Surviving Human Trafficking: What Happens Next

By Christiana Ford

For Detective John Morgan of Cuyahoga County Sheriff’s Department, it’s been a long mission fighting a cause that seems to just keep on growing. Scrolling through a previously shut-down website full of prostitution ads, Detective Morgan told me he has worked to recover victims of human trafficking for 10 years now in Ohio. It is a state plagued as the 4th most reported for human trafficking, only behind California, Texas and Florida. Yet Detective Morgan says, the numbers may be even greater than what’s reported.

“The National Human Trafficking hotline produces those numbers and then those numbers where Ohio is ranked fourth only come from calls that we’re directly sent to them,” Morgan said.

Last year he helped recover around 130 victims from sex trafficking, all from the greater Cleveland area. But one of the harsh realities, he tells me, is that not all of them will stay in that recovery process.

“It’s almost like I know this devil. I don’t know this devil and it’s easier to go with the devil that I know. So they run back to him because they know that they’re gonna find food, shelter, and drugs,” Morgan said.

One of those victims recovered was a 16-year-old girl. Her trafficker was imprisoned. She got help getting her GED and a job at Steak and Shake when Detective Morgan says a different thought hit her.  

“She worked for two weeks until she got her first paycheck,” Morgan explains. “She looked at her first paycheck and said, ‘I can make this in an (expletive) hour, so she went back to the life.”

It is stories like that one that explain his firm belief that recovery is just the first step. Sustainable recovery and a permanent exit takes a bit more. That’s where groups like the Ohio Justice and Policy Center (OJPC) come in the picture proving resources such as help with jobs and a wild card of avenues to move forward.

Verjine Adanalian is an attorney at OJPC. Working first-hand with recovered trafficking victims, she understands the emotional barrier and trust factor that plays into successful recovery.

“There’s been clients where this is the first time they’ve talked about it out loud because they didn’t think that anybody would either listen or believe them or that anything could be changed from that,” Adanalian said.

Verjine also understand the legal barrier and helps trafficking victims get rid of their potential criminal records.

“Criminal records can range from drug possession, having drug paraphernalia, such as a crack pipe or whatever is used for drugs, soliciting, prostitution charges, sometimes theft,” Adanalian explained.

She says tackling some of those barriers to a permanent exit should be the focus.

“The media and just tv shows in general, they like showing what the trafficking situation is and the drama of getting people out of that situation but very little do we spend any focus on kind of the aftermath,” Adanalian said.

The hope associated with the question of what happens next is just another reason why Detective Morgan says he will keep fighting to finish the mission.

“For me is all about giving a person the opportunity to get their life back,” Morgan said.

For more information on how you or someone else can receive help, contact OJPC on their website at www.ohiojoc.org