{"id":5799,"date":"2015-06-09T14:36:28","date_gmt":"2015-06-09T19:36:28","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.gnof.org\/?p=5799"},"modified":"2015-06-11T09:07:32","modified_gmt":"2015-06-11T14:07:32","slug":"covenant-house-helps-victims-of-human-trafficking","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/staging.communify.me\/gnof\/covenant-house-helps-victims-of-human-trafficking\/","title":{"rendered":"Covenant House Helps Victims Of Human Trafficking"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" src=\"https:\/\/w.soundcloud.com\/player\/?url=https%3A\/\/api.soundcloud.com\/tracks\/209572862&amp;color=ff5500&amp;auto_play=false&amp;hide_related=false&amp;show_comments=true&amp;show_user=true&amp;show_reposts=false\" width=\"100%\" height=\"166\" frameborder=\"no\" scrolling=\"no\"><\/iframe><br \/>\nCovenant House New Orleans is a safe haven for homeless and at-risk youth.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cOther people been having control of my life all my life. I was a victim of human trafficking and I\u2019m 22 years old,\u201d a young woman at Covenant House tells me.<\/p>\n<p>Using her name might put her safety in jeopardy. Sexually molested and abused as a child, she took to the streets to get away when she was seventeen.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI had a very rough lifestyle. So I had to do what I had to do to survive. I didn\u2019t really at first feel afraid because I was away from where I was. And I just didn\u2019t want to go through it anymore. I just thought I would maybe find a way to get out what I was going through.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>But things didn\u2019t go well on the street. She came under the control of a pimp who forced her into prostitution and threatened her life constantly.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cHe really, really was hard on me, like with the force and the beating. When he put the gun to my head, that\u2019s when I really thought he was going to kill me. I thought life was over for me, and I just wanted out. I just didn\u2019t want to deal with it no more.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>She called the police, and her pimp was arrested. But then he was released from jail, and she saw him, and had an anxiety attack.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI had seen him one day and I really was having an anxiety attack. It just felt like I just couldn\u2019t breath, and I just wanted to get away. He was telling me, he was saying: you always gonna be in the prostitution life. He was like, you gonna come back.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>But she was determined to put her life in a different direction. Through a victim survivor advocate at the Department of Homeland Security, she came to Covenant House where she found support and safety, and for the first time, special and free.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cYears ago we used to be called child prostitution. Now we refer to it as human trafficking,\u201d says James Kelly, Executive Director of Covenant House New Orleans. \u201cAnd we saw more and more young people coming to Covenant House in need of help and services and love and care.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cRight now in New Orleans, there\u2019s no other crisis center for victims of human trafficking. There are other good providers of service, but there\u2019s no other twenty-four hour program for a young woman who\u2019s fleeing a pimp, a predator and is trying to get out of the life.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Because Kelly and his staff noticed an increase of young people fleeing this type of abuse, they asked researchers at Loyola University to interview their clients. A report released earlier this year estimates that 86 of the young people who come to Covenant House each year are victims of human trafficking. And the researchers say this number is likely higher because people aren\u2019t always forthcoming when it comes to sensitive topics like sexual abuse. Kelly says New Orleans isn\u2019t doing enough, but that our city has the leadership and the will to step up their game.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWe\u2019ve been fortunate to be able to work with homeland security, and the FBI, and the police. It\u2019s a partnership,\u201d says Kelly. \u201cBut we, at the same point are saying, as we see more and more young people coming to us in need who have been victims of abuse, sexual assault, and rape in essence being pimped out. We\u2019re making a commitment we\u2019re making a commitment to saying what more can we do? Can we increase our outreach services? Can we develop more specialized services for the young woman who comes in because if you haven\u2019t been in the life \u2013 and then, no one can ever relate.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cIt\u2019s all about the support and help,\u201d says the young woman. \u201cYou got to have a support system because at first I didn\u2019t have the support system. Where I can get myself together. I really didn\u2019t understand what I had to learn.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>But at Covenant House, she began learning. And healing.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWhen you\u2019re out there in those on the streets and you\u2019re doing them bad things, people look at you in a whole, totally different way. I want people to look at me positive. I want them to see me shining and glowing and being a better person. When I leave this world, I really want to leave a mark on myself. I really want to accomplish a lot of things out here. I really want to be something in life.\u201d<\/p>\n<p><em>Written by Eve Abrams for the Community IMPACT Series and produced by WWNO in partnership with the Greater New Orleans Foundation. Learn more about\u00a0<a title=\"Covenant House\" href=\"http:\/\/www.covenanthouseno.org\/\" target=\"_blank\">Covenant House<\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Covenant House New Orleans is a safe haven for homeless and at-risk youth. \u201cOther people been having control of my life all my life. I was a victim of human trafficking and I\u2019m 22 years old,\u201d a young woman at Covenant House tells me. Using her name might put her safety in jeopardy. Sexually molested&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":37,"featured_media":5800,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[677,30],"tags":[350,130,531,878,100],"class_list":["post-5799","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-front-page-small-feature","category-our-community","tag-community-impact","tag-community-impact-series","tag-covenant-house","tag-human-trafficking","tag-wwno"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v19.3 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>Covenant House Helps Victims Of Human Trafficking | Greater New Orleans Foundation<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/staging.communify.me\/gnof\/covenant-house-helps-victims-of-human-trafficking\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Covenant House Helps Victims Of Human Trafficking | Greater New Orleans Foundation\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Covenant House New Orleans is a safe haven for homeless and at-risk youth. \u201cOther people been having control of my life all my life. 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