By CRISTINA JANNEY
Hays Post
An expert in the field of sex trafficking and relationship violence told a summit assembled in Hays on Monday that addressing child abuse is needed to deal with sex trafficking.
Dorthy Stucky Halley, founder of the Family Peace initiative, said most victims of sex trafficking, sex traffickers and sex buyers were abused as children.
Stucky Halley has worked in the field since 1986. She taught social work at Pittsburg State University for a decade before becoming the state’s victim rights coordinator and directing the Victim Services Division of the Kansas Attorney General’s Office.
"It is important that we prioritize funds and really give attention to stopping child abuse," Stucky Halley said in a short interview after her lecture. "As long as child abuse is going on, these problems will continue to happen."
Seventy to 90 percent of people who are commercially sexually exploited have a history of childhood sexual abuse. This includes 90 percent of strippers as well.
Stucky Halley said people say that strippers choose to strip.
"They should be handing out thank you cards to their uncle, to their mother, to their father, to whomever sexually abused them because you wouldn't be watching them on stage had that person not sexually abused them," she said.
Stucky Halley said victims of child sexual abuse may see the sex trade as their least bad option.
Victims of the sex trade may have children to feed and a criminal history and selling themselves for sex may be the only thing they can think of that pays that kind of money given their circumstances, Stucky Halley said.
"As far as those who are already caught up in it, I think we need to have effective intervention services for those who have been victims and intervention services for those who are buyers and those who are traffickers," she said.
"Putting them in jail for a short amount of time is not going to resolve the issue," she said.
The number of trafficking cases per year in Options Domestic and Sexual Violence Services coverage area in northwest Kansas is usually less than 10 per year, said Meagan Zampieri-Lillpopp, director of client services for Options.
However, Options advocates are training to better recognize human trafficking, which may happen in conjunction with child abuse, adult sexual abuse or domestic violence, she said.
Complex trauma as a child, which is often called adverse childhood experiences or ACEs, is a predictor of people becoming victims of sex trafficking. Of the 10 ACEs, 44 percent of women who were sex trafficked had four to seven of these traumatic experiences in their childhoods.
An additional 48 percent had scores of eight or more.
If a person has an ACE score of six or more, their life expectancy is 20 years or more shorter than the general public.
"In the background of human trafficking, we have child abuse. We've got sexual abuse, and we've got domestic violence. Really most victims of human trafficking that I've worked with and talked with have at least one of those in their background," Stucky Halley said.
"If we are really going to get rid of human trafficking, we've got to get rid of those three," she said. "As long as we have those three going on, we're going to have victims that are vulnerable to get involved in some kind of sex trafficking."
Stucky Halley went on to break some myths about who offenders are. The same childhood traumas that were in the backgrounds of human trafficking victims were in the backgrounds of the traffickers.
Seventy-two percent of traffickers are male, and 28 percent are female. Communities often assume that all traffickers are male, but she noted that 1 in 4 are females.
Sixty-four percent of traffickers did not finish high school.
Eighty-eight percent of traffickers were physically abused in childhood, and 76 percent were sexually abused as children. Eighty-eight percent of human traffickers also experienced domestic violence in the home.
Eighty-four percent witnessed substance abuse in their homes as children.
"It's really easy to denounce them and call them the evil people. It's another thing to view the trafficker and realize that they were victims in another part of their lives," Stucky Halley said.
Stucky Halley also said the motivations of sex traffickers also lined up with those of domestic violence abusers. She said, in her experience, often sex trafficking is discovered when an intimate partner is admitted to a psychiatric facility for care.
Stucky Halley found that one-third to one-half of sex trafficking victims were trafficked by family members. One-quarter to one-third were trafficked by their husbands.
Sex buyers, or "Johns" as they are called on the street, also tend to have many of the same traumatic childhood experiences in their backgrounds, Stucky Halley said.
Sex buyers tend to be white, middle or upper class, married, and often in positions of authority or respect in their communities, she said.
Almost one in five buyers were in positions in which they worked with children, including teachers, coaches and Boy Scout leaders.
Ninety-nine percent of the sex buyers were male.
Twenty-two percent involved a position of authority, including attorneys, law enforcement, ministers and members of the military.
Often sadistic sex buyers or traffickers, those who wish to inflict pain on others, are the ones who will donate to women's shelters or other charities.
Not only do they enjoy inflicting pain on others, but they also derive pleasure in being able to fool others about their violent behavior, Stucky Halley said.
This can lead to victims not being believed because of the status of the offender.
Stucky Halley gave the example of a postmaster in a small community in Missouri who tortured a developmentally disabled woman to the point she had a heart attack.
"What if she had in the middle of the night gone pounding on someone's door in the community and said the postmaster and these men who are considered very reputable in the community are doing these crazy, horrible things to me," Stucky Halley said. "How many people would have believed her?
"How many of them would have said, 'The postmaster, you've got to be joking. I take my grandkid in when I go pick up my mail, and he's giving my grandkid a lollipop. He's a very nice, considerate man.'"
Stucky Halley said some places in the state have implemented "John schools," which are similar to batterer intervention programs for offenders who have been convicted of domestic violence.
However, she said there are only a few of these programs in the state.
Stucky Halley said Kansas and our nation need ways to hold sex buyers and sex traffickers accountable for the harm they have caused others but also give them a path to heal the trauma that led them to those offenses in the first place.
"Accountability is necessary," she said. "It's just not the solution. Those who have been violent with others need to be accountable for all the violence they've done, but the second thing they have to be accountable for is for healing from the violence that happened to them long before they could do anything about it."
She said she has talked to women who are in prison, and they tell about the circumstances that led them to transition from being a victim to a trafficker.
"So, who are you dealing with then?" Stucky Halley said. "Are you dealing with a trafficker or a victim?"
Rotary's Community Action Against Human Trafficking Project in Shawnee County is giving women who have been in jail options other than returning to their traffickers.
Many women who have been in jail have no one to turn to for clean clothes, a place to stay or food other than their traffickers. They are the only ones waiting when they get out, she said.
Participation is voluntary. The women are provided with mentors. Kits, including clean clothes and hygiene items, are provided to the women upon their release.
The women can access ongoing services after their release.
The average woman who experiences domestic violence will try to leave their abuser seven times before they finally leave permanently.
Stucky Halley said sex trafficking victims also often will go back to the streets multiple times before they make permanent life changes. She said this can be very frustrating for advocates, especially when youth are being trafficked, and the urgency to get them out of that life is so great.
"We know people do not make transformational change overnight," she said.