Under the elevated train in a North Philadelphia neighborhood known for violent crime, drug dealing and street prostitution, the first floor of a small row house is a refuge where women enslaved in sex trafficking can have a meal or snack, take a shower and leave in clean clothes, seek help from a social worker, enjoy art and yoga classes and relax awhile on the couch watching Netflix.
“We’re small but we’re mighty,” says Heather LaRocca, LCSW, director of the New Day to Stop Trafficking program for The Salvation Army’s Eastern Pennsylvania and Delaware division.
In East New York, Brooklyn, where street prostitution and the threat of violence are at one of the highest rates in the state, a Salvation Army van arrives one night a month and a dozen or so volunteers and a couple staff members venture out to greet the women and give them navy canvas tote bags containing breakfast (a muffin or sandwich), gloves, scarfs and information about Salvation Army support services.
And in western Pennsylvania a staff of three Salvation Army employees built a network of about 350 partners in three years to meet the needs of their trafficked clients.
These efforts are among the Eastern Territory’s 15 multi-faceted anti-human trafficking programs, which are part of 41 Salvation Army programs across the country. Together they served a total of 3,620 people in 2020.
Helping these victims is very much in keeping with The Salvation Army’s mission, says Major Tawny Cowen-Zanders, MSNMP, CFRE, divisional secretary for Greater Philadelphia,
“We work with them to help them see how very precious they are. We don’t see them as the world sees them. We see them as who they were meant to be and are, a chid of God.” She said this can only be done by “addressing the hope issue, helping them feel and believe and hope for something better.”
The barriers to reaching these people are many. Most have experienced trauma from a very early age and many have substance abuse and mental health disorders and are homeless. Reaching out to them is important because they are far less likely to seek help than other crime victims, says Arielle Curry, Anti-Human Trafficking Coordinator for the Eastern Territory.
“In the Eastern Territory we are working to train all departments in the trauma-informed model known as The Sanctuary Model,” she said, emphasizing the importance of avoiding words like rescue, save, hooker and addict. “We try to have person-first language. Instead of a homeless person we would say a person experiencing homelessness.”
The Salvation Army in England has been involved in anti-human trafficking efforts since the 1800s but efforts in the United States, for the most part, didn’t begin in earnest until more than a century later. It is now estimated that human trafficking is a $150 billion criminal enterprise worldwide, enslaving 40.3 million people at any time.
In Philadelphia the approach is four-part: the New Day Drop-In Center, New Day Home, Anti-Trafficking Task Force and Police Assisted Diversion. Support for clients is built around the belief that they are the experts on their own lives.
“We are working along side them,” LaRocca says. “We’re not telling them what they need. They’re not going to make lasting change unless they’re the ones driving the bus. We hear their story and what goals they want to set. We build a relationship.”
The Philadelphia division’s involvement began when the city started exploring anti-trafficking work in 2010. The Salvation Army and other organizations were part of the discussions. The New Day Drop-In Center was born as a collaborative effort; the division took it over in 2014. Close to 60 people come each day now, down from more than 100 before the pandemic. In addition to being a welcoming haven in a rough neighborhood, diverse services — legal, youth, immigration — are provided through outside partnerships. And it offers one small thing that touches the women, a log of those who have died.
“The women who come in feel so alone,” Cowen-Zanders says. “They know if something happens to them on the street there will be a place where they will be remembered.”
The New Day Home opened in February 2017 as a residence for survivors of sex or labor trafficking. Stays are for one to three years and include earning a GED if needed, vocational training, trauma and trafficking-informed treatment, activities for behavioral health and daily skills acquisition-building, such as basic cooking and housekeeping.
Many of the people who move into the New Day Home are experiencing a safe, caring residence for the first time in their lives. A new residence will open in July, if renovation is on track, that will replace the current one, doubling the number of beds to 16 from eight.
The Police Assisted Diversion program sprang out of a Philadelphia Police Department effort to channel people arrested for drug offenses and petty crime into support programs rather than have them enter the criminal justice system. In 2016 they asked the Salvation Army to try a similar approach for people picked up for prostitution. In 2019 this collaborative effort became a New Day program.
The Anti-Human Trafficking Task Force was launched to combat human trafficking with a collaborative approach of federal and local law enforcement agencies and multiple social service organizations.
Last year New Day served 1,169 trafficking survivors. The four programs have a total staff of about 35, with eight to 10 volunteers, only a handful now compared to the 20 to 30 pre-Covid. To keep themselves from burning out, they follow the Sanctuary Model, trauma-informed care that works to understand how trauma affects clients as well as the staff and organization. This involves using tools like Red Flag Meetings, which are scheduled shortly after a traumatic event, like an overdose, to work together through what has happened. Leaders check on everyone to make sure they have a self-care plan to help eliminate the need to repair damage later.
“We as leaders have to genuinely care about the staff,” LaRocca says. “We’re on a journey together.”
The Salvation Army’s anti-trafficking program is one of the largest in the city but few people know about it, she says.
“People know the visuals, like the Red Kettle and the thrift shops. They get one thing in their mind.”
The Salvation Army’s western Pennsylvania division, which encompasses 28 counties, had occasionally been asked by law enforcement to help find food or shelter for the trafficking victims they encountered. As requests grew the division applied for and received a federal grant in 2018 to start the LIGHT Project to develop a program of comprehensive services, like a giant networking agency, for victims of human trafficking.
