Near the end of my first year working full-time in the anti-human trafficking sector, I attended a conference presentation on providing shelter services for trafficking survivors. The presenter spoke of the survivors she’d worked with tenderly, the way a hobbyist gardener might speak of plants she was nursing back to life. She sounded committed, thoughtful, and assured that any success showcased her skills as a caregiver.
When she was done, I asked how she builds independence among survivors while controlling so much of their everyday lives. After some back-and-forth, she said that in her experience, survivors of human trafficking are so broken down by their traffickers that they don’t know how to make their own decisions anymore. Because of this, she said, she had to decide for them.
I’d heard anti-trafficking professionals say things like this before, but they usually buried it under a veneer of ‘survivor-centred’ language. So I wasn’t surprised by the message. I was stunned she’d said it out loud.
