Ever since financier Jeffrey Epstein was found dead in his Metropolitan Correctional Center jail cell on Saturday, Aug. 10, his harrowing story has been the main topic of conversation for every national news outlet. On July 6, the 66-year-old was arrested (and pleaded “not guilty”) for the sex trafficking of underage girls in New York, Florida and his property on Little St. James Island (widely known as “Pedophile Island”) from 2002-2005.
After Epstein’s apparent suicide, which contines to be investigated, his victims were left with one question – what now? While several are suing his estate, this doesn’t bring the same closure as watching Epstein serve a lengthy prison sentence. Many were as young as 14 at the time of the trafficking, and continue to suffer from the trauma experienced.
In order to better understand the current emotions of these women, The Times spoke with Penny Ettinger, executive director of the Network of Victim Assistance, who shared insight on why it takes victims years to speak up, and how human trafficking can happen anywhere…even in Bucks County.
“People are scared to come forward. You think about Epstein. Here’s this famous, extremely wealthy, opluent person, and girls who come from the way most of us live or less than that. They’re either threatened or told how much they’re loved, which as we know, is not the case. They’re trapped,” she said.
According to Ettigner, there’s safety in numbers. Just look at the #METOO movement, which saw individuals sharing their assault and abuse experiences on social media like wildfire after a handful of celebrities did so.
“Once one person has come forward, there’s an opportunity for someone else to come forward,” she said. “So now they finally have the voice to come forward and, once again, he’s not allowed them to have their moment in court. It can be devastating.”
Though high-profile cases like Epstein’s are the ones popularized by the media, Ettinger explained that his illegal actions can happen anywhere, whether we want to believe it or not.
“This isn’t just about the rich and famous. People think, ‘This is not about me.’ And for most of us, that’s probably so. We love our kids, we have fairly good connections with their social media, or at least we should have. We think we know everything they’re doing. But it can really happen to anyone,” Ettinger said. “While we don’t want to scare parents, there are a lot of risk factors right now. It’s easy to maybe not get lured into an Epstein case, but lured into some other coercive act.”
The Network of Victim Assistance (NOVA), which has locations in Fairless Hills, Perkasie and Jamison, serves approximately 4,000 local victims of crime each year, including those of human trafficking, sexual assault, homicide and fraud.
NOVA services include the SANE (sexual assault nurse examinor) program at Lower Bucks Hopsital and St. Mary Medical Center, which offers preventative healthcare and the collection of evidence; emergency room support; trauma-focused counseling; victim advocacy throughout the criminal justice system; drug and alcohol rehabilitation; housing; and community education, including the training of local law enforcement to know what signs to look for.
“A lot of times, they think of human trafficking as women being smuggled across the border. And that’s not what we see here,” said Fred Harran, Bensalem Township Police Department’s director of public safety. “We see women who fall prey into the wrong hands because they’ve run away, they have nowhere to go, they have extremely low self-esteem or they may have been abused.”
Many women, according to Harran, unwittingly become hooked on opioids. He described them as being like a “hamster in a wheel.”
“All they do is keep working for those opioids and they get so addicted to the drug, that that’s all they care about. They get stuck in this human trafficking environment and they can’t get out of it,” he said. “We do see it here. Being on top of Philadelphia, we see it in the lower end of the county. There are certainly venues that make it a little bit more convenient for human traffickers, some of the motels and hotels in the county.”
Though Harran said trafficking cases are expensive and difficult to work, the department does what it can. Officers have received training on how to recognize when a situation isn’t “traditional prostitution,” and help the women acknowledge that they are a victim of an illegal act.
When a woman is wrongfully arrested for prostitution, victim advocates at NOVA, including Stephanie Shantz-Stiver, accompany clients to court hearings and send referrals to get the charges exponged from their record.
“We always do our best to support them, whether something good happens or something bad happens,” she said. “Regardless of what the situation is, it’s never one and done.”
As a mother, Shantz-Stiver admitted she diligently monitors her young son’s iPad usage. But after witnessing horror stories on a daily basis at work, who can blame her?
“Social media is now where we’re seeing it with our children. These predators know how to find them. They’re going into the chats that they have in the game systems. They’ll go and pretend to be a kid,” she said, adding how this often leads to the sending of inappropriate photographs and in-person meetings. “Sorry, I’m going to be a protective parent with that.”
Shantz-Stiver stressed that while many trafficking cases can’t be prevented, they can be stopped in their tracks.
“If you come across someone who doesn’t know where they are, has no form of identification, they look like they’ve had no medical care, they’re malnourished,” she said. “If you see something or believe that something’s happening, say something. Don’t be afraid to report it. It’s happening here. It is happening in our own backyard.”
Visit NOVABucks.org for more information on the Network of Victim Assistance.
Samantha Bambino can be reached at [email protected]
