We will have the unique opportunity to join with the staff and girls in Cambodia to understand how their organization was developed and to generate new solutions to empower young survivors of this industry. Robyn and I will be participating in this trip as trained therapists and consultants to the program. This 501c3 has already had a history of success with the young people with whom they work. However, they are endeavoring to better their results as well as to research innovative ways to build preventative programs (for human trafficking) in the US and abroad.
Please check out our website (http://www.pearlsincambodia.org), and we’d appreciate many prayers as we prepare for this work in just a matter of weeks!
]]>
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
]]>Free2Work is a great resource to help us make informed choices on our purchases.
]]>I thought it might be helpful to share with you folks interested, some of the details from my notes from the last OATH meeting as well as the meetings with Emmy Ritter, a social worker I’ve met through IJM. I’ll try and detail as much as I can from these, for the purposes of sharing with others and perhaps coordinating efforts to get others (like those at Pearl) involved in local efforts.
Sept, 2009 (Oregonians Against Trafficking Humans) OATH meeting:
Rebecca Cooke from Transitions Global spoke on Portland/domestic facts:
• Pond’s moved to Cambodia to work with those involved in trafficking (from Hillsboro, OR)
• IJM considers their work the “Aftercare experts”
• Teach women/children basic life skills, specifically in their Cambodia location
• Moved back to PDX a couple of years ago, as PDX is the source of recruitment & site for exportation/importation of trafficking victims
• Much of this trafficking involves “working the circuit” across the US and Canada
• Since January- August, 35 kids were reported as runaways, 1/3 were approached by pimps and trafficked within 48 hours
• Many of teens are being approached at places like Lloyd Center
• Average age of those entering trafficking in the US is 12-14 years old
• 3-5 victims per week (both Oregon residents/international, was my understanding)
• DHHS only has 54 beds suitable for kids TOTAL in the country
• Here’s where the Transitions house will be most helpful
• Working with YWCA to have one built
Playground Documentary, Exec produced by George Clooney
http://www.playgroundpremiereatl.com/film-trailer/
Oct 2009: I also watched this film on exploited children at the Multnomah County courthouse, County Attorney present (as well as numerous state agencies, including county courts). Amazing! If you have the chance to see it, do! It details about 8 years of Libby Spears work in documenting trafficking issues domestically.
I met up with Emmy Ritter, at this courthouse meeting. She works with New Options for Women, with Lifeworks. Anyway, she and I met after watching the film and brainstormed for about 2 hours, various ways that we can get involved in some of the work that’s happening here in PDX. Here’s her information, in case you guys are interested in talking directly with her:
(503) 761-5272 ext. 6835 emmyr at lifeworksnw dot org
I told her we may have folks with an interest in volunteering…
Here are some needs:
•Need Mentors/ career guidance! (ie, teachers, others who can remind them of other alternatives)
•Need Shelter—not sure how all these women/children finding alternative places to live
•Need food (boxes, meals would be helpful)
•Need Money
•Need Advocacy (working with state & federal gov’t to raise awareness)
•Preventative work needed- need to be able to work with the school system to go into the middle/high schools, etc. to work on educating girls, helping them to understand how they might be propositioned (low self-esteem kids targeted); Keith Bickford, from law enforcement went into Reynold’s High to talk with girls/family
•Cross-disciplinary training
•Therapy is needed for these girls, suffering “Stockholm syndrome,” where they have developed a “trauma bond” with their perpetrator and won’t testify against them
PDX County (Present) Resources:
•Sexual Assault Resource Center: Assign Victim Advocate to follow through for years, even, on children, look to break “trauma bond
•Harry’s House – kids who’ve been on the streets, prostitution
•Catholic Charities – International Trafficking (looking at labor & sex trafficking abroad)
**So, I tried to list the contacts and helpful resources for anyone interested in knowing more about domestic issues. Presently, I’m applying for a grant to do some research on this issue in the Philippines and perhaps Vietnam, but I’m trying to stay connected with resources in both areas. If anyone is interested in doing some work in these areas, please let me know.
]]>To commemorate the National Human Trafficking Awareness Day, we are holding a conference at Red Lion, Jantzen Beach on Saturday, January 9, 2010 at the Red Lion on the River, Jantzen Beach. Speakers include retired Special Forces Colonel Dr. Bill Hillar, Dallas Jessup from CNN’s “Just Yell Fire”, and Cathy Standiford, President of Soroptimists of the Americas. Sponsors include City Club of Portland, Multnomah County, Oregonians Against Trafficking Humans, and Soroptimists. We also have many community partners and appreciate your help in getting the word out.
Details can be found on our website: http://www.NWCAT.org
Follow us on Twitter: @nwcat2010 and Fan us on Facebook: NWCAT
The facts
Today in the U.S., it’s estimated that 300,000 minors are being trafficked for sexual exploitation, with 90 percent of the victims being American citizens.
