A dozen foster parents surround the table at the mandated Foster Care Child Sex Trafficking class, listening with perked ears to the class leader. She is a survivor of early childhood sex trafficking. The leader continues, noting signs of trafficking, many of which she experienced herself.
Amidst a continual onslaught of questions from attendees, the leader teaches the parents safe ways to interact with their previously trafficked foster child, including being careful to ask before physical touch to respect the child’s former non-existent boundaries.
Parents are taught potential triggers of the flee/fight/freeze response. In the world of psychology, the leader’s words are all clinically correct, but again, the leader has more than education; she has personal experience, having experienced the foster care system and the unexpected terror of being confronted with well-meaning hugs.
[For more on this story by Danett Williams, go to https://chronicleofsocialchang...erts-survivors/30548]
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