21-07-2025
Women on Pensacola streets are trafficked every day. It's difficult to prove and stop.
Lisha Banks has been living off and on the streets for years, camping in the woods, along rail lines, or wherever the 59-year-old can find a quiet place to be. There's no such thing as a 'safe' place to live for most women on the street.
They are disproportionately vulnerable to violence, including sexual violence from people they know and others they don't.
In fact, escaping violence can be the reason why some women, like Lisha, end up homeless.
'It's hard. If you're not tough bad things happen. They get raped all the time,' Banks said. 'When I was at Beggs Lane, I had a 28-year-old try to rape me. Thank God a friend came by and got his attention and I could get out of there. You have to keep one eye open and whatever weapons you can have, and still that's not going to do any good if you got 10 guys coming on you, especially the older women.'
To survive, she has learned several ways to cope including putting up barbed wire around her tent or creating booby traps like digging holes and covering them with old carpet.
Banks said protecting yourself is somewhat easier when you're sober, but for people who are in addiction it's hard to hide from sexual exploitation.
It's a scenario she says she has seen play out time and again.
'I have sat and watched young girls go into prostitution and all this other stuff because they had nowhere to go,' Banks said. 'They ran away from home or when their parents were like, 'You do drugs,' and kicked them out. You don't trust anybody because the ones you trust, they're the ones who will get you. It is really hard, and if you're not a strong woman, you're not going to make it out here.'
Homelessness, sexual exploitation 'go hand in hand'
Service agencies who work with women coming out of homelessness say addiction can lead to a vicious cycle.
Some girls and women end up on the street because of substance abuse, while others become homeless for other reasons, but turn to drugs and alcohol to 'survive' their situation.
Either way they are vulnerable to predators who manipulate and use them for their own benefit.
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Addiction and homeless outreach group Offentsive has been working with women to help them transition out of homelessness.
Offentsive President Brad Bishop says the women they see often turn to what's called 'survival sex,' where unsheltered women trade sex for a place to stay.
'That leads to trafficking out on the streets,' Bishop said. 'There's also a lot of stigma around it. It's like they're making a choice, but if they had enough money, they wouldn't have done that, though. If they had literally anything else to offer, they would. It's just having to be in a situation where you have nothing and that's all you have to offer. They're just extremely vulnerable.'
Ministry Village at Olive operates Charis House, a residential, faith-based, substance abuse recovery program for women. Administrators and counselors who work with street survivors say what they experience is akin to human trafficking.
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Although these girls and women aren't kidnapped and sold into slavery for sex or labor as is commonly depicted in Hollywood movies and news reports, they are also used, abused, threatened and forced into having sex with others to benefit their 'handler.'
Most of the time that person using them is someone they know, and the women are so far down on themselves or addicted they don't know how to escape, service providers say.
Outreach workers in both organizations believe 100% of the women they serve have been exploited or trafficked in some way.
'It seems as if addiction and human sex trafficking is really going hand in hand,' said Nicole Dibono, intake recovery director of Ministry Village at Olive. 'It's one or the other, or sometimes both. Sometimes these women, after hearing their stories, they have been exposed to substances and after being exposed, they become addicted and then that's used as a tool to traffic them. Sometimes they are involved in human trafficking and they're using drugs to cope and numb themselves because of what they're doing.'
Dibono says many of the girls and women have been 'groomed' into believing they are prostitutes, and they are choosing to sell themselves for drugs. She said it's hard for them to come to terms that someone they know or love, who is essentially a 'pimp,' has manipulated them and their addiction to make money off them or some other gain.
What is human trafficking?
Ministry Village Executive Director Drayton Smith said it's not the kind of human trafficking most people may picture, like '100 people in the back of a Conex box and shipped to a foreign country,' but it's exploitation just the same.
But because police say it doesn't meet the legal definition of human trafficking, there isn't much data on the problem and that can make it hard for service providers to access funding and programs that would help victims and survivors get the specialized counseling and care they often need.
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Tracking data not only helps identify and document ongoing issues and needs in the community, but it also raises awareness about an issue, which can lead to more resources to address it.
Smith says both the data and resources to address it are sorely lacking.
'If you reach out to any law enforcement agency or anyone that deals with these things on a regular basis, the data is so unclear because they're going to tell you it's a lot easier to do a drug charge or a gun charge than it is to do a trafficking charge, because it's so hard to prove,' Smith said. 'Understanding the data and getting that data is the largest concern that I think right now we face.'
Col. David Ingram with the Escambia County Sheriff's Office is also an executive board member for the Circuit 1 Human Trafficking Task Force. He says there have been four cases so far this year that are classified as trafficking cases, and while they had connections to Northwest Florida, none of them were in our jurisdiction.
He says the primary focus of the Task Force is to prevent people who are vulnerable, like children and teenagers, from falling into the hands of predators through internet exploitation, a common and growing threat.
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When it comes to investigating sex trafficking of unsheltered women, he said victims often don't report the crimes and when it is reported, proving they were trafficked is difficult because of their circumstances.
Ingram says they base human trafficking charges on the same legal definition outlined in state statutes, which requires 'force, fraud or coercion.'
'We look at, 'What we can actually charge?'" Ingram said. 'If we have a person that we think might be taking part in human trafficking, we may charge them with something other than that, because that's what we can charge them with. Like prostitution. We can charge somebody with prostitution, which that takes a lot of work because you've got to go undercover and additional manpower hours to do that, but I can charge that person with prostitution and get her out of that situation.'
Breaking the cycle of addiction and abuse
Ingram says another priority of the Task Force is to connect victims and agencies that work with them with the appropriate service providers, like Magdalene's.
Magdalene's is a Pensacola-based, not-for-profit organization that fights human trafficking and the sexual exploitation of women through education, awareness and survivor support.
Angie Ishee is the executive director and says one of the biggest issues facing survivors of sexual exploitation is helping them find work once they're back on their feet.
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She says the community usually does a good job providing for their immediate needs like food and shelter once someone is ready to get off the street and away from their handler, but they carry the 'stigma' of their previous life, especially if they have a criminal record.
Ishee says education and a steady job can go a long way to helping people think better of themselves, as well as support themselves, but they need support to pursue those opportunities.
'The stigma associated with addiction, homelessness and the sexual exploitation makes it hard,' Ishee said. 'These people are somebody's daughter, they're somebody's mom, they're sometimes somebody's wife, a grandmother. They need job readiness skills to just help them understand that they are lovable and worthy and can function in a sustainable way.'
Breaking the cycle is the goal and service providers say the resources needed to do it include addiction treatment, specialized counseling, education and jobs.
Success benefits the individual as well as the community because it reduces crime and other expenses related to being unsheltered.
Experts say homelessness can cost a community about $30,000 a year for just one person.
'We break the cycle for future generations when we help people,' Ishee said. 'I know of a survivor of sex trafficking, whose mom and grandmother were in what's called the life of trafficking, so it was just expected that she would be also. The fact that she broke free and got the help she needed and had hope, it's a great benefit to our community when somebody breaks that cycle.'
Lisha Banks wants off the streets, too, and is working to that end. She said most people she knows living that way didn't intend to end up that way.
'I've had a house with a fence and two kids and dogs and cars and all that good stuff,' Banks said. 'Then things just happened, and it happened too fast. I don't understand why some people are like, 'Damn the people out here that have mental issues or addictions.''
This article originally appeared on Pensacola News Journal: Women on Pensacola streets trafficked daily, proving it, stopping it is difficult
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