While slavery was abolished in America over 150 years ago, millions of people across the globe are trapped in some form of slavery, including some right in our back yard. North Carolina has been ranked 9th in the nation for having the highest cases of human trafficking. While this is proportionate to our population, it is still a heartbreaking fact. So the question is, what do we do about it?

This week on Family Policy Matters, host Traci DeVette Griggs welcomes Ked Frank, Founder of Safe Places for Women, to discuss effective ways that individuals can help stop human trafficking.

Parents, please note that this episode touches on some mature topics, so please be cautious if listening with young children.

• Subscribe to our podcast so you can hear our interviews every week.
• Tune in to one of the radio stations that carry Family Policy Matters (see the list below).
• Click below to listen online.

Spotify • Apple Podcasts • iHeart Radio • Audacy • Amazon Music

Family Policy Matters
How You Can Help Stop Human Trafficking (with Ked Frank)

TRACI DEVETTE GRIGGS: Thanks for joining us this week for Family Policy Matters. While lawmakers have passed several laws in recent years aimed at curbing the scourge of human trafficking in North Carolina, it sadly remains a huge problem, not just nationally, but here closer to home. Today, we’re joined by a man who has spent nearly two decades ministering to the survivors of human trafficking. Ked Frank is the President of Safe Places for Women. Ked Frank, welcome to Family Policy Matters.

KED FRANK: Thank you, Traci, it’s great to be with you today.

TRACI DEVETTE GRIGGS: All right, so I think my first question is, what’s your background that you came into contact with human trafficking survivors and got involved in helping them?

KED FRANK: Yeah, people often will ask that question. I’ve been involved for almost 20 years doing this kind of work, and it seems like it’d be mostly women that are doing this. And honestly, all of my staff are females. But this is something that years ago, my wife and I, we feel like the Lord just really opened our eyes back in 2006 and my wife and I had prepared for ministry. Went to Bible college, went to seminary, thought we were going to be pastors, and the Lord ended up interrupting our path of what we thought was the direction we were going. And really broke our hearts when we learned about this issue. We had a chance to meet some women that were in dangerous situations, that were needing a place to go. And at that time, there really wasn’t a lot of housing, not a lot of places to put them. And so, we felt like the Lord opened our eyes and really broke our hearts. And it’s an issue that we weren’t able to get away from. Once you’re exposed to something, sometimes, then it’s hard to stop thinking about it. And we felt like we were supposed to do something about it. In 2009 we opened our very first home on our best friend’s property and outside of Lexington, Kentucky. And so now the home that we’re currently operating here in Denver, Colorado, this is our 12th house that we’ve been able to open, and hundreds and hundreds of women over the last 20 years has come through the programs. And so yeah, really, it’s a calling. We felt called the full-time ministry. And sometimes God says, Hey, full time ministry can look a lot of different ways, and that’s for us, it really got us involved in helping women come out of dangerous situations.  So, you mentioned that you had opened so many houses. Are all of these houses still operating? How does that work?  Yeah, they are. So, the Safe Places for Women is actually the second organization my wife and I founded. And so, we started an organization called Refuge for Women back in 2009, and so we ran that for 14 years. At the end of 2022 we stepped out of that and felt like the Lord is opening a door for us to come out to Colorado and lock arms with some other organizations out here. And so, when we were out here, we decided to launch another organization, and that’s the Safe Places for Women.

So yeah, so all the homes are still operating across the country, and so they’re under different umbrellas currently and legally, but yeah, I just, it’s interesting that Traci, even this morning, I just couple hours ago, got a text from one of the women that we were able to serve, and she came through our home in 2011 and just came through some of the most horrific things. And so she came through the program, and just when, you know, when somebody is ready to make major life changes, you know, and really fully surrender to the Lordship of Christ, that would have been her. I mean, she fully entered in, she ended up going to seminary, she got a ministry degree, she met a young man in seminary, and this morning, she just sent a text and just said, I just want you to know again, reflecting on all the shame, all the things of the past that I brought when I was in the program, and how accepting you were. You looked in my eyes, you listened to the horrific things. And what was that? 2011, that was 14 years ago. And today, she’s actually leading three of the homes in Kentucky. And that, to me, that’s what it’s all about, Traci. It’s like, you know, the homes are just really vehicles for people to make major changes and have an opportunity to start on a new path. And she was one of them. She’s one of those stories that you just go, man, you know, again, you work with a lot of people, and you hope everybody takes advantage of the opportunity they have and really just grabs a hold of this new life and runs with it. And she was one of them that, just this morning, was just like, hey, 14 years later, I just, again, want to say thank you. My life is totally different. She has two kids now, is married, has a ministry degree, and she’s running the home that she came through 14 years ago. And you’re just like, those kinds of stories just fuel you, and they just make you want to go reach more. I mean, it’s one of, okay, let’s, let’s have more stories of her, you know. And just radical, radical transformation that takes place.

