By Avonlea Brown
Ohio places fifth in the nation for the most human trafficking reports, and many cases remain unreported. In response, organizations at Cedarville University are stepping up to educate people and fill that void.
The International Justice Mission(IJM), Dear Dinah and Cedarville’s Title IX Coordinator, Shannon Berkheiser, collaborated to host the event. Students at Cedarville University gathered on Monday night for a special panel discussion answering some of the hard questions about human trafficking.
“Our goal is to get students talking and thinking about how to integrate their faith into the topic of human trafficking,” said Emily Hamstra, panel mediator and senior Social Work major.
Human trafficking involves exploiting victims for profit through fraud, coercion or force. It controls someone through threats, manipulation or abuse to make them work or provide sex/labor services against their will.
IJM and Dear Dinah are 501(c)(3) organizations focused on ending human trafficking on a local and global scale. Students from the Cedarville chapter of IJM worked with students who volunteer at Dear Dinah to organize an event that would address any questions their campus might have about the heavy topic. They invited guests from the greater Dayton area with various expertise on exposing human trafficking. On the panel were law enforcement officer Jesse West, Homeland Security officer Ryan Sutphin, Project Woman liaison Emily Parsons, Dear Dinah Volunteer and Pharmacy major Rachel Massey and Dear Dinah founder Mandy Reed.
The panel opened with words from Reed about the current statistics about human trafficking nation-wide, which are constantly changing due to the changing nature of reported cases. According to the National Human Trafficking Hotline, in 2023 9,619 cases were identified and 16,999 victims were involved with said cases. HUman trafficking is also forced labor and slavery, which the International Labor Organization estimates brings in ~$236 billion every year globally. The human trafficking business She also called Christians to view human trafficking as a serious problem that requires immediate action.
“Human trafficking boils down to the selling of souls,” Reed said.
Throughout the evening, panelists covered topics such as grooming, the scope of human trafficking in the greater Dayton area and how to spot a trafficking victim.
Students also heard from human trafficking survivor Katie Shepherd. She, along with Reed, shared that the most common mistake people make when helping victims of human trafficking is giving them a label and not hearing their full story.
“When I was 18, if a college student had approached me, all I would have wanted to feel was that I was heard and not judged,” Shepherd said.
West, Sutphin and Parsons talked about their experience trying to catch traffickers and getting victims the help they need.
“You sometimes have seconds to help these victims,” West said. “The fear of the unknown is too great for them to leave their situations, and if you cannot provide help, they will walk away, and that connection is lost.”
Shepherd shared her experience in recovery with the help of an educated court system and – explaining the need for more safe houses. A safe house is a building, or sometimes just a bed in a home, where victims can seek refuge from their situation and their trafficker cannot find them.
“Human trafficking often gets lumped in with domestic violence and other physical crimes,” – said. “And when you have a ton of people within all of those looking for the same resources, they can become hard to find.”
Shepherd and all the panelists called for compassion toward victims of human trafficking.
“The biggest thing is recognizing what they went through,” Shepherd said. “It is not going to heal overnight, it takes a long time.”
The event ended with prayer and a call to action from West:
“All of this is for naught if we don’t do something. The fact that you showed up is a good step. You all are the future, like it or not.”
For more information:
https://ocjs.ohio.gov/anti-human-trafficking/resources/tool-kit-hotlines
Avonlea Brown is a senior Broadcasting, Digital Media, and Journalism major and editor of Campus News for Cedars. She likes reading, traveling, and learning new things.
Photo taken by Avonlea Brown
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