April 2008 Update

April was a solid month of effective ministry for JSASSN.

Sexual assault prevention & redemption: This month, I met with Anne Ream, who works with the Voices and Faces Project. The project is compiling a national archive of testimonies by sexual assault survivors (on the model of the Holocaust Museum). I completed the Voices and Faces project survey online and so shared my story in hopes of helping others.

As a result of Anne’s visit to the Wheaton College campus, I was able to learn about Gabe’s story (below) and his work with Men Against Sexual and Interpersonal Violence (MASIV) on the Northern Illinois University campus. I looked for more organizations and resources specifically for male survivors of sexual assault and found the organization MaleSurvivor as well as Mark Lew’s book, Victims No Longer: The Classic Guide for Men Recovering from Sexual Child Abuse. Because 1 in 6 men are sexually assaulted, it is essential to reach men with resources for recovery.

In addition, I was able to meet with another recent survivor of sexual assault, listen to her story, and encourage her in her recovery process.

Sex trafficking intervention: I met with Wheaton College students, Sarah and Michelle, who are going to Ghana, West Africa through the Office of Christian Outreach Student Missionary Project (SMP) to serve as interns with the IN Network. The IN Network specifically works to free and rehabilitate the trokosi, women and girls who have been turned over by their families to village priests as slaves to pay for the crimes of their ancestors. I will meet Sarah and Michelle in Ghana at the end of May. Thanks to the Wheaton College Alumni Association Faculty Missionary Fund, the costs of my trip are covered.

I also made an initial report to the International Justice Mission (IJM) regarding the sex trafficking situation in Moldova, Eastern Europe. Although IJM does not work in Eastern Europe currently, IJM did supply me with referrals to other legal agencies that do. I hope to follow up on these referrals in the next two months in order to get help to the 70% of orphan girls who are being trafficked by the mafia each year.

Raising Awareness through Online Networking: This month, I joined the Wheaton IL Network on Facebook, a social utility designed to connect people online. Through Facebook, I started a cause called “Stop Sex Trafficking.” Thus far, more than a dozen friends have joined the cause. I linked the JSASSN International site to my Facebook profile in two places: my blog roll and my contact website in my information box. As a result, the JSASSN site experienced a jump in the number of visitors viewing the site, with most attention going to “Jane’s Story” and “About JSASSN.”

I also added two Compassion International boxes to my Facebook profile: a cause and an opportunity box, the latter of which a viewer can click to begin the process of sponsoring a child. I am an advocate for Compassion International, a Christian ministry that seeks to “free children from poverty in Jesus’ name.” Children in poverty are a group especially at risk of being abused and trafficked. Compassion, by connecting sponsors to children in need, in effect acts to help prevent the abuse and trafficking of children.

Finally, I updated JSASSN International’s site, adding pages on “Ministry” and expanding the page on “Myths, Facts, Statistics” with information on sexual assault from the Voices and Faces Project and information pertaining specifically to sexual assault of men and boys from MaleSurvivor.

I hope these resources will continue to strengthen others as they heal.

Dr. Jane Beal
JSASSN International

PRAY for Anne Ream and the Voices and Faces Project; for Michelle and Sarah, the IN Network, the trokosi and those women and girls who have been set free; for my upcoming trip to Ghana; for international legal intervention in Moldova that will stop the sex trafficking of women and girl in and outside of the country; for more committed Christians to join the “Stop Sex Trafficking” cause and to sponsor a child in poverty through Compassion International.

Gabe’s Story

One is six men is sexually assaulted in his life-time. Yet there are few ministries or organizations that specifically address the needs of male sexual assault survivors. One man, Gabe, has told his story and started an organization, Men Against Sexual Interpersonal Violence (MASIV), in response to this need.

