Our Mission & Strategy

 

In the summer of 2010, the Crisis Pregnancy Centers of Tucson, in partnership with Streetlight in Phoenix, launched a new ministry, Streetlight Tucson.  Working with local churches and like-minded organizations, Streetlight Tucson presents a hopeful solution to help eliminate child sexual exploitation, provide safe housing, and promote healing for the victims.  Those caught in sex slavery are in desperate need of God’s touch, mercy, and grace.

Our Vision:
Southern Arizona envisions a day when the sexual exploitation of children will not be tolerated in our communities. 

Our Mission:

  • Working with other local and national organizations, we will create a coalition of churches united with public and social sectors to bring an end to child sexual exploitation.
  • We will provide a safe home where victims of sexual exploitation can find the safety and protection they need to stabilize, heal, and move toward independence.

Our Strategy

  • Prevention & Awareness – develop a campaign to prevent sexual exploitation of children by educating parents and children in our churches and schools.

  • Prosecution & Enforcement – drive down the demand for child sexual exploitation by working with legislative bodies, law enforcement agencies, and the courts to enact stricter laws and enforce tougher penalties for those involved in child sexual exploitation—including the advertisers, the providers, and the users.

  • Protection & Restoration – provide a safe place where victims of child sexual exploitation can heal physically, emotionally and spiritually, continue their education, learn valuable life skills, and move toward fulfilling their God-given potential.

Remove any one of these elements and eradicating child sex slavery becomes impossible.

 

Prevention & Awareness
If all we do is provide a safe home for the girls, traffickers will simply recruit and seduce more of the readily available and naive victims.  Streetlight Tucson will continually research and report on child sex slavery, including in southern Arizona.  We will develop an education and prevention program that will equip teams to give presentations in local schools, youth groups, and civic organizations.  It is imperative that such educational efforts address:

 

Prosecution & Enforcement
Child sex trafficking is commercially driven by the law of supply and demand.  It’s all about money.  As a result, we must address the demand for child sexual abuse—the “johns”—and those who profit from the slavery—the pimps.  Until we as a community become serious about arresting and incarcerating these criminals, child sex trafficking will continue to flourish no matter how many safe homes are provided. 

 

Streetlight Tucson will not become directly involved in the rescuing of sex slaves or other victims of human trafficking.  That is the responsibility of various law enforcement agencies, which we will support through every possible means.  Our governments, law enforcement agencies, and courts are God’s servant, an avenger that brings wrath on the one who does wrong.  (Rom. 13:4)

 

Protection & Restoration
National leaders who are addressing sex trafficking of minors all agree that without safe homes for the victims we cannot effectively deal with child sex slavery.  The girls are incarcerated but not healed, causing many to return to their handlers.  The perpetrators are arrested but not convicted, because the girls will not testify. 

Today, however, there are less than 100 beds available in the U.S. for the 100,000+ children who have been lured or kidnapped into sex slavery.  When the Streetlight home in Phoenix opened in April of 2011, 30-40 additional beds were added.  But, we will need hundreds of Streetlights—which is not a problem for God.

Having few choices, law enforcement agencies process child sex slaves as criminals and place them in juvenile detention centers or jail.  Beyond the sexual abuse, these girls suffer from severe psychological, emotional and social trauma.  Once they are released and with nowhere else to go these victims often return to those to whom they have been traumatically bonded. 
According to the Los Angeles Times, "More than a month after the FBI said it had rescued 52 children from 'sexual slavery' in a nationwide crackdown on child prostitution, none of the victims is receiving the help experts say is necessary to overcome such trauma and rejoin society." (Joe Markman, "Child Prostitutes Get Little Help After Rescue,” Los Angeles Times.)  Rescue without restoration. 

The National Report on Domestic Minor Sex Trafficking concluded that:
The country-wide lack of protective shelter and specialized services is responsible for the re-victimization and criminalization of domestic minor sex trafficking victims. . . . The lack of such shelter across the nation is preventing first responders from succeeding in protecting and gaining justice for the victims of child sex trafficking.  (World Hope International, The National Report on Domestic Minor Sex Trafficking: America’s Prostituted Children, Arlington, VA: World Hope International, 2009, 67.)

 

 

Note:  Our mission statement and our operational plans are made with the full knowledge that, The Lord frustrates the plans of the nations and thwarts all their schemes.  But the Lord’s plans stand firm forever; his intentions can never be shaken.  Only if our plans reflect his plans and intentions will they succeed.  It is, therefore, our prayer that He may grant your heart’s desires and make all your plans succeed” (Ps. 33:10-11; 20:4).

 

 

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Sex trafficking in Tucson

Watch 12/11 video of Jerry Peyton on In Focus with Bob Lee
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314 "Johns" arrested in multi-state sting

 

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Dozens of children rescued in effort targeting prostituted children

 

 

Helping Stop Child Sex Slavery

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