It can seem like all the stars have to align perfectly for survivors to exit trafficking situations and pursue lasting freedom. Along the way, they navigate countless roadblocks that keep them from getting housing, health care, legal assistance, and other services they need to heal and thrive.
From more than two decades of working with and for survivors, Polaris knows that those moments of alignment don’t have to depend on chance. When communities build strong referral pathways and share responsibility for walking alongside survivors, the constellation of support grows stronger and brighter for everyone.
Through this blog series, survivors share how connection transforms possibility into freedom. Their stories illuminate the pathways of support that help survivors move from crisis to stability — and show where we still need to build together.
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Finding Words — and Someone to Walk With Me
It took me a year and a half to realize that what I’d experienced was labor trafficking. Initially, I kept going through my memories, trying to understand what happened. It was hard to distinguish the lies my trafficker told me from what actually happened. And I was trying to process the psychological trauma of what I went through.
But the hardest part was not knowing how to communicate with my family and closest friends. I knew what I’d experienced was bad, but I didn’t have words to explain it. There’s such a big gap in what the public understands as human trafficking and what it actually looks like. People see a Hollywood movie with a van taking someone away, but that didn’t line up with my experience.
It also happened when I talked to people who were in positions to help me. Law enforcement does a lot of work in this space, but I didn’t have the right words — like grooming, manipulation, coercion — to describe what happened to me. I couldn’t communicate that I was trafficked. And they couldn’t comprehend my story or give me what I needed to move forward.
When I finally realized my experience fit the definition of labor trafficking, I felt angry, sad, and confused. The confusion continued as I tried to find resources for trafficking victims. I would search the internet, email an organization, and wait … and then hear nothing or get told to try somewhere else instead. It was so frustrating dealing with the uncertainty and rejection.
At last, I connected with a nonprofit that made space for me, one that wasn’t overwhelmed with caseloads — and I was so relieved. I finally felt visible. They understood what had happened to me and what I was going through. They listened to me, rather than dictating what I needed to do. And they helped me learn a whole new vocabulary, one that bridged the gap between struggling on my own and finding support.
Even if they didn’t always know the solution, they walked with me every step of the way until I got the care I needed — including waiting with me on the National Human Trafficking Hotline until I could connect with other local resources. They never said, “I can’t help you,” but instead, “Let’s figure it out together.” That approach made it possible for me to keep moving forward.
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Navigating the Complex Web of Credit Relief
One of the things we had to figure out was my finances. Things I was forced to do while I was trafficked had left me with tens of thousands in debt and a ruined credit score, which made finding housing and other resources difficult. Although I was starting way behind others my age, I figured I’d just have to focus and persevere through it.
When I started getting calls, emails, and letters from financial institutions demanding I pay down my debt, I called them and explained my situation. But they wouldn’t back down. Eventually, a major bank filed a lawsuit against me. Meanwhile, I couldn’t get help from anyone — not my state attorney general, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, pro bono law firms, or legal aid clinics. I didn’t know where else to turn, and it seemed no one understood my experience.
As I finally began getting trafficking-specific support, I learned about the Debt Bondage Repair Act (DBRA), a law passed in late 2021 to enable survivors to remove negative information resulting from trafficking from their credit reports. Even this process has required a lot of trial and error. When I first contacted the credit reporting bureaus about DBRA relief, they denied my request because I wasn’t officially certified as a victim of human trafficking.
Once again, the Hotline and the organization I was working with helped connect me to yet another agency that provided the required victim determination document letter. I reached back out to the credit reporting bureaus, and after months of back and forth, they accepted my state-certified victim determination documentation. My credit rebounded. Yet I still had to self-represent in court for nearly two years until the bank withdrew their lawsuit.
I feel so much mental relief not to be unfairly judged for poor credit. I can now obtain most credit cards and have a much easier time applying for housing. But the whole thing has been unnecessarily difficult — and I don’t know if it would have even been possible without the support I received. The process showed me how complicated it can be for survivors to access even the tools that already exist.
Seeing and Solving the Systemic Issue
I am just one person, and each survivor has a different story. But I have learned that the issue is not only about individual survivors accessing services. So many of us have been steamrolled by financial and legal systems. And so I have a responsibility to talk about my experience, to identify patterns, and to bring what I’ve learned to people in power — so that we can change these systems to better serve survivors.
After speaking to more than 70 law firms over the years, I’ve learned there is no state or federal law preventing financial institutions from pursuing debt that was incurred under duress during trafficking. Despite corporate statements about fighting modern slavery and protecting survivors, nothing prevents creditors from collecting or filing lawsuits against trafficking survivors. This only serves to punish survivors, while traffickers remain unpunished and free to victimize more people.
On top of that, many private law firms have conflicts of interest with these financial institutions, meaning they can’t take on survivors’ cases, while regulatory agencies refuse to help and many nonprofits aren’t equipped to deal with this scope of work. This lack of legal infrastructure enables predatory companies to take advantage of a very vulnerable group of people.
But that doesn’t have to be our future. I have been actively supporting advocacy efforts to pass legislation in New York that would protect abuse victims from being held liable for coerced debts. A bill addressing coerced debt has already passed the Assembly and Senate and is now before the Governor. My hope is that this law and others like it will protect survivors going forward — but what about those who have already been crushed?
It’s for those survivors that I speak up — so that they can find language for their experience and service providers who understand and walk with them. And I share so that we can all work together to change systems that punish victims of crime instead of helping us. Let’s make sure that no one has to navigate what I went through on their own.
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