Human Trafficking Awareness month

In the Booth with Ruth – Christine Stark, Child Trafficking Survivor, Award Winning Writer and Visual Artist

“I want to be part of a global movement to end this thing that nearly destroyed my life. I want to live in a world where children and women do not have to figure out a way to get up the morning after being tortured the night before. I want to live in a world where women and children are not sold for men’s pleasure.” Christine Stark, Survivor of Child Trafficking and Award-Winning Writer and Visual Artist.

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Chris Stark

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

Various family members sold me in a prostitution and pornography ring throughout my childhood and teen years. I always wanted to get away from them but since I knew what happened to kids who ended up on the street, I never ran away. I figured my best chance at survival was to stay home and get away by going to college. If I had run away, I would have become more expendable. They would have either caught me and punished me, or I would have ‘disappeared’. Given that I was used by my family, they had more accountability toward me than a youth picked up on the street by a pimp. For instance, they could only bruise me where the marks would not be seen. Bruises couldn’t show on my arms and legs and face. Plus, if one day…

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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.

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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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