The Work of Corrie’s House for Trafficking Survivors

Renée Boehm, Corrie’s House

Corrie’s House is a home-based, trauma-informed space that took about seven years to open. We had done a tremendous amount of research to understand the issues around sex trafficking, especially among children — which is more common in Minnesota than most people realize.

As we researched the greatest gaps in care, we determined that we needed to serve all youth, because boys are trafficked as well as girls. We wanted to provide crisis care as well as long-term residential care. Shelters are intended to provide short-term 90-day stays until the youth can be placed in something more permanent. But there was a significant gap in long-term programs that also offered mental health support and helped them advance their educational goals and life skills learning.

The majority of youth who come through Minnesota child protection are being trafficked by a family member, so they don’t have a safe place. Giving them a temporary roof and food doesn’t solve the problem.

So, we serve youth from ages 12 to generally 17. We can serve up to six youths at a time, each with their own private bedroom. We have 24/7 staff in rotating shifts of eight hours each.

Sometimes people are referred to us by a school social worker or a teacher as children who could be at risk. As mandated reporters, these workers have to report to child protection — which is how most youth are sent to us. They might have been discovered by the police or a neighbor, or at a hospital, but most of the time they come to us through the county.
One of the continuing gaps is that sometimes we’re at 100 percent occupancy, but other times we have rooms available. Many counties don’t have real-time knowledge of what’s available where. It is a lot of work to call around trying to find the right fit for a youth. We need to solve that.

Designing the Space

We were very intentional about the building that we selected; it has been intentionally designed to feel very much like a home. Every youth has a full-sized bed. Our staff is trauma-informed; the essential step is that youth feel some control over their lives, including what they want for meals. We develop an empowered living plan to identify goals they want to accomplish while they’re at Corrie’s House:

• What do you want around your educational goals?
• What do you want around housing?
• Are you trying to reunify with your family, or would you rather be going in a different direction?
• How can we help you with that?

It’s really about their life, their choice. We’re there to support them toward those goals. We try to have a diverse staff, in language, ethnicity, religion. Many of our staff are themselves survivors, so they understand the lived experience.

We are based in the Twin Cities, but we are licensed to serve youth coming from any county in Minnesota, and even some from border counties in Wisconsin.

Vulnerability Is Pervasive

I learned about trafficking as someone who lived in a nice suburban neighborhood. A high school youth on our street was being trafficked. Her parents had no idea until she tried to take her life. I witnessed the devastation to her and her family, and also the love and services they were able to put around her. She recovered. She went to college. She’s married, with a baby. She’s thriving.

If everyone in our community started to understand how vulnerable our kids are today — how any youth who has a phone and is using Instagram or Snapchat can be targeted — we could be part of preventing it.

We need more places like Corrie’s House. Without it, youth are living on the street, or living in an abusive situation. They might couch surf and have to trade sex for a place to sleep or for food. They might end up in correctional facilities, because that’s the best that we have to offer. Or they might end up in a hospital bed, where they can be safe for a while.
Police officers and hospital staff are better able to identify youth who are being trafficked. That means the number of those in need is growing — but the funding has not caught up with it.

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