Every day women and children are bought and sold in a human market of insatiable demand. Human sex trafficking is the fastest growing business in America, and around the world, but the Wellhouse, Inc. is rescuing those women and children and restoring them to families.
Robertson School of Government Professor James D. Slack serves on the executive board of the Wellhouse, Inc., and has watched its development. The Wellhouse is a faith-based NPO located in Birmingham, AL. It is dedicated to ministering to women who are victims of human trafficking. Started by one of Dr. Slack’s MPA students when he taught at UAB, Tajuan McCarty, the concept of the Wellhouse and business plan was her culminating MPA project in 2010. God worked miracles on several fronts, and Tajuan’s story is the impetus for it all.
As a prostitute, a lesbian, a cocaine addict, being sexually exploited for years, and kidnapped 2 times, held captive, raped and tortured repeatedly, Tajuan was quite angry when she finally escaped. She tried to pull her life together and entered the MPA program the next year, but got back into drugs and was re-incarcerated at Tutwiler Prison in Alabama.
Tajuan found Christ when she walked into The Birmingham Dream Center and met Lisa "Roxanne" Holifield. She left prison with no hope of a better life. People like Dr. Slack and Lisa "Roxanne" Holifield from WDJC's Morning Radio show in Birmingham began to show her what following Christ looked like. Dr. Slack shared that her culminating project to restore victims of human sex trafficking was not well received at UAB and it was a struggle getting it approved and accepted by a faculty committee.
Within a year of graduation, however, amazing things happened. God opened up miraculous doors, and Tajuan established The Wellhouse, a house for women rescued for trafficking. Corporations volunteer to use their private jets to fly women into Birmingham to stay at The Wellhouse. CNN has told Tajuan McCarty’s story, and NBC is interested in running a story about The Wellhouse ministry.
Watch this video and learn more about how God is working in this ministry, at http://youtu.be/zqCEni99JQ8. Everything for this short video was volunteered, including the actors and the corporate jet.
For more information contact Tajuan McCarty, Executive Director, The WellHouse, at 1-800-991-0948, P.O. Box 320796, Birmingham, Alabama 35232, email info@the-wellhouse.org, or volunteer@the-wellhouse.org, on the web at www.the-wellhouse.org, on FaceBook at www.facebook.com/thewellhousesaves, on Twitter at @the_wellhouse, or on YouTube at thewellhousesaves.
Women and children are being victimized by human sex trafficking at an alarming rate, but ministries like The Wellhouse work to restore them to their families.
Working with the Center for Global Justice: 3L Reflections
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By Anne Darby Keating 3L Reflections Working with the Center of Global
Justice during my time at Regent University School of Law has been such a
blessing...
These lines stood out to me instantly: "Tajuan found Christ when she walked into The Birmingham Dream Center and met Lisa "Roxanne" Holifield. She left prison with no hope of a better life. People like Dr. Slack and Lisa "Roxanne" Holifield from WDJC's Morning Radio show in Birmingham began to show her what following Christ looked like." Wow, this is what redemption looks like. Let's walk through this statement. First, People should be able to walk into our churches and homes and say "I found Christ there". Sadly, that is often not the result of encounters with Christians. It makes me sad when I sit in church and realize that someone like her, "with no hope of a better life", would feel unwelcomed and out of place. Yet, this woman and doctor "began to show her what following Christ looked like." They didn't tell her, but they showed her. This is an example of the approach we need to take with others. The Wellhouse sounds like a place that provides specialized attention and care for victims of this crime. These organizations are desperately needed in order to address the crime of human trafficking. Hopefully our communities will continue to welcome these efforts and not oppose them just because they are uncomfortable with the issue. Here is an article to highlight this struggle in one community: http://www.charlotteobserver.com/2013/08/30/4264760/plan-to-help-ex-hookers-draws.html#.Uiv1GozD85t
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