TRACI DEVETTE GRIGGS: Right. Where do you find these women? How do you get them out of there? Is this just something that they have to walk away from on their own? How does that work?

KED FRANK: I had a fellow email me the other day, and he’s like, I am ready to bust down doors. I mean, give me an opportunity to go, just, I am so sick and tired of this, and I am ready to and I’m like, well, civilians aren’t really allowed to just like, go break down doors and go, you know, that’s more law enforcement. So, for us, we do the healing process, and so we do the housing piece, we do the long-term journey. And so, all of the women that we get a chance to work with all come from referrals that might be them calling a national hotline, groups like Rescue America, groups like Safe House Project, groups like Polaris. So, they will field the calls. Somebody will say, Hey, I’m in a hotel room right now, or I’m in a home, and my perpetrator has just stepped out for a couple of hours, and this is my one window to get out of here, they’ll call a hotline. They might Google that. They might have come across it by somebody telling them to call this number. And so, then they’ll call groups like us and just go, Hey, we’ve got a woman right now. She might be in North Carolina, she might be in Florida, she might be in New York, but we’ve got a woman right now who is saying she needs out and wants help and needs a safe place to go. Do you have any open beds right now? And then, you know, Traci, this is pretty wild and a lot of people don’t know this, but Southwest Airlines will actually fly a woman for free anywhere in the country. If she’s a survivor of human trafficking, Southwest Airlines will fly a woman for free anywhere in the country to get her to safety. And so, we’ll go to the Denver Airport, we’ll pick her up, and she goes off the grid, goes off the radar, people will start a brand-new journey. And so that’s where we find them, or there may be a drop-in center somewhere, or a church who just goes, Hey, we have a woman who came to church today and she says, this is her story, and we have no idea where to send her or where to go, and do you have any open beds right now?

And so that’s how we find them. And then they’ll come into our program at no cost, and they can stay with us as long as they need to stay with us. And we’ll start doing a lot of case management. We’ll start doing a lot of counseling and three meals a day and a roof over their head and a bed to sleep in. And just, what do you want to do with your life? And how can we come alongside you if you don’t have to do what you used to have to do, but you can do anything you want to do, is that schooling? Is that employment? How can we come alongside you to begin this brand-new journey?

TRACI DEVETTE GRIGGS: Okay, so talk to our listeners here in North Carolina, mostly. How can they get involved either in seeing and responding to human trafficking or helping out with your organization?

KED FRANK: Well, as I reviewed your all’s website again. I mean, just that your passion for God, passion for the family. Honestly, to me, the family is really the solution to end human trafficking, is the family. And so, when we open up these homes, what it really is, Traci, is an opportunity for survivors to experience what many of them never got to experience when they were kids. And so, they are safe, they are loved. They do sit around a kitchen table. They do have three meals a day. They do have people speaking life into them and speaking into their, the things that every family is supposed to do. And so, you know, for me, the best thing that anybody can do to fight human trafficking is have a strong marriage. The best thing any family can do is talk to your kids about healthy sexuality. So, when we think about laws, when we think about, you know, what can we do as a society, you know, again, some of these conversations aren’t the easiest conversations to have with your kids or with your spouse. When you’re talking about, you know, sex and sexuality and educating.

There’s a website that I would encourage listeners to consider going to, and it’s a program called On Watch. And the website is, IAmOnWatch.org. And this was created by some friends of ours who are right over there on the East Coast, close to you, all called Safe House Project, and what they do is they’re a hotline. They’re a policy making organization, but they created this training program, and it’s for high school kids, college kids. It’s for families to watch, and there’s modules that they can go through and learn about human trafficking and questions to answer and get a certificate at the end that they completed it. For me, that is probably one of the best resources that are out there for families to engage in this conversation, because it always begins with education. First and foremost, like, what is the issue? Like, what is sex trafficking? And what are the issues that are out there? So, you know, again, when people say, How do we stop human trafficking? At the end of the day, we gotta protect kids.

