They’ve endured horror. Soon young Tri-City victims will have a place to heal
A “restoration home” for young victims of sex trafficking could open in the Tri-Cities in the next couple of years thanks to a five-figure donation from a Richland congregation.
Columbia Community Church recently handed over an $80,000 check to Mirror Ministries, a nonprofit that’s working on the home —the only one of its kind in Washington.
The donation will serve as seed money for the project.
“It’s incredible. We have been dreaming of this for a decade, and this makes it a reality. It’s planted a seed,” said Tricia MacFarlan, executive director of Mirror Ministries.
“Once you have a starter seed, the rest of it grows,” she said.
Healing the youngest victims
The restoration home will serve minor girls who’ve been victims of sex trafficking.
While trafficking may seem like a faraway problem that’s only rampant in bigger cities, the crime happens here in surprising numbers, with victims from young children to the elderly.
The restoration home will be “a place (for the young survivors) to heal from their toxic environment and be in a place with 24-7 therapeutic care, designed around the most promising practices nationwide and internationally,” MacFarlan told the Herald.
And it will help fill a gap in services.
“We have a couple of places in the state where we can send adult victims, but nowhere in the state to send our minors for that wraparound care specific to sex trafficking victims,” MacFarlan said.
Details are yet to be worked out, including a site and whether the home will be a new build or a renovation, but strategic planning is expected to start soon.
MacFarlan hopes to see the facility open in no more than two years, but closer to a year.
Trafficking victim hotline
Along with working toward a restoration home, Mirror Ministries also operates a 24-7 hotline for trafficking victims, at 509-212-9995, as well as an outreach center.
It also educates the community about trafficking.
Last year, the group fielded 588 hotline calls and helped 72 new clients, among other work.
National statistics are hard to come by, but Polaris, which operates the National Human Trafficking Hotline, estimates the number of victims to be in the hundreds of thousands in the U.S. That estimate includes both children and adults who are victims of sex and labor trafficking.
Like Mirror Ministries, the Support, Advocacy & Resource Center in Richland also works with sex trafficking survivors. It’s served 147 people in the last 18 months ago.
The group recently organized an awareness walk that drew hundreds in the community.
Mark Barker, pastor of Columbia Community Church, said the work done locally to stop sex trafficking and help survivors is vitally important. “There are a lot of people behind the scenes doing things to help,” like MacFarlan and Mirror Ministries, he said. “I just applaud them.”
His church takes a special offering toward the end of each year, dividing the money between the church’s needs and a need in the greater community.
Last year, the offering raised about $60,000 for Mirror Ministries’ operations.
This year’s $80,000 contribution is designated specifically for the restoration home.
“Trying to help (survivors) get out can be very difficult. They’re scared. It’s a multifaceted thing,” Barker said. “I think (a restoration home) is greatly needed here in the Tri-Cities. That’s why we want to help.”
To learn more about Mirror Ministries, go to mirror-ministries.org. Donations to the restoration home can be made through the website or sent to PO Box 400, Richland, WA 99352.
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