Thursday, April 17, 2025
The Barbara H. Hagan School of Nursing at Molloy University held a Spot the Signs, Save A Life human trafficking awareness event to educate nursing students, healthcare professionals and the broader community.
The March 6 event had two sessions with seven speakers to raise awareness on trafficking, a global problem that affects millions of people each year. Healthcare professionals, policymakers and trafficking survivors spoke to the audience about ways to notice the signs of people being trafficked and what to do to stop it.
Francine Bono-Neri, co-founder and president of Nurses United Against Human Trafficking, gave an in-depth presentation on what human trafficking is and the signs for healthcare professionals to look out for. With nearly 33 years of experience as a nurse, Bono-Neri aims to equip and empower medical personnel to identify and respond to victims of trafficking.
“Human trafficking is a humanitarian crisis, it is a public health crisis,” she said during her presentation. “This is global, but we are going to really pull in the reins and focus on what’s happening here domestically.”
Human trafficking is the compelling of a person, through “heinous means,” to engage in physical acts or labor services, she explained. The prevalence, Bono-Neri said, is much greater than people realize.
“Right now, we could go online,” she said, “and order labor or sex as easily as we order pizza from Domino’s.”
Anyone can become a victim, but some common vulnerabilities include being runaway or homeless, part of the foster system, a victim of abuse or trauma, or coming from a low-income situation. Bono-Neri also emphasized that social media is the “new domain” that traffickers use to access and victimize youth.
“You can lock your doors, you can lock your windows,” she said. “You give a child a device, and you’re letting that predator in.”
Participants were urged to familiarize themselves with the various forms of trafficking. Healthcare professionals, Bono-Neri said, have a unique opportunity to identify and assist people who may not even recognize that they are being trafficked.
Some signs to look for in patients that were pointed out during the presentation were distinctive tattoos used as “branding,” lack of eye contact or social interaction, fear of law enforcement or other professionals knowing their situation and signs of physical abuse. Other indications are the patients do not possess their own identification documents, staying close to the person who brought them and being monitored at all times and lying about age, profession or other personal details.
As NUAHT continues its mission, Bono-Neri pushed the healthcare professionals in the audience to stay vigilant, learn to identify signs of trafficking and act when necessary. She encouraged people to pay attention to their intuition and look out for a “gut punch” that something isn’t right.
“If you get that gut punch, it is better for you to go forward and escalate and be wrong than to have not said anything when in fact you were right,” she said.
Jessica Lamb and Alina Donahue, two trafficking survivors, also gave presentations about their personal experiences to shed more light into how someone can become trafficked and what different situations look like.
Lamb grew up in a toxic home in Georgia, where she was the scapegoat of her family and suffered from severely low self-esteem. She was abused by a family friend that lived with them, causing her to regularly sneak out and eventually get kicked out of her house.
Lamb eventually ended up living with her grandmother, whose help she greatly appreciated.
“She taught me basically how to do everything,” she said. “She taught me how to cook, she took me to counseling, to get therapy, all of those things. But I still was dealing with a great deal of trauma.”
Lamb ended up living in and out of her car, and during this time, she reached out to an ad she saw in the back of Creative Loafing magazine. She received a response and drove out to South Atlanta, thinking this would change her life for the better. However, it was the start of her trafficking story.
“There was no romancing, no boyfriending, in my situation, and he was very direct with what he expected of me,” she said. “I was with him for several months until I was able to get away with the help of the Salvation Army.”
Lamb started Atlanta Redemption Ink in 2017, which is a nonprofit organization that covers tattoos, drug marks and self-inflicted wounds to help survivors move past their exploitation. It stemmed from her need to have her own tattoo covered up after she was able to leave her situation.
She is now a keynote speaker and advocate for other survivors, having over eight years of advocacy experience and 10 years in the anti-trafficking field.
Donahue, another survivor, came from a “perfect, happy home” in Naples, Florida. Her trafficker was her boyfriend, who she said was charming and handsome from the beginning, so she never expected it to happen. He trafficked her for eight months.
During that time, he also forced her to commit small crimes, like buying products with stolen credit cards, as a way to avoid being trafficked for the day. For her crimes, she spent a year in jail, but she was able to get them wiped from her record after proving that she was forced to do them.
For a long time, Donahue said, she didn’t see herself as a victim of trafficking, only as someone who was overcoming a difficult situation.
“Very often, most often than not, victims do not relate as victims,” she said.
Now, Donahue trains law enforcement throughout the country on topics like forced criminality, which she went through, and works to combat trafficking.
“I’m here in front of you today, but imagine all those girls that don’t have the opportunity, and some may never,” she said.
