Symposium shows there is help and hope for victims of  HUMAN TRAFFICKING

BY TONI CASHNELLI

It’s horrible, and it happens here.

In 2015, human trafficking – the practice of treating people like GRAPHICS BY AARON GOLDER, Graphic Design Dept. Mount St. Joseph Universitypossessions – is a global pandemic. What’s shocking, says Fr. Al Hirt, “In a day and age when we thought slavery ended 150 years ago in this country, is to know that it’s widespread here and around the world.”

“Here” is Cincinnati, the site of an Oct. 27 conference on human trafficking mounted by the Sisters of Charity and co-sponsored by two dozen concerned groups, including the JPIC Office of St. John the Baptist Province, represented at the event by Br. Scott Obrecht. Pastor Al and 20 members of his congregation, St. Monica St. George, were among 500 people attending the Violence Against Women Symposium at Xavier’s Cintas Center, all gathered in a comfortable auditorium to hear the uncomfortable truth about modern exploitation. “The parish has already gotten involved with this issue,” Al said, “so this was sort of a natural event for me to attend.”

Throughout the evening women who had investigated and battled trafficking told stories in grim, gut-wrenching detail. Those who had experienced and lived to tell about it proved just how resilient the human spirit can be.

It’s all about profit

Attendees learned that human trafficking is the fastest-growing criminal industry in the world, yielding $150 billion in profit annually. About 55% of its victims are women.

Those numbers were provided by speaker Pamela Matson, a 25-year veteran of the FBI who estimates that 20.9 million people in the world are enslaved. “The UN recognizes five types of human trafficking,” said Matson: labor trafficking; sex trafficking; child prostitution; organ trafficking; and the conscription of children as soldiers.

Edwina GateleyIf you thought this was strictly a third-world problem, think again. Thousands of victims in the United States are controlled with threats, lies, drugs and physical violence. A map projected on a screen showed the network of highways – 21 of them criss-crossing Ohio – that gives traffickers easy access to any part of the state.

Matson, who spent her last seven years in the FBI working on human trafficking cases and other civil rights crimes, was frustrated by the lack of legal support. “Ohio was the fourth-to-last state to enact a trafficking law,” she said.  One two-year investigation resulted in the 2014 conviction of Christopher Hisle, a Cincinnati man who admitted he locked 12 women in his house and forced them to engage in prostitution.

When does exploitation become trafficking? If fraud, force or coercion are involved, Matson said, it’s a crime.  And if anyone under the age of 18 is involved, “It’s automatically a crime. There’s no need for proof of force, fraud or coercion.”

Preying upon the young

Pimps prey upon the young and the vulnerable. According to Matson, “The average age for starting prostitution is 13.” Thirty-two years ago, Edwina Gateley discovered her life’s work was befriending and ministering to people in prostitution. An author, artist and theologian, British-born Edwina is an eloquent spokeswoman for her cause. Outwardly as proper as Mary Poppins, she pulls no punches in her graphic depiction of life on the streets.

Thirty-two years ago, “I heard God’s whisper” to work with women in prostitution. “It made me feel God really, really was concerned about a whole population of women nobody gave a damn about. My call….came directly from God. Off I went to the streets of Chicago,” where she met women selling their bodies for $10-$15 a night. “It was those women in prostitution who took me to this underworld. They became my sisters.”

Edwina learned that more than 90% of them were victims of child incest. “They felt guilt; they had zero self-esteem and were too young and immature to know they were being exploited. They thought they were scum. With no other source of income and zero self-esteem, what else can you do?” Sitting with prostitutes and hearing their stories, she assured them, “You are God’s work of art.” Sharing those stories became her ministry. “We have to change what’s happening to these beautiful girls and women who are being brutalized,” she said.

A downward spiral

One of those women, Brenda Myers-Powell, was 14 when she escaped an abusive home in Chicago. Brenda Myers-PowellControlled for years by pimps who degraded and physically abused her, she survived when Gately intervened and helped her break a cycle of violence.

“I had no idea I was traffic,” said Brenda, addressing the Cintas crowd with disarming candor about the horrors she endured as a young woman.  Her own mother died at the age of 16. Neglected by her caretaker grandmother, Brenda had two children of her own before she turned 15. “I was raised up [to think that] God didn’t care about me.”

Over the years she was kidnapped, locked up, forced into prostitution, shot, stabbed, and badly disfigured “when I was dragged six blocks by a car when my clothes were stuck in a car door.” Then she met Edwina Gateley. “She took me, a raggedy piece of girl, and taught me how to find me.” Today Brenda is a motivational speaker who runs The Dreamcatcher Foundation, a survivor-focused agency working to end human trafficking in Chicago and its surrounding suburbs.

Awareness is key

As the Cintas audience learned, awareness is the most powerful weapon in the war on human trafficking. Watch for signs that people are being controlled (see sidebar). If you suspect that anyone is a victim, call the toll-free hotline National Human Trafficking Resource Center at 1-888-373-7888.

