From one survivor to another, helping survivors of human trafficking escape and stay safe

Marjorie Saylor remembers a woman who was looking for help leaving her trafficker. The woman was pregnant and waiting for a bed at a shelter to open up, but she had to wait on the street, alone and in the cold. Her trafficker found her and took her with him.

"I never heard from her again. She only had a week left to go before her bed opened up, but the two weeks she toughed it out waiting on the street kept her in harm's reach," says Saylor, who is a survivor of human trafficking. "After that, I knew I could not go another day without addressing the emergency shelter crisis and formed The Well Path within the next month."

The Well Path is a nonprofit focused on preventing a return to a life of exploitation by providing emergency shelter to survivors of human trafficking, along with peer support groups, diversion programs, financial and educational support and other resources.

Saylor, 37, is the founder and CEO of North County-based The Well Path, overseeing the daily operations and personally meeting with each new client to provide one-on-one peer support "as I, too, am a survivor of exploitation, and I understand the need for mentorship and emotional support." She took some time to talk about her organization, her own story of escaping trafficking, and how others can be better allies to survivors.

Q: Tell us about The Well Path.

A: The Well Path, founded in July 2017, provides emergency shelter services to female survivors of commercial sexual exploitation and sex trafficking. Our purpose is to restore the lives of survivors by immediately removing them from the exploitative circumstances they find themselves in when they reach out for help. In order to prevent them from further vulnerabilities and abuse, we provide shelter, all other emergent needs, mentorship, peer support, and paths to physical, mental, spiritual, environmental, social and financial health. Our main goal is to ensure every need is met so that recidivism is no longer an option.

Q: Why was this something you wanted to start?

A: I saw a gap in services in San Diego to address the immediate shelter needs of our clients. The wait lists for long-term housing can be long, as there are very few beds specific to this population throughout the county. For example, a woman leaves her trafficker only to find that she is now forced to live on the street, as she has been isolated from all of the support systems she may have known before meeting her abuser. After searching for days for help, there is little to no availability for shelter and she realizes she may be better off with her abuser and goes right back to the exploitative situation, feeling hopeless.

Q: If you're comfortable sharing, do you mind telling your story of your personal experience as someone who was trafficked?

A: I ran away from home at 15 years old and, out of a need to survive, agreed to work for a shoe repair shop sewing 500 baseball bat hand-grips for barely any wage and was paid under the table, since I had no identification. This was my first of four jobs where I was labor trafficked.

By the time I was 21, I was deeply embedded in commercial sexual exploitation within the strip club industry as a waitress. I eventually started stripping to make ends meet, and was later sex trafficked through one of the clubs I ended up in, until a sex buyer tried to kill me. Escaping that situation, I decided to never go back. However, I was still vulnerable and ended up in labor trafficking and servitude again. This time, I could not leave. My family was threatened when I tried to escape the first time, so I stayed for over two years, and during that time, I became pregnant by my trafficker.

Q: What did it take for you to successfully escape that life, initially?

A: After my daughter was born in 2012, I started to grow desperate for a way out in order to protect her, but didn't know how. After nearly losing my life in 2013, this time in front of my 11-month-old baby girl, I determined to get us both out. It took me several days to escape, but I was finally able to, and I had my trafficker arrested and never looked back.

Q: And what did it take for you to stay out of that life, permanently?

A: Once I was free, I felt a deep responsibility to make my daughter's life better than mine had been. I needed to ensure that she would never suffer the way I had, so I started seeking help in churches, community resources, family, and eventually found other survivors who were leaders in their communities and their peer support helped me to grow in my own leadership abilities. I enrolled in school at Palomar College in 2014 and got an education studying psychology. By the time I graduated in 2017 with two associate's degrees and a certificate, I was already in leadership roles in my community, doing advocacy work and working directly with other survivors of trafficking.

Q: Why is housing the need you chose to focus on, first, as an organization? What happens when housing isn't addressed before other issues, when escaping trafficking?

