Everyone Can Help Survivors of Sex Trafficking. Here is How.
Public reactions around a newly released film, Sound of Freedom, are rightfully intense.It’s not just a movie. There are real children — and adults — who desperately deserve our help. However, there is no rescue scene for most victims. Whether they live in Juarez, Baltimore or Bangkok their abuse and enslavement is real. Yet, we can’t give up. Lives depend on us.
In 2016, I met a teenage girl named Laila who had escaped her trafficker. She had no identification or place to go. That night, Laila moved into the safe home that the nonprofit I founded just out of college, FAIR Girls, ran for trafficked girls in Washington, D.C. Her trauma caused memory loss and post traumatic stress disorder. There were days she was too sad to do much more than sit in our support groups in our small drop in center.
Laila is one of over 2,000 survivors of sex trafficking I have served in the last 19 years.
At 18, I became friends with another foreign teenage girl who I learned was a victim of sex trafficking. After she vanished from our small school in Germany, I tried to find her. I failed. I was told by the police that “girls like that” just disappear. There was nothing I could do, they said. I disagreed. In 2003, I co-founded FAIR Girls to help find and care for trafficked girls in the Balkans.
In 2006, I met two African American teen girls who, like Laila, were being sold at night on the streets and online. Over the years, approximately 90% of the sex trafficked girls who came to us were U.S. citizens trafficked in the United States.
The girls who came to FAIR Girls were often sold out in the open on websites like Backpage.com, in hotels and homes all around us. Sometimes, they were sold on webcams where men would pay to watch them in sexual videos they are forced to do at the threat of their traffickers while their parents were unaware downstairs.
After almost a year, Laila began to regain her confidence. She dreamed of school and finding a job. She eventually left our safe house to live with friends. She wanted to forget her past, she said. Only, her past — maybe her trafficker but we do not know — caught up with her and in the summer of 2018, Laila was shot in a parking lot and murdered just miles from where we first met. I felt hopeless.
If we want to stop sex trafficking, of children or adults, we have to invest deeply and focus on the child’s whole life, not just the rescue moment. We must also understand that many times, these “rescue moments” are in fact slow, quiet efforts to gain the trust of young survivors who often in fact know their traffickers. Traffickers gain their young victims trust by offering love, a sense of family and basic needs.
We can do better for child victims of sex trafficking.
We need to invest in programs to prevent child sex trafficking such as better after school programs, counseling and financial support for young single parents whose children are most at risk.
We need to invest in safe housing and individualized counseling for children in juvenile justice center or foster children like Laila.
We must believe survivors and stop arresting them. We should not arrest victims of sex trafficking. Approximately 50% of the survivors I have worked with were arrested before they were identified as victims. This leads to being placed on the sex offender registry, denied government housing and access of education. It’s a black eye on their future.
After meeting hundreds of trafficked teen girls who are arrested rather than protected, I co-founded Karana Rising to ensure survivors are believed by the very justice and welfare systems that should be there to protect them. This breaks the cycle of injustice one survivor at a time while we focus on systemic changes like advancing policies to prevent the arrests and vacate records.
Everyone can help child survivors of sex trafficking.
I’m still in touch with many of the survivors who have truly changed my life. Some are moms now, some have Masters degrees, or are married. Some are too busy to talk to me because they are just happy with their lives. Others are barely making it and have fallen back into sex trafficking.
Weeks after Laila was murdered in cold blood, I found a tiny pearl and gold bracelet she had made me in our jewelry therapeutic arts program. I put it on my wrist and have never taken it off. I often touch the beads to remember her and my commitment to survivors like her.
What if her teachers, social workers or even law enforcement officials had seen her while she was being trafficked? I can’t help but wonder if maybe her story could have included children, love and college, too. What if everyone had been there to help Laila before it was too late. She could have been more than just a girl whose story I tell because she can’t anymore.
Laila heard the sound of freedom. Only, even after she rescued herself with our help, she didn’t get to live it.
She deserved to, though. Every survivor deserves freedom.
If you want to help survivors, learn more at @Karanarising
Andrea Powell is the co-founding executive director of Karana Rising, a survivor of sexual violence. www.karanarising.org @andreaPowell
