The Importance of Disability Awareness for Change

This image shows a meter from Low, Moderate, High, Maximum measuring the level of awareness. The red dial is on maximum awareness.
This image shows a meter measuring the level of awareness from low, moderate, high, to maximum. The red dial appears to be moving quickly on maximum awareness.

March is disability awareness month in Indiana and Indiana Disability Justice realizes that awareness is a great first step to improve the lives of people with disabilities. Awareness is important because we need to acknowledge ableism and the discrimination that people with disabilities face so that we can reduce and eliminate them. The awareness that people with disabilities are just as human as anyone else is necessary in order to fully include people into our society, communities, workplaces, neighborhoods, and peer groups. Even though we need more than awareness, awareness is a factor in ending violence against people with disabilities. With all this in mind, IDJ will be publishing different kinds of artistic pieces that showcases the perspectives of disabled people. Some of these pieces will relate directly to disabilities. However, some of them will not have anything to do with disability. This is because some of our artists want to remind us that they are more than their disabilities. Please visit us often to grow your perspective!

Post credit: Jody Powers, IDJ Hub Coordinator and IDJ Leadership Action Team member and Cierra Olivia Thomas Williams, IDJ Co-Leader and IDJ Leadership Action Team member

I Met My Trafficker in High School

I met my trafficker in high school. He was in the grade above mine. He lured me out of high school with promises of a good life, assuring me I could just get my GED and become successful. He started advertising me online, without my knowledge, and that’s when men started coming to our apartment to rape me. I didn’t know I was being trafficked, prostituted, then.

When I ask people how they picture human trafficking happening they often compare it to the movie Taken—a young lady vacationing in Paris, being kidnapped and sold by her captors. While it can happen that way, here in America domestic trafficking looks much different. Less than 10% are kidnapped. Traffickers often lure their victims by gaining their trust, posing as a boyfriend, and offering their victims false promises.

A couple of years ago I drove by a house here locally in Marysville, and there were obvious signs of trafficking going on. So I called 911 and said I suspected trafficking going on in the house. When the officer arrived, he said, “Yes we are investigating. This guy is on parole for trafficking girls in the Bay Area.” I wasn’t so surprised that it was happening or that the police were on to it. What frustrated me was watching all the people walking past that house who had no idea even what the signs of trafficking were.

There were people during my exploitation that could have seen signs I was being trafficked. The owner of the clothing boutique I worked in then would often ask me if I was ok. But my trafficker parked his car in front of the store and watched me, to make sure I wasn’t telling anyone, so I always said “yes.”

My trafficker separated me from my family and support system. Separating a woman/girl from her support systems is a common move for traffickers. It helps them to gain control of you. My trafficker married me. I felt stuck.

When I survived it 13 years ago I had no idea that I was a victim of human trafficking. I was headed to play college volleyball. I lived in what was said to be one of the safest communities in Southern California at the time. It wasn’t like what you see in the movies. And I was never educated on trafficking in my small, private high school.

If I had been educated, not only could it have been prevented but I would’ve been able to rescue myself sooner. I needed to know what would happen if I called 911. Was someone going to protect me? Was there a place I could go? Who would help me figure my life out at that point?

This is why I now tour around the country, speaking to and training others. I train first responders on how to identify and respond to victims. I speak on college campuses and community forums to educate others on how to identify trafficking in their community.

According to the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children, 1 in 7 American kids will run away from home and 1 in 3 will become victims within 48 hours. I remember when I first started doing this work and read that statistic—the 48 hours time-frame really struck me.

If you ask most survivors of human trafficking they will say that their story is not like the movie Taken. They were not kidnapped, dragged out from under a bed, and sold on a boat for a half-million dollars. That is one story, but it is not most of our stories. It wasn’t until I started speaking, getting involved, and meeting other survivor leaders that I realized how many others there were like me.

