Forgiving a Father

Written By: Annette Bailey, NFNL Economic Empowerment Specialist

This month is dedicated to celebrating Fathers all around the world. Many of us come from broken or dysfunctional homes where the father is not very much celebrated due to the verbal, physical, sexual, or emotional abuse that was inside or outside the home. As a survivor, how many of us can express or even celebrate this prestigious moment of our fathers’ lives? Not many. As a survivor many of us have nothing but sad and unspoken memories of the father who may have sexually, physically, verbally, or emotionally abused them. For some, life’s precious moments were taken away by someone who was supposed to be their protector, guardian, a gentle and stable person whose desire is to be grounded and do their best.

Cultures have different messages about what it means to be a man, a husband, and a father as the provider; meaning “real men bring home the bacon and support their families.” The disciplinarian father must be safe and respectful today in this role; meaning no verbal, physical or emotional abuse. This brings me to my understanding of the role of a father. “Fathers, like mothers, are pillars in the development of a child's emotional well-being. Children look to their fathers to lay down the rules and enforce them. They also look to their fathers to provide a feeling of security, both physically and emotionally.” I am a survivor of sexual exploitation. My abuse came from my father who was verbally abusive towards me. As a child, I did have all the things mentioned about my father, but after I turned 16, my father told me that I was not his child and at that moment, my whole world turned upside down.

My mother and father were married for 57 years, and I knew that he was my father. Why would he tell me at age 16 that I was not his child? It’s mind-boggling right! Years have passed and much therapy was needed to forget the marks and stains of the words spoken from my father. So, if you have it in your heart to continue to live on and live free from the bondage of a father’s abusive behavior, FORGIVE and let go. Some years ago, I lost the man I grew up knowing as my father. But before his passing I was able to give comfort and support to the man who verbally and emotionally abused me as a young teen girl because of forgiveness.

Not all fathers fit inside this category. Maybe you were raised with a father who showed you all the characteristics of what a father should be like. To all fathers near and far around the world--raising children can be a difficult task.  Here are two thoughts I submit for your consideration if you want to be in the category of a loving father:

Prepare yourself as much as possible before starting a family, and LOVE your child/children unconditionally.

To Fathers all around the world, Happy Father’s Day!

Calling All Men…Will You #StandForHer?

Written By: Matt Osborne, NFNL MAG Liaison

“No no, Señor Osborne…those are just prostitutes and table dancers!”

I was stunned to hear that sentence come out of the mouth of the highest-ranking law enforcement officer in Spain, with whom I was meeting as part of a diplomatic assignment for the U.S. Government in the capital of Madrid. For a minute I had to review in my head the Spanish vocabulary I had learned years earlier to confirm that I correctly understood him, but those were his exact words.

Preventing, Prosecuting, and Protecting

The year was 2007, and I had been tasked to write the entry on Spain for the Trafficking in Persons (TIP) Report that the U.S. Department of State puts out each year to grade countries on the “three P’s” of fighting human trafficking...how that country is faring in: Preventing trafficking, Prosecuting traffickers, and Protecting victims.  As a junior Foreign Service Officer on my first overseas tour, I was intimidated to say the least to have to sit across from Spain’s most powerful law enforcement officer and inform him in my pure gringo Spanish that his country had a trafficking problem. He initially misunderstood me, either due to the fact that my Spanish was shaky or more likely because he was willingly turning a blind eye to the issue of commercial sexual exploitation in his country. He replied that the “traffic” in Madrid was indeed a problem due to poorly timed stoplights and pervasive potholes.  He suggested that the summer months were better when many in the capital head to Spain’s numerous beaches and vehicle traffic subsides, and suggested I come back to see him then. It was only after I showed him on a map of Madrid a few locations that our intelligence had identified as hotbeds of human trafficking—a truck stop where young African girls were sold by the half hour, a table dance bar featuring women brought over from Eastern Europe on false pretenses, and an Asian massage parlor and nail salon exploiting women and girls from China and Vietnam—that he responded with the sentence that began this article, casually dismissing the human trafficking victims being forced to work in those locations as, “just prostitutes and table dancers.”

