A new Holmes County residential treatment center for child victims of sex trafficking accepted its first two survivors a month ago. Experts there aim to help them untangle the trauma they experienced.
The founder of Safe Harbor Ohio, which is in an undisclosed location to ensure survivors’ safety, said the need is great.
“Trauma can be passed down from generation to generation,” said founder and CEO Melissa Brown. “I believe that so can healing.”
Safe Harbor Ohio is a faith-based residential therapeutic program for victims of sex trafficking between the ages of 14 and 18.
The campus is on 30 acres of donated land comprising three cottages with 12 beds, a chapel, an administration building and a school. Quaker Digital Academy is Safe Harbor’s education partner, and Springvale Health Center operates a health care wing.
While Safe Harbor is a faith-based Christian organization, the girls treated there are not required to share the same religious beliefs, Brown said.
“We’re not forcing kids to do anything, we’re just loving on them with no strings attached [and] providing for them with no strings attached … we’re helping kids walk through the hard things,” she said.
Phase one of the project is complete. Donors covered two-thirds of the $4.5 million cost. Phase two construction, slated for spring 2025, will expand capacity to 25 beds and include an indoor gym.
“What we’ve created doesn’t exist anywhere in the state of Ohio, there’s nothing like us,” Brown said. “We’re actually changing the game for how the state helps survivors.”
Without beds in facilities such as this, minors are often held in juvenile detention centers, Brown said.
“That’s what the state of Ohio has to offer for kids because we don't have placement,” she said.
Cuyahoga County currently has 15 cases of trafficked minors with an uptick of girls held in the juvenile detention center, said Alicia Paolucci, a Cuyahoga County assistant prosecuting attorney.
“If there’s no placement for them, that's where they’re held until we are able to find a bed,” she said. “So, it's so important to be opening places or creating more safe places to send them because certainly (the detention center) is not a place that’s conducive for their healing.”
Sex trafficking is the unlawful act of recruiting, transporting or soliciting a person for the purpose of a commercial sex act, which includes sexual exploitation, and is usually done by force, fraud or coercion.
At Safe Harbor, survivors can stay up to one year and can come from anywhere in the United States. Survivors are referred to the program from agencies such as the juvenile court systems, child advocacy centers, foster care centers and children’s networks.
About six referrals came in the first week Safe Harbor opened, Brown said. The organization determines whether the program is the right fit. In some cases, the survivor may be in need of more extensive mental health services before coming to Safe Harbor, Brown said.
The state and the county that refers a victim cover 70% of the cost for their stay at Safe Harbor, Brown said. The remaining money is obtained through fundraising, she said.
Brown has spent the last decade volunteering with anti-human trafficking organizations in Akron and Canton. She sat on the board of the Stark County Juvenile Human Trafficking Task Force, has mentored victims and made connections with people fighting to end human trafficking, including sex trafficking.
“The biggest thing that I noticed was that there was no place for kids,” she said.
The need for safe houses
Human trafficking is the second largest and fastest-growing crime in the world, according to the attorney general for the District of Columbia.
“If I sell you drugs and you take them, they’re gone,” Brown said. “I can sell a human over and over and over again. And so, with it being the second largest growing industry across the whole United States, there’s about 1,000 beds, less than 1,000 beds, available for survivors.”
The National Human Trafficking Hotline found Ohio is one of the top states for reported trafficking cases.
In 2022, there were 459 identified trafficked minors, including male and female victims trafficked for sex and labor, according to the Ohio Human Trafficking Task Force report.
There are fewer than 30 beds in Ohio designated to help girls who are victims of trafficking. There are no beds for boys, according to an email from Bret Crow, a spokesperson for the Ohio Department of Public Safety.
In addition to Safe Harbor, other housing options for child survivors include Gracehaven, a ministry of Central Ohio Youth For Christ in Columbus, and soon-to-open Redeemed Homestead, a safe home to be operated by BLOC Ministries, in Cincinnati.
All three programs have individualized treatment plans tailored to each survivor.
Gracehaven is a group home with a 12-bed capacity serving girls 11 to 18. The ministry has been doing education, intervention and case management work involving human trafficking in Ohio since 2008 and opened the residential program in 2014.
Gracehaven’s client base has been exclusively Ohio victims because of high need, said Vicky Thompson, director of development at Central Ohio Youth For Christ.
“There have been times we’ve had 20 referrals holding,” Thompson said. “We’ve had to turn away referral after referral after referral because if there’s not a spot there’s not a spot.”
Redeemed Homestead plans to open a group home in September for girls 11 to 18 with a four-bed capacity.
The opening won’t be announced until “the building is completely ready, just because we’re already getting referrals weekly from some of our partners,” said Kelsie Staser, director of women’s ministry at BLOC Ministries in Cincinnati.
Since 2016, BLOC Ministries has been serving women over 18 through Redeemed Home, two transitional residential facilities serving up to 10 women who have experienced trafficking, prostitution or addiction. Women voluntarily join the long-term intervention program for up to two years and have access to housing and referrals for addiction and medical treatment, counseling and job training.
A therapeutic approach
At Safe Harbor, all 28 staff members are trained in trust-based relational intervention, an attachment-based, trauma-informed treatment that’s designed to meet the needs of vulnerable children, according to the Karyn Purvis Institute of Child Development.
“You think about kids are even trafficked through families. The fact that your mom or dad has been selling you to the neighbor, talk about ultimate betrayal,” Brown said. “How do you come back from that?”
Victims often experience something known as “trauma bonding,” according to the U.S. Department of State. It's a control tactic traffickers use to give rewards and punishments within cycles of abuse. It creates a powerful emotional connection with the victim.
“A lot of times, when we may encounter a victim or a child initially, they’re not, maybe, receptive to the help or ready for that or don't trust us or any of the individuals around them because they’ve learned people close to them can’t be trusted either,” Paolucci said.
Runaway youth are common victims because they lack a support system and traffickers can offer a place to stay, Paolucci said.
The Wayne Anti-Human Trafficking Coalition, which serves Wayne, Holmes and Ashland counties, marks youth that run away multiple times as high risk for human trafficking behavior, said Michelle Saurer, associate director and forensic interviewer at WATCH.
“It’s really hard in Wayne County [because] we haven’t had a prosecuted case of trafficking, but we’ve had a lot of identified trafficking components,” Saurer said.
Between 2023 to 2024, WATCH identified 12 trafficking cases of minors or at-risk youth with trafficking components, Saurer said in an email.
A multifaceted campus
Girls treated at Safe Harbor sleep in a transitional bed the first few days and receive a medical evaluation.
Each receives a laptop computer for online schooling and their grade level for each academic subject is assessed.
“We’re getting her caught up,” Brown said. “We’re offering school all year long.”
A dietary manager customizes meals, clothing is free at an onsite boutique and an individualized treatment plan specific to each girl is developed.
Girls will then move into a cottage with other survivors, each with “their own bedroom and their own bathroom, and they have an open living room kitchen concept area so it’s like community style living,” Brown said.
There’s a ratio of two staff members to four youth during waking hours and one overnight, Brown said.
The medical wing includes primary, gynecological, eye and dental care, as well as behavioral health medication management with a psychiatrist. If there is need for treatment by a specialist, survivors will travel to specialists’ offices.
In addition to the academic classroom, there is a room for art, music and pilates.
“We have a big walking trail where we have benches where girls can go out there and can journal, they can maybe take a nap if they wanted, they can go out there and cry,” Brown said.
Brown said Safe Harbor’s mission is to provide hope and healing.
“That’s our mission, hope and healing, hope and healing,” she said. “So, everything we do should operate out of that filter.”
