INDIANAPOLIS — For more than 20 years, her life was “miserable” and “chaotic.”
“It definitely turned me into something that I didn’t want to be,” she added. “It was a lot of abuse, sexual abuse, drugs, alcohol, just a really bad lifestyle.”
Then she found Hope Center Indy, a facility just west of Marion County’s border with Hancock County that helps women exiting sex trafficking.
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The woman, whose name is being withheld to protect her identity, is one of dozens the center has helped in the nearly two years it’s been accepting residents. A steady flow of volunteers and donations has made the nonprofit organization’s Christianity-centered programming possible on its sprawling campus. Those driving forces are also behind Hope Center Indy’s plans for the future.
From hardship to Hope
The National Human Trafficking Hotline calls human trafficking “a form of modern slavery.” According to the most recent statistics available from the hotline, 59 human trafficking cases were reported in Indiana in 2018 by June 30 of that year. In the U.S., 5,147 cases were reported in that time frame.
“It’s right in your backyard,” said Michelle Hensley, volunteer group coordinator for Hope Center Indy and a Hancock County resident. “It is rampant. It is a lot more than what people believe.”
Joyce Helfers, leadership development for the organization, said traffickers target their victims and initiate a grooming process that involves flattery and gifts while establishing trust and a relationship. Then the trafficker will consume the victim’s time, isolate them from their family and friends, insist that the victim owes them and oftentimes introduce them to drugs, Helfers continued.
“They lose all control,” she said. “They don’t have any access to their friends or their family because they’ve been so isolated for however long … A lot of it’s just a gradual fade and they don’t even realize the situation.”
Victims can also be children trafficked by their parents to get money for rent, mortgage payments and addictions, Helfers added.
Helfers said 35 to 50 women from all over the country have come through Hope Center Indy’s program since August 2017. The organization does not charge the women for the program. Women arrive through a variety of avenues, Helfers said, including their own initiative, law enforcement and court systems along with government agencies.
The woman who found refuge at Hope Center Indy after two decades of misery and chaos said she found the facility after fleeing another state and entering an addiction rehabilitation program in Indianapolis.
“While I was there, after 90 days, I knew something else was missing,” she said. “I didn’t really know what to do though. I was kind of scared to go out into the world because I knew I wasn’t really prepared. I was sober, but I still had a lot of issues.”
She went to a chapel to pray. David Nolen, who served as Hope Center Indy’s associate director until his passing last month, was at that chapel speaking about the organization.
“I kind of felt like it was too good to be true,” she said of the program, “but when I looked into it, it was more than what I needed.”
Hope Center Indy has been “extremely helpful” throughout her stay, she continued.
“They’re able to help me learn how to love myself on days that I don’t,” she said. “It’s a saving grace, definitely. There’s no other place that I know of in the United States like this, and I’ve been all over the United States, so I know it’s very unique and hopefully in the future there will be more places like this.”
She said she is grateful for the staff’s patience with her and her fellow residents and for what she described as a refuge of safety and comfort. Program participants do not want for food, clothing or hygiene products. She has benefited from resources the center has made available for education and practicing Christianity along with coping with addiction and trauma. She’s gaining new skills by working for a company that trained her to do computer-aided design work right form the center.
Learning to return to society and lead a healthy life is a formidable challenge after experiencing the opposite for so long, she said.
“You’re so used to living one way,” she said. “You come here to the Hope Center and you learn how to live in this vicinity — we have a really big campus — but eventually you have to start baby steps out into the real world.”
Along with her faith and Hope Center Indy’s programming, the other women staying at the center also help her strive for that goal.
“We all are really good about leaning on each other, holding each other accountable,” she said. “Sometimes there will be something that I won’t see in myself that one of them will see in me and it really helps by just listening to each other a lot of the time. We’ve all been there, so we can trust each other.”
‘Right before our eyes’
Hope Center Indy’s campus spans about 25 acres with several buildings totaling about 210,000 square feet. A program providing help to adult students earning credit through standardized tests formerly operated on the property. Before that, the site served as an orphanage.
Sara Feasel, grants coordinator for Hope Center Indy, said the facility is currently able to accommodate about 30 women. There’s enough space for 160, a capacity the organization hopes to one day meet through continued fundraising.
Programming guides residents through personal success plans under the direction of the facility’s program director and staff.
The program is made up of five phases. Each is designed to take 90 days, but can last as little or as long as each woman needs.
“We want to keep the woman however long she needs to be here,” Feasel said. “We won’t move anybody forward if they’re not ready and we also won’t hold anybody back if they’re ready to move forward.”
The program’s five phases are introduction and acclimation, education, employment, sustainability and reintegration. Five goals accompany those phases: spiritual, career, wellness, financial and relational.
Residents have weekly requirements like attending classes on sobriety and financial literacy along with education courses if they’re seeking a degree. Obligations also include trauma therapy sessions, Bible studies and church and worship services.
Some of the women don’t have high school diplomas or an equivalent, Helfers said. Some can’t read. Others have college degrees.
Program participants learn job skills by helping at the facility’s boutique, coffee shop, and wedding and event venue, all of which serve as fundraisers for Hope Center Indy.
The organization also provides transportation to and from work for women in the program’s employment phase.
“They’re getting income and starting to save up their money so when they do transition out, they’ll have a lot of resources to help them,” Helfers said.
The campus has a prayer center, art room, library, computer lab, greenhouse, kitchen and cafeteria as well.
Among Hope Center Indy’s team members are a case manager, medical director, educational director and 24/7 resident technicians.
Volunteers power about 97 percent of Hope Center Indy’s operations, Helfers said. It is funded entirely by local churches, individuals, companies and grants.
There are more than 400 volunteers on record, with 150 of them contributing their services on a regular basis. Those tasks run the gamut of housekeeping, helping in the boutique and coffee shop and serving as resident technicians, mentors, transporters and case managers.
“God is good,” Helfers said. “Week after week, you can tell that God’s hand is upon this center and these grounds because of his provisions. No one could have dreamed this up. It’s just unfolding right before our eyes. With this many volunteers and this many people involved, our hands are just completely off and we’re just watching things happen.”
People who shop at the Redefined Hope Boutique on campus help the center continue to function too.
“Shopping is serving,” Helfers said. “If anyone wants to serve the Hope Center, they can shop.”
The transformation the campus has undergone over the past two years continues. Hope Center Indy has plans for a beauty salon, botanical garden and space for pet grooming, training and veterinary care.
Hensley recently joined efforts to offer transitional housing in the future to women who have completed the program. She said it will allow the women to build an employment and rental background that will help them secure their own housing in a good neighborhood after they leave. Women will also be able to live with their children at the transitional housing, which isn’t possible at the center.
Hensley has been volunteering for Hope Center Indy for about a year and a half.
“The reward that you get from giving back to other people and seeing it make a difference in their lives is priceless,” she said. “I wouldn’t want to do anything else.”
