Safe Passage: Help 150 Girls Survive Trafficking

Dear Supporters and Friends

A lot has happened since FAIR Fund’s launch of our Safe Passage campaign on GlobalGiving.  We could not have done it without the support of our friends who gave to us during the past year.  We sincerely thank each of you for making our work to keep high-risk girls safe from all forms of human trafficking and to provide compassionate care to those who have already been exploited. 

We have some exciting news!

On December 9th, the Senate passed a groundbreaking bill that, if also passed by the House before the end of 2010, will provide $15 million Federal dollars to support the recovery of American child victims of sex trafficking. I believe that the passage of H.R. 5575, the “Domestic Minor Sex Trafficking Deterrence and Victims Support Act of 2010”, marks a change in American attitudes toward child victims of sex trafficking. 

On Christmas Eve 2008, I stood before D.C. Child Protective Services with a teen girl, “Mary”, who had just escaped her violent pimp.  Instead of helping Mary find a place to stay, her social worker called her a “slut” and walked away.  The one youth shelter in the area was full.  For the next 24 hours, my staff and I searched for a safe place for Mary.  Eventually, we found “Theresa”, a woman who had met Mary years before at her local church.  Theresa took Mary into her home until we found more supportive housing.  As we made call after call, Mary watched and worried, “where will I go tonight?”

Child sex trafficking is a serious human rights violation affecting thousands of children every year.  The “Domestic Minor Sex Trafficking Deterrence and Victims Support Act of 2010” will be the first bill of its kind to provide COMPREHENSIVE care to the girls and boys our society has, until now, left out in the cold.  So often, the conversation centers around: did she have a choice?  To be honest, that question is irrelevant – no child can legally consent to be engaged in commercial sex.  So, let us flip the question around and ask: “when we had a choice to help her, did we?” 

In the past year, there have been times when a hotel was our only option for emergency overnight client housing.  Given that the exploitation of child victims like Mary has occurred in hotels where their pimps held them, one can understand how difficult it is for them to stay in yet another hotel reminding them of their horrific past.  The passage of this bill will enable service providers across the country to better offer emergency and long-term safe housing for girls like Mary.  It just shouldn’t be this hard to help a sexually exploited trafficked girl.  These young survivors should be at the top of our society’s priority list.   

Because of your support this year, despite the recession and truly challenging economic times, FAIR Fund has continued to support the girls and boys who need us the most.  As you are celebrating the coming New Year, I want you to feel good knowing that if someone asked you the question: “When you had the choice, did you help her?”, you can say, “Yes, I did.”

 On behalf of the young women and girls we serve, thank you so much for your support.

Sincerely,

Andrea and the FAIR Fund team

www.fairfund.org

Links:

• Global Sex Trafficking: Voice of America Article 9/20/2010
• FBI Innocence Lost Rescue 69 children from sexual exploitation
• H.R. 5575 Domestic Minor Sex Trafficking Bill

Dear Supporters and Friends:

On September 3rd, FAIR Fund and our partners successfully lead the charge to shut down Craigslist's adult services section. FAIR Fund organized local and national support around this effort and worked to educate and advocate publicly through appearances in national news networks CNN, the BBC, ABC and was quoted as an expert in the Wall Street Journal. Please visit our web site to see recent CNN video footage and a sample of all of the recent press.

Throughout our effort, we met with leaders in the fight against the scourge of human trafficking and with heroic young survivors, but it was the current victims who reminded us that while we are making progress, there is still so much more that needs to be done.

FAIR Fund needs approximately $3,000 to assist each of the teen girls we help and there are three specific teen girls who have come to us in the past month who need and deserve our support. While this is a modest goal, $9,000 will pay for a year of therapy and recovery programs for these three girls. Through a generous donation from one special donor, we have already received a pledge of $3,000! To make a donation visit www.fairfund.org today.

Children as young as 13 are being sold 10 to 15 times per night in the United States. Their traffickers prefer to use online avenues to avoid the police and to reach more people who want to exploit these girls and boys. Exploiters preferred Craigslist because it seemed somehow less exploitative to go to a site where apartments were being listed. Craigslist had consistently maintained that they screen every single ad posted on their adult services section of their web site to ensure that trafficking and exploitation, especially of minors, does not occur. Many of the young women FAIR Fund assists know that this simply cannot be true. They know this because they were being sold on Craigslist and other online search engines. Here is an example of the cold, harsh supply and demand reality of one girl's one-month experience being trafficked on Craigslist's adult services section prior to it being shutdown: Trafficker: $30,000 Craigslists $3,000 Trafficked Girl: $0

Your past support made it possible for FAIR Fund to help successfully advocate for Craigslist to shut down their adult services section. Your support helped remove one of the spaces where minors are easily, and without impunity, exploited and sold. There is much to be done to ensure that Craigslist and other web sites continue to help put an end to sex trafficking on their web sites. FAIR Fund will continue its work in the U.S. and around the world to support over 3,000 teens each year and we need your support.

Please help us continue to help even more young people in need right here in D.C. and around the world. Thank you for being a part of FAIR Fund's work. We need your support now more than ever. Every single person who we reach out to can help us make a difference to these three girls and the thousands more we assist in the nation's capital and around the world.

Thank you,

Andrea,

Links:

• Latest CNN Story: Sex Trafficking on Craigslist
• FAIR Fund featured on CNN's 9/4 story: Trafficking on Craigslist
• FAIR Fund listed as expert on Wall Street Journal