“We’ve grown a lot quicker and faster than we thought but, unfortunately, the need is great,” said Sarah Medina, MSW, LSW, Anti-Human Trafficking Director for Western Pennsylvania.
Since launching out of the division’s main office in west Pittsburgh in 2019, this vast collaboration of community-based partnerships has helped 42 victims. Through the partnerships they receive therapy, legal help for civil, criminal or immigration matters and much more, as well as material help of hygiene products, new clothes and housing from The Salvation Army. Requests from law enforcement to help a victim are met 24/7.
“Our clients have so many needs,” Medina says. “If a new need comes up, we’ll find a partner.”
The latest of these is a tattoo parlor that will cover up tattoos or brands.
The LIGHT Project also has an educational component that has educated 3,000 people about human trafficking red flags.
If a client can’t get to the office, a staff member will go to them. Medina said she recently drove two hours to Erie after a call from law enforcement. Since she wasn’t using a Salvation Army car she sent the woman to a hotel in an Uber and then met her there with personal products and clothes.
“We’re looking for the success with each client’s story. It looks so different with each one.”
The Greater New York division has also been growing its anti-trafficking efforts, which began modestly in the 1980s with one officer ministering to street prostitutes in Times Square. It wasn’t until 2018 that GNY began researching services being offered to women at high risk of human trafficking. Focusing on the fastest growing hotspots in northeast, they zeroed in on illicit massage businesses in Sunset Park, Brooklyn.
“The fact was that human trafficking is happening in New York City as it is across the country and world,” said Jennifer L. Groff
Corporate & Community Engagement Director, Greater New York Division. “It was long overdue.”
Groff’s commitment was sparked in 2017 while she was in graduate school researching and writing a paper about human trafficking and survivors. She developed relationships with people working in the field. Realizing “this is where the unmet needs were” and wanting to create awareness in the division, she began working with Major Susan M. Wittenberg, Eastern Territory social justice secretary, to create the first program in New York.
P.E.A.R.L. Essence, standing for Purposed, Empowered, Appreciated, Respected and Loved, launched in January 2018 to minister to women working in illicit massage parlors in Sunset Park. These businesses were made up largely of women emigrating from China who had been defrauded into believing they would have a legitimate job as a masseuse. The barriers keeping them entrapped are hard to overcome — poverty, the need for shelter, language differences, no work authorization and fear of deportation.
Between six and 12 volunteers, along with a couple staff members, set out on foot with a list of the parlors, bleak boarded-up buildings with blackened windows. They offered gifts of jewelry, lip gloss and a list of Salvation Army services in the city. They brought cookies to bribe the owners.
At first the women were extremely guarded. But Pearl Essence is “a seed-planting mission” and the team persisted. By the fifth outreach five Mandarin-speaking volunteers had been added. One young woman, who looked about 16 and had always strongly resisted the team’s efforts, smiled and told them her name.
“It was a beautiful moment of progress in her,” Groff said. “Doors began to open.”
In 2019 the division’s anti-trafficking effort expanded to include the monthly late night/early morning visits to East New York. Arriving in a Salvation Army van, the team of about 20 go out in threes between 11 p.m. and 3:30 a.m., knowing they are being watched by pimps who “don’t like anyone distracting their business plan for the night,” Groff says. They always stay in sight of the van and wear team jackets — black with “The Salvation Army P.E.A.R.L. Essence” logo so they are easily identifiable for the women.
In encounters that last only about a minute, the volunteers approach about 20 women, most of whom are between 25 and 35, with smiles and questions about how they are. In time the women “were joyful to see us,” Groff says. “They liked our attention. We know we are making a difference for those women.
“Their situation is dire. The Salvation Army’s programs are about helping people in destitute poverty.”
Safeguards were put into the program after a September 2021 showing of HOPE, a full-length documentary produced by Eastern Territorial headquarters about survivors’ day-to-day lives after their trauma recovery.
After the showing the Pearl Essence team provided information about the van visits at an information table. Others who work in the field said this approach was too risky. Leaders began working with the Brooklyn District Attorney’s office and the New York Police Department to ensure volunteer teams would be protected. Now plainclothes detectives are in cars in front of the van and behind at all times.
In December 2019 Pearl Essence began offering a seven-day emergency stay program where women who want to leave prostitution receive three meals a day, clothing, a private place to meet with their social worker and respite so they can “get on their feet while the FBI finds them long-term housing.”
Pearl Essence is different from other human trafficking programs in the city, Groff says, because it puts the empowerment on the women.
“We’re their friend, not a direct service. We’re just building trust over time. They are used to people objectifying them and using them for their bodies. We have an interest in them as a person. It’s powerful. ”
Philadelphia’s Cowen-Zanders includes a tour of the rough, violent neighborhoods where the women work when she is introducing a new board member or donor to the work of The Salvation Army. As she says, people associate pictures of cute children in day care or the comforting environment of a shelter with The Army’s work, not the reality of street prostitution.
“This isn’t pretty, but it’s precious. These women are precious to Jesus. We hold this work in our hands like a precious jewel. We are honored to be there.”
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