Dear Counter-Trafficking Movement

July 28th, 2026

I've spent more than twenty years in the counter-trafficking movement, and I don't say that from a place of pride, but as a platform to stand and share my knowledge and experience from. 

I've sat in support groups with survivors who were trying to figure out how to rebuild their lives. I've sat across tables from government officials discussing policy and funding resources. I've worked alongside law enforcement, service providers, educators, faith leaders, and other advocates that want to make a difference in this fight. I've spoken on stages, sat on committees, advised organizations, collaborated on projects, and spent countless hours having conversations that most people never saw with the hope that a difference was being made in individual lives and in this fight as a whole. 

I've shared my story publicly more times than I can count, and I've also withheld it when I knew the room wanted my trauma more than my expertise, or wanted the glory story of rescue and not the real story of overcoming things beyond their comprehension, or rooms that just weren't ready to hear any level of truth about the real issues survivors face. 

I've watched organizations do extraordinary work with almost no resources, and I've walked away from organizations that claimed to serve survivors while continuing to perpetuate harm and exploitation behind closed doors. I've watched survivor leaders burn out, and I've watched new survivor leaders become tokens. I've watched people with lived experience get invited into conversations only after the important decisions had already been made. 

I've been the young survivor who was excited just to be included, and I remember what it felt like to simply feel grateful for a seat at the table. I remember believing that if enough people just listened, that things would change for the better. I remember the naive belief that awareness would naturally lead to better systems, better supports, and better outcomes for survivors.

Twenty years later, I'm not so sure.

It's not because I've stopped believing in this work that still needs to be done in counter-trafficking: it's because I've spent the last two decades close enough to see where the cracks are and very few people with enough courage to fill those cracks with actual solutions instead of fluff, pomp and pats on the back.

We need to do better.

I've had a lot of conversations lately where many “someones” have told me that we should be encouraged because, “at least people are talking about human trafficking now,” and I've heard different versions of that same sentence for years now.

It usually comes from someone who genuinely means well, and I know they aren't trying to dismiss what I'm saying. I know in my heart that they genuinely believe they're offering an exciting and positive perspective of this fight.

Thirty years ago, hardly anyone knew that trafficking was occurring in North America and today, governments fund awareness campaigns, law enforcement agencies receive specific training, organizations hold multi-sector conferences to break silos, and the general public has at least some understanding that trafficking exists.

By all appearances, that looks like progress.The problem that I see, is that every time I hear that argument, I find myself thinking about every survivor I’ve worked with as an advocate, and every survivor I’ve worked alongside as a colleague. 

I don't see the campaigns, conferences, or annual reports and statistics.

My heart sees the people. I think about a young woman who finally leaves exploitation and discovers that leaving was only the beginning of a completely different fight. I think about the survivors who spend months trying to navigate systems that were supposedly built to help them. I think about organizations that are doing meaningful work but spend as much time chasing funding as they do serving people because the funding landscape rewards visibility far more often than it rewards effectiveness.

I genuinely wonder what exactly we're measuring things against when we talk about the supposed progress we are making and maybe this is where much of my frustration is coming from. I'm old enough now to know that simply being invited into a room, and actually being listened to, are two very different things.

What I've watched over the years is a movement that has become increasingly comfortable with survivor stories while remaining strangely uncomfortable with survivor authority. People want lived experience at the table right up until lived experience challenges assumptions, questions priorities, or points out that a celebrated initiative isn't producing the outcomes everyone hoped it would.

A survivor that has the courage to share their story is inspiring, but a survivor questioning where the money is going is often viewed very differently, and that reality becomes harder to ignore the longer you're around the counter-trafficking movement. 

There are so many moments that stay with me and push me to make change. One of them happened during a conversation about a government-led trafficking awareness campaign. A significant amount of money had been invested into the project, and the people involved were understandably proud of what they had created. At some point I asked whether survivors had been consulted during the development process.The response wasn't defensive, but It WAS confusion and they asked why that was necessary.

I remember sitting there wondering how we had reached a place where that question could still be asked with complete sincerity. After all these years, how are we still explaining why people with lived experience should be involved in initiatives that claim to serve people with lived experience?

