Written By: Rana Amini, MS, LPC, EMDR-Trained, Clinical Program Director at NFNL

A survivor of human trafficking. Who is she in your mind? Is she a woman or a girl who is imprisoned and chained up in a dark basement? Is she a damsel in distress waiting for a knight in shining armor? Is she someone who is powerless and waiting for someone to rescue her from despair?

No, that isn’t her.

She is a woman or a girl who has endured a lifetime of horrors, likely starting as a small child. She is a woman who in her earliest and most formative years of life likely learned she could not trust her caregivers. She experienced trauma. Lots of it. Trauma that looked like neglect, domestic violence in the home, substance use in the home, or caregivers with their own severe mental health struggles. She endured uncertainty, fear, instability, and minimal to no moments where she felt any periods of safety in her environment.

The people who were meant to keep her safe were the very people she had to try to keep herself safe from.

When Her World Is Not Safe

When most little girls were learning to explore their creativity, make friends with their classmates and learn about the latest trends, she was learning how to keep herself safe by taking up as little space as possible, learning how to attenuate to the needs of her abusers, and escaping her reality in whatever way she knew how.

We hope that little girls are told and shown how strong, brave, confident and smart they are. She was being told no such thing. She was being shown and told that she is not worthy, that she is not wanted, that she is not good enough and that she is not safe.

What does that do to a young child?

It immediately creates vulnerabilities that if not addressed or bolstered with protective factors will surely bleed into adulthood and gravely impact the way she views herself, others, and the world around her.

These early experiences paint a trajectory of despair and struggle.

So, when she is approached by her neighbor and experiences childhood sexual abuse… she expects it.

When she is physically assaulted by her abusive father... she thinks she deserves it.

And when she runs away from home in the search for a better existence because it is no longer tolerable to endure one more minute of the torment … she is desperate for a different way of living.

So, within 48 hours of being a runaway, when she is approached by a trafficker who offers her a roof over her head, stability, and false promises of safety and love? She believes him.

No one wakes up one day and hopes for and choses a life of sexual exploitation but it happens. And it happens to the 320 women and girls we serve each year.

These women and girls have endured the most unimaginable horrors. And yet, they want nothing more than to come out on the other side. They want nothing more than to get another chance at having the life they have always wanted and the life they deserve. A life of stability, safety and support. But, even when they get the small window of opportunity to access the life they want, the path to stability and safety is paved with endless barriers.

With no safe support or place to live, where can they go? With no money, no education and no employment history, where can they turn?

It is daunting. And yet, they don’t need a savior. They don’t need someone to swoop in and rescue them.

Survivors Need Access, Choice, and Resources

Survivors are remarkable, hardworking and compassionate. Despite the darkness they have endured, they are full of light. They are women of grace, dedication, fervent tenacity and invincible resilience. They have faced the world’s greatest horrors and yet their hearts are still soft. They have every reason to want to give up and never trust another human being, again and yet they fight tirelessly to create a new life and move forward.

What do they need? They need access, choice, and resources.

When we play the role of savior or rescuer, we send a very harmful message to these women that they aren’t enough. We inadvertently disempower them, even when we are well intentioned. And in doing so, we re-create the devastating cycle that they have experienced since childhood.

They need us to understand that they are not fragile, they are not weak, and they are not without choice. They don’t need us as caregivers, allies, or advocates to recreate the abusive dynamic where they are void of choice.

They need an assortment of choices. They need access to safe and supportive environments with individuals that understand that they have done the very best with the very limited choices they have. They need access to fair and affordable housing in safe neighborhoods where they aren’t vulnerable of being re-victimized or re-exploited. They need access to a multitude of employment opportunities that pay them fairly and allow them to make choices based on what kind of work they want to do, instead of having to settle for a few limited options that pay them minimum wage and take advantage of them once again. They need access to trauma informed counseling where they can begin to heal from their nightmares, their flashbacks and their complex PTSD.

Survivors do not need us to save them. They have been able to do it on their own all along. They just need the chance and options to do so.

Written By: Bianca Davis, NFNL CEO.

If you’ve ever played Jenga®, you’ve likely had a moment where you’ve leant in and closed one eye to focus on your next move or held your breath as you’ve steadied your fingers. Though the rules are simple, the game is not easy to win. It can be downright nerve-wracking trying to move a single block from beneath the weight and support of all the others to place it atop the shaky, swaying tower. Inevitably, without being able to touch the other blocks, the tower collapses. Game over. You’ve lost.

The tower topples because it becomes impossible to move one block without affecting all the others.

The Weight of Intersecting Points

Researchers are brilliant at identifying points of intersection to help explain why certain populations are more vulnerable than others to becoming victims of various social ills. When it comes to the issue of sex trafficking, Black women and girls are disproportionally affected, making up 40% of all trafficking victims in the U.S. Some of these points of intersection include living in poverty, having a history of childhood sexual abuse, experiencing domestic violence, and spending time in foster care, all of which Black women and girls experience at alarmingly high rates:

Black women represent 22.3 percent of women in poverty in the U.S., while only making up 12.8 percent of the population
Black women are three times more likely to be killed by an intimate partner than White women
Black children are overrepresented in the foster care system

This national data mirrors what we see at New Friends New Life where 53 percent of our women and 38 percent of our teen girls are Black. In addition:

85 percent of our members live below the poverty line,
81 percent have experienced non-fatal strangulation by a pimp or john, and
47 percent of our teen girls have a history of interaction with CPS or the foster care system.

I once heard someone say that by the time a girl or woman is actually sold for sex, being trafficked isn’t the first bad thing that has happened to her.

What these numbers prove is that each intersecting point represents a block that sits atop another, creating a shaky, swaying tower that increases Black women and girls’ vulnerability to being victimized. Traffickers will often show up as a solution to a problem, posing as someone who can prevent the toppling, while actually being the cause of the inevitable collapse.

Building Stable Towers

The theme for Black History Month February 2022 is Black Health & Wellness. Sometimes, when we think of health and wellness, we focus on ways to improve our physical health like through exercise and diet, or maybe emotional wellness activities like therapy and self-expression to address our mental health. Sex trafficking is a looming health crisis of a different kind that is also particularly devastating and threatening to the Black community, and it sits at the intersection of other societal ills like poverty, domestic violence and childhood sexual abuse – issues that we must also address if we are going to make a move against sex trafficking.

The word Jenga is derived from the Swahili term meaning “to build.” The person who loses the game is the one who moves a block without successfully understanding the interconnectedness and impact of the surrounding blocks. Focusing on one block without taking into consideration all the neighboring factors topples the tower.

The tower topples because it becomes impossible to move one block without affecting the others.

When a group is overrepresented in ways that harm and destroy their ability to thrive, when we see this group standing beneath a shaky, swaying tower of intersecting points, or worse yet - crouching beneath the rubble of an already toppled tower, we must examine all the blocks that contribute to the collapse. Then collectively, collaboratively, and in concert, we can build new towers – sectors, agencies, and societies - that are stable, safe, and strong.