In 2011 Voice of Hope (Lubbock Rape Crisis Center) and Forensic Nurse Staffing of West Texas noticed an increase in the number of children presenting in the emergency room with “red flags” of having been sex trafficked. In that same year, 53% of Voice of Hope’s sexual assault cases involved children under the age of 17 years. With the help of the Children’s Advocacy Center (CAC) and Forensic Nurse Staffing of West Texas, Voice of Hope spearheaded a local task force to assess Domestic Minor Sex Trafficking (DMST) in Lubbock and the surrounding rural communities. Because sex trafficking has become such a problem in the United States, this task force was comprised of representatives from several offices, agencies, and associations throughout the Lubbock community to help combat this ongoing issue.

The task force met monthly to discuss the issue of human trafficking, and eventually, a decision was made to conduct a community needs assessment to garner information from the local community about their knowledge of DMST and explore the various needs that this issue presents for our area. The Community Needs Assessment confirmed the documented statistics and reflected 73% of those who responded to the survey were seeing signs of sex trafficking.  The survey also revealed a gap in services for victims of DMST here in West Texas. There was no place to offer long-term residential services to the girls apart from the juvenile justice system.

Fighting to make a difference, community leaders Peggy Galanos, Kim Stark, Gloria Toti, Laura Pratt, and Terisa Clark founded the nonprofit organization called OneVoiceHome. This nonprofit organization is a key piece in a collaborative effort to combat DMST in Lubbock and the surrounding areas. We are committed to offering victims of domestic sex trafficking a safe home for restoration and the opportunity for a new beginning.

Faced with the knowledge there are girls and young women here in our community, who are victims of sex trafficking within our region and are not receiving long-term victim care, OneVoiceHome desires to take the lead in providing these services through a home of healing and restoration for them. OneVoiceHome is designed to be a faith-based, state-licensed, therapeutic home for sexually exploited girls, providing long term care and holistic case management and programming. Our hope is to develop a full campus for meeting the needs of these girls, allowing them to transition through different phases, bringing them from a place of initial rescue into a place of refuge, resiliency, recovery, and ultimately, complete restoration.

With over 79,000 child victims in Texas being sex trafficking at any given time, the need for this home is so great! Upon surveying several facilities around Texas able to house human trafficking victims, OneVoiceHome learned many of them operate with a near-constant wait list for minor victims of sex trafficking needing residential placement, so the need for this specific type of facility is great. Additionally, Lubbock, Amarillo, and the Midland/Odessa area are seeing an increase in the number of victims of domestic sex trafficking, and it is imperative we move quickly to address this gap in services evident in Lubbock, the surrounding rural communities, and the entire West Texas region.

OneVoiceHome was founded by several women in our community from different professions, different churches, and different places in life, but regardless of our differences, we all had a heart to be a voice for these children. Throughout history wrongs are made right when One Voice is willing to stand up and speak out, to unite with other voices and make a difference. We truly believe that the mission of OneVoiceHome is not just the mission of our founding board members, but it is the mission of this entire community. We are not all called to do the same thing in this fight against the sexual exploitation of girls & young women, but we are all called to do something!

Through its programming, OneVoiceHome will create opportunities for new beginnings, so ultimately, our success will be measured through changed lives. Rescuing and restoring these victims is challenging work, but the affects of their changed lives can be far-reaching. We want to create an environment that allows victims to transform into survivors and overcomers, thus inspiring further awareness and action in others around them. Because victims of human trafficking often become traffickers if they remain in the industry for an extended time, providing a complete rescue from their situation breaks the cycle of human trafficking, saving countless victims from recruitment and exploitation. Providing a place for complete healing and restoration ensures women do not return to exploitation and are equipped to make a positive difference in society. Additionally, rescuing victims can aid in prosecution and result in more convictions, effectively preventing the convicted trafficker from exploiting others in the future.

With millions of people in bondage worldwide, it is so easy to lose sight of the children that need our help, that need freedom, that need rescuing in our community. These are OUR girls, OUR daughters, OUR sisters! If we don’t speak for them, if we don’t care for them, if we don’t rescue them, who will? The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil in this world is for good men and women to do nothing to stop it.

Every child in our community deserves the chance to experience the love, support, and opportunities we sometimes take for granted. As someone who has experienced such things in excess, I must give back.

William Wilberforce was an abolitionist from the turn of the 18^th century. For most of his adult life, he fought to end the British slave trade. In one of his many speeches to Parliament about the issue of slavery, he said, “Let it not be said that I was silent when they needed me.”

Our hope is that as more people know about human trafficking in our community, more people respond as one voice against it. I hope that one day our community will become a nationwide example for eliminating the buying and selling of human beings and for being a safe refuge for survivors and overcomers of human trafficking.