Rotary Club brings information on local human trafficking

Karen G. Moore, who runs Sanctum House, and Irene Faziani, a former human trafficking victim who works at Sanctum House, gave a Feb. 13 presentation on human trafficking in this community at the regular meeting of the Belleville Rotary Club.
Members from Rotary Clubs in Wayne, Romulus, and New Boston also attended the presentation to bring information back to their clubs.
Moore, a former global executive at Ford Motor Company, is executive director of Sanctum House, and is certified by the U.S. government to train people in trafficking information.
“Irene is one of our heroes,” Moore said, adding that Faziani graduated from the program a year ago and now is full-time staff.
She said all the Sanctum House business cards give the address on Haggerty Road in Novi, but it’s not really there. That is a place you can send mail to Sanctum House. Moore said she lives within walking distance and picks up the mail.
Sanctum House actually is in a house with 12 rooms on 10 acres in another, protected location in the Oakland County area. They are buying another house on two and a half acres with HUD funds.
Moore presented a brief film clip that showed the basics of human trafficking that includes people you wouldn’t think would be victims – nurses and attorneys – with no race or gender left out.
Some victims say they were robbed of their childhoods because their mothers and fathers trafficked them.
“They come in hating themselves,” Moore said of the victims, adding they get trauma therapists and the treatments are immersive. She said it gives them their dignity back, their hope back.
She said it is a long-term program and women come for two to two-and-a-half years. Moore said there are two kinds of human traffickings: un-paid laboring in the fields or domestic service and sexual exploitation. Sexual exploitation includes not only women but girls and boys, where they are sold to be raped and exploited and the trafficker keeps all the money.
Moore said this is the sixth anniversary of Sanctum House and it has serviced more than 150 women, ages 18 to 62. Some come food-insecure and from living in poverty areas, she said.
She said the face of human trafficking is vulnerability and it’s common to start at a young age, including foster care, where intrinsic needs are not met.
“Human trafficking is the fastest, illegal network in the world,” Moore said. With drug trafficking, you only sell the drugs once, but a boy or girl is a renewal commodity that you can sell several times a day, she said.
“Traffickers are making a fortune,” she said, noting her goal is to get the community to understand the grooming process. She said the trafficker develops a relationship.
Moore said Claire was a successful lawyer who in midlife was a successful executive. She got a divorce and wanted to be rooted in her church. She rented a home in a very wealthy local neighborhood. She went to church, came home, and had no friends.
The home was owned by a trafficker who was very friendly. He came over one night, knocked on the door and asked to come in and talk. She invited him in and he took her car keys and took over her life.
Faziani said Sanctum House offers doctors and nurses for the victims and law enforcement and the public is not knowledgeable about the situation. She said they felt if they educated the public more, people would be able to notice things and help more.
She said someone is kidnapped and it could happen to anyone.
“I came from an abusive home growing up and we had little money,” said Faziani. “There were painful behaviors and I continued to be vulnerable,” she said. “I was very, very vulnerable when I was introduced to the trafficker. I didn’t know. I loved this person. When I figured out what was going on, I was given drugs and alcohol and was more under their control. I was hooked on them and was in a terrible cycle and didn’t know how to be free.”
She said she didn’t know how she would make it without substance abuse. She said at Sanctum House it’s not just 60 days and you’re better, she said, adding she came four years ago and still has therapy.
“I’m a big advocate for women,” she said, adding she is strong.
She said she worked at a Walgreen’s and saw a woman who was very scared. She said she had taped information on the wall in the restroom at Walgreen’s because that’s the only time a woman gets away from her trafficker and is not supervised.
A woman in the audience said women wouldn’t know who to trust.
“Even today, I get scared really easy,” Faziani said.
“Trust is hard to find,” Moore agreed.
Moore said Trinity Health (St. Joseph Hospital) provides health care to all the women at Sanctum House without charge. They also have a very full mental health program.
She said women feel “stripped of their soul.” The program gets money from the state and federal levels and individuals get mental therapy every other day and group therapy daily. Moore said they teach victims how to shop for groceries, instead of eating chips and pop from the party story, and they teach anger management.
“I was extremely angry and I took it out on stuff,” Faziani said. She said some of the women at Sanctum House don’t believe they are being helped without charge and think their benefactors want something in return. They get food cards and money and, “What do you want from me?” They didn’t believe Sanctum House didn’t want anything.
Moore said the Art Van Elslander Foundation from the furniture store helps them. She said they are fully funded for the full years of 2023 and 2024 and can afford decent pay for the employees. A graduate is paid to live in a house with victims at night, while pursuing her own profession in the daytime while the women are in the program.
Moore said many of the women are from this local area, but others are coming to them from Alabama, New York, Ohio, Oregon and South Carolina. Many women have to get out of their areas for their own safety and there are so few services.
“We’re on the national hotline,” she said.
Faziani said when she was first trafficked it was in the 14 Mile/I-275 area and they would move the women. Then they were sold to the second trafficker who sold them to his cousin. “We ended up in a house in Detroit.”
She said one of the women died and the place was raided and her trafficker was jailed. “But they get out,” she said.
“Every trafficker is a different situation, but they are controlling, abusive, and you can’t walk to the store by yourselves.” If those trafficked escape, the traffickers get them back and hurt them or let them go and get new ones, she said.
