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Sex Trafficking in the USA: The Journey Continues

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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 

Building Community-Rooted Change

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This summer I was driving down a dirt road in Uganda with Canon Gideon, who founded Hope University near Kampla to serve at risk youth and young adults in severe poverty and suffering the effects of HIV/AIDS. We were developing a partnership between women tea farmers in Uganda and the women who work for the social enterprise here called Thistle Farms. I had founded a program almost 20 years before this drive with housing and work for women who have been trafficked, traumatized, locked in closets, beaten, raped, sold, addicted and feeling rootless. We were discussing how to become better advocates for women who have known the underside of bridges, the backside of anger, the inside of prison walls and the short side of justice.

I told Gideon the story of my abuse, and how I decided 18 years ago that I needed to confront my abuser. When I did, I was surprised that the first thing the man who molested me asked was, “Who have you told?” In response, Gideon told me that on his journey when he told the head of the seminary that he was HIV positive in 1988, the first thing his Professor said was, “Don’t tell anyone.”

Canon Gideon with Becca Stevens in Uganda

The documentary A Path Appears, celebrates brave women who dared to speak their truth and helps us discover how our truth can set us free. The truth untangles deep problems and hidden secrets. Then and only then, we find communities committed to housing, recovery, trauma therapy, economic freedom and love without judgment.

Many people who see this documentary will ask how it’s possible that the New York Times reports that more than 100,000 women and girls in the U.S. are at risk for trafficking. More folks will want to know what they can do to help.

Thistle Farms is committed to continuing its efforts to offer education and outreach to assist more cities in creating sister communities. We welcome everyone to our workshops and feed them at the Thistle Stop Café. We want to help be a part of a movement with social media advocates, conscious consumers and new friends in the fight to witness to the truth that love is the most powerful force for social change.

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As Gideon and I drove and talked about the universal issues of sexual violence borne on the individual backs of women all over the globe, we remembered that this work is non-competitive. We need each other to grow our economic leverage, political clout, and clinical insights to make a difference in a culture that still buys and sell women, preys on the most vulnerable, and keeps the secrets of predators.

As we drove down the dirt road, I felt myself washed in a wave of grief at the injustices I’ve seen, and the tenderness I feel towards the mercy of a community that hopes together. We are committed with friends throughout the world to make the social enterprise more successful, to bring in more women from the streets and to make the system more just. We need each other to do this work, which is not issue oriented but rather community rooted, to create systemic change.

 

About the blogger:
 
Becca Stevens is an Episcopal priest and founder of Magdalene, residential communities of women who have survived prostitution, trafficking and addiction. She founded the social enterprise Thistle Farms which currently employs nearly 50 residents and graduates, and houses a natural body care line, a paper and sewing studio, Thistle Stop Café, and its new global initiative, Shared Trade. Her work has been featured in the New York Times, ABC World News, NPR, PBS, CNN, and Huffington Post, and was named as one of 15 Champions of Change for violence against women by the White House in 2011. Stevens has also been inducted into the Tennessee Women’s Hall of Fame, and recently launched her newest book, “The Way of Tea & Justice: Rescuing the World’s Favorite Beverage from its Violent History.”

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The Reality of Sex Trafficking in America

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No girl deserves to just disappear. Every girl is valuable. These two beliefs guide my life and are what inspired me to found FAIR Girls when I was just 23.

It all started my first year of college while studying abroad in Germany. I’m from a small Texas town and had always dreamed of going to Europe, but what I found there was nothing like what I expected.

Her name was Rafif, and she was 19. Just a little older than I was then. We bonded quickly during German classes. And, I soon learned the man in his 60s who came to pick her up each day after class was her husband. While I was studying and hanging out with my boyfriend, Rafif was a domestic slave who had been traded to pay for a debt her parents owed to a man with three other wives.

