Sexual exploitation is becoming a well-known issue. Rape and sexual assault cases in our society are rising at an alarming rate, and to combat such crimes, we must encourage people to increase awareness and concern, particularly among women. What will it take to end exploitation in the sex industry?

In this week's episode of Action Antidote, Rev. Bonnie Gatchell joins us to enlighten us and provide hope to those women trapped in the snares of exploitation, as well as to raise awareness of the issue. Rev. Bonnie Gatchell is the Director and Co-Founder of Route One Ministry, a ministry that serves women who have been sexually abused by the sex industry. 

Her mission is to provide the church with a theological framework as well as practical means to better serve, receive, and care for women who have experienced domestic abuse, sexual exploitation, and gender-based violence in all of its forms.

Tune in to this episode to find more!
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Preventing and Responding to Sexual Exploitation, Violence, and Harassment with  Rev. Bonnie Gatchell
Welcome to Action’s Antidotes, your antidote to the mindset that keeps you settling for less. One of the problems that keeps a lot of people settling for less and less than what they really want and really deserve out of life is this feeling of disempowerment, and disempowerment can come in so many different forms we can identify it in our own lives and we can identify in others. My guest today, Bonnie Gatchell, has found a way to not only empower herself to solve some of our biggest problems but also empower some others that are really, really in need, really in a place of some genuine disempowerment with her organization, Route One Ministry.

 
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Bonnie, welcome to the program.

 

Thank you so much, Stephen. I appreciate you having me. 

 

Yeah, I really appreciate you coming on. So, Route One Ministries, you help women who were tricked into the sex industry. Can you please explain to us, first of all, how it is that this happens to the people that it ends up happening to?

 

That’s a great question and I even like the wording that you used with “tricks,” kind of the quotes around it. So I think the misunderstanding about women who are working in the sex industry, maybe strip clubs or in prostitution, I think particularly around strip clubs and then maybe even pornography is this belief that they choose to be there or there’s a lot of freedom in being there, that they are sufficiently financially backed up by being there, supplying for, but the truth is, the average age of entry here in the United States is 12 years old. 

 

Oh, wow.

 

Yeah. I think that’s a great response that you said, “Oh, wow,” and I think a lot of people don’t realize that. I think the other thing for Route One, when we think about women being sexually exploited, I think no little girl wants to be a stripper when she grows up so if we think from that premise, no little girl wants to be a stripper when she grows up or a woman in prostitution, then we have to ask the question what has brought this woman here, and there’s a lot of different reasons for each woman but the biggest driving factor is some source of poverty. Maybe it’s financial poverty or emotional poverty or spiritual poverty, I think a lack of education, so some kind of brokenness that has happened in their life, trauma that has happened in their life that has brought them to a place of being exploited. And I think, directly, some women have even been manipulated through force, fraud, or coercion, and then forced to work in the strip clubs and they’re given a fake name and a fake identity and fake background story for the sake of their clients and to protect the men and women who are essentially pimping them out and trafficking them.

 

So, you said the average age of entry is 12 years old. What is a genuine story or a typical story of a 12-year-old? Because, I don’t know,