Linda Smith, Author at Shared Hope International

September 1, 2020 by Linda Smith

Linda Smith’s Perspective on Lacy’s Journey: the Law, The Culture and the Church – Part 2

We are often asked, how can the church help stop this and protect children?

And I think one of the reasons the church hasn’t been too concerned about it, is because men aren’t being taught in the church what a real man should be. A lot of men, if I can say this boldly, are tied up in pornography themselves. Our culture is saturated with it. And that’s why people don’t react to the victimization of these children, because that implicates them and then they have to say, “I’m guilty in some way.” We have got to do a better job in the church of learning what it means to be a true Christian and a true man as God designed you to be. Addressing porn addiction is a good place to begin.

Visualization to actualization sounds very simple, but so many guys are watching pornography that it’s become considered normal. And children are being exposed to it at younger and younger ages, and the stimulation is more and more violent and perverted. A generation of buyers and traffickers is being groomed through online pornography. When it no longer satisfies to just watch the abuse, some are going to go out there, when they decide to go “actual,” and look for someone to act out what he’s seen. And now he’s looking for a younger person, because only younger or more vulnerable will do the things that he’s seen in pornography. Now that’s hard to hear in a Christian setting, but it’s true.

What is happening in the real world of child sex trafficking, is that there are two ways that the traffickers make money. First, they take pictures from the child’s first act, and sell it to guy who get their kicks watching the taking of innocence, whether the child knows they’re being taken or not. It’s having a sexual experience with that child without consent that plants ideas and desires for more that they find hard to resist. And commercially explicit images of children are a whole billion-dollar market all its own.

Most don’t realize that when they’re watching pornography, they’re participating in child sex trafficking. Whether that child appears to enjoy it or not, as in the case of Lacy, that child is in her own head, thinking of protecting her 10-year-old sister. And by watching, you’re taking away that child’s life. Don’t think pornography that is ‘just one click or one view’ doesn’t hurt anyone, because when you listen to Lacy’s story, Part 1 | Part 2 you have to realize that she that lost all of her junior high and high school childhood to men who produced that video or took those pictures, and because there are consumers like the men who sit in our church pews. We can’t be silent anymore. We need to teach about the connection of the abuse of children that is closely tied to those who watch those images. And the church can help those who are addicted to it to find freedom. We must help them find freedom. Because without their demand, there would be no market and children like Lacy would have a childhood.

Shared Hope developed a Faith in Action kit with all the tools to begin a four-week Bible study with men to find freedom. It’s available at https://sharedhope.org/product/faith-action-kit/ and it gives you all the resources you need to first educate your church, and tools to educate your community!

Receive your free copy of the video Chosen here featuring two survivor’s stories.

Hear the stories Lacy/Stephanie tells in her own voice at Focus on the Family.
Part 1 | Part 2

August 25, 2020 by Linda Smith

Linda Smith’s Perspective on Lacy’s Journey: the Law, The Culture and the Church – Part 1

In the number of years that I’ve worked on many of these cases in the United States, I’ve watched law enforcement change dramatically. They’re realizing that victims of prostitution are just somebody’s daughter, son, mom, cousin, sister or brother. And they’re starting to understand that, and they’re starting to change how they work with girls like Lacy.

Lacy was her street name, forced upon her by the pimp who controlled her. Her given name was Stephanie, and she has police in her life now that she loves. They’re just great. In particular, one who was involved in her rescue has come cross-country to see her and visits her any time he’s in the area. So, there are some really good law enforcement officers. But I think their thinking reflects society. If I thought some girls were just breaking the law and some people are just buyers, then it would never have affected me ten years ago. Our culture is this way, so why would they think any differently? But in those many years ago. The system is changing, but there’s still a certain number of law enforcement, judges, prosecutors that do not see buying or selling another person for sex as a serious crime. And so, we have a long way to go. We have changed the laws in a lot of states and many of you those reading this have been involved in supporting that advocacy. It takes time and energy, and many voices to effect changing the laws.

But if the heart of our society doesn’t change and see victims instead of perpetrators, then the law will not be applied, because they only prosecute cases that they think people care about. Many people don’t realize that not every crime is prosecuted but maybe pled down to a lesser crime.

