This year when a young woman was trafficked from Egypt and forced to serve as a domestic in a home in Atlanta, Georgia, she fled to the one place she knew she would be safe: a church.
Her intuition proved correct. While Atlanta, Georgia wears the unfortunate badge of being one of the biggest hubs in America for human trafficking, the city’s churches are now joining with the mayor’s office and other advocacy groups in a unique, effective partnership to address the crisis. North Avenue Presbyterian Church (NAPC) and Peachtree Presbyterian Church (PPC) are leading the charge on behalf of the faith community—and their efforts have focused on the “least of these,” the children trafficked into this country for the purpose of sexual exploitation ranging from child pornography to prostitution.
NAPC Pastor Scott Weimer was the lead organizer of the first-ever “Faith Summit” to address the issue, held at his church in March 2007. More than 100 people participated in the ecumenical interfaith gathering of Atlanta-area churches, including Atlanta’s mayor, Shirley Franklin. As Weimer tells it, the Summit was one of several milestones this past year in raising awareness and generating a response to child sex trafficking.
The first of these was an article in the Atlanta Journal Constitution that appeared back in November 2006, reporting on a study by the mayor’s office and sponsored by the Atlanta Women’s Foundation. The study, “Hidden in Plain View,” dealt with the topic of child sexual exploitation in Atlanta, but one fact in particular was of greatest shock value to Weimer and his congregation. The study identified the intersection of Peachtree and North Avenue, the corner where North Avenue Presbyterian Church sits in downtown Atlanta, as one of three locations in the city known for the heaviest concentration of child prostitution.
That fact alone was enough to place the tragedy square in the face of North Avenue’s congregation—so much so that when he mentioned it in a sermon several months later, Weimer was overwhelmed by the offers of help made afterwards. One response, suggested by the church’s African members, was to organize a prayer vigil—and organize a prayer vigil is just what North Avenue did. A rainstorm at midnight on a Saturday in April could not stop an ecumenical gathering of over 200 intercessors, including neighboring churches and even a few members of the local Church of Scientology, from walking the streets near the corner of Peachtree and North Avenue with heads bowed in prayer.
But there was also the prayer that the church leadership had already been praying since January 2007, asking God to let “our hearts break with what breaks your heart,” and to “give us eyes to see you at work in the world and courage to join you in that work.”
And prayer is what Claire Hertzler, reflecting on the unparalleled momentum that this past year has seen in the movement against sex trafficking, believes makes the difference. Hertzler, a long-time member of North Avenue Presbyterian and Regional Director of the National Coalition for the Protection of Children and Families, has been championing the cause of sexually exploited children since she first learned of their plight in June 2000. At the time she had been reading a newspaper editorial by a juvenile court judge stating that the one-thousandth case of child prostitution had just come through her court. “I couldn’t put it down. I thought, ‘Why are we letting this happen?,’” Hertzler recalls.
The following year, Hertzler’s organization was lobbying the state legislature to change the pimping-of-minors law from a misdemeanor to a felony. The next year she got involved in a movement led by the Atlanta Women’s Foundation to establish a home for girls rescued from sexual exploitation. (“Angela’s House” was the only house like it east of the Mississippi—with only six beds.)
Then in 2004, Hertzler joined Weimer as members of a newly formed “Rescue and Restore” coalition that meets monthly to address sex trafficking in Atlanta. The coalition was one of several chapters formed around the country by the Department of Health and Human Services, in Washington, D.C. and uniting the resources of churches and other local organizations.
But it was the prayers of God’s people that, according to Hertzler, ushered in the dramatic progress seen this year. In January 2007, Hertzler was at a training session learning about her organization’s new ‘iCare’ intercessory prayer program for children in danger of sexual exploitation. At the end of the meeting, she asked staff to pray for “our city of Atlanta…we had been called ‘sex city U.S.A.,’ and we prayed and I cried…I just felt that prayer had a lot to do with what’s happening now.”
“What is happening now” in Atlanta is an unprecedented convergence of events and resources both on the local and national level to raise awareness and mobilize action to end the sex trafficking of children. The national “Not for Sale” campaign recently organized two “concerts” in Atlanta and is now preparing to draw up a detailed map of the city that will improve future surveillance and response and rehabilitation services. The movie documentary, “Trade,” aired last month in theaters around the country. Its debut coincided with several educational and advocacy-related events hosted by Atlanta-area churches, in partnership with organizations like the Coalition and the mayor’s office. (Two such events, the Salvation Army’s second annual weekend of prayer and fasting and North Avenue Presbyterian Church second midnight prayer vigil and “Faith Summit,” are upcoming.)
Ordinary individuals are also beginning to join in the effort. One young mother invited college students and young adults to a "Trafficking Awareness" Party in her home and has started a blog. Another woman recently volunteered her home as a shelter for as many as fifteen girls. Still others are raising money for a drop-in center where children will be able to go to find the resources they need in order to escape sexual exploitation.
“…The faith community is what all of the agencies, the government, the mayor’s office, are turning to,” Hertzler said. “They believe in us—that we can do something and will do something.”
Peachtree Presbyterian’s Director of Community Outreach, Johnny Myers, put it another way: “[As Christians] we’re called to go into the dark corners of this world and we are called to be the hands and feet of Jesus, because this is where Jesus would be.”
Myers celebrates that where there was once inaction, there is now a growing number of churches “filling the gap” through education, prevention, advocacy, and crisis intervention.
“God’s heart is hurting. Our heart needs to hurt. We need to be standing in the gap. We can’t wait for others to do that,” Myers said.
Myers’ congregation and other concerned members of Atlanta’s faith community are planning a trip next month to Washington, D.C., to learn new strategies from the Christian advocacy organization, International Justice Mission (IJM), which they in turn will apply to their city’s sex trafficking problems.
Meanwhile, Weimer recently represented the faith community at a talk on the subject at Atlanta’s Commerce Club. He was joined by the woman from the mayor’s office who authored the report, “Hidden in Plain View.” Together, this self-described “Jewish feminist” and evangelical Christian are a visual testimony to the way in which local churches and the city government are working in an unusual partnership to dismantle one great millstone around the necks of the “least of these.”
If you would like to learn more about the issue of child sex trafficking and how you can work to stop it, the following resources in the way of people and organizations may help:
Faith Summits and projects (Scott@napc.org)
“Hidden in Plain View” Stephanie Davis@earthlink.net
Hear Their Cries: A PowerPoint Presentation and Service Opportunities (claire@nationalcoalition.org)
Sermons, Scripture, Annual Day of Prayer (salvationarmyusa.org)
Power Point and other helps (sharedhopeinternational.org)
“Rescue and Restore” Speakers’ Bureau (claire@nationalcoalition.org)
Training workshops (alesia_adams@salvationarmyusa
“Rescue and Restore” Membership (alia@tapestri.org)
Training/speaking on international victims of trafficking (alia@tapestri.org)
International Justice Mission (www.ijm.org)
“Not for Sale” Campaign (www.notforsalecampaign.org)
Innocence Atlanta (www.meetjustice.org)
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