Traci, I have listened to hundreds and hundreds of stories of these women talk about their journeys and how they ended up where they ended up. It always, 99% of the time, it always goes back to when they’re 5, 6, 7 years old, and it starts with childhood sexual abuse. Every single one of the women experienced disruption in their innocence, in their childhood. It might have been from mom’s boyfriend. It might have been from a grandpa. You know, a lot of people have seen the movie Taken. They get these images of like a van pulling up and snatching. That is very rare. That is very rare that happens actually. Most trafficking happens by people who victims know, a family member, a cousin, somebody, a trusted person takes advantage of them. And so, it’s not normally by strangers, it’s by people that are familiar to them. And so the more that they’re aware of boundaries, the more that they’re aware that, you know, again, abuse and this is God’s plan for sex and sexuality. When they see a husband and wife loving each other, when they feel safe within their home. There’s no better combating human trafficking than education and safety within a family structure.

TRACI DEVETTE GRIGGS: I’m assuming that parents really need to watch their kids’ online behavior as well.

KED FRANK: There is, I mean, a whole new world has opened up in the last 20 years with having, you know, access to pretty much anything and everything right there in your pocket, basically. So you know, again, it’s even more important for parents to be instilling, you know, self-worth, self-esteem, value, dreams and visions and goals and so you know, again, when you when you think about if the stats are accurate, that organizations like Pornhub have 100 million visitors every single day to their website. I mean, Traci, think about that. 100 million visits every single day, if that’s accurate, there is a pursuit, a tempting to meet needs in a way that is obviously not God’s plan for where needs get met sexually, and for, you know, the secrecy and for the shame and all the things that go along with that. And so again, going back to all the women that we’ve worked with, and they go back to just how unstable their childhood was, the abuse that they encountered, the drugs that were in their home. And they’re starting to experiment with things that kids should never be exposed to. You know, again, the individuals who get caught up in all these things online, yeah, they might have hours and hours and hours of unregulated time because, you know, parents are working, or parents are doing things that just, here’s a tablet, here’s a phone, and just go occupy yourself for however many hours. And the reality is, is things start to become truth to them that aren’t truth, and they start to think about themselves and perceive themselves in a way that, you know, again, is not rude, and anchored in the foundation as believers, we think need to be there.

So, parents have a critical, critical role in preventing trafficking, whatever that might be. I mean, sometimes you might have a neighborhood kid who wants to be at your house on a regular basis, and it’s like, man, you know, they don’t ever want to seem to be at home. They want to be at our house all the time. And all of the sudden, you almost become a refuge, you know, to the vulnerable. You know, my wife and I, we opened up our home and ended up adopting a little girl into our you know, and so she’s seven years old, so we basically look like her grandma and grandpa for the most part. But, you know, again, I mean, she came to us at six months old because our heart got broken and realized that, you know, whether it be the foster care system, whether it be kids in our neighborhood, that again, we have an opportunity to be a light within some families that might be going through a lot of challenges, and you might be a safe place. Your home might be a safe place for some kids that might, years down the road, look back and go, had you not opened up your home to me the way that you did, my home was just not safe, and it was so vulnerable, and it was so much going on. And you modeled, you modeled what a Christian family looks like. You modeled what a godly marriage looks like. You modeled what it looks like to sit around a kitchen table. And you may end up helping spare them from a whole lot of things, because you extended your family.

And that’s something Traci, I would say, you know, within human trafficking, the church, Christian families, they are the solution. And one of the things we’re going to introduce in the upcoming years is training and equipping families. If they have an open bedroom in their home, if they are empty nesters, or they’re just going, Hey, we want to bring somebody in who’s vulnerable. You know, there’s a thing we’re calling the Family Alliance, that we’re going to equip Christian families across this nation to bring survivors into their home, because it’s a lot more affordable than trying. We can’t build enough houses. That’s what it comes down to, Traci. We can’t build enough houses and have enough beds to meet the need of hundreds and hundreds of thousands of women across this country who are vulnerable to human trafficking or are currently being trafficked. There’s not enough beds. There’s only 1600 beds in the country right now today.

But the church, Christian families, they are the solution, and we’re going to implement training and opportunities for Christian families to say, hey, we’ll take one. Hey, we’ll take one. We’ll be a light. She can feel safe in our family. And that’s going to be the solution. That’s going to be a huge new thing coming in the next year. SafePlacesForWomen.org. Follow us on social media, go to our website. We’re located in Denver here. But all the women that we’re working with come from all over the country, and so they come to Denver and go off the grid. So, we have more than once served women from North Carolina. We serve women from over 20 different states. If you’re listening, say a word of prayer today that we would just be able to continue for every woman who’s crying out for help today, that that we would just continue to be able to give her a chance to be able to start a brand-new life today.

TRACI DEVETTE GRIGGS: Okay, well. Ked Frank, thank you so much for all the work that you do. Safe Places for Women. Thanks for being with us today on Family Policy Matters.

– END –