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By Karen L. Willoughby, Managing Editor
ALEXANDRIA – A type of scarf hand-made on an Indonesian island that had been hanging on her wall for eight years opened Kay Bennett’s eyes to God leading her into becoming an advocate for people victimized by Human Trafficking.
Bennett has been director of the Baptist Friendship House in New Orleans since 1997; she worked among the homeless for 10 years before that at the Brantley Center in New Orleans. Bennett also is a spokesperson on Human Trafficking for the Southern Baptist Convention’s North American Mission Board. She told the story of what technically is a “stole” – a scarf-life garment with symbols embroidered on it – during a six-hour seminar in mid-March at Calvary Baptist Church in Alexandria. The Human Trafficking seminar was sponsored by Calvary and the Louisiana Baptist Children’s Home and Family Ministries.
“I’ve done thousands of conferences, but I’ve never seen an audience as intense as this one,” said Nelda Seal, event coordinator and a member of the Calvary Woman’s Missionary Union. Seal also is retired as the Louisiana Baptist Convention’s WMU executive director. She spoke of their “rapt attention” to the 165 or more people – including about a dozen men – who attended.
The purpose of the seminar was to build awareness of the problem of Human Trafficking, and to stimulate thinking about how Louisiana Baptists could be a part of the solution, Seal said.
Speakers in addition to Bennett included Courtney Eichelberger, a foster/adoption specialist with the Louisiana Baptist Children’s Home, FBI agents, an assistant district attorney, and two victims’ advocates.
Human Trafficking includes labor and sex trafficking; both are federal offenses, said an FBI spokeswoman who asked that her name not be used for security reasons. “Either is a violation of a person’s civil rights,” she said. In order for a Human Trafficker to be convicted of the crime, the victim needs to either have been taken by force, misled by fraud, or manipulated by coercion.
Human Trafficking is the second-largest and fastest-growing criminal industry, Bennett said, explaining that illegal drugs, as well as firearms, are bought, used, gone and need to be replenished, but a person can be used over and over again. Some are sold 15 to 40 times a day; their nightly quota might be $2,000.
“Don’t think of these women as being prostitutes,” Bennett said. “They’re being prostituted; they hand over the money to their traffickers/pimps.”
Of the 2.8 million children (under 18) living on the streets in the United States, one-third are lured into prostitution within 48 hours of leaving home, Bennett said. The average age of a child prostitute is 14; the life expectancy after becoming a prostitute: seven years.
“If there wasn’t any buying, there wouldn’t be any selling,” Bennett continued, blaming consumers as much as the criminals who provide that which is inhumanely called a “product.” People who might see themselves as removed from Human Trafficking because they limit themselves to viewing pornography online are just as guilty as other consumers of the sex trade, Bennett said. “When you look online, take out plastic, you’ve already bought.”
A young Indonesian woman had been brought to Bennett’s attention who was known to have been victim of Human Trafficking, but she was afraid and wouldn’t talk. Nothing Bennett said was able to penetrate the fear, until Bennett took the victim into her office for a private conversation and showed her the garment, which Bennett knew to be from the victim’s homeland. The victim recognized the embroidery as coming from her tiny village, and began to open up.
“It was God’s way of getting my attention,” Bennett said. “That stole that hung in my office for eight years – it was a decoration! – told her I could be trusted.”
Victims of Human Trafficking on the labor side of the problem might be domestic servants, farm workers, or hotel/food service employees; on the sex side, they might work in brothels, massage parlors, strip clubs or on the streets, according to a document prepared by the FBI. The Human Traffickers have power and control over their victims through coercion and threats, intimidation, emotional abuse, isolation, manipulation, sexual abuse and economic abuse. In other words, the victims believe they are trapped; they see no way out of their situation.
So, how can they be helped? A Baptist Friendship House document lists several ways, starting with prayer: “for self and how God would have you respond,” about the issue, for the people enslaved, for people buying victims, for people selling them, for law officials rescuing them, and for those ministering to them.
The extensive list of ways to help, which includes a second sheet listing Human Trafficking resources, is available online at www.baptistfriendshiphouse.org. The Human Trafficking hotline is 888.3737.888.
Seal said she had been approached by several people, including Perry Hancock, LBCH president, about the need for a seminar on Human Trafficking. The WMU group at Calvary Baptist in Alexandria said they too wanted to help.
“When I was the interim WMU director in Texas, the Super Bowl was there, and I was told more than 10,000 were imported for sex trafficking,” Seal said. “That made me sick to my stomach …. What if one of my granddaughters had gotten into this one way or another? I would want someone to rescue her. …
“We in the church can’t say, ‘That doesn’t happen in my town,’ because it does,” Seal continued. “I think we have to open our minds and our hearts to this.”