Nobody's Girl
Page 15
4.Partner with an anti-trafficking organization to offer low-cost, sliding-scale, or free medical services to human trafficking victims.
5.View the DVD Uncovering The Truth: Identifying Sexually Exploited Youth in a Health Setting, co-produced by Global Health Promise, ECPAT-USA, and GEMS.
Teachers and school counselors
Teachers and counselors have a great responsibility to share education and knowledge of what human trafficking is and how students can avoid becoming victims. Shielding students from the evils of the world does not help them; they need to know the truth so they can help themselves and others. School personnel also have the ability to make a difference by identifying possible victims of human trafficking.
1.Teach about human trafficking in all of its forms, both labor trafficking and sex trafficking. Bringing a curriculum into your classroom will arm young students with information about what human trafficking is, who is vulnerable, and how they can avoid becoming victims. Knowledge can make a huge difference; I’d never heard the words “human trafficking” as a youth, and in interviewing young neighbors and students, I’ve discovered they haven’t either. See information about The Destiny of Zoe Carpenter and accompanying curriculum at www.barbaraamaya.com.
2.Share information with your students about anti-trafficking legislation within your state. Bring local lawmakers to your classroom to talk with your students about how anti-trafficking legislation begins. Polaris is a nonprofit that offers many educational resources (www.polarisproject.org).
3.Attend training to learn how to identify possible victims. Be ready to offer help to victims via a list of nonprofits, advocates, volunteers, resources, and referrals.
4.Expose your students to positive role models. Today’s children look up to people who may be sadly lacking in positive morals and attributes. Invite local advocates, activists, and strong role models and mentors to come into your class to speak.
Parents and caregivers
1.Teach children to arm themselves with knowledge and self-love. Self-esteem has the great ability to cause traffickers, predators, and pimps to turn away when they meet someone who is not vulnerable and susceptible to their lies and manipulations. A detective once told me one trafficker’s story. The trafficker would approach young girls who seemed to be potential victims, and tell them they were beautiful. If the girl looked down at the ground, he knew he had her; that lack of self-esteem showed she would be easy to control. But if the girl maintained eye contact instead, the trafficker would leave the girl alone and search for a more vulnerable target.
2.Educate yourself and your children about human trafficking. Traffickers come in all forms, ages, and genders. Sometimes traffickers even manipulate their young victims into recruiting other young boys and girls.
3.Know where your children are and what they are doing, especially online. Even though your teenagers seem distant and independent, they are still children who need your guidance, love, and advice. Take time to learn about their world and how you can still fit into it.
4.If your child tells you someone is hurting them or has approached them and asked them to run away, believe them. If your child seems depressed or distant, or begins to act out or seems disturbed, take them to a professional for help.
Young men and women
1.Arm yourselves with high self-esteem against the manipulations of traffickers and predators. Healthy self-love will turn them away.
2.Protect yourself, especially online. If an older person approaches you and asks you to run away with them, they are not thinking of your well-being, no matter how much you want to believe that they are. They are trying to prey upon you.
3.No matter how much someone pressures you, do not share questionable or nude photos online or via social media (those images will stay out there on the Internet forever, and believe me, there will come a day when you will not want to see them). Don’t share personal information or information about family fights, either. Traffickers troll the Internet, looking for young victims who seem unhappy at home or who seem to want reassurance that they are attractive. A predator may seem like they understand you better than anyone, but they are lying. They say the same thing to everyone who appears vulnerable and easy to control.
4.Join a team or a group, whether it is sports, the school newspaper, or another school club. Accomplishing goals within a group setting will send your self-esteem soaring and help you feel a sense of belonging. Additionally, you will get to explore new interests and meet new people.
5.Become media literate. Learn how advertisers are feeding you ideas to make you buy their goods and services, messages that may make you think you’re not pretty enough or thin enough. Those images of models are edited to make them look perfect; they are not real. Learn to make your own choices.
