The existence of sex trafficking in our corner of Floridian paradise is a sad fact most would choose to forget, much less engage. For Elizabeth Melendez Fisher, president and CEO of Selah Freedom, it’s an issue she can’t ignore. Selah Freedom is the Sarasota-based nonprofit organization dedicated to helping victims of the sex trade and raise awareness of the trade’s existence. Part healer, part businesswoman, all resolve—if Selah Freedom is bringing light into the darkness, as the slogan says, then Fisher is the one behind the megawatt.

Tell us about the name Selah Freedom. Selah is a Hebrew word that means “to pause” or “to rest.” Every girl that we help has been on an abuse wheel for so long, usually since they were 3 to 5 years old. They were abused by someone, ran away, got caught in the sex trafficking life and abused again even worse, and they’d never been able to just pause and reflect and realize that it wasn’t their fault, it wasn’t their choice. So the name fit.

What sparked your involvement? I was part of an event with a group of women looking to support a charity that wasn’t getting a lot of attention. What I found was that our own local children were out on the streets and victims of the sex trade. People want to believe that it’s international children and not our children but you’ll find out that our region is ranked second in the entire state of Florida for this. Then you see it’s not only our local children, but our local buyers. So it’s our own problem and no one was doing anything. We decided to hold up the issue. And once we said, ‘Here’s what we found out, here’s what’s happening and here’s what we’re about,’ it’s as if people had been led here. We started this whole thing from scratch three years ago and it’s more than tripling each year. We try to follow the best practices and we now have a volunteer program based on something we know is successful. It was a volunteer that created our logo and our whole branding. Our whole website was started by a volunteer. No matter what skill set someone has, we can take them.

How has the community engaged with the issue? The response from the community has been awesome. What I find is that once people realize what’s happening and their eyes are opened, they want to know what they can do. It’s growing the awareness that’s essential. And the outlook is good because it’s on the map. We have all of law enforcement on board–sheriff and police, Sarasota and Bradenton–that are now understanding this is an issue and what people were thinking was a problem with prostitution is really just a symptom and an outcome of what we all didn’t see happening. I think everyone’s getting it and it’s just going to be locking arms and then rock and roll.

Does it take its toll, personally, being exposed to this side of life? People think it’s depressing, but we’re on the other side of depressing. If you were walking the streets with them, that would be depressing. But if you’re over here watching them have their eyes opened every day and say, ‘I never thought I could do that’ or with them during horse therapy or art therapy, it’s not depressing at all. I’m a master’s level clinician so I still counsel one survivor a week. When we first started with her, if you’d caught me in the first two months I may have been a little down, but I keep my spirits up because she’s night and day. She may be yelling at me this week, but I know that I’ll be there for her next week anyway. We get nothing but the outcome. I get to be there when she goes to horse therapy for the first time and comes back with a positive experience. She’s crying and I’m crying, and it’s just amazing. People think what we do is so hard, but I say, ‘Are you kidding me? It’s the best job in the world.’ It still moves me to tears every day. You’re seeing what people thought were throwaways become something else.

What are the challenges? The biggest issue we were hitting was law enforcement saying, ‘We don’t have an issue.’ They weren’t identifying it and didn’t understand what the issue was because it had always been written up as prostitution and not human trafficking. It was a labeling thing. You say “human trafficking” and they think “international,” while the definition federally had become ‘Any commercial act of sex involving a child is human trafficking.’ Locally, the education wasn’t there. But the district attorney from Atlanta came in and led a six-hour training session for our law enforcement and the response was awesome. There wasn’t a bit of ‘That was a waste of time.’ It was all ‘We could have tried the last five cases differently; we just didn’t know.’ There’s so much new law that’s been written, but if it’s not trained all the way down to the local law enforcement in every small town, they only know to write things up the way they’re been writing them up. Now we have a whole arm that does law enforcement training.

How has the organization expanded? There are so many different arms of Selah Freedom. People think it’s just a house, but that’s only one aspect of the program. When they do come to us and go into the housing, we work with them for one to three years depending on how long they need. But we also have a mentoring program, so whether they’re in our residential program or not, because they don’t need a place to stay, they still go through a great deal of trauma counseling. And then we have the prevention arm aimed at the 12- to 17-year-olds and is based on a program out of Boston. The stats say that 1 out of 3 girls and 1 out of 5 boys will be abused, and an abused child is a vulnerable child so prevention is important.

What’s next? Right now there are a lot of great things happening. We have prevention groups  (My Life, My Choice) that we are getting off the ground. As for housing, right now we are maxed out at four girls and have a waiting list. We have only four beds. We’re looking at new property that could house up to 16 and quadruple us. It has three buildings and a 2,800-square-foot barn that we’re going to convert into a space where they can have art therapy, dance therapy and beyond. Right now, they have a dining room table in a little bitty house and they do everything right there. They’re so happy to be free, but we’re going to spread out.

Your parting message? The slogan, from the beginning, has been ‘Bringing light into the darkness.’ Now that people know it’s happening here, if they see something that looks odd, they can anonymously report it.

Human Trafficking Hotline: 888-3737-888