Samford’s International Justice Mission and the Center for Children, Law, and Ethics at Cumberland School of Law hosted an anti-human trafficking event at Brock School of Business. This event included Tom C. Rawlings of Taylor English Duma L.L.P. and Carissa Phelps J.D., founder and CEO of Runaway Girl.
Phelps shared her story of once being involved in trafficking and how she had to become accustomed to living as a victim, and Rawlings shared ways we must make a change. The event also included two local girls’ homes and two from Tennessee. An important message that “advocacy matters” is sent through their speeches.
Rawling began with a power point about ways to help victims, how to approach them, how to treat them and how to prevent them. Rawlings points out that there is a wide variety of what we could do to help.
He pointed out that through unintentional actions, undocumented children are put into homes or given to sponsors, which is sometimes the prime source for trafficking.
Sometimes children run away from the home to try and get to safer environments and end up in trafficking at a very young age Rawling stated that these acts can cause “perverse incentives for people to traffic a child across the border.”
He shared that no one follows up on the children and that the system needs a better way to keep track of them.
This point was echoed in Phelps’ story. Phelps stated that every time she was in trouble with the law, there was no record of her situation; the only thing that was documented were the charges against her. Because of this, she felt that no one cared about how she and other victims got into that position or how they can get out and be safe.
Phelps has a website at RG@runawaygirl.com to help victims as well as a movie Carissa and a book titled “Runaway Girl” to share her story and reach out to those in similar situations.
Rawling stated that citizens have numerous resources available to help find these victims and help them get to a better place. A phone number to call if you or a loved one knows or has experienced any sort of trafficking is 888-373-7888, and the website for the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children is at https://www.missingkids.org/home.
Individuals can also go to the website of State and Federal laws for creating “safe harbors” for victims at https://reportcards.sharedhope.org/safeharbormap/?location=al.
Staff Writer