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“Sex Trafficking in the U.S.A.”: Keep Shining a Light

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The end of the film

On January 26, 2015, episode one of A Path Appears, “Sex Trafficking in the U.S.A.” aired on screens across the nation. The story began and ended for viewers around the world in under two hours; however, the harsh reality of sex trafficking continues — to this day — to affect victims across the nation.

The story

The National Human Trafficking Resource Center received 3,093 reports of sex trafficking in 2015 alone. Over 90 percent of the cases reported were of women, and 35 percent were children. Globally, the International Labour Organization estimates that 4.5 million individuals are forced into sexual exploitation each year. Ninety-eight percent of these individuals are women, and 20 percent are children.

In the United States, prostitution is distinguished from sex trafficking in that prostitution does not involve external force or coercion. Under this definition, approximately 47,598 individuals were arrested for prostitution in 2014. However, studies have found that nearly 80 percent of women charged with prostitution are coerced or forced into sexual exploitation. Women engaged in sex work typically enter the industry when they are 12 to 16-years-old.

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Thistle Farms has found that, on average, residents and graduates first experience sexual abuse between the ages of 7-11 and first use drugs or alcohol as a coping mechanism as early as age 13. These women spend an average of 10 years on the street before finding freedom. All of Thistle Farms’ residents and graduates have survived rape and/or sexual abuse. For the majority of women, sex work is not a choice. It is one piece of an aggressive cycle that often includes abuse, drug addiction, homelessness, and selling one’s body out of desperation.

Changing the story

At Thistle Farms, we continue to break this cycle by providing housing, physical and emotional healing, and employment to survivors of sex trafficking and prostitution in Nashville, TN. As a result, the stories of survivors change. Eighty-four percent of residents at Thistle Farms graduate the two-year residential program clean and sober; since 2005, 62 percent of graduates of the residential program have remained in stable housing, are working, and are sober. In 2015, alone, residents and graduates employed at Thistle Farms social enterprises earned a combined total of $825,000 in income.

Why show the film?

The challenge to the viewer, and to each of us, is to not let the story end once the film is over. Keep showing the film, because if you do it will change a life. When A Path Appears premiered on January 26th, Thistle Farms’ website welcomed 6,934 visitors in one day, attracting over 3,470 new Facebook fans and garnering record online product sales. As a result, it was a monumental day and an incredible year for the residents and graduates at Thistle Farms: Anika purchased her first home; Kristin drove her children to school for the first time; Lori relished her first glimpse of the ocean; and Jovita spoke in front of a crowd of hundreds.

These survivor-leaders’ stories are changing because of you. The cycle is being broken, and women at Thistle Farms are finding freedom.

Get involved and become a Social Good Ambassador today! And find out how you can get a grant to screen A Path Appears on your campus: showofforce.com/ambassador-screening-grants.

The Journey Continues: Sex Trafficking in the USA

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In A Path Appears: Sex Trafficking in the USA, Nicholas Kristof, Sheryl WuDunn, Ashley Judd, Blake Lively and Malin Akerman traveled across the country to investigate a problem that is often overlooked. They visited programs that have successfully implemented support systems to protect girls vulnerable to sex trafficking, rebuild the lives of survivors, and reduce the demand to help end trafficking. But the story didn’t end after 90 minutes, here’s your chance to find out where the characters are today.

Shana and Shelia from Thistle Farms are both doing great! Shana is rocking the sales team, helping to place Thistle Farms’ products with over 400 retailers and extending her role as mentor and educator by joining the A Path Appears team in the Capitol to share her experiences with Ashley Judd and select members of Congress. Shelia joined Shana on stage at the Nashville premiere of A Path Appears and just completed her first year overseeing our program for inmates at Magdalene on the Inside, a reentry program for women incarcerated at the Tennessee Prison for Women!

Thistle Farms is thriving too. It reached its $1M milestone in revenue this past summer and launched a new initiative called Shared Trade, taking the Thistle Farms model global. Founder Becca Stevens also published a new book, The Way of Tea and Justice, recounting the victories and challenges of launching the Thistle Farms Café, and sharing the powerful personal stories of café workers, tea laborers, and volunteers whose lives were transformed by the journey.

You can continue to support Thistle Farms on our Crowdrise Page at: https://www.crowdrise.com/ThistleFarmsMagdalene

Cook County Sheriff Tom Dart and his team are still leading highly successful John Day stings across the country. The eighth “National Day of Johns Arrests” ran for 18 days from July 17 through August 3, 2014 and brought together 28 law enforcement agencies throughout 14 states. This push also expanded the mission of the program and targeted pimps and traffickers who have forced victims into lives of prostitution.

Their most recent sting led to 14 sex trafficking/pimping arrests, 496 sex solicitation arrests (johns) and $174,205 in minimum fines from 172 johns arrested as a result of fake Backpage.com ads

Anecdotally, across agencies, law enforcement reported arresting a federal border agent in full uniform as well as a man who had his infant child in the backseat while attempting to purchase sex. Las Vegas Police Department recovered eight juvenile trafficking victims and Cook County Sheriff’s Police arrested a man who had previously done time for taking part in the murder of a prostitute. These stories are indicative of the “ordinary” and violent nature of these crimes.

