Child sex trafficking cries for a sea change in tactics

By Elizabeth Hovde, Oregonian columnist (October 31, 2009, 7:23AM)

A decade ago, Annette served 13 months in jail for lighting her pimp on fire.

But that’s not the most interesting thing about her. Years after escaping her past life — a rarity for sex-trafficking victims — Annette is a successful adult running a recovery home for prostitutes.

Annette was lured into prostitution right here in Portland as a 14-year-old girl. Like a lot of child sex slaves in the United States, she ran away from an abusive home and the man who found her gave her shelter and care before he started beating and raping and trapping her in what many victims and prostitutes call “the life.”

Annette’s story is devastating. But the life she lived is one that too many girls — American girls, local girls — are experiencing.

Sex trafficking of minors isn’t just a problem in countries such as India and Nepal. It’s a problem here. Right here. (read the full article on Oregonlive.com)

Cost: Free and open to the public

In 1988, while traveling with schoolmates in Southeast Asia, kidnappers pulled Bill Hillar’s 17-year old daughter off a train and forced her into the sex industry. Despite an exhaustive, multi-country search, her father, a Special Forces Colonel, was unable to save his daughter from the fate that ultimately took her life. The recent movie “Taken,” with Liam Neeson is partially based on Bill Hillar’s personal story. On Thursday, July 23, Dr. Hillar, now an adjunct professor at the Monterey Institute of International Studies, will discuss the international web of human trafficking and global approaches to combating this horrific practice.

Learn more: http://www.pdxcityclub.org/agora/agora.php

Submitted by Kari Suppes 6/17/09

By:  Peter Korn
Portland Tribune, April 23, 2009

The 3-inch skin ulcer on the ankle of the woman before her was like nothing Jenny MacNichol had ever seen before.

Alameda resident MacNichol had practiced internal medicine in Portland for a number of years before retiring a decade ago to spend more time with her children. But now the children were mostly grown, and MacNichol had decided to ease her way back into medicine by volunteering with a group of doctors from Providence Portland Medical Center who were providing free health care to agricultural workers in Central Guatemala.

The elderly Guatemalan woman explained that her wound had first appeared five years ago, and had never healed. And MacNichol knew almost immediately what it was – something called cutaneous leishmaniasis. “A very rare disease that you would not see in Portland,” MacNichol says. A tropical disease that, up until a few months ago, if she’d seen it, MacNichol would not have recognized.

But not this time. “It looked just like it had been described in class,” MacNichol says.

That class is one of Oregon Health & Science University’s latest, and a unique one at that, according to officials at the medical school there. Its focus is retraining physicians looking to become volunteers overseas through organizations such as Doctors Without Borders.

The class, which is really more of a 10-week program, was the brainchild of 66-year-old Salem ophthalmologist Andy Harris. Harris is semi-retired and had been thinking that he’d like to get involved with overseas volunteer work. But as an eye doctor decades out of medical school, he figured the skills he had been honing all these years were not the ones that would be most needed in some little village in Africa, Central America or South America.

Harris says he knows other doctors who are retired or close to retiring who also were interested in volunteer work, but uncertain if their training was adequate. Many were specialists like him, who knew that in Third World countries they would likely be practicing primary care.

Harris approached OHSU officials, who wanted evidence that there were enough Oregon doctors interested in the program.

So Harris sent a letter to every physician in Oregon between the ages of 46 and 69. More than 400 said they would like the training.

Six doctors attended the initial offering of the class this past winter, including MacNichol and Harris. Four have since gone overseas on volunteer missions. Harris went to Ethiopia in February. Ten more doctors and one nurse have signed up for the next session of the class, which begins this fall.

While there are other medical school courses around the country that retrain physicians for overseas work, what makes OHSU’s program different is its hands-on approach, according to Don Girard, OHSU dean of continuing medical education.

The program included weekly lectures by both OHSU medial school staff and other experts in Third World health from around the city. In addition, the doctors/students shadowed OHSU physicians around the hospital, just like medical students. And in the evenings, they worked shifts at the nonprofit Wallace Medical Concern’s community health clinics in downtown Portland and Gresham. That sharpened their primary care skills on patients who, like those they would likely see overseas, had been receiving inadequate or no medical care.

Paul Bollinger, emergency medical services senior advisor with Tigard’s Medical Teams International, helped develop the curriculum for the course and taught sessions at OHSU. He knew what he wanted to impart to the doctors – training in tropical medicine and security issues, for instance. But foremost, Bollinger says, he wanted to remind the students of why many of them became doctors in the first place.