Victims, Not Volunteers

Fast forward 15 years and I am pleased to see how much progress has been made in the fight to raise awareness about the global problem of human trafficking and child exploitation, as more and more people around the world have come to realize that this is trafficking, not prostitution, and that these women are victims, not volunteers. I am also grateful to see that in recent years Spain has achieved and maintained Tier 1 status in the Trafficking in Persons Report, indicating that its government fully complies with the minimum standards of the Victims of Trafficking and Violence Protection Act of 2000.

Since my first exposure to this issue back in 2007, I have had the opportunity to play a small but myriad role in the fight against child exploitation and human trafficking—first as a US Government intelligence officer and diplomat, and later with an anti-trafficking NGO that empowers law enforcement in the U.S. and around the world to launch undercover sting operations to arrest suspected traffickers, free trafficking victims where appropriate, and help provide aftercare and counseling services to survivors.  More recently, I have been blessed to be affiliated with New Friends New Life (NFNL) in Dallas and have come to see that one issue stands above all in its importance to truly ending this crime once and for all…and that is the issue of demand reduction among men and the shifting of societal norms around the purchasing of commercial sex.

I have become convinced that it is vital for men to take a prominent role in the fight to end child exploitation and human trafficking, because too many men in our society share the view that trafficking victims are “just prostitutes and table dancers.”  I speak from experience because, much to my chagrin and embarrassment, I had those same thoughts in my adolescence and early adulthood. And, before I was exposed to this issue through the writing of the TIP Report, I had assumed that the women I saw working the streets or in strip clubs or on online escort sites were there of their own free will and choice.  I made the erroneous assumption that this was just like the movie “Pretty Woman,” where it was made to seem as if the Julia Roberts character truly had the choice to decide when, where and how she performed sex acts for money.  But I soon came to understand that today it is the extremely rare occurrence, if indeed it even still happens, where a woman has total control over how she runs her business and where she keeps one hundred percent of the profits without a pimp or trafficker controlling her body and earnings.  The hard truth is that the vast majority of women in the commercial sex industry are not there of their own accord, and most likely are being abused and exploited in some of the worst ways possible.  It is imperative for all men to understand this reality.

Addressing Demand

Though steady progress has been made in educating men about this issue, it is still an uphill battle and there is much more work that needs to be done to raise awareness.  To that end…I am so grateful for the Men’s Advocacy Group (MAG)—an auxiliary of NFNL created to mobilize men to take action against sex trafficking and exploitation of women and girls by raising awareness through advocacy, education and volunteerism. The more than 100 DFW-area men who have supported our group in recent years know that we have the power to effect real change, because while men drive the demand, we can also influence fellow men and our youth.

MAG members support the mission of NFNL through various volunteer opportunities:

• Teaching The manKINDness Project curriculum in high schools, churches and Young Men’s Service Leagues.

• Sponsoring and leading the Sex Trafficking Awareness Excursions (bus tours) that raise awareness about sex trafficking in and around Dallas.

• Serving or providing meals for NFNL members

We call on all good men to join our rallying cry to #StandForHer…we promise you will not regret the decision to join our group of uncommon men who not only refuse to be part of the problem, but who mobilize to be the solution to the epidemic of sex trafficking in the DFW area.

Join the fight!

More Than a Diagnosis

Written By: Rana Amini, MS, LPC, EMDR Trained, NFNL Clinical Program Director

As mental health clinicians, it is understood that there is a significant overlap between trauma and its impact on mental health. Every day, people have learned to live with the aftermath of their traumas with no choice but to cope in order to survive. This is the experience of the women and girls that we serve. It is of no surprise that these women and girls have endured an arduous lifetime of traumatic experiences that undoubtedly have changed the way they view themselves, others, and the world around them.

