A local non-profit is working alongside those impacted sex trafficking.
Between 2007 and December 2017, nearly 22,200 sex trafficking cases were reported in the United States, according the National Human Trafficking Hotline.
The Elnora Foundation seeks to provide survivors with the tools they need to become self-sufficient.
“I want parents to be able to sleep at night, knowing that their kids are safe,” Elnora Foundation Founder Gayan Troussard said at a recent Hispanic Council meeting. “I want women out there who didn’t have the opportunity to make it home — who are now free and can start over — to get that second chance.”
Troussard spoke about the Manassas-based non-profit and sex trafficking at the meeting, which was hosted by the Prince William Chamber of Commerce.
The Elnora Foundation offers utility assistance and trauma informed therapy. It also helps survivors pay for their first month of rent and security deposits.
It plans to the Elnora Foundation Shelter for sex trafficking survivors in Woodbridge next year.
Sex trafficking, according to Troussard, is one version of modern day slavery.
“This is a $32 billion industry, which is why it’s becoming harder and harder and harder to get rid of this, because it’s a money-making thing for the traffickers,” Troussard said.
Troussard almost became a victim when a near-stranger picked her up from school.
The man drove Troussard, who was 7 years old at the time, to a factory and later a house where she saw him argue with another man and a woman.
He eventually drove her home.
Troussard later found out that the man had tried, unsuccessfully, to sell her.
“I look back and I say, ‘Wow … How different things would have been for me had that first man said, “Yes, I’ll take her.” That would have been it for me. Or if that woman had decided. Who knows what plans they would have had for me?’” Troussard said.
To learn more about or donate to the Elnora Foundation,
Troussard encouraged her listeners to be watchful of abnormal behaviors, such as a person who can’t access money or needs to ask someone else for permission to use the bathroom.
“Just pay attention to little things like that, because you could save somebody’s life,” Troussard said.
