Shared Hope International honors Marian Hatcher for dedication to fighting demand for sex trafficking

ARLINGTON, VA. – Marian Hatcher, Project Manager at the Sheriff’s Women’s Justice Programs for the Cook County Sheriff’s Office, has been named a 2014 Pathbreaker Award recipient for her determined leadership in pursuing the buyers of sex trafficking.

Marian Hatcher escaped from the world of commercial sex. At 38 years old, Hatcher was well established— holding a Finance degree from Loyola University, advancing in the corporate world, and living in a good neighborhood in Chicago with her five children. However, she entered a relationship with a man who abused and threatened Hatcher and her family. Depression caused Hatcher to turn to drugs, resulting in prostitution to support the habit. She served four months in jail, enrolled in the Cook County Sheriff’s Women’s Justice Programs, before her release and subsequent employment by the same program.

Today, Hatcher has been with the Cook County Sheriff’s Office (CCSO) for 10 years. She is the Human Trafficking Coordinator and member of the Human Trafficking Response Team. She coordinates several of CCSO’s anti-trafficking efforts such as the “National Day of Johns Arrests,” a nationwide effort with more than 59 participating federal, state and local law enforcement agencies targeting buyers of sex as the driving force of sex trafficking. As a national expert on combating the demand for commercial sex, she has testified before the Illinois and Colorado legislatures, has been featured in the OWN documentary “Prostitution: Leaving the Life” which focused on her work as a survivor advocate and the Ink 180 Documentary. In July 2014, her article “Ten Years and Counting” was published in Police Chief Magazine as a companion article to a piece written by Cook County Sheriff, Thomas J. Dart, both focused on human trafficking.

“Marian Hatcher is a brave example of a survivor who overcame great strongholds to free herself and blaze a path of freedom for others,” Shared Hope International President and Founder Linda Smith said. “She has made significant contributions in the fight to hold buyers accountable for their crime and to eliminate tolerance for commercial sexual exploitation.”

In 2000, the U.S. Department of State engaged Shared Hope International to hold Pathbreaking Strategies Conferences in six countries to energize the global conversation about the issue of trafficking and share innovative approaches to combat the problem. The conferences led to significant change in the global landscape of national responses to trafficking in countries that were behind the global community and enabling an environment that was fostering trafficking with no developed response. During this process, the Pathbreaker Award was established to recognize the pioneering efforts of individuals throughout the world who broke the trend of inaction and initiated proactive responses to prevent trafficking. See all Pathbreaker Award recipients.

The 2014 Pathbreaker Award recipients also include Congressman Frank Wolf (VA-10) and Brendan Johnson, U.S. Attorney for the District of South Dakota. U.S. Attorney Johnson and Ms. Hatcher will accept the award on November 7 during Shared Hope International’s JuST Conference in Washington, D.C.

MEDIA MATERIALS

For media convenience, a variety of video clips and resources, including survivor comments, are available at this location: vimeo.com/sharedhope/albums. Clips are password protected, please contact Taryn Offenbacher at Taryn@sharedhope.org for access.

ABOUT SHARED HOPE INTERNATIONAL: Shared Hope International was established in 1998, by former U.S. Congresswoman Linda Smith, to prevent, restore, and bring justice to women and children in crisis. We provide leadership in awareness, training, prevention strategies, restorative care, research, and policy initiatives. For more information about Shared Hope International, go to www.sharedhope.org

For more information contact Taryn Offenbacher at (602) 818-3955 or taryn@sharedhope.org.

Shared Hope International honors Brendan Johnson for prioritizing the prosecution of buyers of sex trafficking

ARLINGTON, VA. – Brendan Johnson, U.S. Attorney for the District of South Dakota has been named a 2014 Pathbreaker Award recipient for his determined leadership in combatting child sex trafficking.

U.S. Attorney Johnson has taken a progressive approach to demand enforcement through broad collaboration and aggressive prosecution of buyers which established broader federal engagement in combating demand for child sex trafficking.  At the request of Attorney General Eric Holder, Johnson was one of fifteen U.S. Attorneys selected to serve on the Attorney General’s Advisory Committee from 2012-2013. He has prioritized the prosecution of cases involving violence against Native American women and children and human trafficking. Mr. Johnson has overseen the prosecution of more than 25 human trafficking cases in five years, including three life-sentences and the federal prosecution of numerous men who attempted to purchase sex from trafficking victims. His office pursued the case of United States v. Jungers through the Eighth Circuit Court of Appeals, securing the critical decision that buyers of sex acts with minors are committing crimes of sex trafficking under the federal law, upping the risk of such activity by those who drive the sex trafficking markets.

