Human Trafficking

The battle waged against human trafficking, how to keep your children safe and the women caught in it.

Protecting Our Children From Human Trafficking (video)

Christy Ivie, the founder of Christy’s Cause, joins Julie Graham to provide practical, nitty-gritty tips for families to help protect their children from sex trafficking. She offers age-appropriate advice, what signs of vulnerability to look for in kids, and how to protect them from compromising situations. It’s up to us to advocate for the children in our community. If you see something, say something. Looking for more encouragement? Don’t miss: What You Need to Know About Human Trafficking What You Need to Protect Your Child From Sexual Exploitation The Solution to the Sex Trafficking Problem Bible Verses From the Grit and Grace Team on Self-Worth To hear more of Christy’s advice on sex trafficking listen to her interview at This Grit and […]

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What You Need to Protect Your Child From Sexual Exploitation

What You Need to Protect Your Child From Sexual Exploitation

If you are like me, I dreaded talking about sexuality with my kids. Unfortunately, in this digital age, if we wait too long and don’t share age-appropriate information, our children could learn a distorted view of sexuality from strangers or even predators. We can all agree sex trafficking and sexual exploitation of children are horrific epidemics, ones that we never want to personally affect our children. According to the National Human Trafficking Hotline, my home state of Florida ranks third in the nation in reported cases of human trafficking, and the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children’s Cyber Tip Line received over 18.4 million reports in 2018 related to child sexual abuse images, online enticement, sextortion, child sex trafficking, and child

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what to do when you've been ghosted in dating

How My Little Black Dress Made a Powerful Impact

This time of year my Facebook feed is always showing me memories where I am wearing a black dress. An overlook in Idaho, at the Golden Gate Bridge, on the playground, at that party—in all of these pictures I am wearing that black dress. There are pictures on the beach, in the snow, when I was healthy, while I was sick, and others where I have newborn spit-up on my shoulder. Heck, I have a whole month of pictures where I am flaunting bright red hair like the mermaid, Ariel (still disappointingly finless, but in that black dress)!  My black dress is ordinary, but it does extraordinary things. For starters, it represents over $75,000 raised to help bring freedom to victims to

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This Grit and Grace Life Podcast

Sex Trafficking: Why Kids are at Risk and What You Can Do to Protect Them with Christy Ivie – 121

Subscribe: Apple Podcasts | Spotify | Amazon Music | Android | Email | TuneIn | RSS | More  We need to talk about sex trafficking. We assume it’s not a problem that is occurring in our backyard, or even in our country, and that couldn’t be further from the truth. Whether you like it or not, it’s happening in every community across the United States—even in yours. It doesn’t always look the way we think it would. A victim could look like a middle-class teenager at your kids high school who is still living at home.  In this episode of This Grit and Grace Life podcast, hosts Darlene and Julie are joined by Christy Ivie, the founder of Christy’s Cause, a non-profit working

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What You Need to Know About Human Trafficking

What You Need to Know About Human Trafficking

Recently, the U.S. State Department released its current assessment of human trafficking entitled “2019 Trafficking in Persons Report.” I found the statistics to be horrifying as I glanced through the findings, reminding myself they represent real individuals, lives caught in a world of degradation. According to the accompanying letter from the Secretary of State, “Right now traffickers are robbing a staggering 24.9 million people of their freedom and basic human dignity—that’s roughly three times the population of New York City.” I have to repeat that: three times the population of New York City! Just envision the streets of New York—the bustle of those walking to work, the number of people in every high rise and workplace, and every apartment building and borough

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The Solution to the Sex Trafficking Problem 2

The Solution to the Sex Trafficking Problem

Unlike the typical case of individuals learning about an issue through academia, books, and/or the media, I had the privilege of learning about the issue of prostitution and trafficking from the source. Having no previous understanding of the issue, I spent day after day and night after night doing life with amazing individuals who were at various levels of transitioning out of the sex industry. Through those relationships, I’ve learned a few things: 1. Prevention begins in the home. In the United States, the average age of entry into prostitution is between 11 and 14 years old. There is a growing epidemic of absent fathers, leaving children unprovided for, unprotected, and without leadership. When the father is not in the home to

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4-Ways-You-Can-Join-A21-in-the-War-on-Human-Trafficking

4 Ways You Can Join A21 in the War on Human Trafficking

For many of us living in the United States, the idea of human trafficking happening in our corner of the world seems hard to believe. Sadly though, this issue is just as pervasive here in the U.S., as in places like South East Asia and Eastern Europe. Human trafficking touches every part of the globe, from small villages in Africa, to major cities like Bangkok or London, and upper middle class cities in America. We may have watched Liam Neeson in the movie, Taken, busting down doors to rescue his daughter who was captured and about to be sold into the sex trade, and wish we could channel that heroism and go fight some bad guys. Well, I’m sure for most of us

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How I First Learned of the Sex Trafficking Epidemic

How I First Learned of the Sex Trafficking Epidemic

As is the case for most adults, I’ve found no shortage of social events and situations where I find myself faced with the inevitable, standard question, “So what do you do?” It’s unlikely that people expect to find themselves discussing the illegal exploitation of minors over chips and dip, but there’s really no way for me to sugar coat reality because fighting against that exploitation is what I do. Statistics on human trafficking are pretty shocking, divided into both labor trafficking and sex trafficking. The U.S. Government defines sex trafficking as “when a commercial sex act is induced by force, fraud, or coercion, or in which the person induced to perform such act has not attained 18 years of age” (National Institute

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