Dr. Marian Hatcher
Shared Hope Policy Consultant
Ambassador-at-Large, United Nations

Each January we start off the new year with renewed vigor to fight human trafficking as we acknowledge and consider the long road ahead during National Human Trafficking Prevention month. Of course, we know we can’t address Human Trafficking in one month, and the reality is that human trafficking cuts across so many different issue areas that most months have some relevance to this fight, and offer a different perspective on the issue as we move through the year. However, as we move through February, there is a unique importance to pause and consider the impact of Black History month on human trafficking. Sadly, the data continues to show that trafficking disproportionately impacts Black communities, especially Black children and youth, largely due to structural inequality.

“These vulnerabilities do not exist “because of racial identity but because of deeply entrenched systemic practices and structural responses to race, ethnicity, and socio-economic status.” Thus, many of the factors that increase Black girls’ risk of being trafficked also make them more likely to be criminalized as a result of their trafficking victimization and directed into the justice system. The disproportionate arrests of both exploited Black girls and women, is glaring.”

Currently, there are two federal bills that exemplify the need for shifting the trajectory that puts at-risk youth in the crosshairs of abuse and exploitation while also addressing the resulting harms when our systems failed to shift that trajectory and those young people not only experience trafficking, but also find themselves facing the immense burden of a criminal conviction. We must view juvenile justice packages of legislation as well as long term consequence legislation as intertwined opportunities, which serve as building blocks for more just responses overall.

It is imperative we connect the dots, no longer passing legislation in silos, but instead realizing the problems and their solutions are a part of a puzzle. Vulnerabilities resulting from being a runaway can lead to homelessness for our young people, which in many situations results in trafficking. Circumstances such as this will become an environment where criminal behavior becomes an act of survival to meet a trafficker’s demands or to meet basic needs such as food and shelter.

This is why the Runaway and Homeless Youth and Trafficking Prevention Act (RHYTPA) is so critically important. As the Runaway and Homeless Youth Act celebrates its 50^th anniversary, this bill would reauthorize and expand the critically important programs that enable RHY providers to be the force that shifts the trajectory for young people facing homelessness and housing insecurity. Recognizing that these adversities don’t simply dissipate on a young person’s 18^th birthday (indeed these adversities are often compounded as that young person ages out of supports provided through child serving systems), RHY programs extend critically needed supports to youth 18+ and can be a lifeline at a critically important stage of a young person’s life.

If we don’t address the vulnerabilities and systemic failures aimed at our younger population, we will be addressing the same issues when they become adults. Tragically, as a survivor-leader and anti-trafficking advocate, I have seen the failure to support young people early on play out day after day. I have seen how failing to shift the trajectory early on, leads to greater harms and often unjust involvement in the criminal justice system. Then that involvement in the criminal justice system compounds the trauma of that experience by leaving survivors with a criminal record that impedes access to housing, education, even basic financial resources that are needed to move forward, requiring a different, but equally important, type of legislative remedy to address the injustice of criminalization that arises from victimization.

The Trafficking Survivors Relief Act (TSRA) provides that remedy at the federal level. This bill is essential to (1) provide criminalized survivors of trafficking the opportunity to address unjust criminalization at the outset of a prosecution by asserting an affirmative defense, (2) remove convictions and arrests resulting from trafficking and enable trafficking survivors to shed the incredible burden of carrying an unjust federal conviction and criminal history, and (3) ensure that this remedy is available to a wide range of survivors.

“Victim-Offender Intersectionality (VOI) is at the heart of the Trafficking Survivors Relief Act (TSRA). It is the solution to unjust criminalization when addressing vulnerabilities, years of exploitation, and long-term consequences. Consequences impacting a survivor’s ability to secure safe housing, employment, education and financial stability.

As a member of the SHI Just Response Council, a survivor leader, who received Executive Clemency & Expungement on the state level in Illinois, I have agonized over the substance of this legislation. It is therefore my deep belief in the need for a federal remedy to alleviate long lasting legal effects on survivors, that I support Affirmative Defense and Vacatur.” (Rev. Dr. Marian Hatcher, January 31, 2024).

When we don’t connect the dots between runaway and homeless youth, trafficking, and juvenile and adult criminal justice in a uniform manner, we inevitably find ourselves addressing the lack of viable solutions to harm after the fact. Trying to fit the individual pieces of a puzzle together can be challenging and sometimes discouraging, but the victory in completing the puzzle is always of great reward! We must end the cycle of harm and take action to prevent all the harms of trafficking, right from the beginning by protecting young people, and down the road to prevent trafficking victimization from being the end of the road.

Dr. Marian Hatcher
Shared Hope Policy Consultant
Ambassador-at-Large, United Nations

Last month was Mental Health Awareness month and as annual attention to this issue prompted introspection about my own personal experiences, I began to think about how the mental health needs of trafficking survivors so often intertwine with the need for federal vacatur and post-conviction relief for trafficking victims.

While the focus on mental and behavioral health overall gained traction beginning in the 70’s, 80’s and 90’s, finally resulting in the current Substance Abuse Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA) established in 1992, the focus on human trafficking didn’t manifest until the year 2000 with the Trafficking Victims Protection Act (TVPA). Even then, it has taken over two decades for human trafficking to become widely understood as a crime that impacts people across the United States and isn’t just a crime that “happens over there,” no less how mental health plays a role in creating vulnerabilities to trafficking.