Al and his parishioners at St. Monica St. George have taken it a step further. “Our parish has a tithing program and this year we tithed about $2,000 to three different organizations dealing with human trafficking,” he said.

Sadly, the stories of rescue and redemption are rare. This evening, "The magnitude of the problem was put before us again,” said Al. Trafficking happens around the corner from where we live, where we work, where we worship.

Millions of people in the world will never know freedom. And thousands of them are closer than you think.

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Enlisting truckers

Ohio is taking its anti-trafficking campaign to the highways. Starting next year, all truckers issued a commercial driver’s license in the state will undergo a one-hour training program to learn what to look for and what to do when they suspect human trafficking. They will also receive a Truckers Against Trafficking wallet card with info and instructions about how to proceed. Ohio is the first state to make anti-trafficking training mandatory for truckers.

Profiling Workshop benefits postulants

BY FR. MARK SOEHNER, OFM

If what Stan Bir did in profiling could be called “Stan-dardized”, and Tim Lamb’s work could be called, “Lamb-inated”, perhaps the postulants and I have been “Scott-guarded” in a recent Profiling Workshop given by Fr. Scott Brookbank from Holy Name Province.

All 16 postulants from the U.S. and their directors came to the workshop at the Capuchin Retreat House in Washington, Mich. It was a good first meeting for all of them.

​Above, SJB postulant Dan Ward with classmates; right, Scott Brookbank led the workshop.Above, postulants and directors in Washington, Mich.PHOTOS BY MARK SOEHNER, OFMScott encouraged the 16 U.S. postulants’ understanding about their profile using the same instruments as both Stan and Tim (Myers-Briggs, FIRO-B, and the Leadership Matrix).  Soon metaphorical lightbulbs went on as they applied their new knowledge to community living.  Running masking tape on the conference room floor, Scott taught the postulants the meaning of Introvert/Extrovert. With introverts on one side of the line and extroverts on the other, both groups explained how they processed information, and what they needed from the other group.  Gradually a grid of masking tape delineated the full 16 MBTI types.  A similar interactive process was used for the FIRO-B, while the Leadership Matrix was handled in our individual provincial groupings.

This week of being together also introduced the postulants to each other, since they could potentially be novitiate classmates next August.  Evening recreations were opportunities to get to know each other, as well as the sending province.  Formators, too, were able to have some time for support and planning the next gathering in the Spring.  Now that I’ve been Scott-guarded, I hope my own community skills grow.

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• Next Tuesday when Fr. Bonaventure Bai is sworn in as an American citizen in Washington, D.C., Provincial Vicar Frank Jasper will be there rooting him on. Both will report to the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia bright and early, at 8 a.m. Nov. 10. Bonaventure writes: “I would like to take this opportunity to thank our Lord for all the blessings and graces, and our province, for all the supports and efforts. My heart is full of gratitude.”
• Friars Dennis Bosse, Andrew Stettler and Mark Gehret commemorated All Souls of the Seraphic Order with a midday prayer service today at St. Michael Chapel in St. Roch No. 2 Cemetery in New Orleans. They remembered the 10 friars who are interred there:  Anthony Korcek, Bertin Harrington, Generose Stronk, Alexius Wecker, Ammian Lutomski, Senan Kelly, Ambrose Kroger, Barry Coyle, Emmeran Frank, and Marcellus Moorman.

• A note from Fr. Pat McCloskey about the Roman-Franciscan Guide for the 4-volume edition of Liturgy of the Hours: “Franciscan Media no longer distributes these guides; Catholic Book Publishing produces them but does distribution through Holy Angels Gift Shop in Ft. Wayne, Ind.  Call them at 1-260/739-6882.” The price is $4.50 each, plus shipping and handling.
• The widely praised Duns Scotus lecture by Sr. Ilia Delio, OSF, on “Evolution and the Primacy of Christ” has been posted as a podcast, according to Ed Foley, Duns Scotus Professor of Spirituality at CTU. Listen to it at http://learn.ctu.edu/duns-scotus-2015
• SJB Novice John Boissy talks about his vocation and love of woodworking in a video posted Oct. 28 on the Facebook page of the Interprovincial Novitiate in Burlington, Wis., at: https://www.facebook.com/FranciscanNovitiateBurlington

• Oct. 24, Fr. Jeff Scheeler celebrated with the Poor Clares in Canton, Ohio, as Sr. Marie Joseph Erana made her first profession of vows at Sancta Clara Monastery. “I pray that this intense fervor I have now would always remain in me, and I would be more determined to continue following the guidance wherever the Holy Spirit would lead me,” she said. What a welcome!
• On Oct. 18, Advancement Specialist Gene Mayer was one of 10 friars who joined band members, teachers, athletes, administrators, club members and Assisi scholars in welcoming 165 prospective students to Roger Bacon High School’s Open House. “My usual job is to be a ‘greeter’ in the first floor lobby,” Gene says, “and there is a certain joy in seeing former students come in with their daughters and sons.” The majority of visitors who came from 46 local schools were eighth-graders.

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