What still happens in many of these cases, these policemen, like the ones that played so heavily in Lacy’s life, and have been a part of her rescue and protection, they may bring these cases to the prosecutor, but they may never get to the judge. The case will be pled down to a misdemeanor or some other crime. Sometimes the buyer ends up pleading it down to where he serves less than 15 days in jail total, and many times not any at all. But if that same buyer had been arrested and prosecuted federally, he’d be in prison 15 years because having sex with a child in exchange for anything of value, is a federal crime. Now that’s still going on. And so, there’s a reason for girls like Lacy to be irritated. She spent more time in jail than those who abused her.

In Lacy’s case, where the perpetrators were threatening her with killing or abusing her 10-year-old sister or her mother when you see what was going on emotionally for Lacy it’s no wonder she was angry! So, when you as the average citizen thinking about these stories in the news, you don’t necessarily know the whole emotional story going on with that young lady or that young man, that is being victimized. That’s the word we need to get out to the public – they are victims. And they’re kids. They are traumatized and blackmailed and don’t know how to get out. They’re told “if you tell, we will get your little sister,” then she feels trapped into submitting to their demands in order to protect the ones she loves. Read Lacy’s story here. Part 1 | Part 2

I’ve had those aha moments on things I’ve known, but didn’t really recognize applying with these kids. And that is, the brain development of a child is not complete. Our brains are not ‘cooked’ until about age 25. And at 12 or 13, parts of the brain that would deal with cause and effect, the front part of the brain that weighs risk and danger, there are a lot of those skills that just aren’t developed yet. They don’t see it. Lacy said, “So I gave him my number” in the Chosen film, referencing the man she met in Starbucks.

We say to your kids something like, “Well, don’t you see what’s happening?” No, they don’t. Their brain isn’t developed yet. And likewise, these kids trapped into commercial sex, don’t recognize the danger, and they don’t see the manipulation, and they don’t see how to get out, simply because their brains aren’t yet developed. They trust too much. What they see on the internet, the nice guy who approaches them in the mall.

If an unthreatening young man sits down, particularly with a girl, and lets her talk for about 20 minutes; psychologists will tell you, she thinks he loves her. This is one of the most common methods of recruiting females. The art of building a bond through trust.

She responds differently to a male. She falls for the person if they simply listen to her and give her caring attention. So, what do these guys do? They hang out at Starbucks and they listen to people like Lacy. So, just remember, they are still a child and they may be made a choice to skip school like Lacy did. But this shouldn’t be a choice to slavery and torture and a society disregarding her. No, we need to go after that predator, that man who is shopping for these kids, because the traffickers and the buyers are the bad people, not the innocent kids being caught in their web.

Receive your free copy of the video Chosen here featuring two survivor’s stories.

Hear the stories Lacy/Stephanie tells in her own voice at Focus on the Family.
Part 1 | Part 2

June 11, 2020 by Linda Smith

Faith and Justice

We have taken time to observe and ponder the events of the past several weeks. It has been instructive to watch and listen to what is being said and done as individuals, groups and organizations absorb and react to, our nation’s current events. There are various opinions on roots of the turmoil–and causes and cures–but the theme we see replaying is that when you dehumanize people so you don’t see them, you can do anything to them. This is, in fact, the essence of using children for sex, brutalizing another human being, destroying another person’s livelihood, and of racism. We would do well to go back to the Bible’s two greatest commands—to love God and love our neighbor. We neighbors are not loving each other very well right now. Faith without works is dead, and the work (or action) in these times for those of us who claim the Christian faith is to work against the injustice of dehumanizing others. There is certainly more than one way to do that.

In this conversation, Linda Smith founder of Shared Hope and Rev. Dr. Marian Hatcher have an unfiltered discussion about these very things.