The most recent FBI Operation Cross Country sting found Portland has the second-highest standing in the country for sex trafficking, with over 50 percent of those victims being children.
Oregon police say they encounter three to five people per week who are victims of trafficking.
]]>As we have all learned, the chocolate industry uses prolific child slavery to harvest cocao beans. There are a few great chocolatiers that have taken a stand against this and offer alternatives. Would you consider having a Fair Trade Halloween?
]]>To help continue the conversation about how our community can be involved with the work against human trafficking, we thought it would be helpful to let you know about events in the PDX area that you can attend to learn more about the industry. If you would like to know more about Pearl Church’s involvement with this kind of work through IJM please feel free to get a hold of Mo Hawthorne who is heading up this arm of our Outreach Ministry.
Thanks for your interest. I pray that the Lord would show us how we can move toward stopping this imjustice in our communities and in the world.
Best,
Fran
Human Trafficking Series sponsored by City Club
October 20th, Tuesday
Kell’s Irish Pub, 6pm
Speakers:
Retired Special Forces Colonel Dr. Bill Hillar
Portland Police Detectives Doug Justus and Meghan Burkeen
Brian Willis from Global Health Promise
Not for Sale - Scott MacDonald and Lisa Acheson
Chris Killmer - Catholic Charities, OSSIP
International Justice Mission
Transitions Global
Detective Keith Bickford - Director of Oregon’s Human Trafficking Task Force
Carol Fenton - Women of Vision
Other speakers may also be present. This is our time to discuss where we go from here, both individually and as a group. Do we continue these forums next year? Monthly, bi-monthly, quarterly, not at all? Do you prefer longer meetings with more speakers, or is this about right? Tuesdays better? Good venue? etc, etc, etc!!!
Other OATH activities (visit our new website at oregonOATH.org):
Pacific University OATH Student Group:
Oct.13-Brown Bag “Porn v. Sex Work”
11:00 AM Documentary “Pornography: Andrea Dworkin”
12:00 Panel Discussion
Oct. 14-motion picture Trade
7:30pm in Strain 121
Contact Celeste Goulding at goul0861 at pacificu dot edu for further information
October 14, 15, 16 5:30 - 9:00 PM
Change your Look, Change a Life
Join the Future Professionals at Paul Mitchell, the Portland School and Agape Beauty Salon
Downtown Portland on SW Broadway and Oak
Choose salon services that night for yourself, or purchase a gift card for future use. For more information, call 503-367-0732
all proceeds benefit Remember Nhu a non-profit organization dedicated to fight the existence of forced prostitution and child sex slavery through education, safe havens, and nuturing environment - teaching young women skills in the hair and nail industry, giving them control of their lives and hope for their future.
http://www.remembernhu.com
October 16th, Baghdad Theater - Nicholas Kristof will have a talk and book signing for his new book “Half the Sky”. Cost $28, includes the book.
The Not for Sale Oregon Book Club is meeting on October 19th from 5:30 to 7:30 at the Hollywood Library. We will be discussing the book, “Half the Sky”. The book is a passionate call to arms against our era’s most pervasive human rights violation: the oppression of women and girls in the developing world.
October 19th
Oregon Center for Christian Values
4619 N Michigan Ave
Portland OR 97211
Human Trafficking advisory committee meeting to vett through the upcoming possible bills that will be introduced this session.
contact: Stephanie Ahn Mathis 503-222-2072 (office) or
Stephanie_mathis at occv dot org
October 21st, Wednesday
Greg Mortenson, author of Three Cups of Tea will talk at Concordia College
October 23rd, Friday
Not for Sale is partnering with NEW SEASONS with our Fair Trade Chocolate campaign. All New Seasons stores will have fair trade chocolate tastings and awareness materials.
October 28-30
Roots of Change: Men, Sex and Justice,
PSU, Portland, OR.
The Women’s Resource Center is organizing the conference for October 28-30 in partnership with the Attorney General’s Sexual Assault Task Force and the National Organization of Men Against Sexism. This year’s theme is “Roots of Change: Men, Sex and Justice,” focusing on the whys, hows and implications of engaging men inthe primary prevention of sexual violence.
For more information and to register, please see the conference website: http://www.sati.oregonsatf.org/roots.html orcontact Jessica Amo, WRC Assistant Coordinator, at jamo at pdx dot edu.
October 29th
A North Korean human rights group in LA called LINK will be coming to Portland to show their documentary of three North Korean refugees escaping through the underground railroad. North korea has some of the most unknown trafficking in the world. http://www.seoultrain.com/ and organization: http://www.linkglobal.org/
Contact Stephanie Mathis for more information:
503-222-2072 (office) or Stephanie_mathis at occv dot org