If slavery seems too far away

It's real.  It's right here in our home town.  Before we get huffy about how some other country looks the other way, let's examine how we treat slavery victims in our own town.  This is America in 2010.

Here's what Rachel Lloyd did about it.

 GEMS Council Of Daughters   

History

GEMS, was founded in 1998 by Rachel Lloyd, a young woman who had been sexually exploited as a teenager. Ms. Lloyd came to the U.S in 1997 as a missionary to work with adult women exiting prostitution. While working with adult women in correctional facilities and on the streets, Ms. Lloyd observed the overwhelming need for services for young women at risk for sexual exploitation who were being ignored by traditional social service agencies. It became clear that specialized services were essential for this disenfranchised population.

From a one-woman kitchen table project, GEMS has grown to a nationally recognized and acclaimed organization and now is one of the largest providers of services to commercially sexually exploited and domestically trafficked youth in the US. GEMS advocates at the local, state and national level to promote policies that support young women who have been commercially sexually exploited and domestically trafficked.

 

 

 

Comments

[Jaxx]

Jane that is great! I'd acquired the Captive Daughters org link but not the California gov links. It IS exhausting slogging through the trails, isnt it? Sometimes I can spend hours and only come up with vague references to some initiative that was never enacted. One of the many reasons I want to try and get this database idea off the ground. I'm going to need a lot of help. I'm hoping (when I get back from India) to find interested university students, etc that can help with the technical side. Thank you for the gift of your time AND encouragement!

[Jane Velasquez]

Jackie, running a little behind, but I did look up Calif. resources for human trafficking victims and found;

\http://www.ag.ca.gov/publications/Human_Trafficking_Final_Report.pdf

long list of resources...training, campaigns, agencies and orgs.(state, federal, national and international), hotlines, direct services or referrals. This task force report was from 2006 so I don't know how much has been implemented. I read the entire report and was pretty well spent by the time I finished. I don't know how you do it.

ca acts task force http://www.captivedaughters.org/capage.htm

California has the first shelter in the nation specifically designed for human trafficking victims. Located in L.A., it provides housing for adult female trafficking survivors.

www.safestate.org/humantrafficking

There were more links, but I found these ro be very informative.

[Jacqueline Zimowski]

Jane, I'm looking for resources online. I'm actually finding more than I expected for my state. Now I'm going to find out if they've actually been passed down to the individual department, if they're being implemented and how. You can do a search on "Recognizing a Human Trafficking Victim" and it should lead you to some national governmental pages and eventually to your state. Most of what I found was woefully out of date but it looks like the 2010 GTIP Report (U.S. Government Trafficking In Persons Report), though it doesn't have much in the way of teeth, may have kicked out some current initiatives. I intend to see if they're following it in my state and go from there.

[Jacqueline Zimowski]

Paul the timing of your question is amazing. I just got home from the BITAHR (The Boston Initiative To Advance Human Rights) Film Forum. They're expanding the scope of their program to include Human Trafficking issues. One of the questions I brought up was to ask a documentarian who's film we watched if she would let me use it to approach my states's law enforcement and Immigration services as an introduction to help officers be aware of things to look for that might indicate that a person was being trafficked. The victims are usually traumatized to the point of absoulute submission before they're transported across and entry point. Since I live in a low population border state we're a prime place for importing. She was very enthusiastic so my next step is to talk to my local law enforcement for advice in how to format an approach to such a thing and go on from there. Think I'll write a post about it now that you've got me following the thread on it! The applications could cover an enormous field besides law enforcement. That second suit may have more uses than you ever imagined.

[Jane Velasquez]

Makes me want to scream! I really do not understand how these young girls can be arrested for prostitution instead of taken to a safe house and helped....that's rhetorical, since it doesn't surprise me in the least. Girls and women have always been treated like property. I know too many girls who were raped at 12 and 13, and one I know for sure who went on to become a prostitute. Very sad, short life. My heart aches for these children.

[paul sonderman]

How do you get this message to the young girls who need it? The message that there is somewhere to go? Someone who can help? Why isn't there aid at that first response level, at the police station? Jax, do you have any knowledge of what the officers who walk the beat have to offer? I imagine the laws are such that their own hands are cuffed.

It is easy to live an insular life out in the country, thirty miles from the big city and close my eyes to it all. This is so far removed from my sleepy little village but at the same time the story is very compelling. I had a spiritual mentor, who once quoted another (maybe de Chardin) that any man who owned two suits of clothes while others went naked and called himself religious, was a hypocrite. I feel as if I have two suits of clothes and don't know where to send the second to do the most good.