Survivors

From the Northern province of Chiang Mai, Thailand to the brothels in Bangkok came a brave young girl… sold as a child to traffickers that used, abused and re-sold her for many years before finally she was rescued and redeemed by an organization dedicated to such efforts.

Prang is rare! I say that because according to the U.S. State Department TIP Report 2011 says only .001% of women sold in sex trafficked around the world are ever rescued by anti-trafficking organizations. Of those that are rescued less that 10% are able to move forward in life free from going back to the captivity. And only one in a million will go on to do what Prang does… she graduated her program and went back to her village to share her story!  To do so she faced certain shame from the villagers… her family could have been dishonored by her speaking of such things and most that have attempted to do so in the past have been disowned by their families and friends.

Prang didn’t stop there, she started a school in her village where kids could be educated. She started a micro-factory in her village as a prevention effort where families can make products to sell so that they are not poor and desperate (eliminating the need to sell their children). And Prang continues to help the organization in Bangkok rescue other young girls from the bars and brothels and she helps in mentoring them into redeemed persons.

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Jeannetta Taylor McCrery is another remarkable survivor that gives her life now to help others. Growing up with a good mom and normal childhood until someone molested her and damaged that part of her soul that tells us who we are. Running away from her problems, finding drugs as her way to cope with life only made matters much worse. She was arrested in Tulsa at the age of 12 for prostitution, exploited and trafficked by multiple people, drug dealers, pimps, and gangs until a 90 year old Christian woman at AA sponsored her and helped her turn her life over to Jesus and begin a journey of healing and hope.

Today Jeannetta works with neglected children, elderly and domestic violence victims with a joy and compassion that can only come from a life changed and redeemed by God. She shares her own story of victimization to help other women come out of the shame of drug use, prostitution and victimization.

Working on her Masters degree in Social Work at NSU, Jeannetta is employed by DaySpring Villa where she gets to do what she loves most – helping and inspiring others that have been abused. Jeannetta speaks as a victim/advocate for OATH and proves that every life is precious and that the power of God to redeem lives still works today for women that have been trafficked!

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After being raped at the age of 12 and running away from the abusive home at 13, Theresa Briscoe found herself homeless and afraid. Things went from bad to worse… before she was old enough to drive, pimps were driving her to major cities in the U.S. and selling her for sex. Over the next decade and a half she was trafficked as a prostitute, continually running away searching for help. For years she was brutally exploited and victimized.

Eventually she escaped her pimps and found her way back to Kansas, but could not get free from the life she had learned to live and even after having her daughter continued to sell herself to survive.

On Sunday mornings, the Baptist church would send a bus through the neighborhood where they lived and she sent her daughter to church with many of the other children. One day Theresa looked out her window and saw two women talking to her daughter on the playground. She immediately ran them off with loud and abusive language. They were her daughter’s Sunday School teachers. A few weeks later, they knocked on her door and asked if they could pray for her. “I cussed them out and told them to get off my porch” she said. Then the women offered to babysit whenever Theresa needed help. She told them off again. Then they invited her to children’s programs at church and she refused.
“Those women were relentless,” Theresa said. “Finally, they asked us over for a meal and we went. Soon I was in a car with them and they led me to the Lord.”

Today Theresa reaches out to women caught in prostitution and sex trafficking in Oklahoma and Kansas and is the nicest, sweetest, most tender woman you could ever meet. If Mother Teresa is alive today… she is alive in Theresa Briscoe and the love she has for every one of these girls!  CLICK HERE to support Theresa in her outreach to victims

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