This is the second of a two-part series on the annual Human Trafficking Awareness Day event. This part will focus on the perspective of the victims, sharing stories and being able to recognize who they are and ways to help.

By Karen Kistler

karen.kistler@salisburypost.com

The theme of this year’s Project Light Rowan’s Human Trafficking Awareness Day program was snowflakes.

Snowflakes are all different, said Amy Young, executive director of Project Light Rowan, and “so are the stories of those that survived trafficking.”

The event, which was held Feb. 22 at the Tom Smith Auditorium on the Catawba College campus, provided information from multiple organizations, along with speakers who shared details of who these victims are and how to help and stories from several survivors of trafficking themselves.

One of the speakers, Hope Lloyd, a survivor of labor trafficking, said that “it can happen to anyone, but certain groups are more vulnerable.”

Denise Heinke, who serves as the director of outreach and development at Smart Start Rowan, spoke about some of those who are vulnerable and at risk.

In addressing those there, she said, “the mission that brings us together is a matter that strikes at the very heart of our humanity, safeguarding the most vulnerable among us, our children.”

Focusing on the birth to five age bracket, she said this group is extremely at risk, telling that human trafficking can begin to affect lives from the time a child is born.

“These young children, with their boundless innocence and trust can fall prey to traffickers if we are not vigilant,” Heinke said. “Their voices are the hardest to hear, which makes it our moral responsibility to speak for them and protect them.”

Reasons that infants and toddlers are targeted, she said, are varied and could range from illegal adoptions to forced labor and sexual exploitation.

Providing information from a recent study, Heinke said thousands of children, younger than five, “fall victim to trafficking each year across the globe including right here in Rowan County. This crime hides in plain sight, often masquerading as legitimate businesses or tragically involving individuals that the child may already know and that’s a hard one.”

She addressed the whys, noting that infants and toddlers are easy targets because they rely on adults for their care and protection and can’t express what’s happening.

Secondly, she said, the younger the child, the longer the period of exploitation, which “unfortunately makes them a valuable commodity in the eyes of criminals.”

Healthcare providers, Heinke said, are one of the frontline defenses against trafficking and in a unique position to identify the physical signs of trafficking which include unexplained injuries, neglect, along with behavioral signs of extreme fearfulness or an attachment to those outside the family.

Therefore, she expressed the importance of having them trained and having resources to help them recognize the signs and understand the proper protocol for reporting and offering support.

Helping to equip parents, who, Heinke said, are the primary line of defense for their children, and educating the community to be constantly aware are also important. She also added that awareness campaigns can help teach how to spot behavior that is suspicious.

“A well-informed public is a very powerful tool to fight against human trafficking.”

Other ways to help, she said, are making resources easily accessible, advocating for stronger laws, better enforcement and harder penalties for traffickers and reporting that suspicious activity.

Providing support for the survivor must be thorough and offer everything from medical care and psychological support to legal help and safe housing.

Donating, whether it be money or volunteering time, are equally valuable, noting there are many opportunities to help.

Heinke stressed the importance of supporting survivors as she said it goes beyond them being rescued but they need support “through their journey of recovery. Specialized care is essential for these young survivors who may carry trauma of their experiences into adulthood.”

Tania Perrella, a human trafficking survivor who shared her story during the event, told how she suffers from PTSD and is going through counseling.

Young introduced Perrella, who is now married to her husband Mark, telling that she graduated from Wellspring Living Program, which empowers women who have experienced exploitation and has since shared her story in colleges on the hill in D.C. and in churches “to encourage and inspire other survivors.”

Perrella said that sex or human trafficking doesn’t just happen in other countries, but happens here too.

Her story began in Georgia, as a 16-year-old, in an upper-middle-class family. Her parents were divorced and said she was bullied in school, had a learning disability and as a freshman, she was trying to figure out life.

During her high school years, she started getting phone calls with strange messages left on the answering machine. Just facing the recent divorce and having to work all the time, Perrella said she didn’t tell her mom. She figured it was just kids being kids and deleted the messages.

One night, she had a friend over and her mom was taking her friend back home and Perrella found herself all alone at home and the calls came back to mind. She said they said they were going to come and get her and sacrifice her to the devil because they needed a virgin, noting that word had gotten around in school that she was a virgin. When she got this call, she got frightened and thinking that she couldn’t remember if her mom closed the door, she went and there looking through the storm door was a man with a mask, all dressed in black with a gun.

Screaming, she closed and locked the door, ran to her room, got in her closet with her dog and called 911. Within minutes, she said she heard gunshots and then her closet door opened and there stood a man all in black. Thinking it was the one she had seen at the door, she began screaming and kicking, but it was an FBI officer who picked her up and took her to his car.

