Independence Day by Kim Checkeye

This week we celebrate independence and freedom for our country from the Kingdom of Great Britain. We will celebrate with fireworks, picnics, baseball games and family gatherings but all the while, there are those still being held captive in our country and being forced into another form of slavery called sex trafficking.  On July 4^th, they will not be celebrating freedom for they have not known what that is for years. 

It has been a year since Truth for Women partnered with V.A.S.T. in bringing awareness and education to our community on sex trafficking.  While it has been an amazing year of networking, training service providers and making connections with others who have a heart to stop this injustice, it has also been a year of heart break.  It has been a year of many tears shed and many sleepless nights. 

Why?  Because before you can educate or bring awareness to a community, we must educate ourselves on what we are fighting against.  We must immerse ourselves in studying statistics and facts on sex trafficking.  We must read every book we can get our hands on about the trauma the victims experience and we work one on one with the women who have been wounded by this horror.

All the while we plead with God to break our hearts for this injustice and ask Him to allow us to feel just an inkling of what He must feel when He sees this in the United States of America and internationally.  Little did we understand just how amazing God is at granting the requests that we bring before Him.

But what has broken my heart the most is the harden hearts who choose to ignore this injustice.  Even after receiving the information or hearing the stories of the victims from the Lehigh Valley, they choose to believe it is not happening in our community.  They choose to turn an eye from it and ignore what is right in front of them.  They choose to pretend that it isn’t happening in their backyard because if they did, they would need to rise up and do something about it.

The Word of God speaks time and time again about setting the captives free, releasing the oppressed, breaking the yoke of burden and the rod of their oppressors and binding up the broken hearted. 

Those scriptures mean more to me today, then ever before because I have personally met the captives, the prisoners and the broken hearted who have been held against their will in the commercial sex industry.

I interviewed one counselor who works with women coming out of prison.  She has worked with over 200 women and 85% of them were victims of sex trafficking or sexual exploitation.  All of them right here in the Lehigh Valley.  This was just ONE counselor who was interviewed!

Their stories are heartbreaking and bone chilling at what they have been through.  Being sold at the age of 5 to a pedophile, being sold at the age of 2 to a pimp, being injected with heroine at the age of 12 by their own mother so their bodies would be addicted to the substance so in return, they would sell themselves for money. 

These are woman who are right here who need our help and need our support to get them get out of this evil.  But where can they go?  Where can we send them?  There is no place in the Lehigh Valley equipped to handle this type of trauma and devastation.  NONE. 

That is why the Truth for Women Center is feverously working on raising the funds to open a therapeutic residential home for victims of sex trafficking and sexual exploitation.  We are estimating it will cost $130,000 - $150,000 a year. 

How can you help?  Become a part of the solution and put your hands to helping the victims find freedom.