Each year, hundreds of Maine residents are being forced or manipulated into having sex with strangers numerous times per day, day after day. When police, nurses, case managers and others identify them as sex trafficking victims, they often are suffering from unimaginable traumas caused by daily mental, physical and sexual abuse and sometimes possess nothing other than the clothes they are wearing.
These victims may require lots of support. They may have short-term needs of food, clothes and shelter. Their long-term needs may include drug addiction treatment, medical care, mental health counseling, job training and legal services.
But federal, state and local governments and communities as a whole are failing to properly assist the state’s most vulnerable.
It’s welcome news that the U.S. Department of Justice awarded the Preble Street Anti-Trafficking Coalition, a network of southern Maine service providers, $650,000 in grant funding to provide such supports to victims. So far Preble Street has helped 111 sex and labor trafficking victims in Cumberland and York counties since mid-2014.
But that coalition and the many other service providers across the state, including Hope Rising, a residential treatment program in Penobscot County, require much more funding and support to properly address the needs of Maine victims. Federal, state and municipal governments need to step up in this regard.
Yes, residents can donate to the Maine Sex Trafficking and Exploitation Network’s victim support fund — and should, generously — but if lawmakers and state and local officials were truly serious about assisting sex trafficking victims, they would consider expanding a host of services and remaking larger systems to support them.
Service providers such as Preble Street have struggled to address the critical health care needs of victims, because many of them are unable to access MaineCare. By expanding Medicaid to low-income parents and adults without children, victims could gain access to such essential health services.
Lawmakers and state and local officials could also help victims by taking Maine’s opioid epidemic seriously. Maine residents across the state, including many sex trafficking victims, need better access to a variety of addiction treatment options, including Suboxone and methadone paired with counseling. Instead Gov. Paul LePage has been actively trying to shut down methadone clinics, and local governments, including the Bangor City Council, have been fighting the expansion of such services in their communities.
Last, the state’s hospitals and medical clinics can continue supporting and encouraging its nurses who are receiving or seeking their Sexual Assault Forensic Examiner (SAFE) certification. Those certified nurses are trained to identify sexual assault and sex trafficking victims, record the victim’s history and collect evidence to help in the prosecution of their abusers.
There are 30 to 35 SAFE-certified nurses in the state and about 30 others are going through training, according to Michelle Markie, an emergency department nurse at St. Joseph Hospital in Bangor. This is good, but it’s only a start. Sex trafficking victims often seek medical assistance for unrelated injuries, such as assault and sexually transmitted diseases. Our nurses need to be ready.
There are many people in Maine outraged by the atrocities that are happening in their own backyards. Now it is time for the entire community to step up in a meaningful way and help the people being victimized by those atrocities.
