We can no longer be silent. We stand to be a voice for those entrapped by the billion-dollar Human Trafficking industry. We want parents and grandparents to keep their children close. We will research, speak out, and protect boys and girls from sexual predators who are everywhere.
McCook Community College and North Platte Community College hosted presentations to staff Thursday to discuss the issue of human trafficking and help raise awareness about its prevalence in area communities.
Stacey Cahill of “Traffic Stop-Voices Against Human Trafficking” and co-founder Lisa Moline provided insights into the various forms of human trafficking and methods for combating this crime.
This non-profit travels from community to community offering a free informative and interactive presentation with awareness skills.
“When people have many adverse child experiences (ACE Score) such as sexual, physical, and emotional abuse combined with abandonment, shame, ridicule, and tragic suffering often we are unequipped to know/sense or see red flags. These traumas make it difficult to know that we can stop or walk away from new traumatic experiences. Because our normal is tragic suffering and dysfunction, we do not know how to keep ourselves safe. Our negative experiences are higher than those who have a lower ACE score, even in adulthood. Therefore, we are flash-flooded with ‘messed-up’ experiences throughout our lifetime (it is as if our security system was not installed). Our PTSD responses compound and grow. We explain this for you to understand why we are jumping and bouncing all around in this novel. It is because of Marley’s trauma and her high ACE score. Finding a way to express this phenomenon happened after years of processing, writing, and editing this novel side by side.”
“I am enough. I’ve proven stubborn and hard-working to see things I want to come to fruition. I have been an entrepreneur for almost 20 years without employees. The only rejection I’ve experienced professionally is when I don’t click with a potential client. That is a rare occurrence, one where the decision is likely mutual. Thus, the sting of rejection is new to me.
Friday morning, I was riding a natural high like no other. It was like NOTHING could stop Team Traffic Stop. Lisa and I had our first television interview with NTV Good Life. If I do say so myself, it went well. We were badasses sharing our cause. We thought, “Let’s get breakfast and strategize our next move.” So, we took our supportive spouses out for brunch.
A Christian bookstore is near to where Team Traffic Stop was sharing a celebratory meal.
Lisa and I walked into the bookstore with our sales pitch prepared. The owner was excited and purchased five Traffic Stop: Human Division novels on the spot and invited me to join the store next week for a book signing on their anniversary! With our egos a bit more inflated, Lisa and I went into business mode and prepared to get some work done for that event.
Then, I received an email from the owner stating that she should have done more research before her purchase and invitation. She said she would not be supporting the sale of this book or hosting a promotion at her store. She said the novel was not compliant with biblical teachings since I had used words like “chimera” (a scientifically proven human state) and “spiritual guide” (a guardian angel). Additionally, she said from what she read on the back cover, some 5-star reviews, and the few explicit pages in between were too much. She took back her original offer.
I felt like I was the anti-Christ in her eyes when we went back to pick up the books. I said, “I respect your decision. I just wish you would have read the entire novel before you made that judgment call because I believe all Christians need to be aware that child trafficking happens in our communities. And it is ugly. I wanted the reader to understand the perpetrator’s perspective so they would know the signs of people to keep their children away from. I explicitly shared the feelings of a victim because we need to empathize with their pain. If Christians were aspiring to live as Jesus did, we need to do something as Christians to stop modern-day slavery.”
She was visibly shaking. She wanted to exorcize me from her business and all the manipulation/evil I represented to her.
I walked out with my rejected novel (after returning her check to her), feeling deflated and misunderstood. I felt like a vulnerable, abandoned little kid again who knew (without testing the theory by telling an adult) that if I disclosed childhood sexual abuse, no one would want to listen. I felt like the bad one, exposing this act of violence against children.
Childhood sexual abuse, childhood sexual imaging (aka pornography – which it isn’t because pornography implies consent), and human sex trafficking on vulnerable people
HAPPEN. EVERYDAY.
And it breaks our hearts.
It ruins a child’s natural ability to trust another human being and to be in healthy interpersonal relationships. It destroys their sense of safety and whether they want to be in this world where people hurt them. It confuses them sexually. Their greatest gift, the core of who God created them to be, their sexuality, was stolen (manipulated, coerced, or forced).
The picture I want to set your minds of what we are doing is;
We are securing the sandbags (education/awareness) upstream from Niagra Falls to deter the flow of our children falling over the waterfall’s turbulent precipice. We hope this diverts many innocent lives from falling victim to confusion, shame, and fear. Trying to catch the kids as they fall has proven to be ineffective (therapy after the crime takes years) It’s time to do something different (prevent).
sponsoring us to present free information to communities on how to become more informed about human trafficking, dispel the myths, and become more aware of what to look for so we can prevent another human soul from being engulfed by the pit of the Falls,” Stacey stated.
We can no longer be silent. We stand to be the voice for those entrapped by the billion-dollar Human Trafficking industry. We want parents and grandparents to keep their children close. We will research, speak out, and protect boys and girls from sexual predators who are everywhere.
We are offering educational presentationson ways to prevent & report Human Trafficking. Our informative sessions last up to 1 hour. While we are sharing up-to-date content, “Traffic Stop: Human Division” by Stacey Cahill will be available for purchase, and donations will be taken to support Missing and Murdered Indigenous People programs.
It has been a Joy Ride (also the title of Chapter 1) of the the novel Traffic Stop: Human Division by Stacey L Cahill, that is not over! https://scahilllinebywine.org. I am blessed to offer creativity and consultation to such a massive topic. I’m thankful to Tankashula (God) for the opportunity join in the efforts to Advocate against Human Trafficking. And to add my voice and suffering to Missing & Murdered Indigenous People a call for justice.
Good Morning Everyone, Please leave a final comment or question about what you have learned this week! For those of you who are in both the IPL & Digital Citizenship please post about both. Thank everyone for joining in on leading your own learning this week!!! Have a great summer – Mrs. Molina
Our learning has began! We have students who are learning to speak Japanese and others who are learning to be creative in the kitchen. We have a few students who are partnering with friends to speed up the amount of learning that can be done on 1 topic. I am excited to learn from all of you today! Please post your leaning in the responses and remember to support your friends!
After making our Digital Citizenship tool kit the students where asked to identify topics they want to learn about. They were allowed to begin their learning and did so with excitement!Please read what they have learned in the comments and share what you know!
Please read what they have learned in the comments and share what you know!
Raising Awareness about Human Trafficking 