Human Trafficking Awareness Interviews

In the Booth with Ruth – Virginia Heath, Anti-Human Trafficking Advocate and Filmmaker

Virginia Heath, who has made three films about the sex trafficking of young people in the UK, shares about those films and the research involved in creating them.

Ruth Jacobs's avatarRuth Jacobs

Virginia Heath Film Director

What inspired you to support the movement against human trafficking and make films about human trafficking and sexual exploitation?

As a woman filmmaker, I have always felt strongly about issues of sexual exploitation and human trafficking. In 2009, I was asked if I would write and direct a film – My Dangerous Loverboy – that would raise awareness of the sexual exploitation and internal trafficking of young people in the UK. At the time, this was an extremely hidden issue. There was a slowly growing awareness of women being sex trafficked into the UK from abroad but very little recognition that British teenagers were being groomed, moved around and sexually exploited by gangs in our own towns and cities. It was happening right on our doorstep. As part of the research for writing the film, I was taken to hang out in places like shopping malls, back streets and parks…

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In the Booth with Ruth – Delores Day, Child Trafficking Survivor and Anti-Human Trafficking Advocate

“On my sixteenth birthday, my father sold me to his best friend,” says Delores Day, an anti-human trafficking advocate. “In the end, he was my pimp… I was still naive enough not to know this was trafficking. I just knew I had to get out…”

Ruth Jacobs's avatarRuth Jacobs

Delores Day

How did you become involved in the movement against sex trafficking and sexual exploitation?

I’ve been on Facebook for quite some time but in the beginning, it was mostly to play games. I didn’t see anything else that interested me at the time. Then my daughter was abused by her now ex-husband. She somehow stumbled upon a Facebook page called The Sisterhood. I noticed on that page many hurting women who’d been battered and abused. My daughter’s story was on their discussion page. God, it hurt me to the bone of how he truly hurt her, and how my granddaughter was the witness of it all. That’s when my daughter knew she had to leave and she did. She was so brave. So, I would go in there once in a while to help console some of them and give them little words of wisdom I’ve learned in my years of life. The creator…

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In the Booth with Ruth – Nicole Rowe, Feminist, Anti Sex-Trade Activist and Co-Founder of Nordic Model Advocates (NorMAs)

“A woman that is under psychological pressure from a pimp, boyfriend or other coercer to continue selling sex needs to hear that there is another way and have someone believe in her that she can make it happen,” says Nicole Rowe, a UK feminist and co-founder of Nordic Model Advocates (NorMAs), an organisation that tackles “the foundation that holds trafficking up – prostitution.”

Ruth Jacobs's avatarRuth Jacobs

Nicole Rowe

How did you become involved in supporting the abolition of prostitution?

As a feminist activist, you have to be wilfully blind to ignore the sex trade. I was planning a one-off activist stunt around sex trafficking at a UK activist training event, and was fortunate that those I met were passionate and dedicated enough to want to form an organisation with me to tackle the foundation that holds trafficking up – prostitution. If we lived in a world where women’s bodies were not for sale, then sex traffickers would not be able to operate. So, the best place to start alleviating the problem of trafficking is with prostitution.

What draws you to support and advocate for people in prostitution?

Largely, the lack of people doing so, and my outrage at that. Put simply, we live under a capitalist, patriarchal system, which means profit comes before people. For those at the receiving end…

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