Has the formal attention and organization of governmental agencies, programs and initiatives focusing on trafficking made a difference in how trafficking victims are viewed and provided services? Yes, and no. When we look at how long it took for the puzzle pieces of mental health and human trafficking to be named, and considering from 1949 to 2000 discussions around mental health didn’t yet have the framing of human trafficking (although many of the impacts on survivors were inevitably part of those conversations), it makes sense that mental health responses to human trafficking victims have been lacking in critical ways and the mental health needs of trafficking victims/survivors are only recently becoming central to how we respond to human trafficking.

On a personal level, both my mother and I have backgrounds which require us to check the box of having a mental health history. Childhood and adult trauma triggered both of our experiences. I was molested by a trusted family member at the age of seven, which perverted my sense of intimacy and I was also a victim of domestic violence as an adult.

Mental health issues are an “outside looking in” multilayered system of good stressors, bad stressors, pain, suffering, joy and feelings one can’t name or label. In Asheville Insights, Chelsea Jennings stated: “From the outside looking in, it’s hard to understand. From the inside looking out, it’s hard to explain.” While this quote is related to an “immersion” trip experience, I feel the words profoundly describe the mental health journey and what trauma means to trafficking survivors.

“There are many complex and varied issues that affect survivors of trafficking, both medical and otherwise. An article by Lederer and Wetzel (2014) found alarming rates of injury and illness among sex trafficking victims. It does not require a stretch of imagination to infer that these adverse physical and psychological health impacts are the direct result of trauma from victims’ time within the sex trade. For example, a peer-reviewed article on traumatic brain injury (TBI) found that prostituted women suffer rates of TBI at much higher rates than the national average. (Farley, Banks, Ackerman, & Golding, 2018).”[1]

Trafficking is a traumatic experience often resulting in verbal and physical abuse, lack of control, loss of liberty, loss of family and more. It stands to reason, if there is an existing mental health problem, additional trauma(s) would exacerbate that. Substance use, existing or introduced in a trafficking environment also has an impact. Survivors look normal until worn down. At the beginning of my trafficking experience, other people on the street said I looked like the “po po.” At the end I was considered just another “crackhead.”

It’s the wearing down, the lack of good nutrition, lack of sleep, lack of good hygiene, lack of love, lack of empathy…lack lack lack. Where does the lack push you if not to the point of no return? Do I have a memory, of, even if off in the distance, of normalcy to instill hope that it is still achievable? The buildup of lack–physical and mental abuse, torture that is a “prostitution/sex trafficking experience”— creates a wall preventing healthy choices, education, stability, love, care, safety, nutrition, financial security, etc.

I was fortunate, in that I did have a normalcy to claw through the fog of trauma, drugs, guilt, shame, confusion etc. I had a family that never stopped looking for me when I was missing for almost two years. I also had a formal education and career, that I would sometimes have glimpses of, through the pain of beatings and rape and hunger.

There is a shade of gray for each person’s trauma. The hues too numerous to quantify. The names of mental health diagnoses are so many. Anxiety, depression, bipolar disorder, OCD, oppositional defiance, borderline personality, PTSD, complex trauma and so on.

Where in this unsavory recipe for disaster, do we realize trafficking victims are surviving, often living exploitative lifestyles with or without nice trappings. These experiences are certainly harsh in many cases, but often so subtle they appear as “willing” participation or cooperation to those without clinical training or personal experience.

What does that mean when it’s time to step out of the darkness of trafficking, into the often blinding light of life?  Mainstream society? Family? Motherhood? Employment? School? Financial health? Criminal justice ramifications of victimization that often exist long after trafficking while gaps in post-conviction relief persist? How do we remedy these harms so survivors can heal?

For me, I was able to emerge from the burden of my criminal history by seeking executive clemency from the Governor of Illinois. However, I am fortunate not to have had federal charges, in which case I would have had to seek an executive pardon from the President of the United States. What a daunting hurdle for survivors of exploitation and abuse to have to face in order to not carry a criminal record as a constant reminder of their victimization? This is why I am now an advocate for federal vacatur.

In the Victim Offender Intersectionality (VOI) report, which I contributed to as member of Shared Hope’s JuST Response Council, there are actually many opportunities for a “just response” to criminalized trafficking survivors, but these can’t happen until…

Until the millions of grey hues in the color pallet of pain that is trafficking are understood.

Until the impact of unimaginable sexual violence trauma bonds is considered.

Until there is less bias and more connective tissue between law enforcement, prosecution, and victim services.

Without this, we will continue to face barriers.

So, what can we do? We must wear them down with the truth and a greater understanding of the impact of mental health on human trafficking. And until federal legislation models/mirrors or learns from many states’ efforts to enact vacatur, survivors with federal convictions will be treated unfairly.

[1] Marian Hatcher et al., Exited prostitution survivor policy platform DigitalCommons@URI, https://digitalcommons.uri.edu/dignity/vol3/iss3/10/ (last visited Jun 16, 2023).