The hard truth is that I've become much less interested in awareness as an achievement in and of itself: awareness for awareness’s sake. It matters and it always will and should. People need to understand that trafficking exists in their communities and the potential of it existing even in their own families.

But awareness was never supposed to be the destination, rather the beginning, and somewhere along the way the movement forgot that truth.

Governments announce awareness campaigns as though awareness is the victory and they’re checking a box and they get glory and praise because of it.
Individual organizations celebrate training numbers as though training is the outcome.
Churches count attendance, impressions, engagements, and reach, and meanwhile, survivors continue to struggle to find housing, mental health support, addiction treatment, legal assistance, and stable pathways toward long-term restoration.

Those things are harder to measure, more complex to implement, and they're absolutely the things that matter the most.

The uncomfortable truth is that we cannot awareness-campaign our way out of exploitation. Photo opportunities do not create safety. Public declarations do not create housing. Campaigns do not replace economic opportunity.

Maybe that's why I've become increasingly skeptical of celebrity involvement that seeks applause for their good deeds.

I've sat through enough presentations and strategic planning to know that activity and impact are not the same thing. An entire movement can be incredibly busy without actually being effective. It can generate endless conversations while leaving fundamental problems untouched.
It looks at numbers of reported cases or law enforcement interventions instead of long-term healing and true restoration from unimaginable trauma.

This is the WRONG focus. 

All of this is not an easy or comfortable topic to engage with, especially when I know so many genuine people with good hearts that are involved in this work and want to make a difference.They are advocates, service providers, law enforcement officers, and government leaders who care deeply and sacrifice enormously.

This is not a criticism of everyone in this fight by any means, but it is a challenge to all of us, myself included.

When was the last time we stopped kicking the can up the road long enough to ask whether the things we're celebrating are actually working or making a difference and whether it is even the right can, or the right road?

We need to stop asking whether it sounds good or looks good in a report, and start asking survivors whether things are truly changing their outcomes long term.

I am saying all of this and asking these questions NOT because I have given up on this movement, because if I had, it would have been done years ago. What keeps me here fighting every day is the same thing that brought me here in the first place: the reality that survivors deserve better than to be offered hope and then given tokenization and re-exploitation, and they absolutely deserve better from the systems that want to help, but end up failing them and pushing them back into the life that they tried to leave.

What has changed the most for me in this fight is that I no longer confuse effort with impact. I've seen too much for that. Twenty years will do that to a person. Now I find myself asking different questions than I did when I first entered this fight.

Today, I am asking these questions:

Are the things that we're doing actually helping the people we're trying to serve?
Why is survivor expertise still treated as optional in conversations about survivor outcomes?
Why are organizations that are providing direct services to survivors, still fighting to survive while awareness budgets continue to grow?
Why do we celebrate the number of people who attended a conference more than we celebrate the number of survivors who found safe housing, long-term support, and sustainable healing?
Why are survivors still being invited to share their stories with little to no compensation and are absent from the rooms where decisions are being made?
How many times can we call something "survivor-centred" before we stop long enough to ask survivors what that actually means to them?
Have we become so focused on proving that we're doing SOMETHING, that we've forgotten to ask whether we're doing the right things or actually changing the lives of those we have committed to serve?

Most of all, I want to know whether we, as a movement, actually have the courage to be honest with ourselves.
Honest about what's working and what isn't.
Honest about the fact that awareness alone was never the actual goal.

Because if survivors are still falling through the cracks, if organizations doing life-changing work are still struggling to keep their doors open, if lived experience is still being treated as a box to check instead of expertise to be trusted, then perhaps the most important question isn't how far we've come.

Perhaps the most important question is whether we're willing to admit how far we still have to go.

I don't claim to have all the answers, but after twenty years, I know enough to be suspicious of anyone who thinks they do. And what I do know is this:

The people at the centre of this issue deserve more than our good intentions, our awareness campaigns, our statistics, our reports, our conferences, and our self-congratulation.

They deserve systems that work FOR THEM and that are built BY THEM and they deserve a movement that is willing to measure success not by how loudly we talk about trafficking, but by whether survivors are actually finding freedom, safety, healing, and long-term restoration on the other side of it.

And until we're willing to ask those questions honestly, I worry that we will continue celebrating a false perspective of progress while missing the very people we set out to serve.

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