If you need a roommate and think it could be a good fit, please reply to this post or e-mail me directly at laura dot mcvicker at gmail dot com.

We will kick-off the new series with Retired Special Forces Colonel Dr. Bill Hillar, Dr. Cyndi Romine, and Jessica Richardson.  Dr. Hillar teaches human trafficking to law enforcement and at various colleges including University of Oregon.  His personal story inspired the movie “Taken” and his pursuit of righting this atrocity.
Jessica Richardson’s story was recently told on Channel 6 news. 

OATH Slavery Still Exists Weeks at various campuses. 

Great speakers include Bill Hillar and others. 
University of Portland - February
Pacific University - March 8-12
University of Oregon - May 12-15
Oregon State Univesity - May 12-15

February 8th

Prayer service for victims of human trafficking and slavery at St. Mary’s Cathedral on February 8th from 6:30-8pm.

This is the feast day for St. Josephine Bakhita. Pope John Paul II said that in St. Josephine Bakhita, “We find a shining advocate of genuine emancipation. The history of her life inspires not passive acceptance but the firm resolve to work effectively to free girls and women from oppression and violence, and to return them to their dignity in the full exercise of their rights."Please join us for readings, reflections, and music. St. Mary’s is located on NW Couch at NW 18th in Portland. For more information, please contact Brian Willis, Director, Global Health Promise at 503.381.0085 or BWillis at taskforce dot org or at http://www.globalhealthpromise.org.

February 16th
THE HIGH PRICE OF CHEAP SEX
Feb. 16th, PSU campus, SMSU 327/8/9, 7:00 Free
Charles Moore, Director of Operations, of ITEMP (Institute for Trafficked, Exploited, and Missing Persons) is coming all the way from Guatemala to open for this anti slavery awareness event. Following Charles, Nola Brantley, of MISSSEY (Motivating, Inspiring, Supporting, and Serving Sexually Exploited Youth), will be joining us from San Francisco to speak about her experiences as a victim of sexual slavery and about her organization/after care facility.  Contact Lexie Woodward at l dot woodward dot notforsalecampaign at gmail dot com for more information.

Getting serious about helping young victims of prostitution
By Elizabeth Hovde, Oregonian columnist
January 09, 2010, 6:41AM

Pimps, beware: Society is sending you a pink slip.

So start looking for a real job or move back in with Mom, because we’ve got your number. Victim advocacy groups, families who have lost their kids to the streets and cops who’ve had enough of you finally have the attention of Congress, state legislatures, police, school counselors, teachers, parents and maybe even some of your customers. What happens in Vegas—and in U.S. cities everywhere, including Portland—doesn’t stay in Vegas. We’re making your sex-trafficking business our business. And we won’t rest.

More and more people understand that prostitution is not a victimless crime.

Just because sex has been sold for centuries does not make it OK nor does it mean that the women involved wouldn’t rather have a different life.

Fighting sex trafficking
Learn more about domestic sex trafficking by visiting:
Shared Hope International, http://www.sharedhope.org

Oregonians Against Trafficking Humans, http://www.oregonoath.org

The Innocence Lost National Initiative, http://www.fbi.gov/innolost/innolost.htm

You can also download and read “The National Report on Domestic Minor Sex Trafficking: America’s Prostituted Children,” at http://www.sharedhope.org/files/SHI_National_Report_on_DMST_2009.pdfAnd we’re onto your strategy of using girls too young to drive a car to fuel the commercial sex industry. Even though these girls don’t make the perfect poster children once they’ve been duped, then hardened, beaten and made completely dependent on you for their livelihood, they are still worthy of finding, saving and restoring. You try to distort their image. You try to remake them. But we see them for what they are: someone’s missing child, sister or granddaughter. We know that no little girl wants to grow up and become a stranger’s sex toy or a pimp’s punching bag.

The age of entry into prostitution is getting younger and younger, as evidenced by the young girl found prostituting in Beaverton in November. (She says she was forced into prostitution at 13.) And when such girls recruited into commercial sex become adults, we still consider them victims: They are women robbed of their childhood; women turned into modern-day slaves.