A: We have very little housing available to survivors of sex trafficking in San Diego. Housing is the No. 1 need when escaping exploitation. If we don't have a safe place to lay our head, we are left vulnerable and defenseless when trying to reach self-sufficiency. Without the stability of a safe home to come to, none of the other issues or needs can be properly addressed, and we are left at risk of falling back into the arms of exploitation.

Q: What are some of the emergency exit strategies you offer that are helpful to those looking to escape trafficking and exploitation?

A: We offer immediate shelter, transportation, airfare and basic needs. Whatever the emergent need is to keep them off the street or keep them from being vulnerable to being at risk, we provide it. They might need shelter or they might need a plane ticket home, but no matter what the need is, we suit up, show up, provide the resources, and we stay connected with them. We follow up with them and help them again, if needed. We don't just assist and leave them to figure the rest out; we continue to be a resource for as long as they need us to be.

Q: What are some of the resources you provide that help your participants leave a life of exploitation?

A: We offer case management, access to therapy and attorneys, and that key component of peer support and mentorship.

Q: How can people be better allies and supporters to individuals who are being trafficked? What are some supportive and helpful things to ask/say? And what should definitely be avoided?

A: We need more housing, we need more funding, and we need people to stop stigmatizing the drug addict or prostitute on the corner as a lost cause, and begin to ask ourselves how they got there. We need more compassion for others. Recognize that not everyone who is being trafficked is aware that they are being exploited. Understand that our resilience is so much stronger than our trauma and that recovery can happen. Understand that recovery sometimes looks like going back out, again and again, until it finally sinks in.

We need more patience and open-door policies for past clients who we feel have failed or are helpless causes. We need more trauma-informed care. We also want to avoid calling a survivor a "victim." Most do not feel like victims, initially, or understand the level at which they have been victimized. The word "victim" is also harmful once someone has walked away from their abuse, as it is not empowering language. We are survivors, we are stronger than we know, and we are more than our stories. As advocates, we don't rescue anyone; survivors make the choice to get the help they need and let us assist them.

Q: What does your life as a survivor look like today?

A: Today, I am using the pain from my past to lead others out of exploitation, as well as fight for policy that will not further harm the population that I serve. I just got back from Washington, D.C., not too long ago, where I used my experience to testify against a bill that would jeopardize those still in exploitation. The bill will not move forward, and I am proud to be able to be in a position that allows me to create change on an even larger scale. Never in a million years would I have thought that I would be where I am now, free to make choices that impact the world around me. Not one bit of my experience has been wasted and I'm truly grateful, as I could not do this work without having gone through it. Mentally, I don't suffer as much; physically, I'm healthier than ever before; spiritually, I'm growing into the best me; financially, I'm in the best place yet of my life after starting all over again, and I can give back. It was all hard, slow work, and still a work in progress. I'll never stop reaching the best version of myself.

Q: What's been challenging about your work with The Well Path?

A: The biggest challenge is watching the struggle with each client as she or he fights their way through their own challenges, but it's so rewarding in the end, as you literally see the hope come back into their eyes, that life exists after trauma. Joy exists after trauma. It is so worth it to me.

Q: What has your work taught you about yourself?

A: I continue to grow and learn through it. I realize I'm stronger than even I know. The world is at my fingertips.

Q: What is the best advice you've ever received?

A: "The only wasted life is a life that's not poured out." I know, today, that if I do nothing with my past and my pain, my purpose is misguided. Today, I thrive because I give of myself to the benefit of others, no longer in an exploitive way, but a true choice to do so.

Q: What is one thing people would be surprised to find out about you?

A: I love writing self-reflection poetry. I love creativity and self-expression.

Q: Describe your ideal San Diego weekend.

A: My ideal San Diego weekend is being downtown, strolling between the massive buildings, enjoying the view of the oceanfront, good food, friends, and feeling alive with my community.

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