Habakkuk 1:5 Look among the nations, and see; wonder and be astounded. For I am doing a work in your days that you would not believe if told. -LORD God
Non-profit agencies, law enforcement, government officials and area stakeholders have joined forces to combat sex trafficking and prostitution in Northeast Kansas City, specifically on Independence Avenue.
The new initiative, which was introduced on April 23, includes billboards and street signs in areas known for activity, circulating photos of “Johns” – buyers of sex – and implementing reform strategies, and resources to help those who are being trafficked.
“This strategy is going to say, ‘Not in our community, not in our city. Not now, not ever, will we allow you to come in and pay for our people. If there wasn’t demand, there would not be traffickers exploiting our vulnerable.'”
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I understand the kind of rage that can bring you to the brink of taking a life. I also understand today the profound intervention of God preventing my ability to act on that rage, even when the opportunity was presented.
I have shared experiences, and thoughts, of my journey. I hope I have brought some insight that you hadn’t considered before. By understanding the life of a prostituted or homeless or addicted individual a little bit better, I believe our compassion toward those individuals can grow.
I believe I have succeeded in debunking the Pretty Woman scenario of prostitution for all who have read this book. And just because another person’s situation doesn’t look like scenes from the movie Taken, it doesn’t mean he or she isn’t a victim. An individual’s vulnerabilities may be exploited in any number of ways. Exploitation in general is too complex to exhaustively define or discuss in one book. It is my hope, however, that your personal perceptions of victimization, abuse, and exploitation have expanded to include those who are often ignored completely.
I pray I have been able to help you develop empathy for these souls. My journey was not an exception to the rule. My story is a reflection of a common and present reality of thousands, if not millions, of others.
I hope you have been challenged to look beneath the surface of these individuals and ask yourself: How did this person get here? I hope you can set aside judgment and pursue genuine interest in that particular individual’s story. Every person has a story.
Now I would like to share a little of my personal God experience and journey, and the events that led to His introduction into my life. It is clear that He was present throughout my journey, or I wouldn’t be sitting here in my living room writing this book for you to read. While I was unaware at the time, looking back, I know He kept me. The odds were certainly stacked against me. I should have died out there.
I worked Independence Avenue and Spruce. Many of my friends were murdered during my years on those streets. I believed they had somehow found their out. After I tried to get help a few times, I quit fighting my situation. As I’ve shared throughout this book, I would reach out only to be victimized in a different way. After so many years in darkness, the only thing I had real hope for was an end to my life.
I had heard the preaching from the church folks at the soup kitchens. They reminded me of how wicked and evil individuals like me were, but they assured me that if we repented, we wouldn’t die in the flames of Hell.
I knew nothing about a compassionate, loving God who loves us so much that He sent His only begotten Son to die for us, knowing we would be a mess. I had never heard of the God who generously gives grace and forgiveness.
After all of the beatings, rapes, drugs, malnutrition, lack of sleep, and exhaustion of being homeless, I was resigned to the fact that I was all on my own. The reality I lived was all there really was.
For the longest time, I believed I was a renegade. But the reality is, I was used up and my body was riddled with scars. My soul was tormented. No man/pimp wanted me to work for him anymore. I was used up and discarded even by the lowest of the lower class of street pimps.
The vulnerabilities of others are exploited. These “helping hands” pose as if they are doing a good deed. Yet they exploit the disparity of the poverty of others by paying them a pittance for their labor. They get cheap labor, yet can rest their heads in peace at night because they have done their “good deed” in “helping the homeless.” I have to question the motives. They are not facilitating a chance to break the chains of oppression and poverty that bind these human beings. They are perpetuating them.
By definition, the exploitation of the vulnerabilities of those who have not by those who have is trafficking, whether labor trafficking or sex trafficking. They are exploiting the tough circumstances of poverty, homelessness, maybe mental illness and addiction, for their gain, which is cheap labor or perverted pleasure.
We have to acknowledge the intersection between poverty and homelessness as a place of vulnerability. It puts such individuals on a platform to be trafficked. Males are often labor trafficked, and females fall victim to sex trafficking. The victims often don’t even realize what is truly happening at the time. This is part of the cold injustice of trafficking.
We cannot continue to turn a blind eye to this population. We cannot ignore that they are a target of traffickers who seek victims to exploit for their financial or selfish gain. We must start by recognizing trafficking and exploitation for what they are. Asking another human being to work for less pay than someone else simply because they are poor, homeless, and without other options is labor trafficking, and it is wrong. And asking another human being to perform sexual deeds in order to meet their basic human needs—the needs every person should be entitled to—is sex trafficking, and it is nothing short of grotesque.
Every person is a human being made in the image of God. No matter how desperate a person may be, he or she is not a commodity to be used!
Christine is appointed by the Missouri Attorney General for the Trafficking Task Force.
“For every woman and girl violently attacked, we reduce our humanity. For every woman forced into unprotected sex because men demand this, we destroy dignity and pride. Every woman who has to sell her life for sex we condemn to a lifetime in prison. For every moment we remain silent, we conspire against our women. For every woman infected by HIV, we destroy a generation.” – Nelson Mandela
Collateral damage is what we call the loss, injury or victims incurred by an action or event who were never intended to be involved. Many times, when we venture out in a helping capacity, we have our sights squarely focused on the population we serve. Yet oftentimes, those individuals we serve touch the lives of many we may never encounter.
Compassion and love at their best grow and extend indefinitely. The things we do out of love for others can have a massive ripple effect across time and space. Likewise, the things we don’t do can carry greater, far-reaching ramifications. What if one simple, yet sometimes controversial, moment of service could save a life? Conversely, what if a misapplied moral objection costs a life?
When we consider human trafficking, exploitation, and prostitution, we tend to recognize the purchaser/exploiter as well as the person being used. However, there is another population that is inadvertently affected yet rarely lands on our radar. Sometimes our narrow view of the impact and our tightly-clung-to moral objections have unintended consequences.
When we think of serving and how we serve, the most important thing we can do is put on the love of Christ and remember how much He loves and would give all for just one person. We have to ask ourselves, is making a moral statement that will inevitably be lost more important than the individual?
Jesus was well known in His day for spending His time with those viewed as the biggest “sinners.” When the religious leaders of the day verbally lashed against Him for this, He told a parable about a shepherd who had one hundred beloved sheep and one ran away. In the parable, the shepherd left the 99 to go after the one. The Son of God did not withhold His presence from the “sinners” to make a moral statement. Instead, He left us all with a clear example to follow. He made it crystal clear that every one of those “sinners” was invaluable to Him.
Even while knowing His days were limited, Jesus didn’t spend His time with His family and loved ones. Instead He chose to spend time among the untouchables of His day. And though He – the perfect, Holy, God of the universe – had many moral objections to their actions, He didn’t let those moral objections become the focus or stand in the way of an opportunity to touch their hearts.
“Love your neighbor… ALL of ’em!” -Christine “Clarity” McDonald
Featuring Christine “Clarity” McDonald