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Rafif slowly trusted me. Her bruises were a map of the exploitation and trafficking she endured as his wife and servant. As far as I know, she is the first victim of human trafficking who I had ever met. When she disappeared a few months later, I decided to search for her. What was perhaps as devastating as her disappearance was that no one else seemed to care. The police, social services, and even friends told me that was just what happened to girls like her. It was as if Rafif was expendable. While I searched for her throughout Bosnia, for years afterwards, she was gone. And, she is why I believe reaching girls before they disappear into the world of human trafficking is critical. That is why, FAIR Girls now trains hundreds of law enforcement and social workers who are at the front lines to see when girls like Rafif are being exploited or abused.

I didn’t have a background in nonprofit management. I don’t come from a wealthy family whose resources could sustain me during the early years. Like most nonprofits, we started at my kitchen table with volunteers. I worked late nights on top of my job and often missed out on dates and family gatherings to try to make FAIR Girls thrive.

It wasn’t until I had been building FAIR Girls a few years that I began to realize that sex trafficking was as pervasive in the United States as it was in places like Bosnia, where Rafif had grown up. In 2007, we started going to girls’ detention facilities and foster homes to educate girls about sex trafficking. By this time, we knew that pimps often lured girls out of foster homes, and that most of them had been abused at home and lived in extreme poverty. It was at one of these homes where I met 17-year-old Janel, who had been exploited and sold by her foster mom for drug money since she was 4.

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WASHINGTON, DC - JULY 10:

After talking for hours outside the group home, I told her that if she wanted to talk about things, she could call me. And at 2AM, the day before Thanksgiving and two days before her 18th birthday, she did. Her mom had kicked her out again, and was afraid of her mom’s pimp who had threatened to kill her. She was hiding in her pajamas behind Starbucks in downtown D.C. when I showed up. As we jumped into a taxi to go to Child and Family Services, people where passing us by on their way to work at law firms and investment firms along K street.

When we arrived to Child and Family Services, we were told they couldn’t help because she was turning 18. They didn’t believe Janel was a victim of sex trafficking. Actually, they didn’t know that sex trafficking happened in America. I didn’t know where Janel would stay that night because all of the shelters were full. Ten hours later, I found one woman, a volunteer who had met Janel weeks earlier at a church, who offered to let her move into her small apartment with her.

Over the next few years, I saw Janel almost every day in FAIR Girls’ drop-in center and we often talked late into the night when she felt alone and not sure she could make it. She attended art classes, job finding classes, and even volunteered at FAIR Girls as part of a school project. That was now seven years ago, and I just heard from Janel that she is in community college and has her own apartment.

When I was growing up, I had parents who made sure I was safe, got to school, and was loved. Most of the girls I know at FAIR Girls didn’t have adults who could or would care for them. That is how girls like Janel almost disappear every day in America and around the world without a trace.

There are so many more girls who need our help. FAIR Girls has more than 20 employees now. There are police, social workers, and teachers who still need to be trained. More laws to ensure victims of sex trafficking are protected rather than be arrested as “prostitutes” need to be passed.

Sometimes I look back at where we started, and all I can think is “whoa.” We recently opened the Vida Home, an emergency home for girls aged 17 to 24 who, like Janel, have nowhere to go after escaping sex trafficking. Yet, there is a lot more that we want to do. And, we can’t stop now. I will always believe that every single girl who comes into FAIR Girls is worth fighting for, no matter what her past may be.

 

About the blogger:
 
Andrea Powell is founder and Executive Director of FAIR Girls, a nonprofit serving young women and girl survivors of commercial sexual exploitation and human trafficking. Since 2004, Andrea has led FAIR Girls’ efforts to prevent the sex trafficking and exploitation of girls in the United States and in FAIR Girls’ global programs. Andrea currently serves as the FAIR Girls’ chief liaison to the D.C. Anti Trafficking Task Force and has trained hundreds of U.S. and international first line responders on how to identify and assist victims of sex and forced labor trafficking. Ms. Powell currently acts as an adjunct professor at the Elliott School of International Affairs at George Washington University teaching courses in global sex trafficking and girl’s empowerment.

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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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