National Public Radio [NPR] has shared several stories that shed light on the harsh reality of sex trafficking in America. The journalists of these stories explore the phenomenon of the lure for traffickers and johns to exploit underage girls or women in prostitution and the complex interaction of factors that increase girls’ vulnerability to pimps and traffickers.

Recently NPR shared a story on American gangs moving to traffick youth into prostitution for financial gain. This report depicts what NFNL staff has heard from law enforcement at conferences discussing human trafficking over the last several years and from the stories and lives of the women who have found an escape. NPR reports gangs find selling girls comes “with virtually no costs” and that “it is not like moving, or as risky as moving narcotics. It is not as risky as extorting business owners” according to authorities. Gangs who pimp/traffick girls and women may use a variety of tactics to entice, coerce, or force a victim into prostitution.

Another report run in 2010 on All Things Considered shared the story of two young women that were trafficked in their teenage years in Oakland, California. We recommend you listen to the audiocast of this story for its thorough exploration of the culture surrounding the girls and the men in this story, the girls’ recruitment into prostitution, and their escape and healing from “the game.”

The two young women share the harsh reality of their life as prostitutes which seems to counter the normalization and even glamorization of pimping and prostitution they experienced growing up in a neighborhood with rampant trafficking. “I used to fantasize about boys that are gangstas. ‘Oh, they get hecka money and they’re just gansta and cute, and it’s cool.’ That’s ok when you’re in high school. After that, what are you gonna do with your life? You’re gonna be in jail or you’re gonna be dead, and I don’t want part of either one of those.”

NPR shares the diffculty for many in the general public to understand the phenomenon and effect that the normalization of pimping and prostitution and responds that “many [victims] see it as an alternative to desperate home lives, friends getting shot, no food on the table and absent parents. And pimps take advantage of that.”

The report also discusses with authorities and social workers who interact regularly with numerous other victims in the Oakland area, the plight of youth trafficked. Alameda County Assistant District Attorney Sharmin Bock likens trafficking and pimping to brainwashing. “Remember Guyana and Jim Jones, where everybody’s drinking that Kool-Aid drink? Well, that’s exactly what these girls have had. Let’s call it pimp juice. They’ve all had it, and they can’t see past either their affection for their trafficker, or their fear of him,” says Brock in the NPR report.

The broadcast ends with the young women sharing their ongoing process of healing and how even decisions about dressing up or wearing heels stirs an inner-dialogue of their abuse and reclaiming of their bodies. A year after her escape from prostitution the same young woman reflects, “When I was 15, I didn’t see myself alive at the age of 18. And now I am 18, and I can look back and say, ‘You know, I’ve been through all that, and I’ve come out of it.’ It feels wonderful.”

If you want to continue to reading or listening to NPR broadcasts on this topic, the following stories may be of interest for further education or insight into the reality of trafficking. They again explore the Oakland community which can reflect what is reported on youth in Atlanta, New York, and Dallas:

The second part of the report explores the response of Oakland Police and the FBI to sex trafficking of American victims.

Almost a year later, this broadcast follows-up on the community response in Oakland when parents and advocates realized that pimps were targeting their middle school girls for trafficking.

Kelly is a highly motivated Community Relations and Marketing professional with expertise in communicating to a variety of audiences. Since 2007, Kelly has worked as the Assistant Director of Development for The Family Place, where she co-managed an annual $2.5 million development fund. In this role, she administered public awareness ad campaigns that received national attention, lead fundraisers and special events, managed development of two auxiliary boards of directors and increased financial and community involvement by cultivating and maintaining relationships within the community. Kelly will help implement NFNL’s strategies for civic and corporate giving.

Additionally, Kelly brings unique skills to develop Second Chance Job Programs around our city for the women we serve. Before Kelly changed to a career in non-profit, she had much experience in the corporate world. She worked as a recruiter and outplacement representative, owned a small business, was a lobbyist for Southwest Airlines, and worked in marketing, sales and events. Kelly earned her Bachelor’s of Arts in Psychology in 2004 from Southern Methodist University. She brings a wealth of experience and expertise to the role of Advancement Director.

