OPERATION SILVER BRAID
Operation Silver Braid (OSB) is the main program for Voices for Justice Network. Voices for Justices Network is a California 501(c)3 non-profit corporation.
Our goal through OSB is to help bring healing to those that have been victims of sexual exploitation and human trafficking.
Our outreach networks throughout the United States help locate victims of sexual exploitation and provide them with the services that help prevent re-victimization.
Our network also assist survivors in getting out of the sex industry, empower themselves in finding new job skills and receiving a variety of other services that they need to redesign their lives to be able to live a healthy life.
The Silver Braid, as a symbol, represents hope and integration with society through its three strands:
The first strand is survivors - bringing together all the forms of survivors. Often survivors of various forms of exploitation feel isolated. Whether they are victims of domestic violence, rape, or childhood sexual exploitation, we believe these survivors share similar aftereffects.
The second strand is the development of communities that can help survivors.
The third strand is life affirming non-dogmatic principles.
The development of the OSB program was the result of the Executive Director Anne Bissell's collaboration with the US Government's Department of Health and Human Services "Rescue and Restore" campaign to find and help victims of human sexual trafficking.
Anne Bissell participated in the Los Angeles Coalition Steering Committee for Rescue and Restore, and also was a key note speaker in the launching of several Rescue and Restore operations throughout the country including California, Texas, and Wisconsin.
Anne Bissell's message was simple: By expanding our understanding that victims of human sexual trafficking are part of a greater population which includes all victims of sexual exploitation connections could be made between various common traits found with all of these survivors and activities surrounding these victims. Government agencies and non-government organization looking for and wanting to provide services to victims of human sexual trafficking needed understand the interconnections between legal and illegal activities involving all forms of sexual exploitation including prostitution, stripping, pornography, ect.
Currently, OSB has a 800 National Hotline Number, follow-up for these survivors, many other survivors through Silver Braid guides and programs offered through correctional and recovery facilities, strategic and tactical planning to a variety of government and non-governmental agencies, speakers, advocacy for both domestic and foreign trafficked-prostituted survivors, education materials and websites.
The strands of the Silver Braid are:
1) The survivors
2) The communities that need to help them
3) Spiritual principles
We want to educate the community about this huge invisible epidemic that society turns their head the other way to and ignores that their young daughters, sisters, friends, etc. are being exploited.
This needs the attention of all in our society to help break this trend that is being made to look glamorous to young girls, to runaway girl that are trying to get away from being sexually abused at home. This is a cycle of devastation. We need to stop turning our head to this problem and break this cycle.
The Silver Braid is a symbol of reintegration and spiritual healing, for both the survivor and the community.
Call Our Toll free Hotline 1-888-702-7273
"Every day, a child is exploited, every day, we look the other way. If I did not tell the truth about what happened in my lifetime as a result of my own experiences as an exploited child, it would be as if I too was looking the other way. If no one tells the truth, the exploitation will become the norm." Anne Bissell