Savannah’s trafficker was arrested and sentenced 15 years in prison on October 10, 2014 for coercing a teenager into prostitution. Parallel to this, the missing girl Nicholas Kristof helped locate using backpage.com also received justice, her traffickers were also arrested.

The documentary represents a very specific point in time in the lives of two girls in the My Life My Choice program, and the organization continues to work with them and respect their need for confidentiality. Both girls continue to work with My Life My Choice mentors to find stability as they transition into adulthood.

You can continue to support My Life My Choice on our Crowdrise Page at:  https://www.crowdrise.com/MyLifeMyChoice 

A Path Appears: America’s Equality Illusion

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In a recent interview with Community Cinema, Director and Executive Producer of A Path Appears, Maro Chermayeff, recounted powerful moments from her filmmaking journey including helping police rescue a missing girl in Boston. “We as a team were integrally and directly involved in finding a young girl, missing for over three months,” she revealed. “Suddenly, without preparation, Nick found her on a trafficking site, in the presence of her shocked and frightened mother and father.”

Inspired by and based on Nicholas Kristof and Sheryl WuDunn’s newest book by the same name, A Path Appears is a follow-up to the critically acclaimed series, Half the Sky: Turning Oppression into Opportunity for Women Worldwide.

“We wanted to break down the illusion that some Americans seem to have: that extreme poverty, sex trafficking, or gender-based violence are not happening here to the same extent, when in fact these are very much happening at home,” said Chermayeff.

Filmed in the United States, Colombia, Haiti and Kenya, A Path Appears explores the ripple effect of poverty, and also shines a light on individuals and organizations working to make a difference. In choosing the subjects, Chermayeff and the production team from Show of Force vetted hundreds of stories, and carefully selected the most compelling ones to inspire greater impact. “Our goal is to introduce our audience to individuals and issues they may not know about, and to take them to new places they may never go, in the interest of raising awareness and fostering positive solutions and change,” she says.

Nine actor/advocates including Eva Longoria, Blake Lively, Alfre Woodard, Mia and Ronan Farrow traveled with the production team to shed light on issues such as early education, sex trafficking, teen pregnancy and gender-based violence covered in the film. So, what does Chermayeff wish to achieve with this film? She hopes that people are “transported by incredible storytelling and filmmaking, understanding that there are real issues out in the world that deserve and require our attention, and that more importantly, there are solutions to the issues.”

A Path Appears premieres on PBS, Monday, January 26 at 10pm ET.

Read the full interview online at: http://bit.ly/1DpM3R7

Survivors Lead the Fight Against Sexual Exploitation

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Two weeks ago, I visited Tanya at her new home: her college dorm. Tanya once thought that college wasn’t in the cards for her —she didn’t believe she could find a community where she would fit in. When we first met Tanya, she was a fourteen-year-old survivor of sexual exploitation. She had been commercially exploited by men who believed that she was a commodity that they could use and throw away. Her community saw her as a “bad kid”. Tanya felt judged and worthless.

When Tanya met her Survivor Mentor, Ann, she wasn’t convinced that we could help. She felt alone and profoundly angry—she had every right to be. She had been victimized by a multibillion dollar industry that systematically targets the most vulnerable children in our communities.

Now four years later, Tanya is a strong, proud young woman. She graduated high school with the rest of her peers last year and was given a four year scholarship to a top university. She knows that what happened to her was not her fault—that she is neither damaged nor worthless. She believes in her heart that her Mentor cares for her, wants the best for her, and has full faith in her. She has found her voice and sees herself as a leader in the movement to end exploitation. She has been an active member of our Leadership Corps, and is someone other girls in our program look up to.

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My Life, My Choice strives to help survivors of sexual exploitation like Tanya find their voice, their place, their strength and their resilience. Our Survivor Mentor program is the core of a continuum of services we offer. Youth survivors, as well as those that are deemed to be at high risk for exploitation, receive one on one support for as long as they need it. We have served girls since our founding in 2002 and last spring launched a pilot program for boys and transgender youth. My Life My Choice is a nationally recognized survivor-led organization working to stem the tide of commercial sexual exploitation of adolescents. As of July 2014, we have trained over 7,000 youth providers, led prevention groups for more than 1,750 girls and mentored over 300 girls in the Greater Boston area.

As we walked through her dorm, Tanya pointed to different doors where her new friends lived. She told me about the incredible food in the cafeteria, her really nice roommate, her own messy side of her dorm room, and how great her public speaking class is. I left homemade cookies, pizza money, and a card from all the staff telling her how much we all love her. Tanya deserves this and so much more. Every young person does.

Like Tanya, there are countless girls who are commercially sexually exploited every day. Like Tanya, they need compassion, support, faith, and opportunity to become the next generation of leaders in the fight to end exploitation.

 

About the blogger:
 
Lisa has been working with vulnerable young people in a variety of capacities for almost twenty-five years. Her professional experience includes running a long-term shelter for homeless teen parents, developing a diversion program for violent youth offenders, and working in outpatient mental health, health promotion, and residential treatment settings. She has served as a consultant to the Massachusetts Administrative Office of the Trial Court’s “Redesigning the Court’s Response to Prostitution” project, and as a primary researcher on the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services national study of programs serving human trafficking victims. She has served as the Co-Chair of the Training and Education Committee of the Massachusetts Attorney General’s Task Force on Human Trafficking, and is currently the Chair of the Training and Education Implementation Subcommittee.

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