Latisha’s House in Williamsburg changes the lives of sex trafficking survivorsBy Alison JohnsonVir

By Alison Johnson

Aug 24, 2022 at 10:00 am

JAMES CITY — The story of Latisha’s House begins 15 years ago on a street corner in Chicago, where Elizabeth Ameling spotted a skinny, dark-haired girl standing strangely alone.

Ameling, then a church musician living in Charlottesville, was chaperoning a youth service trip with her daughter and other preteen and teenage girls. The third time the group ran into Latisha, they asked if she needed help.

The “girl” was actually a 25-year-old woman who had been sold into sex trafficking at age 12 by drug-dealing brothers. Latisha had been raped, beaten and starved by pimps who could earn more money if she looked like a minor. She was infected with both HIV and hepatitis C.

“Her shoulder blades stuck out like angel wings,” Ameling recalls. “We drove her to a safe house in our van and she told us, ‘No one cared about me until you.’ We were all bawling. And then I started realizing, ‘This doesn’t just happen in Chicago.’”

She was right. Back in Charlottesville, Ameling and her husband, Jeff, found other victims by driving around town in a church van, including people living under a bridge not far from the University of Virginia.

In 2013, the couple founded the Latisha’s House Foundation, a long-term safe house program for adult female survivors of human trafficking. The nonprofit operates homes in Williamsburg, where the Amelings moved in 2012, and Orlando, Florida, both national hot spots for the crime. Over the past nine years, it has sheltered more than 155 women.

In Williamsburg, women can spend up to 1½ years in a 5,000-square-foot, nine-bedroom house at an undisclosed location. There are crisis beds for new arrivals and a transition program to help women build new lives and often break generational cycles of abuse.

Offerings include trauma-informed counseling; life coaching; medical, dental and psychiatric care; GED tutoring; legal services; financial literacy classes; help obtaining new copies of social security cards and birth certificates; and cooking, art and yoga classes for stress relief.

The foundation also helps women pay for college and vocational programs, find housing and employment and file to regain custody of children in foster care.

Additionally, Latisha’s House has broken ground on a longer-term housing community on 47 acres in Central Virginia. “Hope Village” will have six small cottages where women can live for three years while receiving additional counseling, job training and financial support; the first homes are due to open by the end of the year.

Human trafficking, a form of modern slavery, is defined as forcing, coercing or tricking another person into labor or commercial sex activity. Traffickers often know their victims and pretend to want to help them; about 40% of trafficked children are sold by a family member, according to statistics from the Safe House Project, a national advocacy group.

There are 40.3 million trafficking victims globally today, including hundreds of thousands in the United States, according to estimates from The International Labour Organization, a United Nations agency. Hampton Roads is a major trouble spot due to its transient population, tourism industry and easily accessible interstates, seaports and airports.

While people of all backgrounds can become victims, risk factors include poverty, an unstable living situation, previous physical or sexual abuse, involvement in the juvenile justice or child welfare system, and addiction to drugs or alcohol.

Ari Konkel, a 21-year-old intern at Latisha’s House, has found herself advocating for women her own age with horrific pasts. “People think this only happens overseas,” says Konkel, a Williamsburg native and senior at Virginia Tech. “Really, it could have been me.”

In fact, Konkel believes she was approached as a teen outside a Newport News fabric store, where a woman asked her, “Can we talk about God’s love for you?” Konkel had just read a Twitter warning about similar techniques used to bait potential victims into lingering or moving to a new location while a male pimp lurks nearby.

“People make a mistake because they just don’t know,” she says. “They end up torn apart, physically, emotionally and financially. It’s devastating.”

Virginia lawmakers have begun to do more to tackle the state’s trafficking challenges. In July, Gov. Glenn Youngkin signed several bills to aid law enforcement officials and hotel employees in recognizing signs of trafficking. At hotels, for example, traffickers tend to pay in cash and request rooms near elevators.

Future legislative proposals would help survivors expunge convictions — many are forced to steal or use drugs — and connect with support resources. Advocates also urge everyone to know signs of a trafficking victim, as listed by the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime:

• Appearing malnourished or unkempt

• Bruising, injuries and other signs of physical abuse

• Avoiding eye contact, not speaking or dodging social interaction

• Responding in a manner that seems rehearsed or scripted

• Lacking personal identification documents or possessions

• Seeming under the influence of a substance

“Sometimes, it’s happening right in front of you,” says Selah Ball, 20, a sophomore at William & Mary who volunteers at Latisha’s House. “If you see anything that doesn’t feel right, speak up.”

Watching survivors transform is remarkable, says Ameling, a mother of three adult children and grandmother of one. Even a shopping trip to buy new clothing, bras and underwear with donated gift cards is life changing.

“It makes them cry,” she says, “because they come in with almost nothing.”

Many women also discover unknown talents and interests. One house graduate is a chef, another is a floral designe, and a third is studying for a master’s degree in counseling. As for Latisha, she completed a transitional program in Chicago and got a job at a coffee house.

“We can change one life at a time,” Konkel says. “These women need to begin to trust again, and that takes a village.”

To learn more

Visit latishashouse.com, call (757) 346-5344 or email latishashouse@gmail.com. For the National Human Trafficking Hotline to report suspected cases or seek help, call 1-888-373-7888 or text “HELP” or “INFO” to 233733.

Alison Johnson, ajohnsondp@yahoo.com