Most of us are familiar with the term PTSD or post-traumatic stress disorder, which often develops when a person experiences something that is frightening or dangerous and that then combines with the brain’s perception of a threat to their safety or livelihood. The other type of PTSD that the world is less familiar with is complex PTSD and this is the one our members more commonly experience.

The layout of these types of PTSD, while they might sound similar, are wildly different. It all comes down to the chronic and pervasive nature of complex trauma, which is ultimately what differentiates the two. Someone who has gone off to war or has experienced a single incident car accident might experience PTSD symptoms whereas someone who has experienced chronic childhood abuse and continued adult experiences of trauma and abuse will likely be experiencing C-PTSD or complex PTSD.

In the world of trauma, traumas can be understood in two categories. We can refer to traumas as either big T’s or little T’s. Big T’s are typically isolated events or experiences like a car accident, a medical trauma or even a sexual assault. Whereas, little T’s are comprised of smaller but typically re-occurring and repetitive events. Little T’s can look like emotional abuse, harassment, neglect, bullying, etc. The contrast between the two is most notably the compounding effects of little T traumas that can over time create long term impact. This is a simplified way of better understanding the differences between what we refer to as PTSD or complex PTSD. PTSD often looks like big T traumas, whereas complex PTSD can be understood as the combination of big T’s and a chronic amount of little T’s over time. Complex PTSD is different in two very critical ways, the trauma is longer-lasting or pervasive and most notably the symptoms are much more severe.

I love this definition of C-PTSD from Beauty after Bruises, an organization that helps provide context and support for adult survivors of childhood abuse. They define complex post-traumatic stress disorder as follows:

“Complex PTSD comes in response to chronic traumatization over the course of months or, more often, years. This can include emotional, physical, and/or sexual abuses, domestic violence, living in a war zone, being held captive, human trafficking, and other organized rings of abuse, and more. For those who are older, being at the complete control of another person (often unable to meet their most basic needs without them), coupled with no foreseeable end in sight, can break down the psyche, the survivor’s sense of self, and affect them on this deeper level. For those who go through this as children, because the brain is still developing and they’re just beginning to learn who they are as an individual, understand the world around them, and build their first relationships – severe trauma interrupts the entire course of their psychologic and neurologic development.”

It is not uncommon to receive a misdiagnosis in the world of mental health as there is such an overlap between many of the most common mental health diagnoses; however, misdiagnosis happens at a starkly higher rate in the women and girls that we serve. Trauma easily can be misinterpreted as A.D.H.D, depression, anxiety, and bipolar diagnosis. The forgetfulness, inattention and memory issues can often be misinterpreted as attention deficit disorder while the vacillation in intense moods can be misdiagnosed as bipolar disorder.  

When you are misdiagnosed, it can pathologize behaviors that are very normal given the trauma one has experienced. When someone finally tells you for the first time that the behaviors, thought patterns, and symptoms you are experiencing are likely due to your trauma, it becomes normalized and often a weight is lifted. It can help give you context to a lifetime of shame and messaging that something is wrong with you. This messaging often bleeds into every aspect of the lives of the women we serve. They are experiencing symptoms of traumatic experiences that have quite literally changed the layout of their brain and the way they see themselves and the lens in which they view the world. And… that is a normal response to an abnormal experience.

This understanding is vital for the women and youth we serve every day as it allows them to make sense of their experiences and raise their awareness around how normal their emotional responses, thought processes and behaviors are, once they are understood in the context of their trauma. Once we begin to understand these behaviors and symptoms as adaptive survival skills, we can shift away from pathologizing them. We can then understand them for what they truly are: emotional response and behaviors that are simply just a response to the survival of trauma.

When our members gain this understanding, it begins to shift their perspective quite drastically.

84.6% of the women and 67% of the youth we serve have a mental health diagnosis by the time they enter the doors of New Friends New Life. Most of our members have been institutionalized, navigating through the systems of community mental health, the educational system, and the justice system throughout their lives. Through this navigation, they have been given diagnostic labels. Often, these labels that are intended to assist them become their scarlet letter, each label continuing to etch the message into them that they are “crazy.” This can lead to guilt, shame, and the messaging that they are broken, deficient, and flawed. When we help our members understand their symptoms for what they are, adaptive and functional skills, bred out of a need to survive their traumas, only then can we begin to re-frame their view of self. This mindset shift from pathologizing behaviors to a mindset of resilience and strength is critical.

