Jessica Muñoz was working as a nurse practitioner in Honolulu when she first discovered American kids had been being purchased and bought for intercourse.
Children had been coming into the emergency room the place she labored, however their tales “simply didn’t line up,” she says. Usually, they’d been written off as troublemakers or unhealthy children, however Muñoz realized the reality: They had been victims of intercourse trafficking and exploitation.
These susceptible children had been tricked or compelled into intercourse work, they usually had nowhere to show. Muñoz determined to vary that by founding Ho‘ōla Nā Pua, a nonprofit centered on stopping youth intercourse trafficking and offering care and therapeutic for victims. The group’s title means “new life for our youngsters” in Hawaiian.
Below her management, Ho‘ōla Nā Pua has opened a 32-bed residential remedy facility known as Pearl Haven that gives therapeutic providers for kids ages 11 to 17. The group additionally raises consciousness about intercourse trafficking, runs a mentorship program and gives prevention schooling in colleges. Ho‘ōla Nā Pua leads coaching for well being care professionals, legislation enforcement and repair suppliers who may need the chance to intervene.
“There was an actual have to construct a complete mannequin in order that these children may actually discover these pathways to freedom and therapeutic,” she says.
We talked to Muñoz about her journey and the way on a regular basis individuals have the facility to make a distinction.
SUCCESS: What initially drew you to well being care?
Jessica Muñoz: I used to be all the time actually fascinated by individuals who had been within the medical area—nurses, docs, family and friends who had been in well being care. I used to be simply fascinated by the tales they might share. And I may see the alternatives to supply hands-on assist for individuals once they had been in troublesome instances, going through well being points.
S: You’ve mentioned you have got a “justice gene.” What do you imply by that?
JM: All of us have DNA. All of us have totally different genes in our DNA. And I simply assume there are individuals like Corrie ten Increase, Abraham Lincoln, William Wilberforce and Florence Nightingale who’ve this relentless drive to make proper what’s been mistaken, to face within the hole for the susceptible and be certain that individuals are capable of reside a lifetime of freedom and well being.
S: Why are the victims of intercourse trafficking and exploitation so typically labeled as “drawback” children?
JM: Behaviors are the language of trauma. If children are into medication or substances or working away, they’re working away from one thing to one thing else. We have to look backstage and actually perceive what’s occurring. A lot of children become involved in delinquent behaviors, and other people will label that as, “Oh, they’re only a unhealthy child or a troubled child,” versus, “Wait, they’re a traumatized child.”
S: How do individuals miss it?
JM: A part of it’s oblivion. Persons are oblivious, and, for the common citizen, they consider the scary man within the white van and kidnapping. However it’s really the predator who’s on-line, who’s speaking to children and recruiting them subtly. It’s the boyfriend-type relationship. And so, there [are] simply misperceptions of what this appears to be like like and the prevalence of it.
S: Do lots of people shrug off this subject? And, if that’s the case, how do you reply?
JM: The fact is that this subject is in every single place. You simply don’t see it. It [might] appear to be, “Oh, that would by no means occur to my baby,” however I can’t inform you what number of upper-middle-class dad and mom I’ve labored with. All it takes is a second of vulnerability and unhealthy attachment for teenagers to finish up on this scenario and never even understand what they’re entering into. Everyone seems to be on-line, and the web and social media apps and all of these issues which can be speculated to be bringing us collectively additionally collide our worlds with perpetrators and people who find themselves eager to abuse and exploit. You simply won’t see it and understand it. However it’s harmful.
I all the time problem individuals. I say to them, “I don’t need to reside in a world the place this occurs to kids.” And I consider my very own nieces and nephews, and I combat for them as a result of they symbolize the hundreds of youngsters who’re on the market who this might occur to.
S: What makes intercourse trafficking and exploitation such a troublesome subject to deal with?
JM: It’s complicated as a result of sexual points are complicated. Take into consideration once we began speaking about sexual assault and rape and the #MeToo motion. It creates a whole lot of emotion. It creates a whole lot of dialog. There could be a whole lot of finger-pointing. With this, there’s a related stigma round it as a result of I feel individuals even have a very laborious time accepting that this occurs to kids—particularly in America. “Wow, that’s loopy. After all, you would see that in different nations however not our personal.”
Whenever you take that to the following degree of processing, you go, “Effectively, why does this occur?” We wouldn’t have this occurring if individuals didn’t [seek it out]. So, then you definitely go into, “The place is that this demand coming from? How do you handle it?” As a result of it’s not the scary particular person crawling out from underneath the bridge that’s doing it. It’s the politicians, it’s the docs, it’s white-collar, blue-collar. It’s all the above. Consider the disgrace and the stigma round that. And people are the hidden issues we don’t wanna discuss.
Kids that suffer from this degree of abuse and violence have complicated trauma and wish a complete strategy to therapeutic. The over sexualization of our youngsters has elevated in our nation over the previous 20 years. This additional contributes to vulnerabilities of youth from all several types of backgrounds and socioeconomic statuses.
Photograph courtesy of OpenWaterProductions
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