“Brendan Johnson is a force of determination, initiative and skill that should leave buyers terrified to purchase sex with a minor in South Dakota,” Shared Hope International President and Founder Linda Smith said. “By creating a threshold for buyer accountability, he sets a national precedent that, if applied, will make significant strides in reducing tolerance for purchasing sex with a minor.”   

In 2000, the U.S. Department of State engaged Shared Hope International to hold Pathbreaking Strategies Conferences in six countries to energize the global conversation about the issue of trafficking and share innovative approaches to combat the problem. The conferences led to significant change in the global landscape of national responses to trafficking in countries that were behind the global community and enabling an environment that was fostering trafficking with no developed response. During this process, the Pathbreaker Award was established to recognize the pioneering efforts of individuals throughout the world who broke the trend of inaction and initiated proactive responses to prevent trafficking. See all Pathbreaker Award recipients.

The 2014 Pathbreaker Award recipients also include Congressman Frank Wolf (VA-10) and Marian Hatcher, Project Manager for the Sheriff’s Women’s Justice Programs at the Cook County Sheriff’s Office. U.S. Attorney Johnson and Ms. Hatcher will accept the award on November 7 during Shared Hope International’s JuST Conference in Washington, D.C.

MEDIA MATERIALS

For media convenience, a variety of video clips and resources, including survivor comments, are available at this location: vimeo.com/sharedhope/albums. Clips are password protected, please contact Taryn Offenbacher at Taryn@sharedhope.org for access.

ABOUT SHARED HOPE INTERNATIONAL: Shared Hope International was established in 1998, by former U.S. Congresswoman Linda Smith, to prevent, restore, and bring justice to women and children in crisis. We provide leadership in awareness, training, prevention strategies, restorative care, research, and policy initiatives. For more information about Shared Hope International, go to www.sharedhope.org.

For more information contact Taryn Offenbacher at (602) 818-3955 or taryn@sharedhope.org.

I should say up front that this post is aimed at men.  When it comes to fighting human trafficking, those of us on the front-lines of this battle tend to look beside us and see mostly women.  When you add the fact that many, but not all perpetrators, especially of domestic minor sex trafficking (DMST) are males, it becomes painfully clear that we need strong and compassionate men to join the efforts to end this atrocity.

With that said, I promise that this will not be a “male bashing”post.  As an African-American male, I don’t want to add to the guilt that many feel.  To the contrary, my intention is simply this: to move you to action.  And perhaps the best way to do that is to share why I got involved.

I have been married to my beautiful and loving wife for 16 years.  In that time, I have been blessed to be Daddy to two amazing daughters.  Yes, three women govern my personal life!  I have learned to enjoy mall hopping, learning the newest pop sensations, and I have enough rainbow loom bracelets to stretch across all the Peachtree Streets in Atlanta.

Perhaps one of the biggest adaptations I’ve made as a father was understanding inequalities that still exist for women.  The looks my oldest would receive as one of a few girls at basketball camp.  The bullying my youngest dealt with as the smartest in her class.  Many times the thought would enter my mind – “Would they go through this if they were boys?”  As a dad, my job was to protect and that’s what I planned to do until they were grown and married.

And so as a protector, when I began to learn that modern-day slavery still existed around the world, I was shocked.  I was even more shocked to learn that it happened in many forms, one of which was DMST and my own home of Atlanta had developed a reputation across the world of being a hub for the sex trafficking of minors.  In fact, in 2005, the FBI named Atlanta as one of 14 cities in the nation with the highest incidence of children used in prostitution.  As men, many times our natural reaction to this is to get angry, and then once football or some other distraction comes into our world, that anger subsides.  For me, the anger just stewed.  And I knew I had to do something.

