Walk a Mile in Her Shoe – Saturday, June 16th

Saturday, June 16, 2012 / The Mall at Tuttle Crossing / 6:30 p.m.

Our fourth annual walk will feature men (and women) walking one mile in high heels to raise awareness around the issue of human trafficking, and to support Gracehaven, a safe shelter of hope and healing. Both men and women are encouraged to participate. Plan to stay after the walk for a party which includes food and fun! All proceeds of the walk and after-party to benefit Gracehaven.

INDIVIDUAL FEES: $50 Adults / $25 Students / $60 Adults who prefer to wear flip flops instead of high heels

TEAM FEES: $175 Team of five adults (each additional adult can register for $35 per adult) / $100 Team of five students (each additional student can register for $20 per student)

To register online, click here

 

 

New Video on Ohio case

Under-Age Prostitution on the Rise

Oakland is trying to reduce the number of teenage girls who are on the street and controlled by pimps.

Bay City News — On a gray, drizzly afternoon last March, it was mostly empty along Oakland’s “Track,” a section of International Boulevard in the middle of the city that is known as a hub for prostitution.

As the sun occasionally pierced through the clouds onto the bars, restaurants and shops that line the street, a young African American girl in a T-shirt and skinny jeans stood behind a bus stop at 29th Street, rubbing her arms against the cold.

“There’s one,” Oakland police Officer Hamann Nguyen said as he drove by in an undercover police car.

Click here to finish reading the story.

Human Trafficking everywhere

I work mostly with domestic minor victims of sex trafficking. Occasionally I will have an international victim. But day in and day out my life revolves around reading about trafficking, working with victims, training others to identify victims or understand them. I do this here in Central Ohio.

My younger brother lives in Thailand. He sees trafficking every day. He said he is so used to it that he is worried he will become desensitized to it. He can’t walk down the street without seeing young girls hanging out around the “bars” they are forced to work in.

My sister- in- law is Filipino and went home to her village to get some papers needed for a visa so she can move to the United States from where she currently lives, in Thailand.  When she was there,  doctors from another country were there who were smoke bombing “houses” of villagers so they could go in and take the internal organs of children to sell on the black market – another form of human trafficking.

In one week, I was either working with or hearing about Korean traffickers, Thai victims, Filipino child victims, African child victims, domestic child victims from Columbus, Cincinnati and Dayton.

Yet in any given week, I hear from people in our city who belligerently proclaim that this does not happen today, does not happen here or does not happen at all and that we are making too much a big deal about nothing.

I have heard about cases in Alaska and Akron, Atlanta and West Virgina, Kenya, Mauritania, Philippines and Philadelphia, Thailand, Cambodia and Cincinnati. Human Trafficking is everywhere.

I am a firm believer that just because you don’t know about something, does not mean it does not exist. It means you are choosing to not know. You can choose to get informed. Just because something is not on the news does not mean it is not happening. The news does not cover everything. You can be as informed as you want to be. You can research and read about the problem of trafficking just as you can make yourself more knowledgeable about any subject you care about. It is amazing how some people know the names and stats of football players on numerous teams and the college that the pro player came from, but those same people say they can’t know about other issues. You know what you want to know about.

Because the information is out there and human trafficking is everywhere.

Gracehaven T-Shirts Now on Sale!

Support Gracehaven’s mission and create awareness at the same time by purchasing a Gracehaven t-shirt. 100% of the proceeds will go directly to Gracehaven. The t-shirt is a 4.2 ounce, pre-shrunk 50/50 ringspun cotton/polyester blend.

The t-shirt logo is something simple, yet comforting, so the font represents comfort and the the house was sketched in a rough freehand so that
it was one of a kind. Each girl who comes is an individual with a soul and some people in their past have in some way tried to take that away from them. This house is like no other for that reason. Finally the words go in the house to show protection.

