Human Trafficking

In the fall, we gifted our outgoing Board Chair with a snow globe featuring the nativity scene with Mary, Joseph and Jesus. As the present was unwrapped, someone around the table – reflecting on the nature of our work to address the lack of safe, specialized and supportive housing for trafficked survivors –  commented,“They didn’t have anywhere to go either.”

This story contains mature content.  

This is a reflection on human trafficking. 

This is a reflection on more than just human trafficking. 

Because, like many of our world’s justice issues, human trafficking is rooted in other systemic problems and challenges. 

When people hear that I am a RCA Mission Partner Personnel (“missionary”) who is working to address human trafficking and commercial sexual exploitation, I sometimes believe  that they think I am working in some far-off country, perhaps in the Global South. In fact, I work in partnership with a charity in southern Ontario that is striving to provide transitional housing for survivors.

February 22 marked Ontario’s Human Trafficking Awareness Day. That same day, the news broke about Robert Kraft, owner of the NFL’s New England Patriots, being charged with solicitation of prostitution in Florida.

Start children off on the way they should go, and even when they are old they will not turn from it.  Psalm 22:6 (NIV)

When we announced to our family, friends, colleagues, and the congregation we were serving at the time that we were moving to Italy to serve with the Reformed Church in America, the questions began. Good questions. Thoughtful questions. Caring questions.

We bring our prayers to Creator God, who both "takes up our pain and bears our suffering" and will "let justice roll down like a river."

One of the most important tools that advocates have up their sleeves is storytelling. Stories have the ability to inform, inspire, and incite action.

I’m always wrestling with the ethical questions around storytelling.

Whenever I speak or write about human trafficking and commercial sexual exploitation, I rely on stories that try to capture all three of these elements:

In March 2018 a bold decree was made by Oba Ewuare II, the traditional ruler of the kingdom of Benin (located in southern Nigeria). Oba Ewuare II was upset that his beloved kingdom had received negative international press regarding the high numbers of women and girls who are coerced into trafficking and sexual exploitation and “bound” to their traffickers through voodoo juju rituals, so he decreed that all victims of these rituals are free.

Pornography is a giant in our land. How do we bring it down?