Photo by MattZ90/Thinkstock
Women seeking a way out of human trafficking will soon have a new home in Richmond.
A shelter will open here in January that will provide the women who have been caught up in trafficking with a safe place to live, and also with the support and training they will need to leave the lifestyle behind.
The facility, the Central Virginia Emergency Shelter for Human Trafficking Victims, is a joint effort of Safe Harbor and Bon Secours Richmond Health System. Shelter plans were announced Wednesday at an event at St. Mary’s Hospital.
“Their needs are very great," Pete McCourt, vice president of mission for Bon Secours Virginia Health System, said at the event.
As the name implies, it will foremost be a place where the women fleeing from traffickers can find safe haven. McCourt says the shelter will go far beyond the basics in its services. It also will offer counseling, help with legal needs, training in life skills such as cooking, help in finding employment or educational opportunities, and help in finding a safe, permanent home.
Bon Secours and its forensic nurses will help with the medical needs of shelter residents. Forensic nurses work with adult and children who are victims of violence.
The facility location will not be disclosed. It is set up to serve 15 people in 2017 and should open in early January. It is projected to serve 25 women in 2018, according to a release.
It will be the only shelter of its kind in Central Virginia, and will serve women from throughout metro Richmond and also some federal crime victims through its partnership with the U.S. Department of Homeland Security.
Sexual exploitation accounts for about 80 percent of human trafficking, and about 80 percent of its victims are women, according to Safe Harbor. About half of the women are younger than 16. It’s a big business, a $32 billion a year industry.
The facility was established through a $500,000 grant from the Virginia Department of Criminal Justice Services. The grant will help with staffing, equipment and supplies, according to a release.
“The shelter’s ultimate goal is to help victims live independent and happy lives,” Safe Haven’s executive director, Cathy Easter, said in the release.
Michael Feinmel, deputy commonwealth attorney for Henrico County, noted that working with these women, seeing them open up to what life can become, is also life-changing for those who work with them and “changes us as human beings.”
Safe Harbor has provided services to victims of domestic and sexual violence since its founding in 2000.
Human Trafficking stats
Image courtesy Bon Secours and Safe Harbor
CAPSULES
A weekly roundup of health and medicine news
Santa time for Autism Spectrum children
Santa, jolly old, sensitive soul that he is, will have some quality time reserved Sunday evening for children who are on the Autism Spectrum. From 6 to 8 p.m. Sunday, he’ll be at Regency Square for a quieter experience, with lights dimmed and the sound turned down, to provide a stress-free experience for Christmas photos with Santa. Reservations are recommended. Call 740-1518.
Downward trend in abortions
The abortion rate appears to be in decline in the United States, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
The rate of abortion, the number of abortions per 1,000 women aged 15-44, has dropped from 15.9 percent in 2004 to 12.9 percent in 2013, the most recent year for which data was reported by the CDC. The report was released on Nov. 25. The abortion rate in Virginia in 2013 was 12.4 percent.
There are some caveats. A main one is that the numbers reflect reports only from states and agencies that reported each year in the period. Results from five states which did not report each of the years are excluded: California, Maryland, Louisiana, West Virginia and New Hampshire. States and other agencies report abortion information to the CDC on a voluntary basis. The CDC has been tracking abortion since 1969.
Resiliency pays off
If you keep rising up when you get knocked down, you may also have a leg up when it comes to warding off alcohol use disorders. That’s the basic finding in a study released Monday in Alcoholism: Clinical and Experimental Research. The study, conducted by Virginia Commonwealth University and Lund University researchers, found that resilient people, those defined by researchers as people who are able to thrive despite adversity, ran a reduced risk of developing an alcohol use disorder. “From these results, we can focus on how we improve resilience in children to prevent them from developing alcohol use disorder later in life,” says Elizabeth Long, first author of the study and a fourth-year doctoral candidate in the VCU School of Medicine’s Virginia Institute for Psychiatric and Behavioral Genetics.
New CEO
Zach McCluskey is the new chief executive officer for HCA Virginia’s Johnston-Willis Hospital. The Richmond native assumes duties Dec. 19. He comes to the post after two years as CEO for Parham Doctors’ Hospital.
