Commercial Sex Trafficking Here at Home

If you think about human trafficking, the image that probably comes to mind is of a far away country where girls are coerced, abducted, or kidnapped into prostitution. It is a remote issue in our minds, not one that occurs in a country where the idea of owning someone was abolished a long time ago. In reality, human trafficking and commercial sexual exploitation happen every day in the United States, and it is this very issue that 2010 Social Innovator, the My Life My Choice Project, is trying to combat.

On March 26, 2010, Massachusetts Department of Public Health Commissioner John Auerbach spoke in conjunction with My Life My Choice at a Social Innovation Forum Speaker Series event to bring the issue to light. He argued that, though concrete statistics aren’t currently available, commercial sexual exploitation is a serious and under-represented public health issue. Watch video from the event here.

As with many other public health concerns, trafficking disproportionately affects poor populations and people of color. There are numerous health consequences for those that are sexually exploited, such as depression, post traumatic stress disorder, sexually transmitted diseases, and other infectious diseases. It can also, as with domestic violence, be a gateway to violence and substance abuse.

This situation was true for Audrey Porter, assistant program director at My Life My Choice, who was herself brought into the commercial sex industry at age 16. She struggled with substance abuse until she was 30, when she finally received treatment. This treatment served as her way out of exploitation, trauma, and control of substance.

The My Life My Choice Project offers sound and effective approaches to bring girls out of the destructive cycles that Porter found herself in. They focus on prevention for those at greatest risk of becoming victims while educating schools and social workers about warning signs. They also intervene where trafficking has already occurred and offer mentoring to victims, while coordinating efforts of multiple agencies so that the right help can be found. Past victims are paired with survivors so that they may continue on a positive path away from sexual exploitation.

My Life My Choice uses advocacy as a tool to change perceptions about commercial sexual exploitation. Lisa Goldblatt Grace, program director of My Life My Choice, pointed out that in the case of the domestic violence movement, which is already 15 years old, only recently has society begun to recognize that victims are not at fault, that they are not juvenile delinquents and need positive role models and significant support to bring them out of a negative system.

Over 500 girls have successfully been reached through the My Life My Choice Project, and over 2,000 providers have been trained and educated through their groundbreaking model. According to Commissioner Auerbach, the organization has achieved all of this on a “financial shoestring,” but they have the capacity to build and do much more to combat human trafficking in our own backyard.