Every day, hundreds of children, women, and men are sold into sex trafficking.
Texas alone counts for a third of the calls received by the National Human Trafficking Hotline.
The Net aims to put a halt to those startling statistics. The organization is a Tarrant County-based nonprofit that provides care to female survivors of sex trafficking. Over the last 12 years, The Net has served over 1,600 trafficking survivors in Tarrant County.
The agency runs its operation through three different programs: Purchased, The Worthy Co., and MASE.
Purchased
The Net team hosts a weekly support group inside jails for imprisoned women who have experienced sexual exploitation.
As the program progresses, women are paired with a volunteer advocate who walks alongside them for two to four years in recovery, helping guide them to rebuild their lives.
The Net hosts monthly social outings for the women and their kids in order to build a safe community of support around them while they are in recovery, helping restructure their lives in the wake of sexual exploitation.
Additionally, the nonprofit holds financial literacy classes that teach women how to repair their credit and career readiness classes, such as a GED prep course, for example. There are also survivor-led trauma classes that help the women work through the trauma they have experienced.
The Worthy Co.
One of the hardest parts for women getting back on their feet after being a victim of trafficking is finding employment. At The Worthy Co., trafficking survivors work at The Net’s boutique business.
Women make candles and jewelry and work in shipping and fulfillment, customer service, retail, and other areas of The Worthy Co. to gain work experience for their resumes.
“It looks and functions like a for-profit boutique business, but it’s part of the nonprofit,” said Ty Bowden, associate director of The Net, in an interview with The Dallas Express. “Every dollar that’s made goes right back into our programs, which is great.”
Through The Worthy Co., The Net is able to offer women a savings match program in which the organization matches the money women accumulate in their accounts.
Trafficking survivors have a staff member who walks through the programs with them. The staff member and the survivor set frequent goals and have recurrent check-ins to evaluate the participant’s progress.
MASE
The MASE program targets sex trafficking right at the source. The strategy stands for “Men Against Sexual Exploitation,” and it aims to disrupt buyers before they are able to purchase sex.
“We know that a lot of men in Fort Worth, or in DFW in general, are going to participate in the sex industry in some way or another,” Bowden told DX.
Many men do this by consuming pornography and patronizing sexually oriented businesses without realizing they are contributing to the problem. As part of MASE, The Net hosts quarterly men’s breakfasts and online safety training for kids to educate them on the issue.
The Net also works to intercept buyers of sex before a purchase is made. Through decoy trafficking ads, The Net staff tries to have a conversation with the buyers about why they are making the decision to buy sex.
“We go into these conversations trying to educate them on the reality of what they’re participating in,” Bowden said. “The majority of these men don’t recognize the depth of what they’re participating in. They really do think that the women they’re paying are doing it out of free will … but the overwhelming majority of stats say upwards of 85% of women who engage in prostitution don’t want to be but feel like they don’t have any other choices.”
The Net partners with jails in Tarrant County to provide an online course put on by a sex addiction therapist, trafficking survivor, and former buyer for men on probation for solicitation of sex and similar charges.
In 2023, The Net served 197 survivors, made 130 jail visits, and had 50 volunteer advocates who supported survivors through one-on-one advocacy and events.
The nonprofit has a long list of volunteer opportunities, such as bringing meals to weekly survivor support groups, writing letters of encouragement to survivors in The Net’s program, and fulfilling Amazon Wish Lists for survivors moving into their own homes.