So listen up. Here’s the exciting work being done to shut you down and make “johns” think twice about using people as commodities:

After working with Multnomah County Commissioner Diane McKeel’s office, Sen. Ron Wyden, D-Ore., has partnered with Sen. John Cornyn, R-Texas, to offer up legislation that would finance the No. 1 obstacle to freeing young girls from your abuse: safe shelter.

We’re tired of seeing young girls arrested and jailed for prostitution when just months before they were listed as missing children. And we don’t view jail as viable lodging for juveniles, even if it is sometimes the safest option. The Wyden bill, if passed, would establish funding for six shelters nationwide, accompanied by treatment, counseling and the legal tools victims need to escape “the life.”

The legislation also would demand better use of the nation’s missing children database so abducted and runaway minors can be recovered more often. We know runaways are more likely to be lured into prostitution. But you pimps should know that just because a family has rejected a child—or a child has rejected his or her home—these kids are not yours for the taking.

Shared Hope International, headed by former Rep. Linda Smith, R-Wash., is training area law enforcement professionals, educators and others who can reach children in crises how to find your “product” and hopefully put you out of business.

Oregonians Against Human Trafficking is another nonprofit doing an excellent job raising awareness that sex trafficking of minors doesn’t just happen overseas. It is happening here, with vulnerable girls pulled from high school campuses and shopping malls by pimps posing as caring boyfriends.

Victim advocacy groups and local governments are lobbying for legal changes that will put your customers on notice that when caught paying for sex, they will be prosecuted. And when the sex they buy is with a minor, knowingly or not, they will be treated like what they are: child rapists.

Shared Hope will be in Olympia on Monday, on the opening day of Washington state’s legislative session, to help along a bipartisan effort to find more safe housing options, to change the way the state classifies minors caught prostituting so they are cared for rather than criminalized and to create stricter penalties for people buying sex.

Lawmakers in many places are considering Nevada’s new asset-forfeiture law, which could financially ruin many “johns.” Here in Oregon, Commissioner McKeel’s office is dedicated to working with state lawmakers to find safe housing options for child prostitutes, paid for in part by increased fines on “johns,” and is planning a public service campaign to help victims find services.

The National Center for Missing and Exploited Children estimates that more than 100,000 children in the United States are victims of sex trafficking. And as Shared Hope says, “Men who buy sex with children in the United States escape the label of sex offender through the exchange of money. The child is seen as the criminal—labeled as a prostitute—not the victim.”

It won’t continue this way, pimps. Consider yourself warned: Good people are determined to decrease demand, eradicate supply and leave you unemployed.

Elizabeth Hovde writes a Sunday column for The Oregonian and also posts during the week on oregonlive.com/thestump. Reach her at ehovde at earthlink dot net

Thanks!

John

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I now ask for continued Prayer for my Mothers Older Sister and her family. Their last name is Corbin.  Troy Sr. my uncle is now fading fast into the cancer that has consumed his body. He has not eaten much of anything since Christmas. He flew out to Portland with My aunt. He started getting sicker and flew home. He walked off the plane when He got here but had to be carried home.

his wife my Aunt Jerry has dealt with breast cancer in the last few months. Dealing with Radiation Therapy and taking care of her husband my uncle 24 hours a day.

Their second son my cousin Clinton. We thought he had a stroke in September. We discovered this week that it has been a growth in his brain. Tests yesterday confirmed a tumor. We do not yet know if it is malignant or not. Surgery is scheduled for Monday to remove things.

Jones who is Great Grandson to my uncle. He started having seizures about a year ago. He has lost a lot of weight. He they are working on meds and Very restricted diet to control the seizures. He was at one point having 1200 seizures a day.

My Cousin Troy named after his father. He is bearing all the weight of a father dieing from cancer, a mother dealing with breast cancer, a brother now with a brain tumor, and a grandson who was kicked out of school because they could not handle the seizures.

I pray for healing and strength for them and the rest of the extended family as we seek to help them deal with these health issues.

If you are looking for a summer activity that would get you moving while helping a good cause, you may want to check out an event called Wild Canyon Games.  Wild Canyon Games is an adventure race that takes place on June 4-6 in Antelope, Oregon.  Funds raised are used to help veterans and local high schools.  For more information please go to http://www.wildcanyongames.org

Thanks and happy training!

Francis