I learned about Gabe through the Voices and Faces Project, and I am both amazed and thankful for his courage. His story, available on the Voices and Faces Project website, is reproduced here:

Like most men, Gabe never thought of rape as something that could happen to him. He didn’t think much about rape at all. He was 22 years old when that changed. “My then-wife and I got into an argument one night, and I left the house and drove to my favorite fishing hole to clear my head and think things over.” Once there, three men approached Gabe. “We struck up a typical ‘guy-type’ conversation. These were just guys on a fishing trip, like me, and I didn’t think anything was unusual about them until one of them pointed a gun at me. They beat me and raped me, and after that my whole life was different.”

Despite our stereotypical ideas of who is likely to be a rape victim, advocates estimate that one out of every six men will endure some form of sexual assault. But Gabe, who is partially deaf, may have been especially at risk. Rapists prey on vulnerability: a trusting child, someone walking alone, a college student who has been drinking, and the elderly.

Disabled persons are particularly vulnerable, and advocates estimate that up to 85% of the physically, emotionally or developmentally challenged have been victims. It is a staggering number, made all the more troubling when we consider the barriers to healing that exist for those who might find it difficult (literally) to speak up and get the help that they need.

After his rape, Gabe was left with bruises and broken ribs – but his greatest burden was his memory of the rape, which he carried in silence. “I just never talked about it. For six years I did not tell anyone what had happened to me. No one. I struggled mentally for a long time and I let my friends and family think that I was ‘just a messed up guy’,” says Gabe. “I had never heard a man talk about rape, and I just felt I was completely alone. But since I have come out with it, everyone understands what was ‘wrong’ with me all these years. I finally feel understood.”

Speaking out to those he trusted gave Gabe a sense of hope, and new purpose. At Northern Illinois University, he started a group called MASIV – Men Against Sexual Interpersonal Violence. The group involves men in education, advocacy, and community outreach. “We are talking about the issue of rape and what it means for men and women,” says Gabe, “Supporting both male and female victims is important. Finding a place like The Voices and Faces Project, where my story as a man mattered, made a difference for me, too. I have a way to share my story that will help others. Now I feel like things are changing, and that I am changing things.”

PRAY for Gabe and for the work of MASIV.

The Voices and Faces Project

In the third week of April, Wheaton College held “Voices” week, “a time to remember those who have no voice and pray for the marginalized grops of the world by hearing the stories of often-unheard voices.”

On Thursday evening of that week, Anne Ream, a rape survivor and key participant in the Voices and Faces Project, came to the campus to speak in a forum called “From the Inside: What We Can Learn From Rape Survivors.” I met Anne and learned from her.

What is the purpose of the Voices and Faces Project?

According to the Voices and Faces Project website, “The mission is to create a national network of survivors willing to stand up and speak out about sexual violence … The belief is that to stop rape we need to start talking and … the initiatives are political, cultural, and creative.”

What does the project accomplish?

The project specifically invites sexual assault survivors to complete its survey, which can be accessed, downloaded, and returned online.

The survey is helping to build a permanent archive of survivor stories as well as give shape to presentations, books, and photographic exhibits intended to help survivors, raise community awareness, and influence the creation of laws and policies pertaining to sexual violence. The survey helps to make visible the otherwise often invisible trauma of sexual assault.

I completed the survey this week, and I believe it would be very worthwhile for other assault survivors to complete it as well.

PRAY for Anne Ream and the extraordinary work of the Voices and Faces Project.

March 2008 Update

March has been an amazing month for JSASSN.

At Wheaton College, I conversed with the Director of Christian Outreach, Brian Medaglia, who was looking for a professor to visit students participating in SMP (Student Missions Project). Four students are going to work with organizations that minister to women who have been abused in the sex trade. Two are working with ServantWorks in Thailand and two are working with IN Network in Ghana, West Africa. In May and June of this year, I will be going to Ghana, West Africa to visit the latter two students and work with the vocational training program run by the Rev. Walter Pimpong and his wife, Marion, to help women and girls formerly known as “trokosi” (”slaves of the gods” or “fetish slaves”).

