Last year, Refuge for Women helped nearly 300 women across the United States escape sex trafficking. Refuge began 11 years ago in a farmhouse in Garrard County, Kentucky, with a few residents rebuilding their lives after leaving the sex industry. Today, the Lexington-based nationwide network has 84 staff members and multiple housing locations, including Kentucky’s first and only safe house. Most recently, Refuge for Women, a faith-based nonprofit organization, developed a creative means to employ the residents called Survivor Made.
“Survivor Made is literally a game-changer for us,” said Refuge for Women’s founder and president Ked Frank. The products include candles, leather goods, jewelry, and gift baskets. “It allows people to support us through buying products. It has stirred up so much energy, and I love that the women are learning job skills. They’re learning the dignity of creating a great product they’re making. It’s a way to support themselves, and they are getting paid a fair wage. It’s been such a positive thing for us as far as a way for people to give and support.”
Frank’s enthusiasm hasn’t wavered since he left his previous employment about 11 years ago, joking that he doesn’t think about going on vacations because he is so passionate about what he does every day. A big piece of what he does is education and combating the misconceptions about sex trafficking.
1 of 3
2 of 3
3 of 3
“A lot of people think the victims come from overseas and third-world nations,” Frank said. “They are surprised that there is so much trafficking that goes on here. They think of the movie Taken, where someone get pulled into a van and chained to a bed. The majority of sex workers—porn, strip clubs, prostitutes—meet the criteria for trafficking because anyone who sells sex is considered a trafficking victim. It is the relationships they get into. They end up being pimped, and they don’t realize it at first. It is a forced coercion.”
Often, the victims are minors, and sadly, the cycle usually starts at home.
“Kentucky leads the nation in child abuse,” said Frank, whose wife, Michelle, joined he Refuge for Women team full time in March as the Kentucky executive director. “So if you play that forward, when kids are victimized and neglected and in drug-infested environments, their childhood is stolen from them.
“You see the cycle. They’ve been victimized from ages 5 to 10, and then they’re falling apart as teenagers. Then they’re single moms, vulnerable and desperate, and they get into these illegal activities, but it started as a child. They’ve been groomed for these activities because their childhood was stolen from them.”
Kentucky Attorney General Daniel Cameron pointed to the state’s opioid and drug abuse crisis as a massive contributor to human trafficking. He said that the COVID-19 pandemic has removed key contact points from the lives of victims, and he fears it will increase the problem of trafficking.
“What happens in some instances, in far more times than we care to admit, is you’ll see folks who will barter family members in exchange for drugs,” Cameron said, adding that some of Kentucky’s large high-profile events are known as trafficking attraction points.
Frank noted that, in 11 years, he’s never seen a woman choose this path for her life.
“This idea of ‘she chose this,’ the reality is that is very misleading,” Frank explained. “They have been groomed to not have a voice and are at the disposal of others. They don’t have a choice at 21.”
A Key Piece of Recovery
Once women are in the Refuge program, they stay for up to two years and receive intense professional treatment—physical, mental, emotional and spiritual. Many are addicted to drugs and recovering from debilitating trauma.
The next step is occupational training. A number of the women have no formal education and need marketable job skills to prevent a return to the sex industry. Survivor Made teaches them job skills while they earn a living making in-demand products.
Nicole Webb is the Refuge for Women chief operations officer and director of Survivor Made. She partners with the survivors on a daily basis. “Working alongside the courageous women in this program has changed me for the better,” she said. “Their work ethic, creativity and motivation will take Survivor Made to the next level. That’s a given. But when you think about the obstacles they have overcome just to get to this place, to have a chance to work and earn an honest living, is nothing short of a miracle.”
The products are now being made at other Refuge sites around the country. Every piece is high quality and hand crafted by a resident of the Refuge program.
“I dare to say many of us would not have the guts to face the kind of fear they face every day and say, ‘Get out of my way; I am taking my life back!’ ” Webb said. “We provide the opportunity with some training and encouragement. The rest is all them.”
Sex trafficking is a $10 billion industry in the United States, affecting tens of thousands, primarily women and children. Through Survivor Made, Refuge for Women hopes to continue to make a dent in those numbers.
One survivor said, “Having the chance to be a part of the Survivor Made experience is so much more than I could have ever dreamed. I went there that first day thinking that I was going to just learn how to make candles with the Refuge staff, and I left there feeling valued [and] respected, and given the opportunity to help make a real difference in the lives of trafficked women.”
