Local groups fight human trafficking in Richmond

Cyrus Nuval
Staff Writer

The InterVarsity Christian Fellowship club sponsored a three-day awareness event on human trafficking last week.

The event, called “Trafficked,” was orchestrated by InterVarsity member Alix Hines, a senior mass communications major. According to Hines, she and members of the InterVarsity Christian Fellowship have always wanted to make an event to spread awareness of human trafficking.

“I was talking with our staff leader, Kip Hart, for InterVarsity last year about wanting to do something with the outreach team regarding human trafficking,” Hines said. “He told me about Gray Haven so we decided to partner with them and just do a three-day event to get out the word (on) human trafficking.”

According to the Richmond Justice Initiative, about 100,000 U.S children are trafficked within our borders each year. About 18,500 people are brought into the U.S. for the purpose of prostitution every year and a victim of trafficking may be forced to have sex with as many as 40 “johns” or clients in a day.

At an Awareness Wall the club set up in the Compass last week, students learned these numbers and more. After answering questions on how much they thought they knew about human trafficking, they were allowed to write the word “Aware” on one of the bricks of the makeshift wall.

The club also passed out black WorldVision T-shirts in the Compass with words such as “seduced,” “defiled” and “abducted” to spread awareness about the tragic circumstances of victims of human trafficking.

On Friday, Joshua Bailey, CEO and founder of the Gray Haven, and some interns from the Richmond Justice Initiative came to campus to discuss the issue of human trafficking in Richmond.

According to Bailey, while some other organizations such as the Richmond Justice Initiative focus on the prevention and elimination of human trafficking in Richmond, The Gray Haven Project acts more as a safety net to assist the victims of human trafficking.

“Our goal is to provide hope and restoration through direct services to the victims of human trafficking in Richmond and Central Virginia … to help them rebuild their life whatever that looks like and whatever it takes for them,” Bailey said. “We want to create a safe place to help them rebuild.”

Bailey also said the number of traffickers or trafficked victims in Richmond is still unknown.

“The reason why it’s tough to say is because there is a lot more than we’d expect happening in Richmond,” he said. Based on the number of victims his organization and others have worked with, Bailey estimated between 35 to 40 victims were helped in Richmond in the past year.

According to Bailey, a very small number of the people trafficked around Richmond are now VCU students who have either been coerced or lured into prostitution by traffickers.

Sallie Bailey, a VCU sophomore crafts and materials studies major and an intern at the Richmond Justice Initiative, said that Richmond and the U.S. have recently been making more decisive steps in responding to human trafficking.

“Different bills have been passed where the definition of human trafficking and human trafficking victims has been changed, which is great and we want that to happen,” she said. “It used to be that these minors were charged as adults for being victims.”

According to Sallie Bailey and Joshua Bailey, the Richmond Police Department is now training to spot human trafficking activity and human trafficking victims by working with the community and organizations like the Richmond Justice Initiative and the Gray Haven Project.