These women, who have now been set free, were originally given by their familes in sexual slavery to village priests to pay for the crimes of their ancestors.

While in Ghana, I hope to offer support to the Wheaton College student interns working with IN Network, evaluate the strengths of internship site for the college and for future SMP students, and participate in some of the work of the IN Network. This work includes negotiating with village priests to set the women free, sharing the gospel, and meeting the physical, spiritual, educational, vocational, and communal needs of the freed women and girls thereafter. Wherever I can contribute, in the short two weeks I have in Ghana, I hope to do so.

For me, this will be a return trip to Ghana, where my dear friend, Kate Tetteh, her husband Theophilus, my three goddaughters, and the extended Tetteh family, my African family, all live. I am full of a sense of anticipation about what God will do at the beginning of this summer! Please pray for this work.

Dr. Jane Beal
JSASSN International

PRAY for the trokosi and SMP.

Sex Trafficking in Kolkata, India

India is one of the most culturally rich continents in the world. Thousands of languages are spoken there. Architectural, literary, and religious traditions all flourish there.

It has long been my dream to go to India.

Though I have known of the problems with prostitution in India, their severity was recently brought into sharp relief for me as I spoke with my dear friend, Michelle, who has served as a missionary with Free-Set Bags in Kokata, India.

Did you know that in Kolkata there are brothels filled, not just with adult women or teenagers, but with pre-pubescent children ages 7 to 10 who are raped and sexually assaulted daily by brothel clients?

I had not realized there were brothels specifically full of children in India. I was appalled that there were brothel owners who could think to appeal to a market of pedophiles. I was even more devastated as I thought that a sufficiently large market of such clients exists to make such a “business” not only sustainable, but profitable.

How can this be?

The daughters and sons of prostitutes are particularly at risk of being exploited and prostituted. The film, “Born into Brothels,” which originally aimed to work as a documentary to educate people about the problem, actually worked like an advertisement–tripling the international clientele of Kolkata brothels within three months of its release.

PRAY for the end of sexual slavery in India. Pray for the deliverance of children from every brothel. Pray for the love of Jesus and the power of the Holy Spirit to save, to heal, and to redeem every person who has been sexually assaulted in Calcutta today.

February 2008 Update

In February, I have seen some powerful, new connections formed between JSASSN and other Christian ministries seeking to stop sex trafficking world-wide.

First, I met Rikki from Emmaus Ministries during Missions in Focus week at Wheaton College. Emmaus provides the gospel and seeks to meet the practical needs of male prostitutes as they transition off the streets of Chicago into a better life. I was so glad to learn of a ministry that is serving men! Men make up 20% of the trafficked population in the world, as I understand from the International Justice Mission, but most of the Christian ministries I know of focus on victimized women and children. But the need is greater than one gender or generation.

At the same Missions in Focus center where I met Rikki, I also met up with my friend Shuree Rivera. In talking with her, I learned she works with Remember Nhu, an organization to help children get out of trafficked situations in Thailand. Remember Nhu is now looking to expand its ministry to South Africa. Interestingly, in talking with another Christian sister, Taroh Saenz, after church one night, I learned of Straatwerk, which is also seeking to prevent the trafficking of children in South Africa.

Perhaps most significantly, I met to talk and pray with my good friend, Michelle McDonald, who has served as a missionary with Free-Set Bags in Calcutta, India. Free-Set is a “business-as-mission” ministry that provides women previously trapped in prostitution with work-with-dignity that can support them and their children. Michelle is going to help me create a more effective website for JSASSN (hallelujah!), and we are partnering in future ministry plans. (Thank you, God!)

I’m also working on a short book called Stop Sex Trafficking, which will be an e-book that can be down-loaded from the new site for free. I am praying that God will use this little book to raise awareness in the Christian Church about the problem of sexual slavery world-wide. It is my hope that more Christian soldiers will hear the call of our Captain, Jesus, to wage spiritual warfare against the powers of this darkness through prayer and active ministry to those trapped in the trafficking industry.

