We are dedicated to serving adult survivors of sex trafficking in Oregon. It is our goal to work in a collaborative manner with authoritative local organizations like Safety Compass to create a program that offers services to the exploited and vulnerable living in Oregon. Safety Compass is a new, crucial organization for survivors of sex trafficking and exploitation in underserved Oregon communities. We are privileged to be a part of their foundational work by fiscal sponsorship.

Safety Compass provides support to survivors in Marion County and Clackamas County. The survivors in these communities just outside of the Portland metropolitan area would not have any advocacy services available without Safety Compass. Women in their care are recovering and receiving much-needed assistance.

About Safety Compass:

Safety Compass was founded in 2014 by Executive Director Esther Nelson. In her first 18 months, Safety Compass made 156 contacts with 58 domestic and sexual violence survivors, provided community education to 183 community members, trained 30 emergency room staff and administration at Silverton Hospital. They have been nationally recognized for their efforts to advocate for sex-trafficking survivors, having provided almost 200 hours of consultation assistance to other professionals on how to serve this population of survivors in a culturally specific manner, since the program began.

In the past year, Safety Compass has been utilized by the Department of Justice and the Federal Bureau of Investigation, as a resource for local families whose children went missing. In total, Safety Compass has had approximately 300 contacts related to direct service. They have trained major crimes investigators from every law enforcement agency in Clackamas County in how to identify and intervene on behalf of sex trafficking victims. They have also trained DHS Self Sufficiency workers of Marion County in how to identify and intervene on behalf of sex-trafficking victims. Safety Compass was adopted onto the Marion County Child Abuse Multi-disciplinary Team (know as CART). Safety Compass spearheaded an effort to encourage CART to create a subcommittee to address commercial sexual exploitation of children (CSEC) in Marion and Polk Counties. This was a successful effort and now Safety Compass co-chairs this sub-committee.

In collaboration with Intel, Compassion First was able to provide Safety Compass with a new laptop computer for a survivor that enrolled in online educational classes. We are seeking out opportunities to best serve Safety Compass. To stay up to date on how you can be involved, visit our US Survivor Care page and the Safety Compass website. You can also read a recent newspaper article about Esther’s work.

Categories: Updates