April 11, 2018 by Linda Smith

Shared Hope Statement Regarding FOSTA-SESTA and the Backpage Seizure

Today, with the President’s signing of H.R. 1865, the Allow States and Victims to Fight Online Sex Trafficking Act, also known as FOSTA-SESTA, anti-trafficking advocates and survivors of sex trafficking and their families celebrate this long awaited progress in the effort to combat online sex trafficking. Today’s bill signing comes days after federal agencies seized Backpage.com—a website that the Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations reported is knowingly facilitating child sex trafficking—and charged seven Backpage executives in a 93-count indictment. With FOSTA-SESTA signed into law, state prosecutors can prevent similar websites from taking over Backpage’s market share and courtroom doors have been opened to trafficking survivors who seek to hold exploitative websites civilly liable. These concurrent efforts by federal law enforcement, Congress and the President are drastically changing the landscape that, until now, has allowed the sex trafficking industry to thrive.

As anti-trafficking advocates and sex trafficking survivors have argued throughout the process of passing FOSTA-SESTA, the long term impact of civil and state criminal liability for Backpage and other websites that employ a Backpage “business model” is to limit the online marketplace for sex trafficking victims. As the federal government investigates and prosecutes Backpage for its role in facilitating sex trafficking, FOSTA-SESTA will enable state prosecutors to respond when smaller websites begin to employ the same business model. Just as the majority of human trafficking prosecutions occur at the state level, this legislation will enable a more agile, prompt response to similar websites, addressing the problem before the scale of exploitation matches the harm caused by Backpage.

Recent criticisms of FOSTA-SESTA and the Backpage seizure claim these efforts harm trafficking survivors who post ads on Backpage and similar sites for commercial sex. However, these criticisms fail to recognize the inherent harm that commercially sexually exploited individuals face every day—whether survivors are bought and sold online or on the street, they face rates of violence that dwarf the potential for violence faced by most other sectors of the population.[1] Research on the commercial sex industry and survivor accounts demonstrate how the majority of individuals sold for sex are under the control of a trafficker or pimp who often receives the money survivors earn from commercial sex transactions.[2]

The reality is that online advertisements do not insulate victims of sex trafficking from the harm of being sold, purchased and raped; conversely, online advertisements facilitate the violence. Online platforms, like Backpage, that facilitate access to marginalized individuals do not provide them protection from the harms inherent in the commercial sex trade.[3] Instead, an unchecked platform like Backpage heightens the risk of violence at the hands of sex buyers. Rarely do sex trafficking survivors have choices in their exploitation, no less sufficient autonomy to use Backpage as a tool to protect themselves from their trafficker or their buyers.[4] Thus, providing perpetrators with an easy, anonymous and relatively unmonitored means to sell and purchase survivors for sex creates more opportunities for them to face the risk of violence.

We look forward to a changed landscape that not only holds websites like Backpage accountable, but shifts our national dialogue about the exploitation of vulnerable individuals. Indeed, recognizing the harm caused by online platforms as facilitators of trafficking and exploitation is a critical step in shifting the broader narrative to recognize the scope of exploitation that occurs in the commercial sex industry. Through these efforts, the perception of online platforms as benign, passive tools for connecting consenting adults is a veil that has been lifted to expose the violent reality of the commercial sex industry. Lifting this veil should also shift the focus of anti-prostitution efforts from the most vulnerable and marginalized—those selling sexual services, often to survive—to focus instead on the perpetrators and drivers of this exploitative industry—the sex buyers, facilitators and pimps who exploit and profit from the vulnerability of those whose lack of choice traps them in the commercial sex industry.

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[1] Michael Shively et al., ABT Assoc., Inc., Developing a National Action Plan for Eliminating Sex Trafficking 5–6 (2010) (discussing research showing that 95% percent of trafficked women and girls internationally are physically abused, 59% are sexually abused and prostituted persons have mortality rates 200% higher than their peers) available at http://multco.us/sites/default/files/documents/developing_a_final_action_plan_to_eliminate_sex_trafficking.pdf.

[2] Melissa Farley et al., Online Prostitution and Trafficking, 77 Albany Law Rev., 104 (2014).

[3] Id. at 104 (“You are not safer because you work indoors. Craigslist is just the “internet streets,” where the same predators and hustlers are meeting you with the same intentions except they look like straight people who go to medical school and have Blackberrys. I consider myself in the same risk and danger zones as a street worker. I am an upper working class anonymous client worker.”) (quoting Marikopassion, An Outlaw’s Insurance Policy, Bound, not Gagged (Mar. 7, 2010), http://deepthroated.wordpress.com/2010/03/07/an-outlaws-insurance-policy/.).

