LYNN — One Lynn program continues to rise against child sexual exploitation.
We Rise, a program developed at Centerboard, a non-profit human services organization in Lynn, brings survivors of commercial sexual exploitation and key community allies together in order to prevent, intervene against, and promote recovery from the commercial sexual exploitation of children (CSEC). In February, the program launched a 24-hour hotline service that connects young victims with designated outreach workers.
In Essex County, Jennifer Dowd, director of youth services at Centerboard, says recent data indicates that approximately 75 girls and young women every year are victims of sexual exploitation, with the number of youth likely much higher due to underreporting.
“We see ourselves as a bridge to whatever services might be the best for whoever is on the other end of that line,” said Dowd.
We Rise piloted the hotline in Lynn and Peabody and plan to educate community providers and first responders on how to use it, said Dowd. Their main goal is to gain traction with law enforcement out in the field encountering young female victims so outreach workers can go out on a call and help them.
“Say it’s 2 a.m. and a cop makes a traffic stop and encounters a kid and it looks like an exploitation situation,” Dowd said. “The cop could call the hotline and our outreach workers, who themselves are either a survivor of sexual exploitation or were somehow personally involved in it before, would go right to the scene. Our main objective when we first encounter a girl is to provide psychological first aid and if they’re not in immediate danger, it might mean we go and get food or stay with them at the Emergency Room for an exam.”
The program focuses on females up to 25 years old but on the 24-hour hotline, they would never turn away a call from any victim. Breaking down what CSEC means, Dowd said it’s an exchange of goods, usually money, for some kind of sexual activity. Most young victims, she said, are forced or coerced into those situations.
The idea behind We Rise began in 2015, after a young woman who lived in one of Centerboard’s programs was murdered by a man who bought her for sex, according to Dowd. The impact on the staff and the whole Centerboard organization was profound, she said.
Shortly after the young woman’s death, the organization’s staff members asked their Program Development Committee to turn the program from an idea to a reality, said Dowd. A voluntary group of staff was comprised and they consulted with a number of experts in the CSEC field to design a program that would meet the needs of exploited youth in Essex County.
In October 2018, We Rise had its program launch.
“It really touched everyone in the organization,” Dowd said. “We were able to turn something very painful into something that would go on to hopefully have a positive impact in her memory.”
Since day one, We Rise has been involved in an all-out effort to raise awareness about CSEC and generate conversation around the community response to this issue, said Dowd. It is an “all-hands on deck” problem, she said, and law enforcement, probation, schools, health care providers, social services, communities, families, and people will all have to come together to fight it.
To learn more about We Rise, residents can call their office at 339-883-2420. If you, or anyone you know in Lynn or Peabody, is in need of emergency intervention, call the hotline at 781-513-6876.
“When we explain what we are trying to do, the overwhelming response has been, “How can I help?” said Dowd. “I think this is especially impressive when you consider the gravity of what we’re talking about here and it would be tempting to say that doesn’t happen here in my community. But that’s not what we’re seeing. This is a community that’s ready to face this huge problem and do something about it.”
