Leading the Fight Against Human Trafficking

Dr. Jeanne Allert is just one of the heroes in plainclothes, working tirelessly to raise awareness and address this crisis. While some discover their calling as children, others, like Dr. Allert, don’t realize it until later in life, after being deeply transformed by the stories and struggles of others.

A Life Forever Transformed

Dr. Allert had a successful business career prior to her work in ministry. She even had her own company. But she felt a certain restlessness in her life. After getting the opportunity to do street outreach with a church group in Maryland that had a ministry that worked with women on the streets of Baltimore who were involved in prostitution and dealing with drug addiction, she was forever changed.

“They asked me to join them, which I did completely unprepared for the fact that God was going to use that moment to wreck me and introduce me to a world that I had ignored. We go about our day, and we don’t pay attention to the people who sort of blend into the background—the people in the underbelly,” she recalled.

Through the experience, Dr. Allert met a young woman named Heather, who was heavily addicted. They sat and talked in a poverty-stricken area of the city, where she learned Heather had been sex trafficked as a 14-year-old girl by her mom’s boyfriend, who convinced her to run away with him and got her addicted.

“She was trafficked up and down the I-95 corridor for about four years until she was no longer of any use to him. He dropped her off on the streets of Baltimore and moved on. She was left to fend for herself. That just gave me such a holy rage, the fact that people were living this way, that this was happening in America, and that nobody I could find was doing anything about it. I sort of shook my fist at God and said somebody should do something. And, as that often goes, the answer’s usually you,” she stated.

Being a Light for Survivors

In 2007, a few years before the State Department even recognized human trafficking as an issue in the U.S., Dr. Allert made the life-changing decision to sell her company and home and purchase the Baltimore property that would become a sanctuary for women and girls who were human trafficking survivors.

Known as The Samaritan Women, the organization was the first long-term residential shelter that worked with local service providers in the Baltimore-Washington, D.C., area. At its height, it offered over 151 different types of services to survivors in a broad array of areas, including those dealing with legal issues like identification, expungement, and court proceedings.

Academics was another important area where the organization stepped up, with some survivors possessing only a third-grade education. Years of education were often lost to the streets, reflecting just one area of long-term impact for survivors.

In addition to the organization’s academic services, its vocational services helped support reintegration into society and provided new pathways to employment.

“If you imagine all of the services that go into somebody from about, let’s say, fifth grade through college, and you try to encapsulate all of those services that someone needs in about a two-year span of time—that’s what we had to do,” Dr. Allert recalled.

Over the next few years, Dr. Allert greatly expanded her operations and outreach. In 2018, she launched a new initiative, The Institute for Shelter Care, to provide support to more trafficking survivors with the vision that all survivors should have access to compassionate care. The Institute helps train the next generation of service providers and provides the valuable tools and knowledge needed to make a greater impact.

“We hope for the Christian response to this issue to simply be the de facto standard of excellence in the nation, and I think we certainly can become that. We want to make tools and resources available so that Christians who feel that call on their heart can move in with both heart and head into this work,” she stated.

While much progress has been made along the anti-trafficking front, there remains a crucial need for expanded services.

“We track all of the anti-trafficking services across the United States, whether they are faith-based or secular. We have over 30 shelters that will take male survivors now, and there are 70 programs that will take children. Most shelters won’t take families, especially ones with more than one child, though—that’s a much harder placement,” Dr. Allert stated, adding, “What we’re neglecting is the issue of betrayal, which is deeply spiritual and deeply relational, and it doesn’t have the same kind of pharmacological or clinical response. That betrayal lasts with them much longer than the physical abuse, the addiction, or any of the circumstantial issues. I would like to see us bring in more of that relational, spiritual part of healing.”

Dr. Allert earned a Ph.D. in Counseling and Psychological Studies in 2021. Her dissertation focused on familial trafficking, a lesser-known form of human trafficking in the U.S., but one that nonetheless makes up a significant percentage of trafficking in the nation. Her research explored the various gaps in residential quality for survivors and corrected misconceptions about the issue as a whole.

“Induction into trafficking by a family member is the second most common form here in the United States. It presents a kind of challenge because we’ve come to assume it’s a boogeyman situation, like the man hiding in the bushes. Most people aren’t aware how individuals, particularly minors, are getting groomed and then moved into commercial sex trafficking through family members,” she explained.

Spotlighting Anti-Trafficking Efforts at Regent

Regent offered her the chance to expand her knowledge and become better equipped to be an advocate.

“Regent was incredibly open and flexible with what I wanted to pursue and allowed me to in many ways curate my degree, because it is a very new space; hopefully, part of that helped open some new doors for others,” she said.

In addition to her role as the executive director at The Institute for Shelter Care, Dr. Allert is also an adjunct professor in the psychology department. Her hope is that more students interested in trauma will engage with the issue.

“I would like to sit on dissertation committees that are anti-trafficking in nature, but there haven’t been very many. We would love to not only help students discover what would be helpful research, but maybe there’s somebody who doesn’t know what they would want to pursue as a dissertation but is nonetheless passionate about this issue. I would be happy to have a conversation and help them figure out how their passions match up with what would really be relevant and applicable to the field,” she explained.

How can regular people get involved in anti-trafficking efforts?

“It really starts in the home,” Dr. Allert answered. “We would not have so many vulnerable children if they could have a more open and honest conversation with their parents about what they’re exposed to, what they see online, what’s happening on their phones, and who’s talking to them. In our homes, our marriages, and our churches, we can’t be expected to heal others unless we first work on ourselves. The adage proves true even today that just one healthy adult in the life of a child is an incredibly high resilience factor for that child. Being that safe teacher, coach, counselor, etc., makes a difference.

“The majority of anti-trafficking agencies are charities like ours, and so we are dependent on the public to want to endow our work. People who want to trade their labor and time should reach out to see what programs are available in their community and ask them what they need. Maybe it’s being a driver who takes survivors to appointments. Maybe it’s being a GED tutor. There are countless ways to help out.”

Next March, the Institute will be hosting a national conference for Christians who are involved in anti-trafficking efforts. Dr. Allert invites interested Regent students and faculty to attend. More information and updates can be found at https://exploitationconference.org/.

Learn how you can be an advocate and discover anti-trafficking resources in your state at https://instituteforsheltercare.org/resources-by-state/. 

For more information on anti-trafficking efforts here at Regent University and to learn about the new clinic providing legal assistance to help human trafficking survivors have their records expunged, visit https://globaljustice.regent.edu/