Thistle Farms Archives - A Path Appears

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

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.

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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Sex Trafficking in the USA: The Journey Continues