My first course of action was to learn more.  And as I learned more, I realized that this was no light issue.  In my home state of Georgia, the average age of girls exploited sexually is 12-14.  In 2009, each month, 7,200 men were paying for 8,700 sex acts with children in Georgia.  After learning this information, there was no way that I could ignore what was happening in my own community.  As Edmund Burke said “The only thing necessary for evil to triumph is for good men to do nothing.”  How could I consider myself a good man and a good father if I were to turn my head away from what was happening in my community?

And as a father, this meant that, at the appropriate time, I needed to begin educating my family.  Starting with my wife and then my daughters.  Something as simple having a conversation about “what are girls and boys like at your school,” can be an eye-opening dialogue to have with your children.

Once I became educated, I needed to find a place to fit in.  How could I get engaged with this issue?  I did not have extra time to just add hours to my already packed schedule, nor did I want to do the community service equivalent of bucket plunking in church.  I wanted to add value to this cause.  As learning professional that meant applying my experience and skills to the training that was being done by Street Grace, the organization that introduced me to this issue.  For others that have partnered with us, their contribution has also related to their expertise.  There is so much to be done, that there’s a place and role for everyone.  What will yours be?

As I began to serve, seeing the lights go on in the eyes of others was encouraging.  I knew that the way I was serving was making a difference and I began freely giving more and more of my time to Street Grace.  The empowerment that was happening around me was exciting and it lead me to believe that within my lifetime, I could see this horror ended.

Fast-forward four years to 2014.  I had the privilege of serving on the Street Grace Board of Directors for three years.  I now continue to serve as a member of the CEO’s Advisory Board.  I have traveled around the country speaking about the ills of DMST and human trafficking.  All of this because I decided not to let a Falcons game quench the discomfort that was growing within me around this issue.

So what will your story be?  As the 19th Century English abolitionist William Wilberforce said, “You may choose to look the other way, but you can never again say that you did not know.”  So now that YOU know, what will YOU do?

Action Steps:

1. Get educated.  Participate in a Chosen small group study or find training about DMST
2. Talk to the children in your life. Simply learning about what these children are experiencing, challenged with or doing can be valuable information in this fight.
3. Give.  Your time and your finances, make a contribution to a local community-based organization that is fighting this issue.
4. Mentor. If you don’t mentor the children in our communities, the pimps, dealers and other negative members of society will.
5. Spread the word.  Tell others about this atrocity, encouraging them to get involved in this fight.

Learn more about Aaronde’s work at Street Grace and the Fathers Against Child Exploitation (FACE).

While enslaved on a plantation on the eastern shore of Maryland, my great-great-great grandfather, Frederick Douglass, was denied an education. Slaves were prohibited by U.S. law to learn to read and write. Slave owners understood that education was incompatible with slavery. They believed that an ignorant slave was a content slave…and the federal government ensured that those held in physical bondage would also be held in mental bondage.

There is a paradigm that, even after the legal demise of slavery brought on by the Emancipation Proclamation and Thirteenth Amendment, has remained unchanged. Douglass identified the key to ending this human scourge when he realized at the tender age of nine that, “Education makes a man unfit to be a slave.” My great ancestor understood that knowledge was power and it would one day be his key to freedom.

I’ve long considered my connection to Douglass as well as that to my great-great grandfather, Booker T. Washington, to be a rare blessing. It wasn’t, however, until I discovered the extent to which slavery still affects people in the world today, including here in the U.S., that I realized these great legacies were also part of a calling for me – a calling to leverage history in order to help change the future for those captured in modern-day slavery. Unless we’re able to educate young people about slavery’s past and present; about the methods traffickers use to entrap and exploit, it will continue unabated. This is the mission of the organization I lead, Frederick Douglass Family Initiatives (FDFI).

Human trafficking is slavery.  It occurs when one or more individuals are controlled and used by others. Trafficking victims often include children who have been coerced or deceived into the commercial sex trade. Sex trafficking is a profitable crime: where guns and drugs are sold only once, a child can be sold many times (even in one day) and can be sold day after day, week after week and year after year. Unlike the legalized slavery my ancestors endured, the slavery that exists today is illegal. The criminals are not just those who sell children for sex but also those who buy them.

Demand has been recognized as a critical component of the sex trafficking crime. Most of us recognize “supply and demand” as basic elements of an economic formula. In the same way that the demand for cheap and free labor in the Southern United States drove the Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade, sex trafficking today is driven by demand. Sex traffickers meet this demand by supplying mostly women and girls to buyers wishing to purchase them for sex.