To order a t-shirt, head over to the buy a t-shirt order page and follow the two step ordering process! If you have any questions, please email Kendra at kpetrill@gracehavenhouse.org

As seen on WBNS 10TV…

Residential Shelter Provides For Teen Girls

COLUMBUS, Ohio — The first residential shelter in Ohio to provide beds for girls under age 18 who were victims of trafficking needs a grant to finish the building project.

Gracehaven needs to win a quarter million dollar charitable grant from Vivant based on the number of daily votes Gracehaven gets on Facebook.

Executive director, Dr. Jeff Barrows, said the problem is so big that the state could use at least 100 beds.

To finish reading: http://www.10tv.com/live/content/femalefocus/stories/2011/07/18/story-columbus-gracehaven-vote-for-grant.html?sid=102

 

Walk A Mile in Someone Else’s Shoes

I spend a great deal of time trying to help others walk a mile in someone else’s shoes.

One of the greatest gifts I was given as a child was to not take anything I had for granted and to be taught that other people live life differently than me. I was lucky enough to be raised in a multicultural setting and see many other cultures, races, and socioeconomic levels.

I have lived my life, largely, taking a moment to think of what it would be like to be “someone else”; To imagine what the factors are that make up how a person got to be in the state they are today. This been a helpful thing now that I am a social worker who is trying to help the general population understand domestic sex trafficking of minors.

Lately I’ve got into some conversations that go something like this: “They made their bed, now lie in it.” Or, “They are just bad kids.”

I feel passionate about helping others understand that these girls (MY girls!) are not bad kids. Some of them have made some bad decisions, sure, but they are not bad kids and they are a product of so many other things. We all are. I am a product of my environment.

This video helps you walk a mile in someone else’s shoes for a bit. I think it’s helpful to get a more well rounded glimpse of how domestic minor sex trafficking and commercial sexual exploitation is so accessible with girls who are vulnerable. I show this video in trainings I do sometimes to set the scene. I wanted to share it with you. Click on the link and it should open in Quick time. The Making of a Girl(2)

If you have trouble opening the video, you can watch it on youtube, here

In celebration of all those who walked in our Walk A Mile In Her Shoes event, take a moment, please watch the video (it’s short) and for those few minutes, walk a mile in someone else’s shoes. Thank you

Run for Gracehaven

About Run for Gracehaven

Run a marathon, change your world. Support Gracehaven House, change forever the world of a young woman.

We are a team of athletes running in the 2011 Columbus Marathon to raise awareness and support for Gracehaven House.

Our goal is to recruit 26+2 athletes to raise $26,200 for Gracehaven House.

Run a full, or run a half. Dare to run with us and make a difference.

For more information: http://www.crowdrise.com/run4gracehaven

Gangs join forces to prostitute women

Each day, a woman we’ll call Jessica, spent hours on the internet posting provocative photos of herself and fishing for clients who would pay her to have sex.

Jessica worked as a prostitute in the booming internet sex trade. But she didn’t work for herself. She says she had a pimp who set a quota of $1,000 a day – money that took about 10 dates to earn.

To keep reading and to watch the video…http://thecnnfreedomproject.blogs.cnn.com/2011/06/24/gangs-join-forces-to-prostitute-women/

Why do we need Gracehaven House?

I got into an online conversation with someone last week about the need for a home for girls who have been trafficked. I thought I would talk more in depth about that here and address some of those questions or concerns on the blog.

One point that was brought up was that these girls should be put in the foster care system or go back to their own homes. That they “already have homes” so there is no need for Gracehaven.

So far, all the clients I have worked with have already been in the foster care system or have been orphans. I have not yet worked with a client who has had parents or had a home to go back home to. So the option to “go back home” is out. The option to put them in foster care (at first) is not a good one for several reasons.