“I think what they’re missing is the true passion of medicine,” Bollinger says. “Of being able to care for people in the truest sense of medicine, without the bureaucracy that plagues our medical system in the U.S.”

Tropical medicine subjects included treating malaria and river blindness, two of the most prevalent diseases in Africa, but rarely seen in the U.S.

Security issues, Bollinger says, included learning from local residents when a situation was becoming dangerous, and then how to leave.

In addition, students in the class were taught about treating injuries they’ve never seen before, including patients who have stepped on land mines.

Another component of the class is learning how to treat people without all the accoutrements of Western medical care. The latest drugs are rarely available in overseas situations, Bollinger says, so physicians need to improvise with older, or local versions. Another example, Bollinger says, is dealing with leg fractures. A state of the art splint from a U.S. hospital can cost as much as $500. Health care workers in the field need to be able to make inexpensive splints from materials on hand.

“We can’t replicate the Western-based system throughout the world,” Bollinger says. “You do the best you can. It’s kind of like going back to old-school medicine.”

*** For those of you who do not know, Andy Harris is a friend and former board member who is still very active in committee work with OCCV and humanitarian ventures throughout the world (as mentioned above).  We are pleased to share this article and his accomplishment with you all.

My favorite story from the week was that of a poor young women who had been sexually trafficked in a major East Coast city. And when civic crusaders closed the brothel where she lived, she became homeless. But she got hooked up with one of our partner groups in that city, and they brought her to the Mobilization. And here, at this gathering, she heard about a Jesus she had never heard about before—one that wanted to save people like her. So on their delegation’s way to the Capitol, this young woman gave her life to Jesus Christ at the corner of “10th and D,” as I was told. And that’s the vision I have—of believers doing the work of the kingdom of God in the world, for justice and peace, and people coming to faith because of their witness. Thanks be to God!

I once attended an art exhibit displaying several portraits of Holocaust victims during WWII.  They had been photographed during their release from the concentration camps.  As I stood paralyzed by the overwhelmingly pressing weight of trauma worn on each of the victims’ faces, a though occurred to me.  I wasn’t just staring at the photos, the people were staring at me.  With all that was going on, I also thought of the thousands of stories I had heard connected to the Holocaust.  As this flood of emotion crashed through me, the eyes of each victim stared through me to the point of penetrating my very soul.

A few weeks ago, I began reflecting on how art, story, and advocacy are connected.  It started after I had the privilege of attending the Oregon Center for Christian Values’ (OCCV’s) conference, entitled Vote Out Poverty Advocacy Training.  The event, in association with Sojourners, was hosted by Mosaic Church here in Portland.  Aaron Graham, the keynote speaker from Sojourners, began the session with a talk entitled, “The Power of Stories.”  It went something like this.

The LORD says in Exodus 3:7, “I have indeed seen the misery of my people in Egypt.  I have heard them crying out because of their slave drivers, and I am concerned about their suffering.”  God’s concerned love initiates His movement down to rescue these oppressed people.  He does this through calling Moses to be an advocate for justice.

So, what is justice?  In the recently released anti-slavery movie, “Call & Response,” I remember Dr. Cornel West saying that justice is what love looks like in public.  Aaron Graham spoke of justice as an act of worship.  These concepts spun around in my head over and over again that day.  In what ways do we, as proclaimers of God’s kingdom, communicate in word and deed, this deep longing to engage the people of injustices in the world around us?

So, what does communication look like that breaks down the callousness of people’s hearts, penetrating their very souls?  Can we see it in a photograph or painting?  Does it embrace us in a song?  I believe that artistic expression has a way of penetrating one’s soul, without one’s soul giving it permission.  Art is never absent from the lives of oppressed people.  Aaron went on that day to teach of the importance of the art of story.  Throughout scripture, we are gripped by God’s character being revealed through the narrative story.  God is first introduced in Genesis 1 as the Creator, the artist who’s writing His story.  We receive the invitation to participate and write our own story with Him, united in Him in community.

Aaron Graham has experienced a severe disconnect between Church priorities and what he reads in scripture concerning how much God cares for the poor and marginalized.  This is why he is passionate about advocacy training for the Christian community.  In Matthew 9:37-38 Jesus says, “The harvest is plentiful but the workers are few.  Ask the Lord of the harvest, therefore, to send out workers into his harvest field.”  This rhythmic drum beat for justice is the call.  Our activity is the response.  As we have been created in the image of the Creator Artist God, how are we bearing the imaginative response to his love for us and those suffering at the hands of the oppressors?  If you really love people, you don’t want to see them abused.  How are we practicing the Art of Advocacy for Jesus?  What stories are we telling?  What portraits are we painting?