6.Value and respect your own sexuality and body. Today, images of sex and scantily-clad women and girls are everywhere. Young girls are taught that being sexy is good and that having a boyfriend is the most important thing in the world. This is not true. First you must learn to be happy and love yourself. Your body belongs to you; value it, and understand that it is okay to wait to have sex, and to say no to your boyfriend or girlfriend if they’re pressuring you.
Young men, you don’t have to prove you are a man by pushing someone to have sex. Respect yourself and your girlfriend or boyfriend.
7.Ask your parents, teachers, and school counselors what human trafficking is. Learn about why it happens and how it affects everyone. Ask your teacher to help you start a program or chapter in your school to bring awareness and education to others. Become an advocate. You are not too young to make a difference.
ADDITIONAL RESOURCES
Courtney’s House
Support line for survivors, by survivors.
1-888-261-3665
National Center for Missing & Exploited Children (NCMEC)
1-800-THE LOST (1-800-843-5678)
National Runaway Switchboard
For children who have already run away or are thinking about it.
1-800-RUNAWAY (1-800-786-2929)
GEMS (Girls Educational & Mentoring Services)
1-212-926-8089 www.gems-girls.org
National Human Trafficking Resource Center Hotline
1-888-373-7888 or text INFO or HELP to 233733 (BeFree).
Department of Justice Office of Victims of Crime
www.ovc.gov
Inclusion on any resource list in this book does not imply endorsement of the event, training person, or organization.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
With the deepest gratitude, from the bottom of my heart I wish to thank those who have come into my life and inspired and moved me toward writing Nobody’s Girl.
Completing this book has been a journey of so many different emotions: confusion, fear, happiness, joy, anger, bewilderment, empowerment, and contentment. I have often been told that I should put my story into a book, but writing a book is easier said than done when you have a sixth-grade formal education. At a certain point I considered hiring a ghostwriter to help me write it, but I gathered my courage and my thesaurus and forged ahead.
I believe that in my life there are no accidents. Finding my editor, Christina Frey of Page Two Editing, has been a blessing. Her talent, patience, sense of humor, intelligence, and expertise have been a true gift to me. Editing someone’s life is no easy task, but she somehow brought out the very best from me. I wouldn’t have been able to write this book without her. Thank you, Christina.
Quite a while back, when I first decided to write this book, I joined the Arlington Writers Group. After the first meeting, I returned home and Googled “run-on sentence.” I was so terrified of sharing my life with others that I began writing in the third person and created a character with a different name. Michael Klein, the organizer of AWG, encouraged me with his wonderful leadership and sensitivity. He never made me feel less than anyone else, and was instrumental in bringing out the writer in me. Thank you, Michael.
I must thank my friend Kay Chernush for her unflinching love and support in the creation of this book. Thank you, Kay.
Finally, I want to thank all the people who took the time to read drafts of my book and send me their wonderful endorsements. I appreciate all of you so very much!
Barbara Amaya
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Barbara Amaya’s life has changed since she began her journey into advocacy. No longer a silent victim, she has presented and keynoted at universities, NGOs, and other organizations, and her story has been featured on television and NPR.
She has also become an anti-trafficking advocate, currently serving as a training consultant with the Department of Justice Office for Victims of Crime Training and Technical Assistance Center. She has assisted Polaris with human trafficking survivor mental health restoration groups, and in 2013 published a graphic novel, The Destiny of Zoe Carpenter, and an accompanying curriculum in hopes of reaching and teaching young populations. Currently she works with human rights nonprofit Seraphim Global.
Since returning to New York to vacate the convictions she received as an underage trafficking victim, she has worked with lawmakers, law enforcement, and state general assemblies to give expert testimony and to help draft legislation that can make a difference in the lives of human trafficking victims and survivors. Along with local and national nonprofits, she supported the Washington, DC Safe Harbor Bill, which passed in December 2014.
In December 2014 Barbara was honored with the James B. Hunter Human Rights Advocacy Award for her advocacy and activism.
Please visit Barbara’s website for more information on her advocacy work: www.barbaraamaya.com.