Our hope is that this newfound understanding of complex PTSD helps send our members a new message. The message is that they are more than a diagnosis. They have survived unimaginable things, which makes them incredible, resilient, and powerful and that there is recovery, healing and a beautiful future waiting for them beyond their trauma.

Hope of a New Life and Brighter Future

Written By: Priya Murphy, NFNL Senior Director of Development

 It was in the year 2003, when I was on a bus with my college band to go sing at a church that was in the middle of the Red-Light District (Kamathipura) in Mumbai, India where I first learned about sex trafficking. Kamathipura is India’s second largest red light district.  I was a sheltered pastor’s kid who was in theology school and knew very little about the awful reality of human trafficking. My eyes were wide open that day as I sat on the bus that drove through the red-light district. I saw many young girls dressed to appear older, waiting to be bought by men. I thought only adults were involved in sex work and by choice, but I was appalled to hear stories of young girls being sold into trafficking. How could this possibly exist in this modern world? My mind could not comprehend. Our host, the ministry pastor explained to our band the reality of the girls in the sex trade and how many were forced into it, and it was never their choice. No little girl ever dreams of being a sex worker when they were five or six years old. It was not their choice to be a sex worker, and some were sold into this trade by their own family members. “Fatima, a 32-year-old sex worker, said the building in which she has lived and worked since being sold by her sister to a brothel owner at the age of 12 is slated for demolition.”- The Guardian.

Once my eyes were opened to the reality of sex trafficking, I made the decision to somehow help the victims of trafficking and bring awareness to this issue but the following year my family moved from India to central Florida, USA. I started researching to find if Sex Trafficking existed in the US and what I found was perhaps even more shocking to me. I regarded the US to be one of the best places in the world (it still is) and believed it to be a country of freedom for humanity unlike any other countries. It almost shattered me when I learnt how prevalent Human Trafficking (HT) is in this country. Human Trafficking is really a global issue and it’s a monstrous issue facing humanity. I learned that there are nearly 25 million victims of human trafficking globally, it’s a 150 billion dollars industry, annually. 77% of victims worldwide are trafficked in their home country (U.S. Department of State). 42% of the victims were brought into trafficking by a member of their own families (Polaris Project). The more I learned about the stats around HT the more hopeless I felt about making any difference in this large issue. I am sure that’s how many people feel after they become aware of this issue. Perhaps, like me you have asked the question, “how can I possibly make a difference, I am just one person, and this issue is so overwhelmingly large?” But the answer is simple, take the first step and start helping one person at a time.

My personal first step was research and I started to get educated on the issue of trafficking. I got certified as a Human Trafficking awareness speaker. I started volunteering and supporting United Abolitionist, a local non-profit in Orlando, FL who help rescue victims and work to abolish trafficking. In 2009, I even traveled back to India with a few friends to make a documentary movie on Human Trafficking, you can watch the trailer here. I did all this, while I was pursuing my MBA as a full-time student and held a full-time job at a university as Alumni Director. Today, I am blessed to be on the front line of the fight against trafficking working in my full-time role as the Senior Director of Development at New Friends New Life (NFNL). For the past five years I have worked at NFNL, I have witnessed firsthand the hope of the new life we offer to women and girls who come through our doors every day leaving “the life” behind. NFNL emerged in 1997 when an exotic dancer walked into a local Dallas church seeking a way out of her lifestyle and hoping for a better life. The church’s women’s group helped her find conventional employment and provided the ongoing support she needed to make a fresh start. Soon she began bringing more of her friends, and the group organized to help them leave a life of sexual exploitation and trafficking. NFNL started because of the courageous step a women took to seek help and the willingness of the women’s group from a Dallas Church to help one victim of trafficking which led to the creation of an agency that has served hundreds of women and girls in 25 years including serving 312 women and girls last year alone.