Dr. Jane Beal
JSASSN International

Emmaus Ministries

Last week, Wheaton College celebrated “Missions in Focus.” Christian outreach organizations set up in the Beamer Center to let students know about opportunities to serve. I visited the ministry tables and met Rikki from Emmaus Ministries.

Emmaus Ministries is “an outreach of hope and redemption for young men in the inner city who are trapped by male street prostitution, generational poverty, homelessness, drug addiction, and HIV/AIDS.”

Rikki gave me a couple of DVDs with the stories of some of those men. This weekend, I watched them. The story of one young man stays in my memory.

He grew up with a violent alcoholic for a father. Sometimes that father would get arrested for beating his kids so badly. But he would always get out of jail within a few days and come back.

When he came home, he always gave money to his wife to give to the kid who had been beaten the worst, often this young man. “Maybe it was his way of apologizing,” he said. The violence never stopped–nor did the cash “apologies.”

This set up a wierd dynamic in the young man’s experience. He would get beaten, and then he would get paid. So when he ended up living on the street in Chicago after he left home, it wasn’t so difficult to transition to prostitution.

“You get used to it,” he said.

No one should ever have to get used to chronic physical abuse and assault.

Where there has been no prevention of such violence, where the intervention of the criminal justice system has failed repeatedly, there must be a new kind if ministry that offers redemption through the the love of Christ.

Emmaus Ministries does this through street outreach, a drop-in ministry center, and a rehabilitation house. Their ministry meets the real physical, spiritual, and emotional needs of men on Chicago’s streets. I thank God they exist.

PRAY for Emmaus Ministries. I asked Rikki what they needed prayer for, and she said: 1) that men on the street would not freeze from the cold during this winter season and 2) that men would be open to receiving Jesus as they study the Bible together. She mentioned other things I cannot remember, so pray as the Holy Spirit directs!

Praying for Rapists

On Superbowl Sunday, I was with friends, and I picked up one of their magazines, “O,” to read during the commercials. In Oprah’s magazine was a testimony written by Beverly Donofrio, an American writer living in San Miguel de Allende, Mexico. She was raped by a serial rapist living in her town on 23 July 2006. When the attacker entered her home, she did not talk with him, as he wanted her to do, but started praying the “Our Father” and the “Hail Mary” in Spanish. When the rapist asked her why she was praying, she said, “I am praying for you.”

The man left her home after one assault instead of the several he had perpetrated against four other women in the town.

When Beverly Donofrio made her story known, many others began praying. She wrote that fear would titillate the rapist and resistance would infuriate him, but prayer made him leave her house. Within five days of her story being published in her town, the rapist was caught.

As I read this story, I was reminded of the power of God to answer prayer. JSASSN International is first and foremost a prayer ministry, and Beverly’s story is just one more reason why it should be. God’s power to answer prayer is why I began praying last night when I came home and found a “Sex Offender Notification” had been mailed to me from the DuPage County Sherrif’s Office.

A convicted sex offender has moved into my neighborhood. His name is Ross J. Scanio, and he has been found guilty of aggravated criminal sexual abuse against his family. He is a Caucasian, six feet tall, weighing approximately 280 pounds, with brown eyes and gray hair. By law, he is required to notify the Sheriff’s Office when he moves into a new neighborhood, and by law, the Sherrif’s Office must notify those living nearby so that they can take precautions to protect themselves and their children.

When I looked at the picture of this man’s face on the “Sex Offender Notification” mailing, I thought about how sad he looked. I thought about how this man would not be welcomed here like other neighbors. Who would go over to his house and offer him a meal or an invitation to come to church or just friendship? I thought about all the small children in my neighborhood under the age of ten. I thought about how their parents might feel getting this mailing: afraid. But fear doesn’t deserve to have power over anyone. God is the One with the real power.