We need to see every victim. Not just the ones that are like we imagine, but the ones like I was: an 18-year-old girl working normal jobs during the day while being sold in her apartment at night. We need to see the 7-year-old girl being sold by her mom for drug money. And the college student who is facing a dark world she doesn’t want to be in, while still getting As in her classes. When we picture it happening only one way, then we are missing all the other ways it happens.

Statistics show that a girl who is trafficked has a seven-year life span. One night in a motel I was physically beaten. I knew after that I had to get away. So I went to the doctor and moved back home. That was the last time I was sold.

I didn’t tell anyone what had happened to me. I wanted to tell someone but didn’t know what would happen to me and was still afraid of him. I planned to go my whole life living with it and tried to move forward. I married, had a son, and moved to a Marine Corps base on the other side of the country.

Six years later I went to the ER after having a breakdown. My PTSD wouldn’t allow me to stay silent any longer. After the ER I spent some time in a mental hospital where I finally told my story.

I didn’t understand what had been done to me. I knew I had been raped but why had they handed my husband money? What did that mean? I didn’t think I was a prostitute because I had never walked the streets or worked in a strip club.

In doing this work, I have realized that traffickers seem to be aware that we’re not educating our students here in rural communities. They send recruiters, often one of their victims, to befriend a girl and lure her away to a city, away from her support system, and then they traffic her there. It’s a common theme among the victims of whom I am able to help.

Some sources say the “average age a teen enters the sex trade in the US is 12 to 14 years old.” Human trafficking is said to be the world’s fastest-growing crime. There are more people in slavery today than at any other time in history. With such big statistics, to fight it every community has to be educated.

It takes everyone doing their part. We’re all in this fight together. All I want to know is that when I go into a community and when I leave, there’s an opportunity for it to be different for the next girl or boy. Somebody in the audience is going to change things in that place.

I share my story to give hope to other survivors. I started the Jenna McKaye Foundation to assist victims directly and set them up with services and resources. Helping survivors find their way is so important to me. We connect them with professionals that can help them on their journey. We show them that there are people that believe in them and support them. And we help them to dream again, to find new dreams and goals. There are all these survivors out there waiting for somebody to see them, waiting to be given the opportunity to make a new life for themselves.

During my exploitation, I always thought “What is happening to me and how do I get out of this world that I didn’t agree to?” One of the best parts of my job is to look a victim in the eyes and say, “You are my past and I am your future.” I get to be the person that I needed all those years ago.


(Picture of Jenna McKaye) Jenna Mckaye is a survivor of human trafficking with an incredible life story she now shares through advocacy groups throughout the US. McKaye’s extraordinary journey offers hope that inspires others through education and training. She continues to train hospital staff, law enforcement and other professionals how to identify victims of sex trafficking and labor trafficking and respond with victim centered care. Her personable keynote speaking engagements leave a notable impression among a variety of audience demographics including the United Nations. In 2016, Jenna started the Jenna McKaye Foundation to engage in a broader advocacy training model. Visit jennamckaye.com for upcoming news/events and details on her soon to be published book.

Post written by Jenna McKaye

Vulnerability in Sexual Violence Primary Prevention

Originally published by ICADV on October 22, 2020

At some point in the last five years the phrase “vulnerable populations,” used heavily in grant announcements and research articles, has leaked into my writing and my speech, especially in professional settings. For years I introduced myself as a Preventionist who works with vulnerable people or populations to engage in sexual violence primary prevention (SVPP). Last fall I attended a presentation that left me feeling challenged by how I understood vulnerability and the way I have used it to construct a frame for the work to end sexual violence (SV) against people with disabilities.

The fact is all humans are vulnerable and all humans are exposed to varying degrees of risk for different kinds of harm throughout their lives. Vulnerable is an adjective that means easily hurt, wounded, or attacked (from the Latin verb “to wound”). In a culture that glorifies, normalizes, and capitalizes on violence it makes sense to have such language to describe people. When vulnerability becomes shorthand for the problem of historic and continuous inequity within and across systems, bias can thrive, and the connection to the problem—systems inequity for people with cognitive disabilities—is lost. Vulnerability then becomes a tool of silence integrating to the cultural scaffolding of sexual violence as an option with few consequences for people who harm.