I am so proud of the work we get to do at NFNL restoring and empowering trafficked women and girls and driving awareness of the issue. We provide monthly public bus tours free of cost to the community. Matt Osborne, our Men’s Advocacy Group Liaison, and I co-lead these bus tours. He discusses trafficking cases worked by law enforcement at different DFW locations, providing humanizing insights into the characteristics and pervasiveness of human trafficking and exploitation in north Texas. Human trafficking is a $99 million illegal industry in Dallas (Urban Institute) and Dallas has the second-highest number of trafficking cases in Texas (UT Austin).I often see the same shock on our guest’s face during the bus tour that I experienced when I was on the bus on the red-light district in India because once you see, you cannot unsee. It is often overwhelming to learn trafficking is taking place in our own backyard. At the end of the bus tour, I usually share stories of the survivors who are now living a restored and empowered life because of the programs we offer at NFNL and share the parable of the starfish on the beach. You are probably familiar with this parable.

At NFNL we are making a difference in the lives of one woman and girl at a time offering her the hope of a new life. In a recent graduation, one of the graduates of our Women’s Program shared,

“When I first came to New Friends New Life, I was traumatized by my past, emotionally drained, and felt broken spiritually. My desperation for help was all the hope I had left inside... Today, I can accept that I am a Brilliant Woman exploding with Grace, Hope, Purpose, and Strength. My hope for the future is to be an encouragement to others by mentoring young ladies.” – Nikki

My hope is that you, the reader will be moved to take your first step to make a difference in the life of one trafficking victim. If you can give, please give to support our programs. If you can pray, please pray for our courageous survivors to be transformed and for wisdom for our amazing staff for the hard work they do every day.  If you can serve, find a volunteer opportunity or join our auxiliary groups. Finally, if you can raise awareness, follow us on social media or invite us to speak to your community. LET’S BRING HOPE TO SURVIVORS, LET’S REMAIN HOPEFUL of a brighter future of a world without trafficking.   

Not One, But Many

Written By: Jessica Brazeal, MA, LPC-S, EMDR Certified , NFNL Chief Programs Officer

April is Sexual Assault Awareness Month and therefore no better time to discuss and consider this important issue and its prevalence. Statistics tell us that one in three women will experience sexual assault in their lifetime. At New Friends New Life, we serve an incredible community of women that have survived sex trafficking and commercial sexual exploitation. As you can imagine, sexual assault is an issue that our staff spends a great deal of time working to provide support and treatment around. It is an experience that goes hand in hand with the experience of surviving sex trafficking and exploitation, like others such as domestic violence and child abuse.

Most of the women we serve have complex and chronic backgrounds of traumatic experiences, often including things like childhood sexual abuse, domestic violence and sexual assault as previously mentioned. Because of this complexity, it can be easy to lose sight of the pain associated with even just ONE instance of ONE of these categories of abuse. By its very definition, sex trafficking of an adult “requires the presence of force, fraud, or coercion” to be considered trafficking. This essentially means that every single instance of a women being forced to go on a job by her trafficker can be considered an instance of sexual assault, whose definition says that it is “any intentional sexual action by one person without the other person’s consent or coercing someone to engage in a sexual act against their will”. When we consider the sheer number of jobs or “calls” a woman is forced to go on per night, we begin to have an overwhelming tally of sexual assault occurring against her.   

It would be easy to get lost and disheartened with all of that trauma as we begin to consider that one night of being sex trafficked can be akin to being sexually assaulted upwards of 10-15 times in one night, and yet, when you look into the face of any one of the women we serve at New Friends New Life you are met with eyes filled with hope, determination and bravery. It is a place where the strength of women is palpable in the air. These women are not defined by their experience, but rather are daily seeking support and services to heal from their past and dream about their future.

