CR spoke with Courage Worldwide

Emily: A 2012 report showed that most victims are from China or Vietnam and Eastern Europe. Is this the case or are people being trafficked in pretty much every country?

Jenny: It's been every country. It's interesting the reports - and I like you have combed through them all. I think in every pocket of the world children and women are being sold for sex. I think when you're looking at the global issue, it's definitely those countries that come to mind, but when we were in small villages in Africa, I watched with my own eyes while children were being sold in the market place. Here in the United States towns that are very small and you would think are rural, we have had girls come out and say they were sold. It's not just big cities; it's not just those countries: it's happening everywhere, in every city around the world. That's what is so alarming to me, that no-one is immune.

Emily: What are some of the motives that make people do this to people?

Jenny: A load of money: it is a very lucrative business. It is a business of supply and demand and I think that's what is so disconcerting and horrifying to me; we live in a world that demands children be sold for sex and demands our most vulnerable population be held in slavery; that there is a person, a human being that is profiting from their bodies. Money is the pure motivation of the trafficker that sells the children; now the motivation of the person that buys them is a whole other motivation that I can't begin to understand, of why somebody would purchase the child for sex. That speaks a lot about our world and culture.

Emily: So this is a global issue, but also something to be aware of in relation to our local area as well?

Jenny: Yes. We go into high schools and middle schools and children from the age of 12 and up in their schooling and do education and awareness to help them understand how these predators are preying. They use the internet and Facebook sites and they are international. They are preying upon the vulnerable, on those who are longing to be loved and to have a family. It's one of the things that we as an organisation have really enjoyed doing, going into schools and helping prevent this and helping to train the children to see what is going on and how they are being lured into this issue.

Emily: How would you define someone as being vulnerable?

Jenny: I think what we see is poverty definitely makes someone vulnerable. Around the world, young girls are promised jobs in different countries. We see this happening in the countries you mentioned, in addition to Russia and Ukraine. In Eastern Europe, they're bringing them to the United States with a promise of jobs and then they are locked up and sold. They wanted something different, a better life; they wanted to take care of their family and then instead that was used against them. That made them vulnerable. The universal need to be cared about and to be loved makes young women and teen girls vulnerable to somebody taking care of them, loving them and getting them out of a difficult situation. That's the vulnerability of children who are runaways, or on the streets, that no-one is looking for, they have vulnerability and they are preyed upon. No-one is screaming: My child is missing, help me find them and they get lost into the vortex of this underground world.

Emily: So your solution, which you are trying to implement, is by having a Courage House. What happens in a Courage House?

Jenny: The first thing is that they're made to feel safe. They have their own bedroom and they have a refrigerator full of food and they have a staff that calls them family. In addition to that they are accelerated in their education and then there are communal help and therapeutic services to help them work through the pain and the trauma that they have experienced. Many of them have been tortured and so there's a lot of mental anguish that has to be undone to help them to be able to move on to an independent life. It's all done in a family and home setting, so that they literally get a second chance at life.

Emily: So how are they referred to you or are you involved in the process of getting these girls out of the situation that they're found in?

Jenny: Usually we are working with a law-enforcement team. They have different teams in every country in the world that are looking into the brothels, massage parlours and underground. When they go and they rescue the kids, they are looking for an NGO: they are looking for a place to take the kids so that law-enforcement teams can do their job to prosecute the trafficker. Our partnership in Tanzania and the States is with law-enforcement teams that do that and any local child-welfare agencies that take care of minor children: we work with them. We have had situations where we've had parents or grandparents have this happen to their family member and they have placed a girl at Courage House with us and it's really nice when we have a supporting family that cares about these kids. All too often these young women or children don't have families that care for them and we become their family.

Emily: When the girls come into the house, you do something with them that is called a unique life plan?

Jenny: Yes, we do. The hard thing for teens that have been trafficked and young women is that they believe that they will never be able to get through this. They believe that they have no value because they have been sold as a commodity. So the very first thing that we want to help them with is to see their value. With the unique life plan we use the mind, the body, the spirit and the emotions and we help them to set goals in every area of their life. For example their minds: it's about their education. What do they want to do? Do they want to go to university? Do they want to finish school? Do they want to become a nurse? What is their dream? We're trying to get to those dreams and then help them achieve that. Their emotion is putting goals for healthy emotions and relationships. All too often our kids have been diagnosed with posttraumatic stress disorder and so we have a lot of symptoms in behaviour that makes it very difficult for them to maintain healthy relationships when they come on the site and so we address that. As well as their physical health: their bodies. A lot of them have STDs; they've had bruises, broken bones. So we want to make sure that they're healthy in that way. Those are all encompassed in their unique life plan. We say it's a unique life plan because every single kid, though they've been through something similar - the trafficking of their bodies - they're a unique individual and we want to celebrate that uniqueness. We don't want to put them in big, huge dormitories and treat everybody the same as if it were the military. We want to respect and honour their uniqueness and we want to help them find their voice. Sometimes they don't even know how to dream - it just depends on how long they've been caught up in this evil. We expose them to the arts, music, university campuses and different jobs. It opens up a huge world for them and that helps make those dreams possible.