Refuge for Women having Saturday fundraiser
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STEUBENVILLE -- Sex trafficking is a billion dollar industry in the United States, generating more money than Amazon, Google and Starbucks, and it's in every town, every city, every state.
And Ohio ranks fourth in the nation in human trafficking.
The assessment came during a presentation Oct. 8 to the Steubenville Kiwanis Club by Theresa Golden, city director for Refuge for Women, Ohio Valley. It is the local presence of a national organization that provides long-term care for women who have escaped human trafficking or sexual exploitation.
Refuge for Women, Ohio Valley, offers up to 12 months of safe housing with 24-7 staffing. It is a faith-based, three-phase program that includes healing, recovery, individual counseling, life coaching and employment training.
While the world view of trafficking might be the movie "Taken" -- the abduction of girls sold into human trafficking -- "the truth of the matter is there are probably three typical faces," Golden said, noting one of them is familial.
"A lot of times it's family members who are trafficking their sisters, their mothers, their children. A lot of this is because of the drug activity. When you have a drug problem, you have a trafficking problem. They run out of resources to get their drugs and have to find another way to get it so they unfortunately sell their children. It doesn't matter who it is," Golden said.
"The next one would be like a Romeo situation," she explained. "You have these teenage girls who want to be loved, who want attention, so they have this one guy who all of sudden is paying all this attention," she said, noting this trafficker recruiter fulfills whatever her need is. He woos and courts her and builds trusts while isolating her away from relationships with family and friends. He becomes the only person she listens to.
"He has provided every need she has ever wanted and so six months, nine months, a year later -- they take their time, they're master manipulators -- they say I can't meet the rent, I need you to go to this party for me and entertain people, and that's how it begins so that starts their life of trafficking."
The third one is peers.
"When you think of the drug cartel, the different layers of what their job is in the cartel, they have recruiters. It's the same thing in human trafficking. It's women usually, the majority, but it can happen to men as well. They have been trafficked and have worked their way up the system to where she is his right-hand woman, and she gets out of having to actually do the acts because she is out recruiting girls. She's being a friend, that person that person can talk to, and she's out shopping with people, buying them clothes. That's usually most of the time how it happens -- there's a need, and the traffickers have researched and learned all the manipulation tactics, and they get that person to trust them.
"In our valley, a lot of times it's familial, family members selling sisters or brothers for drugs," she said.
Golden said a trafficker can sell a woman up to five to 10 times a night, "so traffickers can make anywhere from $5,000 to $33,000 in a week off of one woman. Most of them have more than one so when you stop to think about it, over a year's time if there's more than one woman being trafficked, they're making millions and millions of dollars."
Trafficking usually starts between the ages of 12 to 14, she noted.
"We are a national organization, and we have a house here in the Ohio Valley at a location undisclosed," Golden said. "We provide safe housing for women who have been sexually exploited or have been in human trafficking. We work with frontline ministry groups in strip clubs, on the streets, building relationships with these women and letting them know there are other choices out there, and once a woman decides she wants to get out, they'll call to move them into the next phase, which would be to have them get out of their environment."
The process takes up to seven times for them to start a program and make the choice to stay in it.
"We want to plant the seeds. We bring them into our home, they have a curriculum to go with some aspect related to trafficking -- anxiety, addiction, PTSD, depression -- all of our curriculum is based on those kinds of things to help them overcome and have the tools to use," according to Golden. The faith-based program also involves church, Bible studies, volunteering and exercise.
"Ninety-two percent of the women who have been in prostitution we've dealt with have said they wanted to get out but didn't have any resources or know what to do so it really wasn't a choice," she said. "If you've been sold or prostituted out since you were 11 years old, you don't know how to hold a job, or balance a checkbook or cook dinner. So those are all the skills we help them do and hopefully will be able to increase the number of people who stay out of the industry."
Refuge for Women needs local support, Golden said of the ministry that is completely free for the women but costs $100 a day per resident to run the program.
Ways that area residents or businesses can help is through volunteering; providing resources such as food, clothing and other necessities; offering jobs; or providing transportation for the residents to attend church, for example, or self-help programs such as Alcoholics Anonymous.
The Ohio Valley presence is the only one in Ohio and one out of five national locations.
Refuge for Women Ohio Valley will be holding its "Night of Hope" fundraiser on Saturday at St. Florian Event Center in Wintersville. The social hour begins at 6:30 p.m. with dinner at 7 p.m. There will be a cash bar and Chinese and live auctions including multiple Caribbean vacations. Tickets for the black and white semi-formal attire event are $50 per person or $500 a table. Call (740) 632-9972 or go online to rfohiovalley.org/events. Tickets also are available at Iacovissi in the Hollywood City Center, Steubenville, and Hauser's Furniture, Sunset Boulevard.
Speakers will be Ked Frank, CEO and president of Refuge for Women, and Christa Wagner, Refuge for Women program graduate.