One of the approaches we take at New Friends New Life to treat this accumulated trauma is through Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing, or EMDR, therapy. EMDR is an evidence-based treatment modality that has been recommended in treating trauma by organizations like the World Health Organization, the American Psychiatric Association, the American Psychological Association, and the International Society for Traumatic Stress Studies amongst others. EMDR utilizes bilateral stimulation in the brain the replicates the natural bilateral stimulation that occurs during REM sleep. This allows a therapist and their client to identify a distressing or traumatic event and essentially work to desensitize and reprocess that event so that it is no longer disturbing to the client. EMDR allows the client to address ongoing triggers and decrease symptoms such as increased anxiety and depression. As you can imagine, when you have been sex trafficked and have potentially years of accumulated traumatic experiences, this therapy model is able to provide immense healing and relief to its recipient.

Despite this painful and heavy material our staff encounters with our members, we find ourselves celebrating the strength, resilience, and tenacity that the women we serve demonstrate daily and invite you to join us in that celebration. What a world it would be if there was no need for a Sexual Assault Awareness Month because there were no sexual assaults. And yet, that is not the world we live in. At least not yet. Until then, we will continue to honor those who have survived this incredibly traumatic experience and celebrate their bravery and resilience. We will continue to provide services and support that helps to resolve the residual effect those events have left in their wake. And we will continue to raise awareness around sex trafficking, sexual assault, and the ways in which we seek to make Dallas a safer place.

The Ultimate Gift of Service

Written By: Vanessa Garnica-Barker, NFNL Community Engagement Manager

A gift is defined as, “a thing given willingly to someone without payment; a present.” Typically, our minds gravitate toward the assumption that a gift is tangible or physical; however, the intangible gifts of time, service and presence have the potential to leave a lifelong impact. At New Friends New Life, these gifts carry a strong significance due to the traumatic past that trafficking survivors in our programs have endured. Because of the exploitation that members in this field experience, the dynamic of transactional relationships becomes their normal, and they build relationships with the mindset that they must give to receive.

      April is Volunteer Appreciation Month, and I am reflecting on the impact that our volunteers have made through the gift of presence. Our volunteers give without expecting anything in return and serve with deep humility. As one of our volunteers always says, “A thank you is never necessary. I do this from the heart.” To be honest, a thank you isn’t enough to express our gratitude for all that our volunteers do for this organization. New Friends New Life has been incredibly blessed to have some of the most kind-hearted, humble, and service- oriented individuals.

The beauty of volunteering is that each person has a gift that they are able to share with members each time they enter the building. Every volunteer, whether individual or group, that I’ve had the pleasure of interacting with, comes into NFNL with one goal in mind: serving with their whole heart. It’s beautiful to see such passion, but even more, love, especially when interacting with our members. They ensure our members feel dignity and respect by showing up constantly in their attentiveness and visibly pour acceptance and love into their work. They are always eager to better serve our organization, build relationships with our members, and overall fill opportunities that reflect their heart for service and change.

In a world where there is such darkness, our volunteers are able to shine a light through their service and smiles. It’s a great reminder that there are still people who want to give with no expectation of recognition or anything in return. These people are truly good and represent change in a world that thrives on love. While their service varies from assembling kits, organizing our space, writing letters, or building relationships with our members, each task is done with grace and sincere intent to better the lives of our members. Volunteers deserve the world and though they believe a “thank you” isn’t necessary, it actually is. Though it does not encompass our gratitude for the impact that you have, THANK YOU to all of our volunteers.

Thank you for pouring your hearts and souls into our mission and members! Thank you for loving our women and girls so well. Thank you for sharing your gifts and expecting nothing in return from someone who has only known transactional relationships. So many of you have told me that the best thank you is finding satisfaction in service and excitement in the most “insignificant” tasks. Each task has immeasurable value and goes a long way in the lives of NFNL members and staff. Thank you volunteers for making our world a better place and for bringing joy into our space. You are living proof that kindness and goodness exist and we hope that you know the impact you have on the lives of so many people and the change that your presence brings about. Your smiles and hearts light up our lives, and we are grateful beyond measure.