We are excited and honored for Kelly to join the NFNL family and feel she is the perfect person to advance NFNL to our next level of growth, which implements our vision to “serve more women more.”

Welcome, Kelly!

Katie Pedigo
NFNL Executive Director

The Fort Worth Examiner shared information on this opportunity to voice dissatisfaction with Village Voice who profits from sexual exploitation as a result of advertisements in their publications. The article reports one-third of the advertisements in a recent Dallas Observer  were adult entertainment ads which can be an avenue for traffickers to sell both underage girls and women. 51 Attorney Generals sent a letter to Village Voice to call on the company to stop publishing adult entertainment ads as they found the ad service to be a vehicle for illegal activity and selling youth as noted in this New York Times article.

Luis CdeBaca, U.S. Ambassador at large, is the man behind the U.S. Trafficking in Persons Report. In a recent CNN interview Luis CdeBaca noted the crucial role consumers and individuals have in influencing businesses to change practices rather than relying on government alone to address the issues. He cites a movement to remove massage parlor advertisements fronting for trafficking and prostitution in another newspaper that was influenced by the outcry of consumers sharing their dissatisfaction.

Will you add your voice to the growing chorus of others sharing disatisfaction and intolerance for businesses to profit from the commercial sexual exploitation of people?

Save the Date!

Thursday, April 12, 2012 at Hyatt Regency- Downtown Dallas

with Nicholas Sparks, bestselling author of The Notebook

Event Schedule:

11:00 am Sponsor Reception, 11:30 am Luncheon, 1:00 pm Book Signing

Individual tickets, table sponsorships, and underwriting sponsorships available below.

Speaker Bio:

In 1994, rejected from both publishers and law schools, Nicholas Sparks was a job-jumping salesman who wrote in the evenings. In early 1995, and against all odds, his manuscript was discovered in the slush pile. By October, Warner Brothers famously paid a million dollars for an unknown story about a notebook. The rest, as they say, is history.

Now with almost 80 million copies of his book in print, literary sensation Nicholas Sparks is the author of sixteen New York Times #1 bestselling books and a cultural phenomenon in his own right. Drawing large and appreciative crowds of fans, Sparks in person displays the traits that make his books so beloved: great storytelling, a unique voice, and a charm that connects through the power of words. His relatable talks weave his own personal story of hard work, rejection, anxiety, and triumph.

Individual Luncheon Tickets:

Seating Preference:

Standard seating $150.00 USD Preferred seating $250.00 USD Premier seating $500.00 USD

Sponsorship Opportunities:

To purchase table reservations or other levels of sponsorship, print the 2012 NFNL Underwriting Contract and mail to the address at the bottom of the form. Please retain a copy for your records. Payment can be mailed with the form or may be made online using PayPal with the exception of the Monarch, Viceroy, and Empress level of sponsorships.

Table Sponsorships:

Cruiser $2,500.00 USD Emerging $1,500.00 USD

Underwriting Sponsorships

Peacock $10,000.00 USD Crysallis $5,000.00 USD

Home Tour Co-Chairs: Heather Roberts, Barbara Miers, Elizabeth Carlock Phillips (Chair) & Leah Semones

 The 12th Annual Home Tour was a great success! Thank you to our Event Chair Elizabeth Carlock Phillips and her co-chairs Barbara Miers, Heather Roberts and Leah Semones for their coordination on the 12th Annual Home Tour.  Thank you to the homeowners of the tour homes featured this year at 3910 Gillon Avenue, 4608 Lakeside Drive, 4301 Lakeside Drive and 4200 St. Johns Drive.

“I believe in and financially support the ministry of New Friends New Life,” said Laura Barker Carlock, honorary chair of the holiday tour. “The people who work so diligently in this ministry are helping to rebuild the lives of women and children who have been marginalized by various sexually related industries. God is a God of second chances, and NFNL personifies just that.”

