Former WATCH intern now heads Minnesota’s Safe Harbor Program

 

First of two parts

In 2006, while attending William Mitchell College of Law, Lauren Ryan monitored cases of domestic violence and sexual assault as a volunteer for WATCH. That experience, she says, helped point her toward a career dedicated to serving victims of violence and exploitation. Today, Ryan directs the Safe Harbor/No Wrong Door program for the Minnesota Department of Human Services, leading the effort to steer Minnesota youth who engage in prostitution to supportive services. Since 2011, such youth have been viewed as victims and survivors, not criminals.

The WATCH Chronicle had a chance to sit down with Ryan and learn about the successes and challenges of Safe Harbor since it was fully launched in 2014.

Q: Was your time with WATCH your first experience seeing domestic violence play out in the courts?

A: Yes. As an undergraduate, I was a juvenile probation officer, and I worked for a juvenile drug court before law school. A lot of the kids I see now—the same population that is trafficked—were the kids I was seeing in drug court. But WATCH was my first experience working with domestic violence.

Q: Do you work mostly with service providers or does your work encompass areas beyond that?

A: One of my main focuses is the grant management of the providers across the state that receive funding to provide Safe Harbor services—making sure they’re supported. It’s also working with other state agencies, counties and tribes to make sure Safe Harbor is implemented. So there’s the decriminalization piece, then making sure there are supportive services and that they know what sexual exploitation is.

“If you pick up a youth at 3 a.m in a hotel room and they are totally resisting the help of services, forced intervention isn’t going to work.” 

Q: It’s been almost two years now since Safe Harbor fully went into effect. Do you feel that by now the mindset shift [of decriminalizing trafficked youth] has taken place and, if so, that the changes going forward will need to be more subtle?

A: That’s a good way to put it. The bright line of, okay, they cannot be arrested, is clear. The aftermath is not so much, especially when they’re involved in systems, whether it’s child protection or maybe they committed other crimes and are on probation.

Now [the question is], what’s the appropriate response? The use of detention and locked facilities is really a hot topic for this population. The appropriate roles for child protection and child welfare is another question, especially when the trafficker is a non-family or household member. Is it appropriate for child protection to come in and investigate when the perpetrator is a nonfamily member?  And then there’s law enforcement. What do they do when they find a youth in a hotel and maybe the shelters are full, or maybe they don’t have a shelter close to them?

Q: It sounds like there are so many considerations around trafficking.

A: Yes. I think it’s two philosophies colliding a lot for professionals. One is coming at it from a safety perspective. Obviously, child protection and law enforcement come from this perspective. It is their professional responsibility—they are ethically bound to protect this child—and in some instances they see that as protecting them from themselves, if that is the urge to run away and return to their trafficker that is potentially causing harm. So whatever they can do to stop that, whether it’s placing them in a locked facility or taking them to family members, that’s their approach.

The other approach, and most of this stems from homeless youth or domestic violence advocacy, is the notion of self-agency: We need to be there to provide voluntary services according to the goals and needs identified by the youth. And those are only going to be effective once the youth is ready to accept those services.

So if you pick up a youth at 3 a.m. in a hotel room and they are totally resisting the help of services—maybe they are in love with their trafficker—forced intervention isn’t going to work. So those are the two different philosophies that are trying to find a middle ground. And I think there’s validity to both.

Q: Is part of your job trying to find that middle ground?

A: Yes. I completely understand both perspectives and I don’t think the goal is to get one on the other’s side. It’s to bring people together at least to understand each other. There’s a purpose for each role; it’s all there to support the youth. It may be protection, it may be safety. It may be that they really need an advocate, to have a voice.