Sex trafficking is a crime that at its core attacks the most vulnerable in our society. At FAIR Girls, we know that sex trafficking victims often experience child and sexual abuse, poverty, homelessness, domestic violence, and discrimination prior to being sold into sex trafficking. In a survey of our clients over the past three months alone, 45% of the survivors that FAIR Girls served experienced domestic violence before or during their trafficking experience.
In order for sex trafficking survivors to thrive after exploitation, they need safe, stable housing. That is why FAIR Girls supports the Housing for Survivors of Sex Trafficking Act (H.R. 3942) introduced by Rep. Vicky Hartzler (R-MO), Rep. Kristi Noem (R-SD), and Rep. Madeleine Z. Bordallo (D-Guam) on October 4, 2017.
In 2014, FAIR Girls opened the only safe home in Washington, D.C. for young women survivors of human trafficking aged 18 to 26. To date, more than 100 young women have lived in FAIR Girls’ Vida Home. However, the Vida Home is one of only a few safe homes across the country that specifically provide trauma-informed housing to survivors of human trafficking.
“I was hungry, homeless and had to sleep on park benches. Oftentimes, I didn’t have warm clothes. I had to go to the parks and play on the swings in order to stay awake at night. Sometimes I had to do things I didn’t want to do in exchange for food or a place to lay my head at night. The person who I thought loved me abused and sold me instead. Eventually though with help and housing, I got out of this life.”– Ashleigh, Age 20, FAIR Girls former survivor advocate and former Vida Home resident.
Sex trafficking survivors need specialized housing programs to address the complex trauma they have experienced at the hand of their trafficker. Sex trafficking, intimate partner violence, stalking, and sexual violence are often interrelated in the abuse these young women have experienced their whole lives. Traffickers often initiate a romantic or familial relationship with a vulnerable girl, posing as a boyfriend or caring father figure. Traffickers then exercise power and control by isolating the victim, rendering them economically dependent, homeless, and emotionally vulnerable. A trafficker’s control and coercion techniques include purposeful manipulation, emotional violence, threats, physical and sexual violence all meant to coerce or force the victim into performing sexual acts for the trafficker’s personal profit. Examples of such aggression include cycles of affection followed by violence, sexual humiliation and shaming, threats to loved ones, denying food or use of a bathroom, rape, forced prostitution and withholding emotional and physical intimacy for obedience. Young women survivors of sex trafficking often develop Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD), Depression, and Anxiety disorders that impair their ability to function. Without specialized services, including housing, untreated trauma can lead to cognitive and emotional changes that may further stunt their development and opportunities. Many girls live with prolonged pain, uncontrolled rage, and hopelessness.
The reality is that in order to effectively offer safe and stable housing for survivors of sex trafficking, organizations like FAIR Girls need reliable funding and resources. Offering safe housing is not only the right thing to do to help bring victims of sex trafficking to a state of resiliency and hope, it is also economically practical. The average cost of serving one young woman in FAIR Girls Vida Home for one night is approximately $71; this is compared to approximately $105 per night in an adult state correctional facility that does not provide trauma-informed serves. During this month at the Vida Home, each young survivor receives food, safe shelter, clothing or emergency personal items, 24/7 crisis support, a dedicated case manager, court advocacy, and access to our FAIR Girls’ drop in center.
Additionally, FAIR Girls’ partners in law enforcement have recognized the positive impact of having safe, stable and specialized housing services available to the trafficking victims they recover in their criminal investigations and prosecution of traffickers. Trauma-informed interactions with law enforcement, including referrals to safe housing like FAIR Girls’ Vida Home, decreases the likelihood that trafficking victims will be further unjustly criminalized with multiple re-arrests in a well-meaning, but misdirected, effort to remove them from the immediate danger of street-based crime. The experiences of our clients reflect the common-sense reality that safe transitional housing that helps trafficking victims stabilize and begin the process of healing from their trauma leads to them being less vulnerable to being re-trafficked and more likely to cooperate with law enforcement. Without this critical specialized housing resource to offer, trafficking victims recovered by law enforcement are far more likely to be re-trafficked, re-arrested, re-incarcerated, or subsequently re-victimized and traumatized in detention settings until shelter beds become available.
Sex trafficking survivors, like all women survivors of violence, need and deserve safe and specialized housing. This bill takes one more important step down the right path of ensuring that sex trafficking survivors obtain the resources they so desperately need to free themselves from modern day slavery.