Individualized trainings will be offered by volunteers and staff for: intake/initial assessments, GED preparation/testing, job readiness and job search skills, computer skills, education- college prep/application/financial aid guidance, bible study and spiritual growth, recovery and counseling classes, and other special events. Women interested in appointments for resources and training, please call 214-965-0935 to schedule.

The Resource Center is open to women still in the sex industry or those seeking to leave. Women do not have to be participants or proteges in the New Friends New Life program in order to benefit from the trainings and mentoring offered.

Interested in using your skills and talents to equip women seeking a new life? Please email lshackelford@newfriendsnewlife.org

Tentative schedule for services available:  Tuesday 9:30am-2:30pm,  Thursday 9:30am-5:00pm, Friday 9:30am-1:30pm, one Saturday of the month 10:00am-2:00pm.

If you want to know more about New Friends New Life or how a church community can get involved in the issue of trafficking, this would be a great event to attend. This is also a wonderful opportunity to share with others so they can understand more about the issue of trafficking and how they can respond.

Irving Bible Church has a strong partnership with New Friends New Life. The church community of Irving Bible Church hosts fundraisers, awareness events, provides tangible provision such as backpacks and food baskets and supports the women and their children in numerous other ways.

Barbara had known about New Friends New Life for at least seven or eight months. Another dancer at the club had given her their phone number. But Barbara had not called. She wasn’t ready. At least, not until “I had solicited an undercover police officer,” Barbara said. “That was my last day dancing. August 28, 2007.”

In September, she came to her first Wednesday night meeting, a little nervous. She knew the New Friends New Life program would be hard. Building a new life independent of the sex industry would demand self-discipline, determination, and commitment, especially if she was going to adhere to NFNL’s method. But she was ready.

Barbara had already put together a resume and gotten leads on conventional jobs. She hadn’t danced in weeks. New Friends New Life offered a little something more, something that would change her life and her son’s life.

“You don’t trust people coming out of a business like this,” Barbara said. “You build this defense wall.”

But enrolling in the program as a protégé, coming to the Wednesday night bible study and support group– a weekly requirement for the NFNL program – and working with her advocate, Irie, she began to let her wall come down.

“She was a mentor, more of a mother-type figure,” Barbara said of Irie. “She had that passion, willing to listen to whatever you had to talk about. She wasn’t going to let you make a bad decision.”

Even then, the process was – as she expected – a challenge. “Going from more of a high class, independent lifestyle to letting an organization help me take control of my life, that was tough,” Barbara said.

As her advocate, Irie partnered with Barbara to help her meet the challenges of her lifestyle shift by helping her sort out her living situation, transition between jobs, keep track of her finances, and pay her bills if necessary by appropriating New Friends New Life funds.

New Friends New Life also “helped me trust and understand the word of God,” Barbara said.

Because NFNL is a faith-based organization, Wednesday night sessions include a bible study component, designed to provide the program participants, or the protégés, with spiritual support, reassuring them of Christ’s love for and acceptance of them.

“I knew about church, but I kind of lost it all living the lifestyle that I was living,” Barbara said. While “they don’t force any kind of beliefs on you,” Wednesday nights gave Barbara the confidence to visit different congregations, know what she was looking for, and pick the church that was right for her.

Perhaps even more importantly, Barbara had to learn to trust herself.

“I was pushed out a little too young,” she said. She graduated from high school a year early and entered the industry shortly thereafter.

Because her older sister had been a dancer, Barbara was exposed to the industry early on and had always admired her sister’s clothes and money.

After graduation, when she was afraid of falling short of her family and friends’ high expectations of her, Barbara knew how she could find economic success.

“I was trying to be more of what other people wanted and expected me to be, rather than what I wanted to be,” Barbara said. “I went to school to be a nurse for a short spell, also majored in Criminal Justice and didn’t succeed. Since I was afraid I couldn’t fulfill everyone else’s expectations, at least I could go out there and make a lot of money and be independent.”