Outside the yard was filled with police cars and a helicopter. “It was like something from the movies,” Perrella said.

She learned that two girls had already been killed as part of some devil worship, and two gunmen had gotten away, and she was the next intended victim.

Following questioning and learning about the phone messages, they assigned an officer from the sheriff’s department to stay with them all the time, which, she said, is where her trafficking story began.

The officer was with them all the time and one day her mom left to go to work and left her with him. She said he showed her a porn tape and for them to reenact it along with giving her alcohol.

“I’m there alone, you think I’m going to tell my mom when she came home what happened? No,” Perrella said.

In time, the officer gets his own apartment and she said he would say he needed to take Tania, and the mom, said, “Sure, no problem.”

“We would be at the apartment and he would have men and sometimes I would have to service 10, 15 guys a night. And then he would bring me back to my mom,” she said.

Life continued in this way and she never told, she said. She withdrew from school believing she would never go to college and she wasn’t smart enough for anything else. Drugs, alcohol and working at strip clubs all became a part of her life and she became pregnant at 18.

“It was very difficult for me to have a relationship because I couldn’t even love myself, until one day I was invited to go to church. I thought that was a joke. But I went. And it was a beautiful thing. The Holy Spirit got a hold of me because my heart was ready. I was tired and that’s when He got a hold of me, and I ended up accepting Christ as my Lord and Saviour at 39.”

She signed up for a Bible study and shared her story with the women and learned of a recovery program for women who have been sex trafficked and wanted to attend. However, she was 39, the wait list was several years and the cutoff age was 40.

She was provided a spot in the yearlong Christian-based program and someone anonymously supported her, and she said, “that was the best thing I ever did, and they helped me with healing and recovery.”

Lloyd shared her story of labor trafficking telling that she was trafficked as a child in England, along with two sisters who were all trafficked together.

She began with “imagine waking up everyday to grueling labor, long hours, no breaks, no pay, you’re threatened if you leave, your documents are taken away and you feel completely trapped. This isn’t just happening in distant countries. This is happening right here in our own community.”

This is what Lloyd went through as they were trafficked by a woman who abused them. She said they were not allowed to see television or read the newspaper “because the goal was to keep us confined, keep us unaware of what our rights were.

She said her paperwork was also taken and was told that she didn’t have a biological mom around and so one knew she existed. And if she ran away, she would just get brought back and it would be death for her. Fear was a big tactic, Lloyd said, with lots of mind control and manipulation.

She told them that their trafficker would take them to Walmart at midnight when they would be less likely to be seen.

“If you looked at us, a normal person would think something is wrong,” Lloyd said as she described how they looked, “disheveled, hair cropped off for punishment, dirty, with cuts and bruises because we were physically abused. Abused every day and malnourished.”

She also told how they were given caffeine pills so they would stay up all night to work and clean.

Lloyd also provided a definition of what labor trafficking is, say that it is a trafficker using force, coercion or deceiving someone into working with no real freedom so that they can’t leave and it happens through force, physical abuse, confinement or threats of violence, fraud, false promises, offering a better life that they never actually get with threats to report someone for immigration status, harm to their family and taking away basic necessities like safety, food, shelter or water.

It is a global problem, she said, providing statistics from the International Labor Organization, that more than “27.6 million people worldwide are trapped into forced labor” and that North Carolina consistently ranks in the top 10 for human trafficking cases reported.

“In 2023, the national human trafficking hotline received 684 reports, 49 were labor trafficking cases,” Lloyd told the group.

Fear of deportation, retaliation and not knowing where to go for help” were why most cases went unreported, she said.

Labor trafficking is very hidden, Lloyd said, so she shared how you recognize it.

“Many trafficking victims don’t know they are victims. They don’t know how to leave, they don’t know the area. Usually, they are taken from their hometown so are unfamiliar with surroundings.”

And those that don’t speak English are afraid to communicate and tell what is happening.

Another way to recognize it is by the people not having documentation and passports, and not having access to their money if they do get paid, along with their demeanor and how they are dressed, and no eye contact are some of the red flags.

Today, Lloyd speaks, mentors, educates and advocates and trains organizations on trafficking. She encouraged those there to be that nosy neighbor, like they had which led to their being visited by DSS and getting freedom.

Being on that side of trafficking she said she feels it is her responsibility to help since she got a second chance at life and freedom.

“Don’t be afraid to be nosy and speak up,” she said.

Salisbury Police Chief P.J. Smith told the group that “it’s our collective responsibility to ensure these stories do not end in silence but become a rally cry of justice”