People with cognitive and developmental disabilities experience disproportionate rates of sexual violence, but they are not inherently more vulnerable to violence victimization or perpetration than people without disabilities. Instead of seeing an individual as “vulnerable” we should look towards the disproportions or inequalities in our society that make some people more vulnerable to sexual violence and address the willingness of people who cause harm to exploit those inequities to abuse people with disabilities.

People with cognitive or developmental disabilities have less access to opportunities and resources across the lifespan and it is these differences that are disabling to individuals and their families. It is not the person’s identity that makes them vulnerable. The scale of exclusion from protective systems of support—like having one’s basic needs met and connectedness through a variety of human experiences across the lifespan—makes a person vulnerable to increased risk of experiencing violence or causing harm. This makes critical the need for sexual violence prevention strategies that create protective environments. 

When our prevention strategies address community or neighborhood specific risk factors, like poverty, no internet access, or inaccessible and unavailable public transportation, we create opportunities for safety, stability, and nurturance among people. This connectedness-architecture is population level infrastructure that reduces toxic stress—a precursor to violence perpetration—broadly benefitting everyone in the community. It is from within this web of social connectedness experiences that humans can and do take risks in relationships and build resilience. Resilience is a survivor’s callous, it does not prevent sexual violence or vulnerability, but social connectedness does.

Our organizations can lead with policies and practices that support human connectedness among staff, such as paid family leave, and tele-commuting post-pandemic. In day-to-day operations, addressing inequity within our prevention practices could include budgeting time, space, and dollars to create accessibility in events, on websites, and in programs; organizations can also create accessible in-person and online meeting environments. Prioritizing accessibility creates an invitation for people with disabilities to be part of and learn about the work of prevention. However, accessibility is a legal baseline and not the same as inclusion.

Building connectedness across difference requires time, trust, genuine understanding, and intentional relationship building with people with disabilities. It is harder for me as a professional primary preventionist of violence to replicate structurally supported inequitable conditions in my work if I am accountable to people with disabilities. My professional inclusion practice is in the elevating of the voices of people with disabilities in the work to end sexual violence. Because the Rape Prevention and Education grant allows consultants to be paid an equitable rate, people with disabilities are paid for their feedback and contibutions to end sexual violence. I have colleagues with disabilities who are willing to help me learn when I am using able bias and ableism in my prevention strategies and leadership practices. Recognizing and acting against bias and discriminately wielding equity is critical to ending sexual violence in Indiana.

The problem of sexual violence is not with individuals, but with how individuals and systems use power-over to maintain the status quo. I am a gatekeeper of sexual violence prevention work in Indiana and I can cause harm through my professional practices. I am a Prevention Specialist who works with leaders and decision makers in our state to address the lack of access to opportunities and resources for people with disabilities who are continually segregated, isolated, and marginalized from essential systems like transportation, employment, and education, and from critical violence prevention strategies and crisis intervention services. By addressing equity in internal organizational practices and in external partnerships, preventionists can work to change the systems that marginalize and devalue people and construct vulnerability. We can’t shorthand anti-oppression work—there is nothing short or easy about it.

Community Risk Factors for People with Disabilities
Organizational Risk Factors for People with Disabilities
Societal Risk Factors For People with Disabilities

Neuroqueer Survivorship/Supervivencia Neuroqueer – Faerie Bear Art

About Faerie Bear Art

Faerie Bear Art is an art adventure by Skye Ashton Kantola (she/they) founded in late 2016. Skye is a fat, white, trans, queer, and intersex, chronically ill autistic person. Skye’s art focuses on trauma healing and uplifting marginalized communities. 10% of all art sales are donated to BreakOUT! Youth, a QTPOC youth lead organization focused on abolition and decriminalization in Louisiana. In some cases, the profits from certain pieces are also split with collaborators.