Campbell, Maxine, Leah, Celia and I, helping out at the Butterfly Boutique
On November 12, my three groupmates and I visited and volunteered at Sanctuary For Families. Sanctuary For Families is a clinic that houses women and girls who have suffered from commercially sexually exploitation or domestic violence. Sanctuary is also made up of many attorneys who help the victims in a more legal aspect. For example, if a victim wanted to press charges against their abuser in federal court, their would be lawyers within Sanctuary to fight for the cause. Sanctuary has four buildings throughout the five boroughs, each having a different purpose. While some buildings served the purpose of housing and working with victims, others were more like offices for lawyers and coordinators. The Sanctuary space we visited was the largest building and their hub.
We had discovered Sanctuary for Families by reading the amazing reviews from last year’s sexual trafficking social justice group. We contacted Lauren Mindle, who is the head coordinator for all volunteering means. She quickly responded and gave us a confidential address. “This address is confidential because women are housed in this location and there is the potential risk of pimps or previous abusers wanting to retrieve them,” says Lauren.
When we arrived and waited in the waiting room with light green deserted walls and a carpet with flowers., I automatically felt a knot in my stomach. There were a number of women and children in the same room and it was upsetting to know that the people of them had been trafficked, abused, raped or maybe all of the above. Lauren greeted us shortly after we arrived and gave us a tour/orientation consisting of what sexual trafficking/domestic violence is and Sanctuary’s mission. She was very genuine and appreciative that we were willing to help out especially with holidays so near making them particularly swamped. Lauren gave us a boatload of information but the thing that stuck out most for me was when she brought up the many reasons why victims have a hard time leaving their pimp or abuser and how victims enter the sex industry. Many people who are unfamiliar with a specific situations and sexual trafficking as a whole, will say, “Well why didn’t you leave” or “It was their choice.” When women leave their abusers, they are filled with guilt, love, fear, shame, embarrassment or bribery. Many victims also had abusive families, lived in poverty, and was in a state where no one would notice/care if she was gone. For people like this, they have unfortunately run out of choices. We also learned that the average age for women to be trafficked is thirteen years old and in the past ten years there have been 11,268 trafficking victims in Manhattan alone.
After our orientation, Lauren introduced us to her colleague Leah who we volunteered for. Sanctuary has a shop called the “Butterfly Boutique” which is a space replicated to look exactly like a regular store except everything is free! This is where victims can look around, try on clothes and pick out some stuff they like. Even though victims and their children could just pick out clothes from a room, the idea of shopping makes them feel like they are living a normal lifestyle again. Our job was to help people in the clinic look for clothes and clean up the boutique.
This was an amazing and unforgettable experience. We had begun the day with minimal knowledge about sex trafficking and Lauren had completely transformed our perspectives. I hadn’t realized how complex sexual trafficking was until listening to Lauren be so descriptive and throughout. It pained me to see shoppers come in and know they have had a difficult experience that they are trying to cope with, however, I was glad that I got to help out and put a smile their faces.
