As most of Fort Lauderdale began to wake up Saturday morning, a stream of marchers in black T-shirts walked past signs with the names and stories of the trafficked:
Jayden Alexis Frisbee, who was trafficked as she was moved between 12 foster homes, before she was placed in a safe house in Central Florida. She ran away before her release, and was later found dead at the age of 16 in a motel bathroom;
An 11-year-old runaway who was sold for sex by a woman in Pompano Beach. She was staying at a hotel with an older man when they met. The woman would arrange the “dates,” telling the girl not to collect any less than $40;
A 16-year-old from Miami, who met her trafficker when she ran away from home. He was later sentenced to 25 years in prison for forcing minor girls to perform commercial sex acts, punishing them with torture and rape.
South Florida is one of the nation’s hot spots for human trafficking, and the number of cases is increasing, according to the organizers and walkers who met at the Broward County courthouse starting at 7:30 a.m. Many of the participants see the cases firsthand through their work as prosecutors, legal aids and judges in that courthouse.
A South Florida Sun Sentinel investigation found that sex trafficking is rampant across the region’s hotels, that foster homes are often a pipeline, and that victims are often retraumatized by the legal system that criminalizes them.
Yet much of the public still doesn’t know what human trafficking actually looks like or how prevalent it is.
“It has increased since COVID and there’s not enough people fighting the good fight,” said Sheena Kelly, the organizer of the “Walk for Freedom” in Fort Lauderdale, who is also an assistant state attorney in Broward. “It’s an issue that’s been around forever.”
The same walks would be taking place in cities across the world Saturday, organized by the Texas-based charity A21. They began eight years ago, said Kelly. But 2023 would only be the second year that Fort Lauderdale had such a walk, even though Florida is the third leading state in the nation for human trafficking, and Broward County is the second in the state. Other walks were also planned for Coral Springs and Miami.
Over 250 people registered to walk in Fort Lauderdale Saturday, Kelly said, double the amount of last year.
They didn’t chant or give speeches, but held signs and walked in groups of two or three. Leading the walkers and holding the “Walk for Freedom” banner were two local human trafficking survivors.
One of them, Brenda Telemaque, 52, found out about the walk from her friend and classmate, Roger DeHart, a Broward court bailiff who previously walked to Washington D.C to raise awareness about human trafficking.
Telemaque was trafficked 40 years ago, when she was 12. She was walking to the store, she said, and a man asked her if she needed a ride; she said no. She didn’t expect him to be waiting for her at the corner.
“I didn’t know that this was even possible,” Telemaque said of the walk. “I’m so proud of Roger … for me to be a part of this, it took a while to overcome.”
‘Under our noses’
Many people still have misconceptions about what human trafficking looks like. They think it only involves foreigners, but most of the victims are local. They think it only happens to people from underserved communities, but it happens to people from good homes and families who care about them.
“It’s happening every day under our noses,” said Arianna Leigh, a resident who heard about the walk and wanted to get involved. “Know the signs, know it does exist. It’s not some myth that happens overseas.”
Kelly grew up in Fort Lauderdale, but only found out about the extent of the trafficking issue when she became a prosecutor who worked in the juvenile division at the state attorney’s office. As part of her work handling regular cases in the courtroom, she saw FBI reports of young girls with branding tattoos and pimps, detailing how much they were paid.
Many of the victims appear in court for a multitude of reasons, from evictions to drug charges or restraining orders, said Stacy Ross, another participant and a Broward County judge who sees many of the trafficking victims in her courtroom.
“Every division in this courthouse has had a human trafficking victim appear before them,” she said.
But other times, the victims are straight-A students from caring families, coerced or blackmailed by traffickers.
The relationships between traffickers and victims are often complicated, something that the legal system doesn’t always recognize. Sometimes traffickers marry their own victims, said Victoria Sexton, one of the walk participants and a legal aid for victims.
Sometimes they even stand at the podium and speak for the victims in court, said Ross. Other times they come into the courtroom to prey on potential victims.
One time, Ross said, a man sat in her courtroom and watched the girls, then went outside to talk to them. Broward Sheriff’s Office deputies stopped him on his way out and found out he had an active warrant.
“They’re everywhere,” she said, “always looking for some kind of vulnerability.”
The system is improving, but still needs work
Broward County’s approach to human trafficking is “multidisciplinary,” which is one of its strengths, said Anna Ferrer, who works in human services at the Nancy J. Cotterman Center, Broward’s sexual assault program, and is in close contact with prosecutors.
The State Attorney’s Office started a human trafficking unit in 2013, according to Neva Rainford-Smith, a walk participant who is also the chief of the office’s sexual battery and child abuse unit.
Sexton, a legal aid, said that the unit is “trauma-informed.” She works to help the victims get expungements, and is often the first and only person that they talk to, so they don’t have to keep telling their story, which can be traumatizing for victims.
But there is still more work to be done, many said. Rainford-Smith said that victims need more services outside of legal help, like safe homes. In Miami-Dade, she said, for example, the victims are given clothes, food and medical services all under one roof.
Another issue is in counseling services; oftentimes the victims are moved from counselor to counselor, Ross said, rather than having one continuous person to speak to.
“They have a big mistrust for the system,” she said, “and overcoming that mistrust takes a long time.”