Mobilizing Congregations and Partnering with Nonprofits to Combat Sex Trafficking in Metro Seattle

Seattle is a leading center for human trafficking and an especially significant location for the recruiting and grooming of minors for the sex trade. As this project documents, each night, it is estimated that there are three to five hundred minors involved in sex trafficking in the Seattle- Metro region. The average age of recruitment is 13 to 17 years of age. This paper identifies two constraints that lead to minors being at high risk for recruitment into the sex trade and proposes practical solutions to each. The first of these constraints is an unstable foster care situation. Children who lack the stability of a consistent home and the protection of a family are at a statistically higher risk for recruitment into sex trafficking. Because foster care children are extremely vulnerable to human trafficking, solutions that stabilize the foster care experience, including training and recruitment of families to participate in the foster care program, will decrease the risk of children being recruited for work in this industry.
The second constraint that pushes children into higher risk for recruitment is an unstable and potentially dangerous home life with their birth families. Tension, violence, and neglect at home can drive children into socially vulnerable situations. In Seattle, the Westlake Center is a fertile recruitment ground for children and teenagers who are unsupervised and marginally attached to their families and homes. The Set Free team at First Free Methodist Church of Seattle, Washington, and students at Seattle Pacific University launched an innovative program entitled “Take Back Westlake,” creating a positive space for youth to congregate and to neutralize trafficking efforts. Furthermore, the project discusses barriers that victims encounter when they try to exit the human trafficking world and solutions to overcome these barriers when victims wish to leave the lifestyle.
A final outcome of this project is a ministry model of initiatives one congregation has discerned after research, asset building, and networking with nonprofits in the Seattle area. This model provides action steps to break the barriers and constraints of minors and young women who are in the sex trade. A partnership with Northwest Family Life is enabling the congregation at First Free Methodist Church to assist in providing a secure and warm environment at Penny’s Place, a sanctuary for women and their children surviving domestic violence and sex trafficking.