How You Can Support Survivors Today
Tiffany Simpson, Advocate Lab Associate with Karana Rising, shares her experience of exiting child sex trafficking while currently serving a 20-year sentence (since 2012) for being falsely accused of trafficking a minor. Karana Rising has partnered with Tiffany to share her story and highlight the importance of advocating for justice. While being trafficked, Tiffany was impregnated and further endured violence by her trafficker and other men. Unfortunately, the abuse did not end with Tiffany. Another young woman, a 13-year-old runaway, was lured into this nefarious scheme when she was promised to receive help. Matters grew worse as the trafficker threatened to burn Tiffany’s grandmother’s house down. Using threats against family members is a common tactic used by traffickers to leverage power against victim-survivors.
Read about Tiffany’s story in her own her words on our blog.
How You Can Support Survivors Today
Now that you know, let’s act. Here are a few ways you can support survivors experiencing incarceration and arrest. Keep learning (https://freetiffany.org) and join us in showing survivors you believe them. No survivor of trafficking should experience arrest as a result of their trafficking and all survivors who do, deserve and need support!
Advocate for Survivors
Contact your state and local legislators
Let your legislators know you support survivor justice. Here is where you can find your elected Congressional officials. Here is where you can find your state representatives.
Here is a current list of the 18 states that have some form of affirmative defense. It is important to assert in your letter or phone call that you support a trafficking victim centered affirmative defense that allows for all crimes to be considered.When writing to your representative, it is important to know the status of your state’s affirmative defense laws for trafficking victims.
Here is a sample Letter.
Sign existing petitions for incarcerated survivors
Petitions, such as those for Tiffany Simpson and Jessica and Jordan Hampton, are key tools to let state prosecutors and legislators know that there is a broad national community who knows about and supports the freedom of survivors.
You can sign Tiffany’s petition here and Jessica and Jordan’s petition here.
Please share these petitions online with a note about why YOU are supporting incarcerated survivors.
2. Support survivors
Give to Survivors
Whether survivors are currently incarcerated or recently released, they need support to truly become the person who they were always meant to be. You can support their healing, legal freedom and life in and out of prison. Please make a contribution here to support survivors through wellness supplies, therapy, legal services, access to educational supplies and more.
Write to Survivors
If you would like to write a letter of support to Tiffany, Jessica, Jordan or Hope, we would love to help you out. Simply click here to access a letter form. Our team will quickly review your letter to ensure it is a good fit for a survivor and then either pass it onward to the survivor you have written (with information on how to write you back) or respond to you with constructive feedback on how to edit your letter to be a better fit for survivors. Once a survivor has received your letter, it will be up to the two of you to decide when and how you will proceed in communications. We will need to advise all parents and guardians of survivors prior to sharing letters with minors, however.
The Dressember Network is made up of 20 organizations that support programs in the following impact areas: advocacy, prevention, intervention, and survivor empowerment. Karana Rising is a survivor-led partner of the Dressember Network that aims to represent survivors in a customized, holistic manner that paves the road to self-security and healing. When you support Dressember, you help dismantle trafficking holistically and in a way that prioritizes survivor needs and voices. Ready to join us? Register to become an advocate or make a donation today.
About the Author
Andrea Powell is the Co-Founder and Executive Director at Karana Rising.