ANCHORAGE - The abuse that young girls trafficked into the sex trade suffer causes severe, long-term damage on several fronts.
“The mental abuse, the emotional abuse, the physical abuse, it changes them inside,” said sex trafficking victims’ advocate Donna Gerwin. “They become really messed up inside.”
Gerwin says that damage — coupled with the lure of fast cash, fear of an abusive pimp or lack of basic job skills — are a few of the reasons why women who have been trafficked into the sex trade stay.
To make things worse, technology is only fueling the sex trade, said Anchorage Police Department Detective Sgt. Kathy Lacey. Buying and selling sex in Alaska has never been easier, Lacey said, with women of every age, race and type on sale just a few mouse clicks or touchscreen taps away. She says websites like backpage.com offer traffickers with new opportunities to capitalize on the vulnerable women they prey on.
“The Internet has facilitated prostitution and made it very easy for the traffickers,” Lacey said. “A lot of these websites are managed overseas, so they can say, ‘Oh, we don’t know. We have a no prostitution policy.’ but it’s obvious that sex is being sold.”
One of the women found in the “escort” section of backpage.com is Trina. That’s not her real name, but that’s what she’d prefer to be called.
“To me it’s pretty much an understanding,” Trina said. “If you want to go on the Internet and get some company then there’s one thing that’s wanted, and I can do that in a minute.”
However willing the women pictured in ads in digital brothels may seem, Lacey said that “willing” is almost never the case.
“We see women involved in sexual exploitation, the vast majority of them are being exploited,” Lacey said. “The vast majority of them entered into the world of prostitution at a very young age. The average age of entry is 14 years old. We see them as victims.”
Lacey considers Trina, who was trafficked into the trade at 16, as one of those victims.
Eleven years later, hollowed and hardened by circumstance, Trina said she sees no way out of what insiders call “the game.”
“I know I’m worth more, but at the same time, I feel like I’m only worth something as long as my legs are open,” Trina said. ”This is not my life plan. I want to go to school. I want to be somebody, someone my kids can be proud of.”
For nearly 18 years, an unassuming house in a quiet Anchorage cul-de-sac is where women like Trina could come to find a second chance; where Trina could become that person her kids could be proud of.
But second chances have been harder to come by since the Mary Magdalene Home Alaska (MMHA) ran out of money and was forced to shut its doors in November 2013.
“We helped a few women. We helped a lot of women. We helped hundreds of women over the years but we couldn’t help them all,” said Gerwin, former president of the Mary Magdalene Home Alaska.
Gerwin says she has dedicated most of her life to helping women escape the sex trade.
“Who knows but that I wouldn’t have become a prostitute if put in the right position?” Gerwin asked. ”If I had a hungry child and I had no other way to raise money, who knows?”
The Mary Magdalene Home Alaska was a one-of-a-kind haven for sex trafficking victims in search of an escape.
“They needed a safe place to live, long term where they could heal, where they knew they were safe,” Gerwin said. “Where they could change their habits.”
The MMHA provided all of that. Long-term housing, food, counseling, transportation, structure and support were made available to sex trafficking victims for free for 18 years.
“It was working and the women were being helped,” Gerwin said. ”I saw it. We saw it in the time [MMHA] was open, women changed. Women’s lives were changed.”
While the Mary Magdalene Home Alaska is gone, its legacy endures. Now, both police and advocates for the women who walk the streets say the public is finally realizing that prostitution is not a victimless crime.
“It has changed,” Gerwin said. “It’s called sexual exploitation now. It’s called trafficking. It’s not called a victimless crime anymore.”
“It has just been a gradual cultural shift,” Lacey said.
Yet, places where victims can find help in Alaska are few and far between, like the Mary Magdalene Home that is no longer serving the desperate needs of sex trafficking victims in the community.
Now, Gerwin said, the women of the street are left to face tremendous odds in finding a way out of “the life” themselves.
“There are statistics out there, one percent succeed in leaving the life,” Gerwin said. “I don’t believe it. Those were the ones that weren’t helped. Those are the ones that tried to do it on their own or didn’t try at all. The ones that want to leave and the ones that were helped, the percentage is amazing.”
Gerwin says the Mary Magdalene Home Alaska had a success rate of about 38 percent, but its closure was a major blow for area trafficking victims.
There are still a few options out there that can help, Gerwin said, but none of them come close to offering the number of services that were provided by MMHA.
If a trafficking victim is seeking an escape from the sex trade, Gerwin says AWAIC and STAR are two programs that can help.
Abused Women’s Aid In Crisis (AWAIC) – 272-0100
Standing Together Against Rape (STAR) – 276-7279