Kelly Armstrong beamed during her daughter's kindergarten graduation, celebrating the finale to her first year of elementary school. <\/p>\n
But in the back of her mind, she was thinking about another young girl, a teenager rescued by law enforcement officials during a child pornography bust, who might be able to have a new beginning. <\/p>\n
Armstrong, the executive director of Freedom Place, Texas' first and only safe house for domestic victims of sex trafficking, had been trading messages and phone calls with officials from the Texas Attorney General's Office all afternoon about the girl. Officials were offering her a safe place to stay, a place where she could get counseling. <\/p>\n
\"We knew we needed to act quickly,\" she said. <\/p>\n
That evening, as she watched her daughter, Armstrong continued to check her cell phone, anxiously waiting to hear from authorities and hoping that teen would agree to come to Freedom Place. <\/p>\n
Until last week, there was no place in Houston - or anywhere in Texas - dedicated to helping domestic trafficking victims. Often the options for the girls were incarceration in a juvenile facility, treatment programs that didn't meet their needs, or being placed back into the same unstable homes that may have led to them the streets in the first place, authorities said. <\/p>\n
Even more difficult, many of the girls don't feel that they are victims, making them vulnerable to falling back into familiar patterns with abusers, said Associate Harris County Juvenile judge Angela Ellis. <\/p>\n
\"What we know is that they will return to the system if we don't offer them therapeutic services,\" Ellis said. She runs a \"girls court,\" designed specifically for young girls who are sex-trafficking victims, offering them intensive supervision and therapeutic services as an alternative to placing them in detention facilities. The court has already referred three girls to Freedom Place, including one who became the program's first arrival. <\/p>\n
\"Telling someone they are a victim and then being able to do nothing but place them in a lock-down facility is not something we wanted,\" Ellis said. \"So it's a big day.\" <\/p>\n
6 horses and 2 dogs <\/p>\n<\/p>\n
See more here: Kelly Armstrong beamed during her daughter's kindergarten graduation, celebrating the finale to her first year of elementary school. But in the back of her mind, she was thinking about another young girl, a teenager rescued by law enforcement officials during a child pornography bust, who might be able to have a new beginning Continue reading
\nGirls victimized by sex trafficking find healing at Freedom Place<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"