Since leaving the industry, however, Barbara’s resourcefulness has served her well. She’s worked two different jobs since leaving the industry, and is currently employed at a major Dallas corporation.

What has made the biggest difference to Barbara, however, is not her own personal success. She sees the most value in what New Friends New Life has done for her son.

“I think the best thing was that my child got exposed to a Christian atmosphere. He started when he was five and he got use to going on Wednesdays. He’s nine now. It motivated me to keep doing what I was doing, because once you saw a difference in me, you saw a difference in him.”

After graduating from the NFNL program two years ago, Barbara is now engaged to be married and is a protégé leader for New Friends New Life, acting as a mentor to women who are going through what she has already been through.

“It takes a lot to get out there and tell your story…. You don’t know who’s listening to you. You’re still a little hurt from your past.  And every time I talk something new comes out that I had forgotten about. That’ s dangerous right there.”

But Barbara was ready to speak, to share her story with the women who need to hear it most, the ones who are still in the process of leaving the sex industry.

Barbara shines as an example of a strong woman who decided to change her lifestyle, and who did it independently, but not by herself. And that is what the New Friends New Life program- community, family- is all about.

“I was molested at the age of seven,” she said. “I think that’s what got me started [in prostitution.] I was always wanting a man’s approval.”

Before long, she was working in a brothel and abusing drugs and alcohol. Eventually, she went to jail, where she met a woman who told her about New Friends New Life.

“When I got out of jail, I knew I didn’t want to go back to living that kind of life,” she said. “I went to New Friends New Life. That was a new start for my journey.

Dana began attending Wednesday night meetings, which include dinner, a Bible study and a life skills session required for participation in the New Friends New Life program. These meetings offered her something that had been missing from her life: a community of women whom she could trust.

“I was used to being around women, but I was kind of a loner.” Dana said. “We used to bicker about who could bring in the most money… I used to be ready to fight other women, you know?”

At New Friends New Life, however, Dana found true friends. She found women she could relate to and confide in, women who would change her life.

“I learned how to bond with women, and it was women that were just like me,” she said. “It took a minute, but I was able to open up and share some things with them.”

As Dana continued to attend Wednesday night meetings and grow her network of support, she became a protégé in the NFNL program. As a protégé, she was partnered with an advocate, Michelle, who served as her mentor as she transitioned to self-sufficiency through conventional employment.

Michelle helped Dana budget and set goals, encouraged her to go back to school and supported her as she applied for and ultimately got a job in business administration.

“I’ve had jobs, but I would quit them. This time, I made up my mind that this was something I was going to stick with,” Dana said. “I never had a job where I liked to go to work. But this one, I love it.”

The most important thing that New Friends New Life did for Dana, however, was bring her closer to Christ.

“I was spiritually, mentally, physically bankrupt,” she said. “When I was in prostitution, sometimes I would go to church. To be honest, I even prostituted with the pastor. That’s what made me stay away from the church.”

However, participating in weekly New Friends New Life Bible studies, Dana rediscovered God.

“I built a relationship with God when I thought God had left me. And he hadn’t. I had left him. He was still right there,” she said.

Her journey was not without its challenges. The most difficult part, Dana said, was learning how to be a mother.

“My mom raised my children, then I got my children back,” Dana said. “After all those years, I didn’t know how to be a mother, so I took parenting classes.”

Through New Friends, Dana also received counseling services. Though she admitted that she was reluctant to open up at first, her counselor and her advocate eventually encouraged her to talk about what she had been through during one-on-one sessions.

“I have so many scars,” she said. “I would go out there, work the streets, wait in the house, give them my money. I almost lost my life a few times… [Through counseling] I was able to deal with a lot of things that I hadn’t dealt with in years, like being molested.”

Dana graduated from the New Friends New Life program in April 2010, and now aims to serve as a protégé leader — a role model, resource, and friend for current and incoming protégés.

