Catholic Charities’ Plan to Open Oakland Center for Sex Trafficking Survivors Meets Resistance

By Gwendolyn Wu
San Francisco Chronicle
April 30, 2019

https://www.sfchronicle.com/bayarea/article/Catholic-Charities-plan-to-open-Oakland-center-13804225.php

The social services arm of the Roman Catholic Diocese of Oakland is seeking to open a home for teenage victims of sexual trafficking, but the church’s plan to help girls who have been abused is facing opposition on multiple fronts.

Claire’s House, named after the mother of Alameda County District Attorney Nancy O’Malley, plans to house up to 12 teenage sex trafficking victims at a location in Sequoyah, a forested neighborhood of the eastern Oakland hills, said Mary Kuhn, a spokeswoman for the Catholic Charities of the East Bay, which will oversee the home.

O’Malley has focused on fighting human trafficking, and when she approached the diocese and other East Bay leaders about a new initiative, the nonprofit offered to convert a former rectory into a shelter.

“If we don’t have housing or some safe place for people to be, what do we expect to happen?” said O’Malley, whose late mother had a reputation for taking in her children’s friends if they needed a place to sleep.

But the proposal has met resistance from some advocates for survivors of sex trafficking, who say the church’s stance on abortion and contraception could harm victims. Meanwhile, neighbors of the home worry that traffickers will bring crime, drugs and guns to their community.

Short-term residential therapeutic programs are usually designed for foster youth and licensed by the California Department of Social Services. Claire’s House, which is still awaiting certification from the state, would differ slightly in that it would provide a bridge to intense support for young sex trafficking victims.

Clients will be able to stay up to 18 months at the facility while accessing mental health services and schooling, Kuhn said. The program will bill Medi-Cal for therapeutic services.

But the shelter will take a strict approach in facilitating access to contraception and abortions.

Catholic Charities of the East Bay will not make appointments for clients at clinics that provide contraception or abortion services, nor will it provide transportation, Kuhn said. Instead, Claire’s House will post a sign in a common area that explains the teens’ medical options.

Beyond that, Kuhn said, they will need to rely on their guardians to arrange for such services.

Ingrid Persson, a former grant manager at Catholic Charities of the East Bay, said she fears the nonprofit will run afoul of regulations that allow minors access to birth control or abortions, which the Oakland Diocese’s top official denied.

In February, Oakland Diocese Bishop Michael Barber responded to Persson’s concerns in a letter that defended the church’s stance on reproductive health care while calling contraception and abortion “morally evil.”

Barber said Catholic Charities of the East Bay would follow the law but would not “violate our Catholic values.” He appointed members of the nonprofit’s board and staff to ensure his instructions are followed, he said.

“For the Catholic Church just to suggest they could open a safe house for 12- to 17-year-old victims of sex trafficking under their rules is obscene,” Persson said.

She said Catholic Charities of the East Bay was originally supposed to receive two federal grants to help sexually exploited children. A 2010 executive order by President Barack Obama requires faith-based organizations that receive federal funds to make sure they do not discriminate against program beneficiaries on the basis of religious belief.

However, Kuhn said the nonprofit only received one government grant, which did not go toward the creation of Claire’s House.

Catholic Charities of the East Bay received $450,000 from the Department of Justice in 2016, and “birth control and/or abortion planning services are not deliverables under the grant,” said James Goodwin, a department spokesman.

He said the funds were designed for a mentorship program, not the creation of the safe house.

“We do not discriminate regardless,” Kuhn said.

Some advocates said providing a full range of healthcare is crucial to helping sex trafficking victims, who are at high risk of reproductive coercion, a form of abuse when a partner manipulates and controls a person’s reproductive choices, such as whether to keep a pregnancy.

Anna Marjavi, a health program director at Futures Without Violence, a nonprofit working to stop domestic and sexual violence, said female victims in particular “don’t have a lot of say around their reproductive choices.”

“Part of improving trajectories of young women and men who have been commercially sexually exploited will be connecting them to reproductive health care,” said Elizabeth Barnert, an assistant professor of pediatrics at UCLA who studies youth who have been sexually exploited. “It’s really important not to add additional barriers.”

A sign in opposition to the Claire's House photographed in the Sequoyah neighborhood in Oakland, Calif., on Monday, March 11, 2019.

The placement of the proposed home in the Sequoyah neighborhood has drawn the ire of neighbors as well. Doug Sager, president of the Coalition of Residents Protecting Sequoyah, said no one from Claire’s House addressed the neighborhood’s concerns until 2018. He worries about traffickers looking for girls they have abused.

“They say this is an act of God and is the goodwill of the church, but with little concern for the neighbors,” he said.

Catholic Charities of the East Bay said its staff will screen victims several times before placing them in the home.

“Claire’s House does not accept referrals for young people who are currently escaping an exploiter or just leaving the streets,” the organization said in a statement. Officials added that any “survivor’s relationship with their previous exploiter is something we assess and screen for at intake.”

Church officials declined to discuss security. The Chronicle is not identifying the home’s address to protect potential clients’ safety.

Other critics of the proposed shelter point to the Catholic church’s track record on preventing sexual abuse. Since January, the Oakland diocese has named 45 priests who were credibly accused of sexual misconduct with minors and placed two clergymen on leave.

“I find it ironic that the church is opening such a facility when they have such a terrible record of sex abuse in their diocese,” said Dan McNevin, a spokesman for the Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests.

The nonprofit group said the diocese will have no direct role at Claire’s House, though both Bishop Barber and Diocese of Oakland Chancellor Steve Wilcox sit on the board of directors of Catholic Charities of the East Bay.

Kuhn said Claire’s House will fill a void for teenage sex trafficking survivors who don’t currently have supportive services. Catholic Charities can begin accepting its first clients, she said, as soon as the state signs off on a care license.

Gwendolyn Wu is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. Email: gwendolyn.wu@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @gwendolynawu