on this new lifestyle, but it got to the point where I felt like I had to do this, I had to do that — I can't sleep until I go outside, I can't eat until I do this,” Baldwin says. “Everything became controlled. I was like, 'Oh, I'm never going to be free.'”

She was eventually freed and now works as a youth advocate in Florida. Last month, Baldwin took to the stage at the Democratic National Convention to give a short speech about Harris' work to fight sex trafficking. Raising his hand as he spoke in the massive convention hall, Baldwin said Harris has “spended her whole life protecting people like me.”

California Politics Editor Laurel Rosenhall contributed to this report.