CLS Christian Lawyer Magazine June 2014_Proofforweb.pdf Jun. 2014 | Page 10

and the National Runaway Safe Line, and we can actually, you
know, go into … go out, and I have a program executive that
travels for me, and goes out and talks to all these diferent programs, and they bring kids into their Drop-In Centers or their
street programs, we book them into a computer, and they can
get their GED through a computer online with us, for free.
And we provide all the support services, including testing fees,
obtaining all of the identiication, registration that’s required,
and even give them cab rides to the tests that day.
We are also doing access to supplemental social security. here
are people on the streets that are psychotic, and supplemental
social security was developed for them, so they wouldn’t have
to be on the streets, but they can’t get through the bureaucratic
process. So we help them, we put them in … the other agencies
will call us, going “We’ve got a girl who is seeing pink monkeys”
and we’ll go, “Okay, let’s do a psychiatric hold on her,” and then
we get the pet team to put her in the hospital. hey can only
hold her for 72 hours involuntarily, and then, we start the paperwork process, the birth certiicate, picture ID, social security
card, and sometimes that information exists in various places.
We coordinate that, we ill out an application for social security
on the internet, and then we have that person, that case manager

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that called us, transport the child to a social security oice for an
interview that we have set up.
he third thing that I have done is go into global expansion. I was
in Rome for a sabbatical, and I had asked the Vatican to introduce
me to this nun who I consider the expert on international sex traficking, and she is. We became friends, and she started introducing me to other programs. he Vatican started introducing me to a
lot of their convents and all their other programs, and started talking about the convents. You know, I looked around, and I thought,
“Gee, I mean the natural resource for working with kids involved
in prostitution or sex traicking is a person that has commited
their life to helping the unfortunate,” and if you can ind that, you
can build a program around them.
…And then I found another natural resource in London, a
woman named Camila Batmanghelidjh, who is the founder, and
president of Kids Company, who helps 36,000 children a year.
And these are some of Britain’s poorest children, many born to
immigrant women, and while they’re born with medical papers,
they don’t have court papers, so now they’re teenagers and they
can’t work, so they are forced into unconventional labor.
Sex traicking organizations have oten painted this picture of
a blonde, blue-eyed girl, laying in her bed with her down comforter and a loving mom and dad in the other room watching
TV, and the boogeyman reaches through the window and grabs
or kidnaps her, and forces her into traicking. hat is NOT what
happens! What happens is these children are otentimes born
to chaotic families who sufer from drug addiction, substance
abuse, mental health issues, mental illness, and domestic violence. Police are always in and out of their house, someone is
always going to jail, someone is always geting beaten up, someone is geting sexually abused, and they are traded for drugs
among their own family members. Many of them are sexually
abused before they can even walk.
So they are living in these horrid conditions, and not supervised.
If you are not going to supervise your two-year-old, why would
you supervise your twelve-year-old, who’s on a bus bench in an
area of town at a time of night where she shouldn’t be. Some
guys pull up and say, “Hey, you want to go to a party?” And she
ends up in full-time prostitution. So, that’s the proile.

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You know, these children, no program is going to be successful with a child who has been a prostitute unless that program
provides real-life alternatives, real-life answers. So you come
in, you see a kid just like you, and you think, “Oh my God,
she is graduating high school! Oh, that one’s going to college!
THE CHRISTIAN LAWYER | JUNE 2014