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Setting the Captives Free

Today traffickers are using new methods to recruit, especially the internet, including sites such as Facebook, BlackPlanet, Mocospace, Backpage, and SugarDaddie. Traffickers use these websites to secretly buy and sell children. One of the initiatives that we’ve taken from the Thorn Foundation is to do a follow-up survey with our clients. When we come into contact with exploited children or they come to us, we have them fill out information and we help make sure that the kids are placed in an emotionally safe environment.

Experts are delighted with the work we’re doing to weed out those traffickers, because they know we have direct access to survivors of trafficking. The National Human Trafficking Hotline in Washington, DC, works with us.

In our program, as soon as girls come forward we connect them with law enforcement. Many of the girls we’ve helped rescue have worked with law enforcement and we’ve seen successful prosecutions of their traffickers, some facing nearly a life sentence in prison while others were deported. As a survivor, I believe we need to help the girls, and the only way to stop trafficking is to shut down the traffickers.

Another organization called GEMS (Girls Empowering Mentoring Services), based in New York, mentors girls to help them stay out of the life by providing exit strategies and support. Rachel Lloyd, a woman from England who is also a survivor, founded the GEMS program in the United States. When I first began doing street outreach in 2009, I worked with several of her people, and now I myself have been trained under her tutelage.

We want to be led by God’s Spirit; therefore, we don’t beg or try to force people to leave their lifestyle. We want them to know about honor, dignity, respect, and love for themselves and for others. For them to embrace such qualities, we have to model it ourselves.

We also try to do special things for survivors. For example, in August 2012 we took a group of our rescued survivors on a retreat to the Ritz-Carlton Hotel in Naples, Florida, and we took others to Disney World in Orlando. Now we have our first group of Survivor Leaders, whom we are training to be good listeners to others coming out of the sex trade. This group of survivors we have helped rescue are now our leaders, listeners, and mentors to those in the public school system and universities who need to talk to a healed survivor.

We have to convince the girls that there are people like us who care and who stand behind them. If we, God’s people, don’t stand up for them, who will? If we’re not there to guide them, most of them will go back into the old lifestyle. But because we speak to them from the honest example of volunteers and an army of survivors who have successfully come out of that life, many of them want to be free.

Pulling them out of the lifestyle is hard enough, but that’s only the beginning. I point that out because a number of churches and organizations are zealous to free the girls but don’t stay with them and help them adjust to a new life. Those girls have been damaged emotionally and often physically. It’s not easy for them to make that adjustment. Because they’ve encountered so little integrity, they don’t know how to trust honesty. Not only do we have to prove we love them, we also have to prove ourselves to them—many, many times. But it’s worth the effort to see the miracles God does in their lives.

Part of what drives me is remembering my own life. If someone had given me support or helped my mother when she was living in an abusive marriage, my life might have been different. For me, the one thing that kept me going in spite of all the abuse was that I knew God loved me and I knew my mom loved me. If these children have just one safe person whom they can trust, they will be able to move beyond their past.

That probably sounds odd to some, because I was weak, terrified, and had no one in whom I could confide. Yet God was lovingly patient with me even though I failed hundreds of times. And he has given me the privilege of leading many trafficking survivors to a personal relationship with Jesus Christ.

Not many of those survivors knew—truly knew—the God who loves them. We try to model that for them. We’ve helped a number of survivors by going into a support ministry with them. We constantly say, “You can do this, you know.”

Instead of saying, “Oh, you poor victim,” we say, “You are more than a conqueror through Christ who gives you strength, and through him you can do all things!” We never give up on them, no matter what!

Not only is hope the concept of our ministry, it’s also an acronym.

H =	Healing
O =	Opportunity
P =	Purpose
E =	Empowerment

God has used everything that I’ve gone through to help those kids and young women. There aren’t many experiences the girls talk about that I can’t identify with. I hate what happened to me, but part of my redemption is to see God taking my pain, turning it around, and using it to help others who are where I once was.

After someone comes out of the sex trade, we refer them for services such as free tutoring, counseling, food, and clothing through like-minded individuals, faith-based organizations, or churches that have agreed to our antiviolence and traffic-free standards. Through the kindness of Christian congregations, we offer free Bibles and study guides. We’re trying to help survivors grab hold of their identity in Christ and gain a vision for their future. Then they too can live victoriously.

I also created a human trafficking assessment tool that is being used nationwide within the public school and foster care systems and by law enforcement to help identify those who might become or have been victims of trafficking. We know, for instance, that if children come from economically disadvantaged backgrounds with abuse in their past, have prior exposure to drugs or alcohol, or if their parents have been in any form of prostitution or commercial sex, those factors predispose children to the vulnerability of being trafficked.

Even though not everyone is vulnerable to being picked up by traffickers, kidnapped, lured, manipulated, or taken, we need to be aware of the factors that exist and protect the innocent and susceptible. Traffickers lurk everywhere. They go into the malls, they sit in McDonald’s, they infiltrate our school systems, and they take their kids to the park and to hotel pools.

The Trafficking Victim’s Protection Act—a law that protects victims and governs anti-trafficking in the United States—says that anyone engaged in any form of paid sex who is under the age of eighteen is automatically a victim of trafficking. If anyone gains financially through the use of a child’s body for commercial sex, that law says the child is a victim of human trafficking and that the trafficker has committed a federal crime, whether they’re a parent, boyfriend, false friend, or child protection worker.

