Do you care about children?
Then I ask you: What could be more life altering than living through the trauma of having your sexuality, your sexual intimacy, your sexual privacy traded, bought or sold? What could be more dehumanizing than walking through the world experiencing this and thinking that no one sees you, no one cares enough to try to stop sexual harm from happening to you?
Children in the upper Midwest are living in this reality. We encounter these children in our healthcare facilities. They are being traded, bought and sold. According to the office of the Minnesota Attorney General:
Minneapolis is one of the top locations in the U.S. for child sex trafficking. A six-month study by local prosecutors found over 34,000 advertisements posted online for sex in the Twin Cities. But sex trafficking is not just a Twin Cities problem. Trafficking affects people from all parts of Minnesota. An online sting in southwest Minnesota led to the arrest of 48 individuals. One 16-year-old who was trafficked in northern Minnesota stated that she was exploited on average by five men every day―which means that she was exploited over 1,800 times in a year.
Studies also show that The Twin Cities has the 13th highest rate of child prostitution in the United States.
The perpetrators of this evil must be stopped. You can become part of the solution to help these children. MNA is pleased to work with Support Within Reach, a sexual violence resource center in Northwest Minnesota, to present a free online class that gives you the weapons to meaningfully engage in this fight to save children from exploitation and trafficking.
WHAT: Identifying and Responding to Signs of Sexual Exploitation: A Training for Nurses
Nurses can play an important role in identifying signs of sex trafficking or exploitation and connecting their patients to resources that can help them recover. This presentation will empower nurses in any specialty or area of healthcare to respond if they encounter a patient who may be the victim of sexual exploitation. (1.5 contact hours)
WHEN: Monday, May 16, 2022, 4–5:30 p.m.
WHERE: Online
REGISTER: https://mnnurses.org/events/?eventID=3204
Will you take the time to equip your yourself with knowledge to start seeing these children being tragically harmed by sexual violence and help stop the tidal wave of human trafficking that is trying to drown our children? Will you make this investment in the future of our world? We as nurses can revolutionize this fight when we come together against this wrong. Thank you for being a nurse and please take this step and sign up here: https://mnnurses.org/events/?eventID=3204
–Wendy Wahl, Sanford Health Thief River Falls, Director, MNA Board of Directors