By Fox23.com News Staff
TULSA, Okla. — Soaring Eagles Youth and Family Services’ fourth annual Human Trafficking Awareness Summit is working to provide vital education for therapists, parents and the wider community.
Premadonna Braddick, the Founder and CEO of Soaring Eagles Youth and Family Services, said she noticed there was a lack of education surrounding human trafficking the first time she encountered a victim while she was working as a therapist.
“I am a licensed therapist and I can remember the first time that I was approached with this,” said Braddick. “I had a 16-year-old girl share with me that her mother made her go with the person she was buying drugs from. She made her go with her at 10-years-old. I’m just sitting there thinking, what? She said she couldn’t pay off her drug debt, so she basically sold me to him…That was 15 years ago. I knew nothing about human trafficking, that people actually do this.”
Braddick said as she spoke to more survivors, she learned many of them chose not to go to therapy because therapists often didn’t know what to do or how to address the type of trauma and situations they’d been through.
“We’re supposed to be here to help them work through their healing. This is what the Human Trafficking Awareness Summit is, through Soaring Eagles Youth and Family Services. We are equipping and training our therapists to better help the survivors of human trafficking.”
Braddick explained that the summit’s keynote speaker, Dr. Nissi Hamilton, is a survivor of human trafficking and is able to give insight into how the human trafficking industry works so therapists and others know what to watch out for.
“This is, unfortunately to say, an over $200 billion business…How do you become vigilant? If you see something that’s not right, pay attention. How do we become informed? Come to summits like this. How do we understand the language? Come to summits like this. Dr. Nissi is doing a great job of helping us therapists speak other languages because when you go to grad school, there’s not textbooks on this, but the best way to learn is hearing it from somebody else who has that experience and us to bring it into our office as therapists.”
Braddick said it’s important for parents to be vigilant, especially in the digital age where social media can give traffickers easy access to children and young adults.
“Social media is a huge piece of how these traffickers are gaining access to our children…It’s the social media. It is trusting. It’s shown that parents only spend 24 minutes a day with their child. Guess what? Traffickers are great listeners. They love to listen to you. They love to hear your frustration that parents are not taking the time to be vigilant.”
Braddick said traffickers can target anyone: girls, boys and even senior citizens.
“Don’t think that this cannot happen to you. Many people think that this happens outside in a third world country. I’ve had parents tell me ‘I sent my child to the best schools’ or ‘they’ve gone to a Catholic school and they got a summer job one day, met this boy, fell in love’ and the next thing you know, their child is out there being trafficked at 18-years-old. Another thing about these traffickers is they have time. They have a whole lot of time, the time to gain trust from the parents, to have you fall in love with them. Why? Because they have other girls out there working for them. It’s really good to be very vigilant and don’t think that this cannot hit you.”
The summit will be held again on Saturday from 10:00 a.m. to 4:00 p.m. Everyone is welcome to register and there’s even a session for teenagers on Saturday to help teach them how the trafficking industry works and ways they can protect themselves.
There’s also a virtual Zoom option available for people who can’t make it to the summit in-person.
To learn more about the Human Trafficking Awareness Summit or to register to attend, click here.
For additional information, you can visit Soaring Eagles Youth and Family Services’ website here or reach out to 918-739-8336.
