CR spoke with Courage Worldwide

Jenny Williamson

The issue of child sex trafficking is global and growing. It is the passion and vision of Courage Worldwide to build Courage Houses in every city around the world that needs one so rescued children will have a safe place to call home. With locations open in Northern California and Tanzania, they are committed to not only rescuing child victims of sex trafficking, but also to restoring their lives.

With endorsements from the Sacramento County Sheriff; the Supervisory Special Agent, Violent Crimes Squad, FBI Sacramento; U.S. Congressmen and women and the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime Goodwill Ambassador to Combat Human Trafficking to name a few, Courage Worldwide have made a huge impact in the two years they have been rescuing children from the sex slave industry.

Emily Graves spoke with Jenny Williamson, the Founder and CEO of Courage Worldwide to find out more.

Emily: What is Courage Worldwide?

Jenny: We're an organisation that builds homes for children and women who have been rescued out of sex trafficking. We have two homes: one in Tanzania, Africa; one in Northern California; and we're about to open another one in Honolulu, Hawaii. But our goal is to prototype our homes, branch out and bring them to every city in the world that is focused on rescuing women and children out of human trafficking.

Emily: So for those who don't know, what is human trafficking?

Jenny: I'm glad you asked that question. I had not even heard the term until five years ago and I was shocked to learn that we live in a world where human beings are still enslaved. The different types of human trafficking that are happening today is servitude, labour trafficking and the one that's most concerning to me - the one we have focused on - is the trafficking of women and children for sex.

Emily: Why did Courage begin?

Jenny: We started around seven years ago. I was doing conferences and leadership-type events around the world - helping people find their purpose and doing life-coaching. When I heard about these issues, our board of directors decided that these women and kids around the world have a purpose. There's something that they are supposed to be doing on this planet and until someone helps set them free and rescues them and provides for their most basic needs, they're never going to be able to do all that they were created to. So it was a decision made out of faith and out of working with law enforcement and studying the issue around the world and realising no one city or country is immune to this issue.

What's so sad to me is that it's our most vulnerable that are trafficked: so children and women are the highest percentage of victims being trafficked. The UN and different governments around the world estimate that there are over 27 million people enslaved in the world today and of those 27 million, that a very high percentage of them are victims of sex trafficking.

Emily: In the UK, a study of the problem was carried out in around 2009 and identified there are about 2,600 foreign women in England and Wales who have been victims of human trafficking.

Jenny: Every country is now starting to realise what is happening and doing their own research. What we're finding is it's very difficult to get all these numbers because this issue happens in secret. The numbers that we are hearing about and that are being reported are the victim recovery, or what the estimates are. But it's very hard to go into the brothels, massage parlours, hotel rooms and literally do headcounts of these victims. Law enforcement around the world think because of the Internet, this problem is growing in leaps and bounds and that as far as organised crime goes, it has passed the sale of guns and it is closely tracking the sale of drugs. I mean, you think about that for a minute: human beings can be sold over and over again where a gun or drugs can only be sold once. It's a profitable business: it is in fact a 35-billion-dollar-a-year industry, an industry of selling humans. It just makes me sick.

Emily: So is the industry growing at the moment or is it slowing down because people are becoming more aware of it?

Jenny: No, it's growing. We, the general public are becoming more aware of it, but our law enforcement say it's growing. What I am hoping and praying for is an outcry around the world saying this is wrong and we need to do something about it. What law enforcement will tell you is because the public doesn't know about it, because there has not been a large outcry, they are not being funded to do the rescues and prosecutions that they need to do. Our law-enforcement teams need to be resourced: they need to be resourced with more manpower; they need to be resourced with more funding, so that they can go in and begin to turn the tide of this growing industry.