When Dana first starting coming to New Friends New Life, it was a huge help “just to know that I wasn’t by myself, that other women were going through this,” she said. By sharing her story, Dana hopes that she can help other women turn their lives around, just like the women of New Friends New Life helped her.

“New Friends New Life really helped me learn how to be responsible, learn how to be a mother, learn how to love me… If it wasn’t for their program, I don’t know where I’d be. I’d probably still be in the whorehouse, waiting for a man to pick me, pick me.”

Robbie, an NFNL program graduate, owns and operates her own hair salon in a retirement home. Ten years ago, she was homeless.

Beginning in the late 1970’s, Robbie struggled with alcoholism and addiction, dancing frequently at first, then more sporadically to earn money to fuel her habit. Though she also held down a few odd jobs, even serving as an apartment manager for awhile, she mostly relied on her parents for financial support as she spent much of her money on alcohol and methamphetamine. That is, until they finally pulled the plug in 1999. She was homeless within a month. “The last time I danced was when I was homeless in 2001, but I got fired for doing drugs in the bathroom,” Robbie said. “Who gets fired from a topless bar?” she joked.

In January 2003, she was arrested on a felony charge – her fourth. She was sent to jail and decided to turn her life over to Christ.

“I remember, when I had been locked up for just a few weeks, I talked to this girl. You know how God sometimes puts the perfect person in your path for just a minute?” Robbie mused. “She looked at me and said, ‘Just do it their way this time. Listen to the people who love you and do it their way. Our way didn’t work.’”

Struck by these words, Robbie wrote a poem she titled, “Their Way.” She was finally ready to change her lifestyle, but she knew she couldn’t do it on her own.

After seven months in jail and six months in court-ordered rehab, Robbie chose to move into the Oxford House, a sober living program in Richardson. There, a woman told her about an organization called New Friends New Life. It wasn’t long before she began attending New Friends New Life’s Wednesday night Bible study and support group meetings and was immediately drawn in.
“When we first get sober, when we first get off the stage, and when we first get out of prostitution, we are so ashamed,” Robbie said. “But we can’t talk about dancing and prostitution in AA. There’s very few places that women like me could go to talk about the trauma that most of us went through.”

Within a few months, Robbie was incorporated into the NFNL program as a protégé and was partnered with Irie Session, a protégé advocate, who would who advised her as she rebuilt her life. Beginning in 2004, Irie helped Robbie to budget, set goals, and devise and adhere to a plan to repay her debt to the courts and complete her community service hours.

“Irie was my mentor and she really held me accountable. I needed that,” said Robbie. “I was really good at manipulating [my parents] to give me more money, but that was not the point of New Friends New Life. They were there to help me, but only as long as I was doing more to help myself.” That’s when Robbie began working at the salon, cutting hair for residents of a retirement home.

After two and a half years as a protégé, Robbie graduated from New Friends New Life and immediately began giving back to the community. She participated in a prison ministry and served as an AA sponsor. She also attends NFNL Wednesday night meetings periodically to partake in the Bible study and support group and to share in the community, which helped her so much when she was new to the program.

“One of the things about addiction and dancing is that we feel so alone,” she said. “So to come in and be around other women that were going through the same things I was, alongside other women who were there to support us, is huge.”

Although, as a program graduate, she no longer receives financial assistance from New Friends New Life, Robbie still receives some program benefits, including advocacy with NFNL protégé advocate Lauri Lanier, who is also her close friend, and free counseling with NFNL on-staff counselor Stephanie Clanton.

“I’ve been in counseling for a year and a half. I can’t afford counseling and women like me really need it,” she said. “Even though it’s been nine years, my addiction and that life are very close to me. Being able to come every other Monday and talk to Stephanie, that’s a huge blessing.”

Robbie has owned the hair salon which gave her a start for three years now, though she’s worked there for eight. And, thanks in part to her seven-year partnership with the women of New Friends New Life, she feels better than ever.

“I’m a lot stronger than I ever was before. They just teach us to believe in ourselves and that if we do the work, the results will show themselves.”