October 30, 2017

The Monterey County Rape Crisis Center has been thinking about updating its mission statement to include human trafficking and child abuse for a long time. Last Friday, MCRCC’s Board of Directors met and amended our mission statement to the following:

"To provide ongoing advocacy, support and healing for all victims and survivors of sexual assault, human trafficking and child abuse; and to prevent sexual violence in our community through education."

Since MCRCC’s founding in 1973, MCRCC has provided services to survivors of commercial sexual exploitation and human trafficking; however, MCRCC did not have specific outreach efforts or trainings for staff and volunteers to serve human trafficking survivors.

MCRCC was part of the initial meetings that established the Coalition to End Human Trafficking in Santa Cruz and Monterey Counties. After those meetings, MCRCC started including information about human trafficking in its outreach efforts, updating trainings for staff and volunteers to include human trafficking, and integrating this new knowledge into existing prevention, crisis intervention, and counseling programs.

Two years ago, MCRCC deepened this effort by hiring Outreach Advocate Deborah Pembrook to ensure that MCRCC would provide quality trauma-informed and survivor-centered services to human trafficking survivors. Last year, MCRCC provided 277 services (including crisis intervention and accompaniment to forensic medical exams and interviews with law enforcement) to 13 survivors of human trafficking and five of their significant others. Services provided to human trafficking survivors account for 5% of all services delivered by MCRCC.

MCRCC also received a grant from the California Office of Emergency Services to widen the scope of advocacy and counseling programs to include children who have suffered from any type of crime. This program is called the Child Abuse Treatment Program (CHAT) and is coordinated by CHAT Program Manager Rosa Zavala. Counseling is implemented by the MCRCC clinical counseling team. Last year, MCRCC provided 1,295 counseling sessions to 69 survivors of child sexual abuse, physical abuse, emotional abuse, neglect, human trafficking, and survivors of homicide through the CHAT Program. Counseling sessions provided to children account for 65% of all counseling sessions delivered by MCRCC.

MCRCC has been providing these services to survivors of human trafficking and child abuse for quite some time now. It was an easy decision for both staff and the MCRCC Board of Directors to update MCRCC’s mission to include this important work.