From Zero to 1000: Accessibility, Inclusion, Connectedness with the IDJ Hub

Congratulations to IDJ, because in WE ARE THREE years old!!! [confetti explosions]

In December 2020, we welcomed more than ONE THOUSAND VISITORS from around the world. We started with an idea in 2017 that grew into a very successful Patreon Community in 2018. We needed to transition to the online Indiana Disability Justice and Violence Prevention Resource Hub in 2020 to reflect the growth in our capacity and reflect our commitment to continue to promote and enhance connectedness across movements, sectors, fields, and communities. We remain inclusive community owned and co-operated with the functionality of a website.

In the last three years, the IDJ established a mission, vision, and values, designed an online Disability Justice and Violence Prevention Resource HUB, developed and piloted two evaluation tools (the community survey and the organizational survey), published 30 posts on the Hub, organized and published 12 webinars, supported the development of a healthy sexuality speaker’s Hub, shared a toolkit written by a self-advocate, accessible environmental and focus group protocols. The success of the IDJ is the cross discipline/cross field fluid membership with a large core leadership team (5-members, 90% of whom are people with disabilities) who work together through temporary action teams that convene as needed to accomplish shared outcomes and develop next steps to make progress in decreasing violence and increasing equity in the state of Indiana for people with disabilities. During all-member meetings throughout the year, IDJ learns about the field or community represented by the IDJ member themselves, the connection to the problem of multiple forms of violence, and to develop solutions and tools to implement with people with disabilities for people with disabilities.

Organizations and individuals who participate in IDJ come away with an array of skills, competencies, and a shared language to prevent violence with and for people with disabilities in their workplaces and neighborhoods. The result is iterative and multiplying the number of accessible survivor-centered disability resources. IDJ is continuously developing and implementing creative, community-building evaluation strategies to assess our effectiveness as a coalition, and the effectiveness of IDJ prevention strategies, and sharing the story of IDJ’s collaborative work via the HUB. The Hub and IDJ leadership was featured by PreventConnect in a #MeToo Prevention Townhall, and National Resource Center on Domestic Violence accessed by people across the globe in 18 countries, 28 states, and more than 50 cities across two continents. The IDJ wants to understand what we are doing well, in survivor-centered and accessible ways, and how the IDJ might continue to improve and advance the work and the leadership of people with disabilities.

We were awarded funding by Indiana Department of Health to continue to support this project through paid leadership from the Rape Prevention and Education Grant FY2021-2022. The leadership includes Cierra Olivia Thomas-Williams (Indiana Coalition Against Domestic Violence), Skye Ashton Kantola (Consultant, Self-Advocate), Tammy Themel (AccessABILITY), Jody Powers (Consultant, Self-Advocate), Jennifer Milharcic (Consultant, Self-Advocate), and Haleigh Rigger (Indiana Coalition to End Sexual Assault and Human Trafficking). Together the leadership team works with the advisory council toward creating protective environments that enable thriving for people who are made vulnerable by systems inequity.

Post written by: Cierra Olivia Thomas Williams, IDJ Co-Founder, Co-Leader, Prevention Specialist at Indiana Coalition Against Domestic Violence  

Heaven and Shadow Man

Art by Ashley McDaniel from Florida. Ashley is a person with schizophrenia and art keeps Ashley safe.

God's House
This is a drawing of a castle in the sky where God lives. There is a pathway with grass on each side leading from the front door off into the distance. There are three suns shining in the sky, one fluffy blue cloud and three blue dots.
Shadow Man is invisible
This is a drawing of Shadow Man in black, gray and red. There is a gray and red spiral in the middle of the page under the writing and under the spiral is a red fire with black outline and Ashley’s name. The text written in black ink reads “Shadow Man is talking to me but I don’t see him though so I ignor him.”

This is Depression

By Paige Guffey

Have you ever looked in the mirror and wondered where you went? Because all you see is sadness, anger, emptiness or loneliness. A shell of a person who used to genuinely smile.

Have you ever been in the middle of a crowd or surrounded by family, yet felt so alone? A deep, soul-wrenching loneliness.

Have you ever woken up and wished you hadn’t? And, you wished you hadn’t with a passion so deep that it shakes you to the core; it terrifies you.

Have you ever felt so empty that you don’t even know if you’re alive? Like you’re a black hole that is eating every emotion, but you can’t feel anything.

Have you ever laid in bed wondering if your family, your children, would be happier without you? Because you feel like you are this giant burden that is dragging everyone around you down and nothing you do is right anyways.

Have you ever asked yourself why? Why me? Why is this happening? Why do I feel this way? What can’t I just snap out of it?

This is depression at its finest. It’s dark and light. It’s happy and sad. It’s crying one moment and being angry, so angry, the next. It’s putting on a smile to mask the pain. It’s playing with your children as if you hadn’t just been in the bathroom crying. It’s a Black Hole that sucks the life out of you until you don’t even know who you are anymore. It’s like drowning, you’re sinking into an ocean of pain and you can’t breathe and you can’t get to the surface.

And, you can’t explain it. Because you’re scared. You’re terrified that no one will understand. That they’ll judge you. They’ll think you’re crazy. But you’re so scared all of the time of what will come next. What if you don’t get better? What if it never ends?

This is Depression.

  • The Lonely Girl
    The Lonely Girl
Image Descriptions: The image on the left is a colorful painting featuring a mother and daughter, a bunny, flowers, and birds. The sky is purple, the air is orange, and the grass is green. There are three Daisies with white petals. Near the flowers, the mother and daughter silhouette appear to be walking away. The rabbit watches them go. The birds fly over the flowers. The piece on the left uses colored pencils to create an image called “The Lonely Girl” who is sitting on a swing hung from a single branch of the tree. There is a bird sitting on the branch looking down at the lonely girl. The ground is green and grassy with several flowers. The air is downcast colors of brown and blue.

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