[4] Alisa Bernard, The Smoke Screen That’s Obscuring the Voices of Survivors—Why We Must Amend the CDA (“In reality, a result of the now internet facilitated sex trade is the intentional disappearing of both victims and traffickers….Identification of victims and perpetrators has become practically impossible.”) available at: https://sharedhope.org/2017/10/smoke-screen/.

September 9, 2016 by Linda Smith

A Southwest Washington Girl was Rescued and Given Her Name Back

For four long years, Stephanie wasn’t even allowed to use her own name. She was only known by the name her trafficker gave her when he first enslaved her. She was only 13 years old at the time.

“He said I was no longer that girl with my old family,” Stephanie remembers, “No longer a girl who went to weekend retreats with my church youth group. But now a new girl that was a part of his family.”

It was a brutal family. Her trafficker beat her and continually manipulated her emotionally. Even worse than the beatings, Stephanie says today, were his constant reminders that he would go get her 10-year-old sister — unless Stephanie kept the customers satisfied.

Eventually, local law enforcement rescued her but she still couldn’t use her own name. Shared Hope moved her from her home community in SW Washington clear across the country, and gave her a new name for her own protection. And as she was loved, cared for her and counseled, the day came when she determined to share her story boldly, to help fight the scourge of sex-trafficking, to keep other girls from being subjected to what she had suffered.

As she prepared to speak at her first public events, the old shame bombarded her again. But then, something beautiful happened: “I walked to the microphone, looked out, and saw smiles of acceptance. Something had changed. I lifted my chin, stood tall, and said, ‘My name is Stephanie, and I am taking back my name.’ I then proceeded to tell them how the traffickers work, so they could better protect the children in their homes and communities!”

Her story is, in many ways, sadly typical: the older boy taking an interest in the younger girl, persuading her that their relationship is “fate,” promising to marry her, buying her nice things, and then demanding that she dance in a strip club to help him out of a financial jam.

“It was degrading, but I did it ‘for us,’” Stephanie says. When he demanded that she sell herself for sex, she refused — and he threw her out of the house on a bitterly cold night. She could sell, or she could freeze to death.

“I began endless nights of selling myself to make the money my trafficker demanded. I descended into depression. I drank and took drugs to dull the pain. Before I turned 16 all I wanted to do was die. Police picked me up, recognized me as a reported missing child, took me home — but fearing what he would do to my little sister if I didn’t return, I would get in the car when he drove up to my house.”

Arrests and returns became a cycle. At one point, the trafficker brutally assaulted Stephanie in front of her own home. “While I was hospitalized, my probation officer asked Linda Smith of Shared Hope to find a safe place where professionals had the skills to address my many needs,” Stephanie says.

The closest such place was 3,000 miles away. But Stephanie was willing to go. To escape the nightmare.

Stephanie has rebuilt her life, with strong support. Yet, as she often tells audiences, she likely would not have been tricked into the horror she endured if she, her youth leader, coach, or even her mom had known how the traffickers work. The signs were very evident.

Stephanie is one of two girls who tell their story in ‘Chosen,’ a gripping documentary from Shared Hope that opens hearts and eyes to the tragic dangers of sex trafficking and educates youth to recognize the danger signs. This 20-minute film tells the shocking true story of two all-American teenage girls tricked into trafficking. Both were manipulated. Both were exploited. Both were chosen.

“My journey has made me strong enough to be a voice for others,” Stephanie says today. “My faith in God and His way of making beauty from ashes has emboldened me to speak on their behalf.”

Shared Hope International is a global community dedicated to protecting our children on a local level. We’re thrilled to be working alongside the Clark County Sheriff’s office and Southwest Washington Churches on September 22nd to train parents, youth workers, community leaders, and teens how traffickers operate and how they can protect themselves and their friends. We invite those in the Northwest to join us for this event. In equipping our entire community with the proper knowledge and tools, we at Shared Hope believe we can protect our children before they come to harm.

We also invite you, our global community, to support our local efforts by giving to Shared Hope International as a part of Give More 24 on September 22.