Rich Brown: Program aids victims of human trafficking

Stephanie Freed had just begun home-schooling her two daughters when it hit her.

“I saw a tremendous evil that I just had to do something about,” she said. “There was a time about four years ago when I stood in my girls’ bedroom and looked at them asleep and I remember thinking, ‘How could I not do something?’”

That’s when the Joplin woman decided to take on the enormous task as USA director of Rapha House, a program her father, Joe Garman, had founded in 2002 as an outreach of American Rehabilitation Ministries.

Garman founded ARM in Joplin nearly 30 years before as a ministry to U.S. prisoners that today extends to 1.7 million people incarcerated in federal and state prisons as well as the nation’s jails.

Rapha House, located in Battambang, Cambodia, is committed to helping girls from 4 to 19 years old who have become victims of slavery and prostitution and providing them with a safe home to heal and get an education.

Garman was introduced to the plight of such human trafficking during a trip to Cambodia to conduct Christian leadership training.

A commotion broke out behind the church where he was holding one of the meetings. It eventually led to sex traders breaking into the session in search of a girl they had purchased and wanted to take into captivity.

Garman said that upon learning the intent of the intruders and what they had paid for the girl, he and other training leaders came up with the money to redeem her.

That was to be the spark for Rapha House, which today houses 60 girls but with the expected completion of another wing next month will add 40 more, said Freed.

“The problem is so vast that we literally have thousands of girls waiting,” said Freed, who left this week for a missionary convention in Cincinnati and a fund-raising stop at a church on the way back. “We could build 10 more houses right now and not even touch the step of the project.”

Freed said she visits the home in Cambodia three or four times a year, with little time to relax when back in Joplin.

“I have been gone every weekend since early September to share this story with churches and others,” she said.

She added that her two daughters — Blair, 11, and Brooke, 9, as well as her adopted son, Barrett, 3 — often travel with her.

“I think the way they help the most is being a support for me and understanding why mom has to travel so much,” she said. “Blair has been to Rapha House twice and she calls herself a child advocate against human trafficking.”

Freed said in addition to providing the Rapha House residents with a safe haven, volunteers help arrange education grants for the older girls and even small business grants. The girls are often trained for work in beauty salons as well as restaurants.

“We have had some of the girls graduate from a school in cosmetology, which is kind of an up and coming career for Cambodian women,” said Freed, whose husband, Brandon, has a trucking company in Webb City.

Besides U.S. volunteers, there are 26 paid staff members at the Rapha House, ranging from guards to house mothers and social workers, she said.

“Our program is facilitated through church and individual sponsorship,” she said. “We do have some non-government organizations like World Vision that help as well.”

Freed said that a new development in the Rapha House ministry has come from a church in Riverside, Calif.

“Pathway Christian Church in Riverside began a foundation for our girls (Rapha House Freedom Foundation), which focuses on reintegration of the girls after they have been to Rapha House and have to re-enter Cambodian society,” she said. The Web site for the foundation is www.freedomforgirls.org.

Garman said that not only does Rapha House provide a safe haven for the girls but, also, gives them spiritual help.

“We feel like there is no hope for these girls without knowing Christ,” she said. “These kids have been traumatized and hurt so badly in the worst ways.”

In addition to the foundation Web site, more information may be obtained by calling American Rehabilitation Ministries at 781-9100, visiting the ARM Web site at www.arm.org, or calling Freed at 782-5341.


Address correspondence to Rich Brown, c/o The Joplin Globe, P.O. Box 7, Joplin, Mo. 64802.