1. The girls I have worked with have already been in numerous foster home placements most of their lives. Most of the girls I work with have lived the majority of their lives in foster care. And foster care tends to mean more than one placement. The norm I have seen is about 5 or 6 placements. The typical foster care placement has other children who are also there in foster care. This setting is not good for girls who are coming out of the trauma of sex trafficking. Most girls need a great deal of stability. Foster care does not provide that because the foster parent can say to Children Services, “please take her back, I can’t deal with her needs anymore.” Or, “She is not getting along with my other foster children.” Or any other number of things that would move the child again and there is no stability.

2. Foster parents do not posses a level of training needed to handle this level of trauma. In fact, I have seen that many staff at facilities and other social workers who deal with kids in foster care are not equipped to deal with children with this level of trauma. They ask us to provide them with training and then request on-going consultation, training and advice because the child who has been rescued out of sex trafficking has such complex post traumatic stress disorder and often other diagnosis that the typical staff member is not equipped or trained to handle it, let alone have the time to spend with a child who is a survivor when they have about 10-40 other clients depending on the facility or agency. For every one hour session you spend with a client, you need about 2.5 – 3 with a survivor of human trafficking. It is just not easy to wade in to conversation and then wade back out. They are not able to connect and disconnect that fast. (depending on where they are in their stage of healing).  So the need for trained professionals who are really comfortable with a high level of trauma is essential.

3. Many girls are unable to be in the home with men or other children. They require homes with only a single foster mother who works only part time or not at all or empty nesters who can provide a high level of care to them. Most county foster parents are not of this demographic.

 

Now, having said this, Gracehaven has offered training to a private adoption agency to foster parents who wanted training on how to take in a girl who has been sex trafficked. But this was a private agency. And these trainings are not what I would call “packed.” This training was at the request of that adoption agency. They are to be commended for seeking out such a training.

Another point of fear was that Gracehaven would be an institution in a long line of bad history of homes for girls who have something to hide. (sending away girls who were pregnant) And that it is no substitute for a real home.

Gracehaven House is called “House” or “Home” simply because it is an actual house. We bought a house as if you or I were on the market to buy a house. We pay a mortgage payment. It is a real house with bedrooms and a bathroom and a kitchen. So that is why we call it “House.”  It is going to be a home to the girls that live there for the time period that they live there. I suspect and hope that it is more of a home that many of them have had. Not all of them, some girls may come from perfectly fine homes. But so far, the clients I have had, have not. In fact, it is really sobering when a girl does not want to leave a correctional facility because it is the safest place she has ever been. Gracehaven House will be a much more comfortable environment than a jail or a correctional facility!

Gracehaven will be staffed by trained professionals in an environment of love and people who are very passionate about the healing of the girls. That is the goal. To see them healed and to see them move on to independence or to move back home to a safe place. It is not meant to be a substitute for home forever or a place for girls to come and live for the rest of their lives. Just as we have facilities and homes for children who have experienced drug addiction, self harming behaviors, who are severally mentally ill or who have eating disorders, Gracehaven’s specialty is for children (girls) who have been sex trafficked. The design is not meant to be a “home” forever for them to live. In fact, I hope not! That means we have less beds to help other girls who need a place to come heal and learn how to live as survivors. Everyone will be on their own timetable and there will be no set time of stay.

So far, the response from the girls I work with is that the want to come to Gracehaven. They wish it was open. They are sad that they will not be able to come there because some of them will soon be 18. They deeply desire a place to go that is a loving, safe, protective environment, where there are other girls like them who understand them. It is frustrating for them to be with kids who do not understand what they have gone through or to be shipped around from facility to facility because no one knows how to help them.

I hope this answers some of your questions you may have had about the intention of Gracehaven House and what it will and will not be. God willing, and with your help, it will be a house that is open soon! Please join us for our largest annual fundraiser this Saturday, June 18th for the Walk A Mile in Her Shoes Event. Or, if you can not come, please keep voting every day for us in the Vivint Giving Campaign. We have now made it to round 2 and we could win $100,000!

Thank you so much for your ongoing support. You are our greatest PR people and cheerleaders!

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