In the fall semester of 2012, when I first began to work on this book, we uncovered sixteen children in three schools—one middle school and two high schools—in the southern region of America. They were being recruited right at their schools, on Facebook, through friends, and even through school computers that they were using to communicate with their pimps.

Through many methods, kids are seduced into trafficking. It often begins with posing for pictures or videos. They start taking off an item or two of their clothing, and it seems harmless. Each time they take off a little more until they’re involved in compromising sexual acts that they never thought they would be involved in. Then they’re ashamed and feel worthless for being tricked into that life—which makes them easy targets for total manipulation and domination. By posting compromising photos online, children are letting traffickers know that they are easy targets for recruitment into false modeling scams, abusive boyfriends, or false-friend scenarios.

Let’s look at the money. At the time of this writing, a sex act with a child costs on average $160 to $180, with the trafficker usually getting paid $50 to $100. Payment to the recruiter (usually an older child) takes another $20 to $30. Payment to the hotel runs $30 to $50. Girls like April, who we rescued in Miami, end up with maybe twenty bucks. It’s not unusual for those girls to service ten men in a single night, but that depends how deeply into the life they are. Usually it’s only one man in the beginning. Then two a night. Then three. Too often, a middle schooler who earns $200 a day thinks she’s hit the jackpot.

One child can bring traffickers up to $3,000 a night. And how many times a year does that child have to perform? One child who was rescued said she had to perform six nights a week, 52 weeks a year. That’s almost a million dollars a year, and she was only one of their exploited children. Do you know how much sexual abuse that child had to endure for traffickers to make that much money?

Once victims become desensitized, they do what becomes familiar. They stop struggling and move into a variety of normalizing and numbing coping mechanisms to alleviate the reality of constant sexual abuse. These experiences often open the door to domestic violence as victims accept this as a way of life. And worse, they think that’s normal. My PhD dissertation, Vulnerability Factors, Lures, and Recruitment Methods Used to Entrap American Children into Sex Trafficking, shows the results of trafficking on American children and how they develop certain coping mechanisms to deal with these effects.

Who knows this better than I do?

Drugs play a major role. If children become addicted, they are more likely to be exposed to trafficking to pay for those drugs. I tell kids, “You can’t control what happens to you after you open the door to drugs. Just say no to drugs!” They don’t realize how much worse their lives can become once they start using drugs. They could be locked inside a room, kept prisoner in a brothel, or chained to a bed. And that’s not just in the movies; it’s reality for many victims.

Because I help bring the children out, I follow through with law enforcement, social services, and churches. To do that usually means sooner or later I have to talk with the child’s parent. When I meet with parents at a school or facility, I have to say, “Your child has been a victim of a crime. Please work with us in helping them to get those bad people out of their lives.”

Our girls who have cooperated with law enforcement have never had to go to trial. We have created collaboration efforts with a unique process to make sure that trafficking is stopped and that the first time a girl comes forward becomes an empowering time to the survivor. The girls who are involved have gained from working with law enforcement and are free to assist when they see that they are actually helping others get out or preventing trafficking from happening to somebody else.

I’m not part of a law enforcement agency, but I work alongside such agencies to end trafficking. Many agencies are now training their personnel to become victim-centered and are compassionate and help the survivors of this crime find strength.

“Be a safe person” is the first thing I tell adults who want to help at-risk children. Become the person to whom they can turn. If you feel inadequate to help, say so and give them a list of individuals and organizations that care.

Those exploited children also need to know they can tell what happened to them. They need to speak up and be heard. They need a voice—a voice for the voiceless in our society.

Once the kids we work with decide to come out of trafficking, we take them to church. The majority of them turn to Jesus Christ for salvation and hope. We’re excited because several survivors have been baptized and are becoming involved in a local church.

Others, obviously, are still in the seeking process, but so far we have a high success rate where kids don’t return to that life. They’re less likely to go back if people like us can help them break that invisible bondage and provide a mentoring relationship with a safe, Christian adult. Those children can finally realize that they are loved and lovable and that someone really does care about them.

We work with the parents and try to provide parent-like ministry. We cooperate with other groups and local congregations to provide free parenting classes. Those within law enforcement have asked us to form parenting support groups, because the parents of these children also need support.

One thing that makes our ministry unique is that it is from survivors to survivors of human trafficking, domestic violence, and other sexual exploitation. If you want to help, consider partnering with a survivor-based organization. Those who are being trafficked will more likely identify with a survivor of trafficking or abuse.

Even once they’re free, survivors have many, many aftereffects. Some of them deal with serious mental health issues, such as post-traumatic stress disorder and bipolar disorder. With no one around them to care for their well-being, some deal with financial issues, homelessness, loss of identity, and feelings of not belonging. Others—both boys and girls—struggle with bisexuality and homosexuality, and we want to be there to encourage and not judge them. It’s easier for some of them to return to the streets or to traffickers if they’re not provided with a safe mentor or homelike environment where they can be nurtured and feel supported.

From darkness into light. That is the life we offer them, and we work with others to see it through to the end. This is a place of spiritual battle for those victimized children. We rejoice when girls and boys come out of human trafficking. The ones who have come out of that life help us mentor the younger ones. I give those young people the same message I received and embraced. Remember this: God will never leave you or forsake you.

If you have been a victim of human trafficking or any form of sexual exploitation or domestic violence, I want to hear from you.

Please contact There Is H.O.P.E For Me, Inc. via our website, www.thereishopeforme.org, or email me at info@thereishopeforme.org.