So this is my prayer: Heavenly Father, You in your sovereignty know everything. I pray that You would bring your salvation, your redemption, and your heart-healing power into the life of Ross Scanio. God, I pray for his family, that You would heal them completely. I pray for my neighbors and their children, that You would take away their fear, cause them to put their trust in You, and protect them from all harm. I thank You for your promise in your word that no weapon formed against us will prosper. God, I thank You for your might and your power to redeem that is working, even now, in ways that we do not understand. AMEN.

January 2008 Update

January 2008 has been a good month for JSASSN International.

I launched the JSASSN website, connected with several prayer partners in the western and central regions of the United States, and most importantly, had three major conversations with adult survivors of childhood sexual abuse about their past experiences. I continue to pray for these three women that God will heal them completely and strengthen them in their innermost being.

I also had a significant conversation with Mark Labberton, author of The Dangerous Act of Worship and senior fellow with the International Justice Mission. I learned that there is an IJM chapter on the Wheaton College campus that meets on Thursdays at 7pm to pray at the Brown House. I also began a conversation with a woman from my church, Church of the Savior, who works for the state of Illinois in sex trafficking prevention efforts.

JSASSN’s existence is starting to become known among my friends, relatives, and colleagues and, of course, to people on the web. I am praying that God will build the ministry with a strong foundation so that, as the walls go up, they will stand.

Dr. Jane Beal
JSASSN International

Elisabeth’s Story

Last weekend, I read Mark Labberton’s book, The Dangerous Act of Worship. Mark argues that the church is asleep to the problems of injustice in the world, such as sex trafficking, and needs to wake up. Mark tells the story of Elisabeth, a young Christian girl in a Southeast Asian country who was kidnapped, trafficked, and sold to a brothel. Over the bed where she was repeatedly raped and assaulted, she wrote verses from Psalm 27, the whole of which reads:

“The LORD is my light and my salvation; whom shall I fear?
The Lord is the stronghold of my life; of whom shall I be afraid?

When evildoers assail me to eat up my flesh,
my adversaries and foes, it is they who stumble and fall.
Though an army encamp against me, my heart shall not fear;
though war arise against me, yet will I be confident.

One thing have I asked of the LORD, that will I seek after:
that I may dwell in the house of the LORD all the days of my life,
to gaze upon the beauty of the LORD and to inquire in his temple.

For he will hide me in his shelter in the day of trouble;
he will conceal me under the cover of his tent;
he will lift me high upon a rock.

And now my head shall be lifted up above my enemies all around me;
and I will offer in his tent sacrifices with shouts of joy;
I will sing and make melody to the LORD.

You have said, “Seek my face.” My heart says to you,
“Your face, LORD, do I seek.” Hide not your face from me.
Turn not your servant away in anger,
O you who have been my help.

Cast me not off; forsake me not, O God of my salvation!
For my father and my mother have forsaken me,
but the LORD will take me in.

Teach me your way, O LORD,
and lead me on a level path because of my enemies.
Give me not up to the will of my adversaries
for false witnesses have risen against me,
and they breathe out violence.

I believe that I shall look upon the goodness of the LORD
in the land of the living!

Wait for the LORD; be strong,
and let your heart take courage:
wait for the LORD.”

Psalm 27 took on a new depth of meaning when I read it thinking about Elisabeth. I thought: If she can trust in God, I can trust in God.

Mark goes on to describe how Elisabeth and others who had been trafficked into this brothel were rescued through the intervention efforts of members of the International Justice Mission. I praise God for their deliverance.

PRAY: Please pray for Elisabeth, for men, women, and children who have been trafficked, and for those who have been delievered and are now in recovery. Pray for the International Justice Mission, a Christian ministry that pursues justice for those who have been trafficked and sold into sexual slavery.