Leadership Corps Launches in Fall River: Young Survivors Effecting Change
This past Fall, My Life My Choice launched its first ever Fall River Leadership Corps group. Leadership Corps is an opportunity for our young survivors of exploitation to use their voice, develop their leadership skills, and join the fight to end human trafficking in a new way. We’ve been offering the group three times a year in Boston since 2010, but the program was not accessible to our mentees living outside of Greater Boston.
As Youth Services Manager, it was my immense privilege to co-facilitate this first eight-week session with Senior Survivor Mentor, Sharon Teed-Medeiros. Together, we had the pleasure of working with ten remarkable mentees who ranged in age from 12 to 19 years old.
Leadership Corps is a project-based program in which our mentees address real life issues facing young people in partnership with local leaders and organizations. Our Fall River group was joined each week by Rachel Niemiec, a Pediatric & Adult/Adolescent Sexual Assault Nurse Examiner (SANE) who is part of a process to develop a pilot initiative among service providers who work with youth experiencing exploitation. The pilot is a collaboration among the Massachusetts SANE Program, The Department of Children and Families (DCF), and the Bristol County Children’s Advocacy Center (CAC). The goal is to create a trauma-informed process of care for children who return from being missing and are in need of medical screening/clearance in a hospital. It is during this medical clearance process that red flags or disclosures of commercial sexual exploitation while the child was missing are likely to come up.
Rachel explained the project to the Leadership Corps members and asked if they would be willing to provide insight and recommendations— acknowledging that they were the experts in this process. They were quickly invested. Every mentee in the room had gone through the medical clearance process themselves at least once, and 9 out of 10 of them had a negative experience with it.
Leadership Corps members spoke about feeling blamed, being treated as a girl “who brought it on herself”, and going through intense questioning not knowing what their rights were. One 15-year-old mentee said, “It is the most traumatizing thing to have just been sexually assaulted or raped and then someone has to invade your body one more time [for evidence collection].”
“Missing and exploited youth are often receiving inconsistent medical care. Many do not know their rights when it comes to accessing appropriate medical care following sexual assault and exploitation,” says Rachel. And that’s a huge problem. A problem that has the potential to detrimentally impact the lifelong recovery and healing process after such severe trauma is endured.
The Fall River Leadership Corps worked diligently week after week to revise and come up with their recommendations on what the medical clearance process should look like, as well as how to appropriately screen for sexual exploitation. The group chose to also create an audio recording of their thoughts and insights so it could be used in training medical providers.
This Leadership Corps project was chosen by the youth as a way to make sure the medical clearance process was better for other kids. “The ultimate goal” says Rachel “is to help as many medical providers across our state, respond compassionately to youth who for so long have gone unnoticed. The
Leadership Corps is a brave and powerful group of adolescents that we are so grateful were open to helping us create change.”
“We hope this project can help another young person out there know their rights and options. Hopefully it benefits someone because there are a lot of difficult things happening when someone is being exploited.” Sam*, Age 15, Fall River Leadership Corps Member
For both Sharon and I, it was incredible to see mentees grow and boldly step into their roles as Survivor Leaders. In a society where the voices of young survivors of commercial sexual exploitation are often silenced, it was powerful to watch how ready they were to dive in with strength, honesty and courage to have their voices be heard. Providing opportunities for youth to create change is not only necessary, but also empowering as it shifts their inner beliefs about their abilities and themselves.
One of the most encouraging aspects of this project is that a team of providers chose to bring their project to our Leadership Corps for their input. True change cannot happen without survivor leadership at the forefront and we are grateful to Rachel and the pilot initiative for supporting and amplifying the voices of our young survivors. The session was such a success that we are already working on setting up a spring session for Fall River.
By Olivia Angood-Hardy, LCSW
Youth Services Manager at My Life My Choice