Our culture is, in many ways, complicit in creating demand for commercial sex. One way is by normalizing prostitution. Media representations of prostituted individuals, various forms of sexual exploitation and Pimp Culture are reaching boys on computer screens and cellphones at younger and younger ages. While some of their female counterparts are being lured into commercial sex, huge numbers of boys are systematically being groomed by pornographers to become future buyers of sex in person and on video. As pornography proliferates on the Internet, the financial stakes and the risk to children increase exponentially. Right now, pornographers have the upper hand.

“It’s easier to build strong children than to repair broken men.”

 Frederick Douglass

Current efforts to address demand have focused almost exclusively on adult males who purchase sex.  Federal and local legislation has been introduced and bills have been passed to strengthen anti-demand enforcement. Community awareness campaigns have been promoted to help men understand that Real Men Don’t Buy Sex.

These are all important and necessary steps to take. If, however, the strategy for stopping demand is to repair broken men, it will ultimately fail. A concerted effort must be made to build strong children. Prevention education needs to become a priority in the fight against sex trafficking and demand. We often use the image of the 2010 gulf oil spill as an analogy for the unchecked destruction being caused by sex trafficking in our communities. Proactively educating children is the logical solution to capping the broken well of this particular disaster.

“Young people play critical roles on both sides of the Contemporary Slavery spectrum: at one end, they are the most vulnerable to becoming its victims and, at the other, the most qualified to lead its demise.”

Robert Benz,

Frederick Douglass Family Initiatives

Educating young people about the crime of sex trafficking is an important first step if we want to eradicate sex trafficking from communities. Frederick Douglass and Booker T. Washington understood first-hand that the application of knowledge and the empowerment of an individual provided the best opportunity for one to remain free from bondage. With this philosophy as our foundation, FDFI created a human trafficking prevention curriculum for secondary schools called, History, Human Rights and the Power of One. It is designed to help keep children from becoming victims of various forms of slavery and to empower them to act against human trafficking in their communities.

Prevention education provides girls and young women with tools to understand how sexual exploitation happens, how to avoid it and what to do when it happens to them.  It also helps them identify the elements within language, media and popular culture that conspire to obscure or even glamorize behavior that may be detrimental or dangerous. Prevention education provides boys and young men with tools to understand how sexual exploitation happens and what to do if they see it happening around them. And, most importantly, education teaches them how to avoid playing a role in driving demand. It helps them recognize and interpret elements within cultural traditions, the Internet, media trends and pornography that may place their health, integrity and women and girls at risk.

In April 2013, I visited a youth detention facility outside of Washington, D.C. It is a secure, lockdown facility for about 150 boys who have been adjudicated as delinquent and committed to the district’s Department of Youth Rehabilitation Services. While chatting with the young men, I noticed a kid in the front row who looked to be about 16 years old.  He had a teardrop tattoo under his right eye which drew my attention to his steely glare and hardened demeanor. I could see in his eyes all of the suffering he had endured as a child and all of the suffering he had likely inflicted on himself and others.

My conversation with the boys covered many subjects that day including violence against women and girls. A few of them emotionally recounted the violence they had witnessed against women in their own lives. Some of the boys confided in me that they were there because they had abused girls.  I asked them to stop and think about how they would feel or react if someone were to mistreat or abuse their sister, mother or daughter. The young man with the tattoo didn’t say a word and continued to stare.

I proceeded to share stories about the courageous men and women in history who gave their lives for the freedom these young men had thrown away. We talked about Frederick Douglass and the importance of freeing one’s mind from mental bondage. We talked about Booker T. Washington and how he started a school to educate formerly enslaved Americans. As our time together came to a close, I concluded by telling them that they descend from greatness and each of them has the blood of heroes and sheroes flowing through their veins, just like I do.

The young man in the front row with the steely glare had been silent until this moment.  He looked me straight in the eyes and said, “Mr. Morris, I have a baby boy. When I get out of here one day, I’m not going to raise him how I was raised. I’m going to teach him to always treat women with respect and dignity.” The teardrop tattoo on his cheek was now obscured by real tears.

I couldn’t help but think how this young man’s life may have taken a different turn had he been educated and empowered when it mattered most.