Safe House Project: How one group is empowering everyday people to combat trafficking

Kristi Wells, co-founder and CEO of Safe House Project, spoke with Live Action News about the organization's efforts to end child trafficking, how abortion intersects with trafficking, and what the pro-life movement can do to make a difference.

Key Takeaways:

• Of an estimated 300,000 American children being trafficked, it is estimated that just 1% are identified as victims and given the opportunity to escape.

• Most trafficking victims know their traffickers, and 90% experience pregnancy at some point during their victimization.

• Safe House Project has created an app, Simply Report, to help those who recognize the signs of trafficking to safely and quickly report what they have seen.

The Details:

Safe House Project co-founder and CEO Kristi Wells said she was inspired to get involved in the fight against human trafficking when she realized the scope and seriousness of the issue. Wells told Live Action News:

"It was an estimated 300,000 American kids being trafficked in the United States every year. Based upon a report coming out of the Department of Justice, the International Labor Organization was reporting that victim identification was only at 1%, meaning of those 300,000 being trafficked, only 1% were ever making it out or escaping."

For those who did manage to escape, an overwhelming majority ended up being trafficked again, due to a severe shortage of safe homes where they could live. That reality led to the birth of Safe House Project.

READ: Innocence Stolen Twice: Why I fight for trafficking victims and their unborn children

"We are a national anti-trafficking organization that trains individuals to identify and respond to human trafficking," Wells explained. "We help victims of human trafficking escape their trafficking situation and access healing, and we help certify safe homes across the United States to ensure that when a survivor is placed, they are getting the best possible care."

These homes are vital because most trafficking victims are not abducted by strangers but by someone they know — and nearly half the time, it is a family member. Therefore, they do not always have a safe home to return to.

Wells noted:

"When you realize that their value and their self-worth has been so significantly shaped by their trafficking situation since an early age, then you've got more to do than just provide safety.

You've got to provide education and life skills training and therapy and all of these different things that are there to help them understand that they have dignity and value and worth as a human being."

Once a victim is referred to Safe House Project, there are no financial burdens placed upon them as they begin to rebuild their lives.

Wells explained:

"We cover the Ubers to help them exit. We cover the bus ticket or the airline ticket. We get them to a hotel if we need to bridge a gap. And then we help cover the Instacart order to get them the food. We cover the baggage fees. We cover everything possible to decrease every single barrier to care.

And then once they get to a safe home, they've got closets of stuff. They've got things for the babies. They've got all of the resources that they could possibly need there."

Zoom In:

Wells debunked some of the myths surrounding human trafficking.

"Human trafficking is rampant across our communities. It doesn't discriminate. Traffickers will take anybody of any age, race, socioeconomic status, or gender," she said. "And so it's really critical that our populations that are highly intersecting these groups are understanding what trafficking looks like."

Safe House Project provides multiple different avenues to train people in how to recognize the signs of trafficking, from individual training to education for medical clinics and pregnancy resource centers (PRCs).

Wells told Live Action News that there are "two very easy tools" that people in the pro-life movement can use to combat trafficking:

• HOPE training: "There are thousands of pregnancy help organizations out there that can take it [to] understand the signs and indicators of trafficking...."

• Simply Report app: "... [W]hen they see a situation, they can reach out because if it's a victim in need of services that needs to escape a trafficking situation, that actually activates our team, or it engages law enforcement if it's a tip and a suspicion of trafficking." The app allows people to report any concerning signs, without fear of getting it wrong.

"It's an AI-powered tool that allows anybody to report their suspicions of trafficking through a chatbot, and it will ask additional questions based upon the information that they're sharing," Wells explained, adding:

"And it will analyze it against a behavioral matrix that has over 700 different behavioral indicators of trafficking, and it will tell the reporter, you know, this is very concerning, it will ask additional questions to determine if it is a trafficking situation, and it will rank the likelihood of it being a trafficking situation.

It doesn't report that back to the reporter, but once that chat is concluded, within seconds it routes to dashboards that are accessible by law enforcement to be able to see properly aggregated, vetted, ranked, and routed tips."

The chats can be anonymous, and give the reporters information on next steps or questions they can ask if they have concerns about something they have seen.

"It's really an empowering tool for any community member," Wells said.

The pro-life movement is in prime position to help victims escape, Wells said. For PRCs and pro-life advocates alike, getting trained to properly recognize the signs of trafficking is one of the first steps to take.

Wells stressed that pro-life individuals "have a really critical intersection point... [and] truly have the ability to make a difference in the life of a victim."

What's Happening:

Pregnancy is a major issue with trafficking, and according to Wells, 90% of trafficking victims experience pregnancy while being trafficked.

"Some of them are forced into abortions, but also there are some that the traffickers have them keep the baby because they use that baby as leverage against them," she said. "In any case, a pregnancy is used as just another form of coercion."

However, Wells pointed out that most victims very much want to keep their babies.

"This is something that, when so much has been stolen from them, feels like something that's just theirs. But it is, again, oftentimes they are forced to have an abortion. Child trafficking victims that are trafficked by family members, it is extremely common for the moms to take them into an abortion clinic."

No questions asked

Too often, there are no questions asked, allowing the victims to be returned to their traffickers afterwards. Wells said:

"We had a situation in [the] Kansas/Missouri area, where the same woman was showing up at different hospitals every time with a young Asian girl under the age of 18, and was saying, oh, this is my daughter, and this is what's happening, and... what we realized was, that it was actually the madam that was controlling a number of girls, just taking them into different health care systems, and different abortion clinics, and... reporting that they were her daughter..."

Wells explained that this wasn't stopped until a victim advocate noticed the trend and took action.

While this is a major issue within the health care industry overall, Wells pointed out that it is significantly worse within the abortion industry.

"When abortions are not evaluated, when there's people who are able to bring in children and have them forced into an abortion and no questions are asked, it allows a criminal enterprise to go unchecked," she explained, adding:

"And human trafficking, especially of minors, is something that is really difficult to track. These are actually key opportunities and key places. We know that more than 90% of trafficking victims intersect some kind of health care provider, inclusive of abortion clinics, while they're being trafficked."

Wells also noted that the abortion industry isn't exactly attempting to ensure that there are fewer abortions; the industry instead "report[s] their numbers... out to donors, out to the community [as if] 'this is the impact that we've been able to create.' The fact is, they're not looking deeper beneath some of the systemic issues...."

The abortion industry, she believes, "is designed to support abortions."

"I have yet to see a full-scale human trafficking training implemented in any of the abortion clinics, while they still understand that this is a high intersection point with human trafficking," Wells stated. "And so not doing anything tells me that this is... not a priority to them."

On the other hand, health care providers "have a Hippocratic Oath to do no harm, and I think in that, have a greater likelihood to evaluate the full circumstances," she said. "They have clinical social workers who are there to understand what's happening. They have training that is specifically around human trafficking."

The Bottom Line:

For human trafficking to come to an end, everyone in every community should be keeping an eye out for it, and be willing to make a report, even if they aren't sure.

"... We all have not just an ability, but a responsibility as community members to take action when there's something that we see that just doesn't feel right," Wells urged, encouraging others not to second-guess their instincts.. "... [People] don't have to be confident. To report, they just have to be concerned. And so I would encourage people to even go back and think about those situations that they might have seen [or] individuals that they might have been around that [makes them realize] something just wasn't right."

For more information, visit the Safe House Project website.