At an unassuming, cinder block building on a back street of North Charleston, a young woman opens a glass door that's etched with an image of an elephant.
This is the home of The Formation Project, a non-profit that helps survivors of human trafficking. It’s named for the way elephants form a circle around the herd’s most vulnerable in times of distress
This is where Justina feels safe.
“To know that I never have to deal with another man again and let him control my life and make me have sex for money,” she says.
"I don't have to do that ever again."
Justina’s story
Justina uses her first name only because the 37 years-old still feels shame about being trafficked for more than half her life.
At 17, she says her mother took custody of her daughter because she was addicted to drugs. She turned to stripping for quick money and more drugs to numb her pain.
It was at a club that Justina says she met a man she dated, loved and lived with. Then one day, he began filling her head with strange ideas.
“Like, you can make more money than just stripping,” she says. “And I was like, ‘what do you mean?’”
Justina says her boyfriend began setting up dates for her to have sex with other men. She thought the extra money would help them find a better place to live, instead of staying in hotels. But her boyfriend kept all the money.
“I was willing to an extent,” she says. “But also, there was a fear that if I didn’t do it willingly, that I could be hurt.”
Justina says she left when another man opened his home. This time it was a mansion with more women. She would soon learn the women were not only trafficked but beaten in front of each other as a warning.
“It scared the daylights out of me,” she says.
“Every other situation that I’ve been in is just somebody that I’ve been intimate with who then took over my life.”
For 20 years, Justina was trafficked by men she knew. She says she was so addicted to drugs she could only stay clean when she was jailed for possession or theft.
Then, COVID saved her.
Because of health protocols, Justina couldn’t leave her jail cell unless she worked, attended school or took part in a drug program. So, she began rehabilitation and later met a woman at a recovery house who just happened to volunteer with The Formation Project.
Justina says they bonded over shared trauma, and she quickly learned; she’d been a victim of sex trafficking. She’d always blamed herself.
Tri-County Human Trafficking Task Force
“With what we’re seeing is, there’s a lot of grooming or manipulating because that helps the victim remain under your control,” says Brooke Burris, an attorney who helped found the Tri-County Human Trafficking Task Force.
In 2018, Burris teamed up with intelligence specialist Lauren Knapp. They brought together police, prosecutors and volunteers across the Lowcountry to tackle sex and labor trafficking in three counties: Charleston, Berkeley and Dorchester. The regional task force is part of South Carolina’s statewide effort.
Knapp remembers when they first began. At the time, she worked at the Charleston County Sheriff’s Office and was desperately trying to find information.
“Data didn’t exist on trafficking,” she says. “Nobody has made an arrest in trafficking through our jail in years.”
Knapp and Burris say victims rarely come forward. And police, already overburdened, just weren’t aware. So, they brought in a criminal justice professor at the Citadel, Leslie Hill. She was tasked with tracking down and collecting information about sex and labor trafficking.
Labor tracking often involves the promise of work but ultimately ends with forced labor through coercion. The victims may be threatened or told they have to pay off some kind of debt.
“The system just isn’t set up to treat them as a victim,” says Hill. “I saw that this was such an opportunity.”
Hill says when it comes to sex trafficking, victims typically aren’t brought in on prostitution charges. Instead, they’re picked up for possession of drugs or weapons because traffickers will make them hold potential evidence, so they don’t get caught.
“You have to know enough of the warning signs and the risk factors to say this person might not have made the choice to commit this crime on their own.”
Identifying victims
Hill says those most at risk are often poor, without a place to live, out of work, drug addicted or have suffered extreme trauma or mental illness.
She helped create what’s known as a jail screening tool. It’s a series of questions meant to identify victims as they’re booked into jail. Once identified, volunteers then try to meet the victims at the jail as quickly as possible before traffickers can bail them out. They're immediately provided housing and counseling.
Since October, Hill says agencies associated with the task force have worked with nearly 100 victims. One of those agencies is the First Circuit Solicitor’s Office.
“Sometimes they get charged with something initially and we shift those charges completely by the time we make it to trial,” says Chief Deputy Solicitor Kelly LaPlante.
“We’re bringing charges that are appropriate for what has actually happened to them.”
LaPlante stresses anyone is vulnerable. She’s seen people from affluent families trafficked after engaging with strangers on social media, strangers who exploit a weakness like feeling alone.
Burris remembers a case in which a mother reported what was happening to her child. She says the woman told her this.
“A 30-year-old man showed up at my house knocking on the door asking about my 9-year-old.”
The task force recently proposed legislation that would require mandatory training for healthcare workers to help identify victims because many seek treatment while being trafficked.
As for Justina, she can only imagine what life would have been like with this kind of help, especially a jail screening tool.
“The very first time I got incarcerated, if they had something like this.”
She shares a bold, black heart tattoo on her forearm that reads “my story isn’t over”. In many ways, her story has just begun.
Justina is finally getting to know her daughter, now an adult. And she’s pregnant with a son.
