Rhonda
The best way to help kids is to teach them to help themselves and to see value in them so they value themselves and want to help themselves. But how can you do that when foster kids are so easily recruited into trafficking?
It starts with teaching them what abuse truly is. Now before you conclude that I've lost my mind or that I don't know what I'm talking about, consider that so many foster kids are quick to defend their drug addicted mother or their absent father. Many maintain fantasies about reuniting their broken family and living "happily ever after." They clearly aren't able to be objective, to properly characterize behaviors, or to make accurate judgements about the people in their lives. So it's no great mystery that when a trafficker comes along and begins to sweet talk them, they fall right into his arms.
Here's an example of what I'm talking about. I'll never forget the day when, in my late thirties, I had lunch with then Executive Director of the National Foster Parent Association, Karen Jorgenson. Karen asked if I had ever met my mother or father. When I responded that I had met them each a few times, she asked what I thought about them. No one had ever asked me that.
Truthfully I didn't know what I thought of them. I told that my mother had been abused as a child by the same people who abused me, and that she had married the first guy who came along so that she could get out of the house. I told how my father was a hard-working, church going man who was friendly and fun and who seemed to know every joke he'd ever heard. "Everyone loves him," I said.
Karen asked how I became a ward of the court, nd I told her that my mother left me with a neighbor and never came back. I said that in those days, fathers didn't get custody of their children, so my father remarried and moved on with his life, and quickly added, "but he's a great guy."
Then Karen said something that changed my thinking forever. She asked, "have you forgiven them for the abuse?" I had to stop and think for a moment. I said, I suppose I've forgiven my mother--I feel sorry for her. I imagine she did the best she knew how to do; and there was really nothing to forgive my father for because he didn't abuse me. Karen stopped, put down her fork, placed both hands on the table, and said, "Rhonda, your father abandoned you, and THAT IS ABUSE."
Until that moment as an adult, having had years of mandatory therapy before I emancipated, and having worked with child welfare providers for years, it had never occurred to me that my father had mistreated me in any way. I never characterized abandonment as abuse.
I thought about that conversation for months. I took a new look at my old story--a look from an adult perspective. I realized that I had never categorized screaming and yelling, demeaning and shame, or withholding food from me as as abuse. In my mind, if there was no bruising or bleeding, it wasn't abuse and it wasn't that bad.
I share this story to make the point that kids who come from dysfunctional environments probably aren't able to make the distinction that someone sweet-talking them may be trying to manipulate them in an insidious way.
They are not likely to think of sex in exchange for a place to stay as wrong or abusive. And if they've been sexually abused, they probably won't think of sex for money as a bad thing. Rather, they're more likely to see it as a life choice on par with any other with which they are familiar.
And consider what they are familiar with. Many have been exposed to mom exchanging sex for drugs or making her kids available for sex in exchange for drugs. They may have been exposed to other "careers" like exotic dancer or stripper. Clearly, if they don't see trafficking as abuse, of course they'll be more likely to see selling themselves as a viable option--unfortunately, they may see it as their only option.
Owner/Editor - Chris Chmielewski