Moore said the State of Michigan Legislature is looking to forgive crimes for those being trafficked because most of the women are felons. They have sold drugs and guns and take the hit for the trafficker because that’s what they are forced to do.
Moore said a group of lawyers in the bar association formed the Joseph Project that offers pro-bono work for the victims of human trafficking and Sanctum House has an attorney appointed for each one of its residents.
She said the Attorney General had a round-table discussion a few weeks ago on how to prosecute human traffickers.
Moore said Sanctum House has one woman in protective custody from this area. She said the FBI called Sanctum House to take her in and protect her because she is going to testify to a federal grand jury on her trafficker. Moore said she gave up information on her phone that is being used as evidence. The FBI has come out to talk to her about the testimony a few times. She said for the grand jury testimony, three FBI agents will come to the house and take her and bring her back by a circuitous route to avoid being followed.
Moore said the trafficking is “so big, massive.”
A woman in the audience asked, “How do we tell? What kind of signs are there? What do we do?”
Faziani said there are different signs and she pays close attention to girls who look vulnerable and she can tell in 30 seconds of watching by seeing their body language and face.
“Don’t go up to the trafficker or the person she’s with,” Faziani warned.
Moore said they work with the hospital on those who are overdosing or hurt. She said they can’t look you in the eye and it is not normal contact. They have few or no teeth because of drug use or abuse.
“We get them teeth,” Moore said. She said victims usually have a lot of tattoos across the back or the neck, showing she’s a piece of someone’s property. One had the traffickers name across the back of her neck. Also, you can see the victim is not speaking for herself.
“Walking down the street she doesn’t look different,” Moore said.
She said the program has an ophthalmologist and gets glasses for those who need them. She said a dentist tried to pull teeth for one victim, but the novacine wouldn’t take hold because of all the heroin use. They will have to put her completely out to pull the teeth, she said.
A woman in the audience asked if they have tried animal therapy and Faziani said they have horse therapy and puppy therapy.
Moore said labor trafficking is higher in the north. The people are out in the field working. In front they have regular workers in houses and in the back are unpaid workers in small trailers.
A woman asked how you avoid traffickers and Moore said after they say, “You’re so cute. You can be a model,” you can say, “Get out of my face.”
She said the traffickers watched the lawyer for nine months before moving in and they knew nobody would miss her.
A woman asked how to help the children and Moore said there are programs for girls and in Detroit there is Alternatives for Girls and they need more services.
“I’ve had difficult jobs, but this is the hardest job I’ve ever had,” Moore said, adding recently a woman they were helping left in the middle of the program and went back to her old life.
She said it is important to have staff without burnouts because of the difficulty of dealing with the women.
“It’s second-hand trauma,” Faziani said. “We give to these women all day and don’t have that much left to give when we go home. We have to be sure to take care of ourselves.”
Another woman in the audience asked how the women get away and Moore said the traffickers get arrested, but victims who agree to testify are retraumatized on the witness stand. One witness was a victim to her best friend’s homicide and the trafficker was put away.
“I was arrested because of a situation that happened with him,” Faziani said of her trafficker, adding an advocate in the Monroe Jail helped her with a rehab center and hospital.
Moore said those suspecting trafficking can use the national hotline to report crazy behavior and if one or two people call, that’s how they set up a sting and get arrested. She said concerned people should not interfere because of the consequences to the individual or to themselves.
She said the program works with law enforcement in Washtenaw, Wayne, Macomb, and Oakland counties and some victims come directly from jail.
She said there is no accurate count of how many traffickers there are.
She said she recently did a presentation in two classes at Bloomfield Hills High School and after one class someone said, “That was me.” She said after another class a student said five doors down from her home there are too many people going in and out. She said someone called the hotline and it turned out to be a trafficking ring.
Another woman in the audience said to Faziani that she is beautiful and asked if all of those trafficked are as beautiful as she is.
“I was not this way when I was trafficked,” Faziani said. “Now I am strong, independent, caring, and loving and it comes from inside.”
A man said he talked with police about trafficking and they told him there is a big event coming up and a lot of stings are being set up at the airport.
Moore said a trafficking ring was found at the Townsend Hotel in Birmingham, where many famous people like to stay.
A Rotary Club member from another community asked how Rotary Clubs can help her and Moore said they are always having fund drives. They like to give gift cards to victims so they can buy the clothes they want, not what someone else wanted them to wear. They come from the jail with nothing, she said.
Also they need coffee with caffeine – lots of caffeine — since they are fighting drug use, paper plates, plastic cutlery, and the things homes usually use. But they use a lot.
Moore said they have an Amazon Wish List that can be used and items can be picked out. Moore said Amazon has a different address to deliver packages to than the fake Novi location.
Moore said they had a lady 62 years old whose abuse started with her father. She came to Sanctum House at age 61, but her addiction overcame her and they “lost her.”
“Sometimes the journey’s too hard and it’s easier to run,” Moore said.
Belleville Rotarian Keith Bruder said they talk about all the money the traffickers make and he asked how much money are they talking about.
Faziani said it could be $60 for 15 minutes, $100 for half an hour, $1,000 for two hours, or $1,000 or more for the night. It all depends on how long they’ve been trafficked. She said the ones that have been used the longest, get less because of their conditions. She said to remember they have eight to ten women to traffic at once, so it quickly adds up.
The hot line to give information or to ask for information is 888-3737-888 . The website for Sanctum House is www.sanctumhouse.org .