She shared that she is eager to help other women making the same journey that she did.
“As a survivor myself, I’ve often worried about the negative impact my background will have on my future—if I will forever be labeled, if I would always be treated differently—and wondering if I would ever be able to even get a job because of it,” she continued. “Our first day working together on Survivor Made, as a loving and supportive team, not only taught me valuable skills about the actual candle-making side of the business but also about its mission: to be able to then teach these skills to other women who have come here for a fresh start and to help them on their healing journey to gain marketable skills and financial independence. This will be utterly life changing for so many needy women, myself included, and will provide us with options that ultimately give us a second chance.”
Refuge continues to grow. The biggest news in Kentucky is a $4 million construction project that begins this fall on the Garrard County property, including new apartments and a community center. It will allow Refuge to serve 40 women at a time. The nonprofit currently serves 26 at a time in Kentucky. It also will house the Survivor Made operations facility.
“They can stay on the farm and be employed full time,” Frank explained. “They don’t even have to leave the property if they don’t want to.”
Gaining Influential Support
It is all a miracle to Frank, who called the early years “a grind.”
“I wouldn’t want to go back to those early days, trying to get that fly wheel to turn, but it does feel like momentum is picking up … People are finding more ways to connect and get involved.”
One of those is Cameron, who visited the Refuge property recently and also has helped the state get into the ring to fight the human trafficking problem with the launch of the Your Eyes Save Lives campaign.
In January 2021, the Office of Trafficking and Abuse Prevention and Prosecution in the state attorney general’s office launched the statewide human trafficking awareness and training campaign to combat the problem by raising awareness of the signs of human trafficking and empowering citizens, law enforcement, and community leaders to report suspected trafficking.
“We all have a vital role to play in eradicating this scourge, and this campaign provides the tools necessary to see the signs of human trafficking and make the call to report it,” Cameron said. “Last year, 136 cases of human trafficking from Kentucky were reported to the National Human Trafficking Hotline, and the Commonwealth’s Cabinet for Health and Family Services reported 206 incidences of human trafficking against a minor.
“Human trafficking is happening in our communities, but it is often unreported or underreported because of lack of awareness, misidentification, and stigma. Our hope is that the Your Eyes Save Lives campaign will change that.”
Cameron said that teaching people how to accurately identify a trafficking victim is a critical first step in rescuing someone who is being exploited for labor or sex, which is the aim of Your Eyes Save Lives.
“It is about making sure people recognize that their awareness can truly be the difference for a small child or a woman or anyone who is being exploited for labor,” he said. “It emphasizes understanding what those signs are; it could be clothing that is out of step with the season, or someone appears hungry, or their appearance is off. Don’t be afraid to reach out and call the National Human Trafficking Hotline.”
He touted the work of Refuge and Survivor Made in helping women reclaim their lives and said that Frank helped him unveil the Your Eyes Save Lives campaign.
“It is so important teaching those life skills and giving women the ability to take care of themselves to break that cycle of dependency that can oftentimes lead back into a world of human trafficking,” Cameron said. “So many victims of this have the challenge of trying to come back on the other side. And knowing they have skills to help them move past this time can’t be overstated how important a program like Survivor Made is in terms of breaking the cycle.”
Working Through the Setbacks
Though the program has seen great success—70 percent of women who graduate from Refuge don’t return to the sex industry—the work is not easy.
“It’s messy, and there are setbacks,” Frank said. “Some women do choose to go back, and that’s hard to see. You celebrate the women who are choosing life, today, who are in homes. They are people who have just been through so much trauma and so much hurt and pain. They don’t want to do what they’re doing. We are walking that journey out with them of recovering from that pain and letting go of addiction and being able to really start rebuilding some dignity and self-worth.”
He said that getting them out of harm’s way is the first priority, which is why opening Kentucky’s first safe house was so exciting. Survivor Made is the final piece.
“They have to start figuring out what they could do if they could do anything,” Frank said. “What are the gifts and talents God has given them? Much of that has been so buried.”
Frank noted that keeping children safe is the number one ticket to protecting people from sex trafficking. And the other side of the ticket is that men need to stop the demand. He also stressed that legalizing prostitution would only make the problem worse.
The best way to help, Frank said, is to “pray, educate, support and give … It can be overwhelming for people, and educating yourself is a great way to start,” he said.
“Also, buying Survivor Made products to help women and certainly continuing to pray for the ones who are working with the survivors all help.” Q