November 05, 2010 06:37 AM (PT
)
This Sunday, anti-trafficking hero Tina Frundt will rub elbows with celebrities like Jason Mraz, Demi Moore, Ashton Kutcher and Forest Whitaker at the third annual Freedom Awards, where she will be honored for her activism in the movement. But it wasn’t always glamor and celebrities for Tina. She is an American survivor of child sex trafficking. However, Tina overcame her experience and is now using it to help other young girls forced into the commercial sex industry.
As a teen, Tina was beaten with a bat until her arm broke. She was burned with cigarette butts. She was forced to walk the streets and have sex with up to 18 men a day to meet the financial quota for her pimp. She was only 14 when she was put into sexual slavery. And she could find no way out, until one day, the police came.
But the police weren't there to help her. She wasn't treated like a victim of sex trafficking — she was arrested for prostitution. The arrest took her out of the hell of slavery, but she had a long road to recovery. At the time, there were no specialized shelters to house and rehabilitate American survivors of sex trafficking. In fact, there were few support services, if any at all, for trafficked girls like Tina.
Now, decades later, Frundt has started her own anti-slavery organization: Courtney’s House, a direct service provider for survivors of trafficked children, aged 12 to 18. They have a hotline, and are preparing to open the first group home in the DC metro area exclusively for minor sex trafficking victims. Tina started Courtney’s House because she saw a need. “When most of us Americans hear the words ‘human trafficking,’ we invariably think of women and children overseas,” Frundt has said. But, she emphasizes, human trafficking is very much an American problem.
In the U.S., the average age of entry into prostitution for girls is 12 to 14 years old. Experts say there are about 100,000 American children exploited in the sex trade every year. But currently, there are under 100 beds nationwide set aside to help shelter and rehabilitate them. More direct service programs and shelters are needed to meet the needs of the thousands of child sex trafficking victims. And you can do something about it. The Domestic Minor Sex Trafficking Deterrence and Victims Support Act of 2010 is currently making its way through Congress. Tina Frundt is a supporter of this bill; she recently testified before Congress, urging them to pass the law.
The law will help provide comprehensive services to rehabilitate young victims of sex trafficking in the U.S. and could allocate funds to train law enforcement and service providers on how to recognize and combat domestic sex trafficking. Crucially, the law would help trafficked minors to be treated as victims, rather than criminals or juvenile delinquents.
Sign the petition below to urge your representative to enact this law. For more information about the Freedom Awards taking place this Sunday, November 7 in Los Angeles—and how to buy tickets—go here.
Photo credit: Dan O'Mell
)
This Sunday, anti-trafficking hero Tina Frundt will rub elbows with celebrities like Jason Mraz, Demi Moore, Ashton Kutcher and Forest Whitaker at the third annual Freedom Awards, where she will be honored for her activism in the movement. But it wasn’t always glamor and celebrities for Tina. She is an American survivor of child sex trafficking. However, Tina overcame her experience and is now using it to help other young girls forced into the commercial sex industry.
As a teen, Tina was beaten with a bat until her arm broke. She was burned with cigarette butts. She was forced to walk the streets and have sex with up to 18 men a day to meet the financial quota for her pimp. She was only 14 when she was put into sexual slavery. And she could find no way out, until one day, the police came.
But the police weren't there to help her. She wasn't treated like a victim of sex trafficking — she was arrested for prostitution. The arrest took her out of the hell of slavery, but she had a long road to recovery. At the time, there were no specialized shelters to house and rehabilitate American survivors of sex trafficking. In fact, there were few support services, if any at all, for trafficked girls like Tina.
Now, decades later, Frundt has started her own anti-slavery organization: Courtney’s House, a direct service provider for survivors of trafficked children, aged 12 to 18. They have a hotline, and are preparing to open the first group home in the DC metro area exclusively for minor sex trafficking victims. Tina started Courtney’s House because she saw a need. “When most of us Americans hear the words ‘human trafficking,’ we invariably think of women and children overseas,” Frundt has said. But, she emphasizes, human trafficking is very much an American problem.
In the U.S., the average age of entry into prostitution for girls is 12 to 14 years old. Experts say there are about 100,000 American children exploited in the sex trade every year. But currently, there are under 100 beds nationwide set aside to help shelter and rehabilitate them. More direct service programs and shelters are needed to meet the needs of the thousands of child sex trafficking victims. And you can do something about it. The Domestic Minor Sex Trafficking Deterrence and Victims Support Act of 2010 is currently making its way through Congress. Tina Frundt is a supporter of this bill; she recently testified before Congress, urging them to pass the law.
The law will help provide comprehensive services to rehabilitate young victims of sex trafficking in the U.S. and could allocate funds to train law enforcement and service providers on how to recognize and combat domestic sex trafficking. Crucially, the law would help trafficked minors to be treated as victims, rather than criminals or juvenile delinquents.
Sign the petition below to urge your representative to enact this law. For more information about the Freedom Awards taking place this Sunday, November 7 in Los Angeles—and how to buy tickets—go here.
Related Petition
Anne Keehn was a media volunteer at the L.A.-based direct services organization the Coalition to Abolish Slavery & Trafficking and is currently the Zimmerman Fellow at Free the Slaves.
Sex Trafficking Survivor Wins Freedom Award For Fighting Slavery | End Human Trafficking | Change.org
Source: End Human Trafficking
No comments:
Post a Comment