Human Trafficking in San Francisco
In February, Emily Scott hosted fellow Legacy members in her home for a conversation around Legacy Member JaMel Perkins’ multi-stakeholder initiative to end child sex trafficking in San Francisco. JaMel and her “Freedom FWD” Co-Founder, Natasha Dolby, shared openly with us about their experience with this project and the lessons learned. A few key takeaways from the lessons shared:
- The Freedom FWD idea came as a solution to fill the void after Sage, a survivor-led organization aimed at addressing this issue in San Francisco, abruptly folded after having been in operation since 1992
- The five primary road blocks JaMel and Natasha have identified are:
- Difficulty in identifying victims
- Challenges in data collection and sharing due to privacy concerns and HIPAA compliance
- Complexity in bureaucratic institutions and the challenges in working with them
- Social norms that enable adults to buy youth for sex
- Racial, social and economic inequalities
- Vison for the first three years:
- Strengthen frontline organizations
- Collaborations within the space
- Identify and close gaps
- Important next steps:
- Amplifying survivors’ voices
- Leveraging technology
- Parent/Caregiver Toolkit
- Strengthening frontline organizations through workshops, storytelling
- Providing meeting places and convenings to increase collaboration
- Part of the solution involves unlocking San Francisco residents’ awareness of this issue—media connections are an important tool for scaling and making systemic impact
Additional information:
- News stories on how a flight attendant and an uber driver helped intervene in cases of trafficking
- Sex Trafficking Prevention: A Trauma-Informed Approach for Parents and Professionals, a book by Savannah Sanders that lays out steps parents and professionals can take to mitigate risk factors that make young people vulnerable to trafficking
- Stolen Youth, another Legacy-connected organization in Seattle for which Legacy member Paula Clapp is on the Board