Dr. Ellyn Jo Waller, first lady of Enon Tabernacle Baptist Church and founder of ‘She’s My Sister Anti-Human Trafficking Ministry.’ speaks to the audience.
Photo: Shara Talia Taylor
By Shara Talia Taylor
Enon Tabernacle Baptist Church brought awareness to the issue of human trafficking in Philadelphia this January with an event during National Human Trafficking Prevention Month.
The church’s “She’s My Sister Anti-Human Trafficking Ministry” hosted its annual awareness conference on January 17 and 18 at its East location on W. Cheltenham Ave. The conference explored the global issue and its local impact on the Black and brown communities of Philadelphia and shed light on the demands that perpetrators place on victims.
Philadelphia City Council member Nina Ahmad
Photo: Shara Talia Taylor
“Since 2007, the national human trafficking hotline has identified more than 4,800 human trafficking victims in Pennsylvania, but we know human trafficking, a crime that disproportionately targets and harms women and girls of color, is often under-reported,” said Lori Shapiro, Pennsylvania’s first lady, in a video presented Saturday. “We’ve got to do more to raise awareness of how human trafficking impacts Pennsylvania communities and that’s why this conference is so important.”
Guest speakers, including local legislators, partners from Uganda and South Africa, local nonprofit organizations who support women escaping trafficking, and officers from the Philadelphia Police Department joined the discussion. Church members, members of local chapters of historically Black sororities and fraternities, and other community members were in attendance. Dr. Ellyn Jo Waller, Enon’s first lady, began the ministry over a decade ago after participating in international anti-human trafficking work.
Dr. Waller said she realized it was an issue domestically when she met with the Philadelphia Anti-Trafficking Coalition (PATC). She later created and led the ministry platform and conference at Enon.
“The reason we call it “She’s my Sister” is because we want to be sure that people realize that this can happen to anyone,” Waller said.
Philadelphia City Councilmember Nina Ahmad (At-Large) spoke to the attendees about Philadelphia’s efforts to combat the issue.
“When Black children go missing, [or] when Black women and girls go missing, they are not necessarily categorized as being trafficked — they’re categorized as being runaways,” Ahmad said.
This is why the state of California passed The Ebony Act, “a resource available to law enforcement agencies investigating the suspicious or unexplainable disappearance of a Black woman or Black person,” Ahmad said.
She said it is also why she is interested in exploring whether to “re-authorize and reinvigorate” laws regarding massage parlors and hotels. Law enforcement agents attending the event mentioned making arrests at these types of locations.
Dr. Ellyn Jo Waller speaks about the She’s My Sister Anti-Human Trafficking Ministry with Rev. Alyn E. Waller on Enon’s Real Talk YouTube channel.
Photo grab-YouTube
The event started Friday with a men’s only conversation led by Rev. Dr. Alyn E. Waller, Enon’s senior pastor. He said about 100 men joined him.
“There’s a whole lot of things that we think are innocent that we have to cut at to change the language of men,” Waller said. “If you’re really going to get at supply, you gotta cut at demand, and demand is shaped by, sadly, how men act or don’t act.”
Enon partners with Hannah’s House, a 501(c) 3 non-profit organization in New Jersey that provides help to women in crisis situations. The church also teams up with New Day Drop-In Center (NDDI), a program of the Salvation Army that “provides a consistent, safe, welcoming, and trauma-informed environment for women exploited by the commercial sex industry in the Kensington neighborhood of North Philadelphia.” Together they fight trafficking. Representatives from the organizations were present to speak about their efforts to assist exploited victims.
Guest visits New Day Drop-In Center (NDDI) table.
Photo: Shara Talia Taylor
“We served over 1,300 individuals through all of our services last year,” said Heather LaRocca, director, New Day. “As a Philadelphia anti-trafficking coalition, we identified over 400 survivors who explicitly stated that they are victimized by this, and we really have a lack of response in Philadelphia. I think there’s a lot of interested parties, a lot of people who are trying to solve this issue, but we really need a coordinated Philadelphia response seeing this as a crisis for our youth and also as a crisis for adults in this city.”
This event has created opportunities for change. LaRocca said a previous attendee of the conference was an Uber driver who alerted authorities to a trafficking situation after attending the event. She felt the Ebony Alert sounded like legislation that would be important in Philadelphia and highlight as an issue to care about.
“Our Black and brown youth are not given the same priority and it’s often seen as like they are delinquent or they are just running the streets instead of seeing them as individuals who are being victimized and kids essentially that we should care about,” LaRocca said.
Attendees were asked to bring toiletries for New Day and Hannah’s house.
Photo: Shara Talia Taylor
Detective Stephanie Rosenbaum of the Philadelphia Police Department Special Victims Unit said events like the conference bring awareness to the community. Attendees can share with their neighbors and be proactive about responding appropriately when they see trafficking. Officers said parents need to be aware of posts on websites that target and lure teens to things like parties and dance groups. They said that in actuality, some have reeled teens into trafficking.
“They learn and are groomed by other individuals that are a part of it,” Rosenbaum said about how teens are convinced nothing is wrong. “They just get attracted to the financial aspect of it and sometimes they don’t even realize the dangers in it.”
Bruna Patricia Acam, who is from Uganda and is the founder & CEO of FemJustice for Women’s Legal and Economic Empowerment, an organization dedicated to supporting women and girls in her country, was the guest speaker of the day. She was inspired to activism by a family member who was trafficked through an online advertisement for teaching. Acam shared her work and provided a definition during her address.
Guest speaker Bruna Patricia Acam, founder & CEO of FemJustice for Women’s Legal and Economic Empowerment, (on left) with Marilou Taylor-Watson, partner, Fox Rothschild, LLP.
Photo: Shara Talia Taylor
“Human trafficking involves the recruitment, transportation, transfer, harboring, or receipt of persons through coercion, abduction, fraud, deception, abuse of power, or exploitation of vulnerability, for the purpose of exploitation,” Acam told the attendees. “Exploitation encompasses various forms, including forced labor, sexual exploitation, involuntary servitude, and the removal of organs.”
Acam hopes to impact 1,000 girls in Uganda in 2025. She asked attendees to support her organization and other organizations to ensure girls and women are empowered and have the capacity to defend themselves and realize their rights.
“It’s a shared concern that everybody must rise up and speak up for themselves, for the survivors and the government to take necessary action to combat human trafficking,” Acam said.
Acam would also like for global leaders to make it a concern and for laws to be enforced so perpetrators are punished, she said.
Francina Pendergrass, executive director of Hannah’s House Inc., explained that the her organization works to re-build victims through offering emergency housing, food, clothing, education, life skills, mentoring and trauma therapy for women escaping trafficking. A documentary was presented to share the story of a survivor helped by Hannah’s House.
Pendergrass would like people to avoid judgment of women, she said.
“No one grows up and chooses to do that,” Pendergrass said about women forced into sexual exploitation. “It’s a life of servitude. The girls are beat, spat on, voided on, punished, (and) abused beyond imagination.”
Pendergrass helps women by changing their mindset to believe they’re more than their situation.
“The Bible says ‘As a man thinketh, so is he,’” she said.
Dr. Waller hoped to drive the message home during this year’s conference.
“You would want someone who has been affected by human trafficking to be treated like you would treat a member of your own family,” he said.
Exploration of the topic continues throughout January. Another event to bring awareness of the Ebony Alert Law would take place Jan. 25 at the Rotunda, located at 4014 Walnut Street. Special invited guests include State Reps. Carol Kazeem and Gina H. Curry. For more information, visit: https://therotunda.org/event/special-event-for-human-trafficking-awareness-month.
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