Happy New Year from Timbelo! Our very first featured abolitionist of 2022 is Cierra Davis. Ms. Davis currently works as a Victim's Rights Advocate for the Ohio Crime Victim Justice Center. As a Victim's Rights Advocate, she works directly with clients to help ensure they are taken care of. She handles intake meetings, notifies current clients of upcoming court dates, makes victims and their families aware of their rights, and helps them to assert those rights at any point in the legal process. When she clocks out of her regular job, she heads to Oasis House in Dayton, where she's been volunteering for the last three years! At Oasis House, Cierra takes care packages to women who are living on the street and delivers meals to women working in strip clubs. The goal is to create relationships, make people aware of their services, and hopefully get them into a safehouse where they can begin to build a better life for themselves.

It's pretty clear to see helping others is very near and dear to Ms. Davis' heart. She's particularly passionate about sexual violence survivors, dismissing harmful stereotypes, and clearing up common misconceptions about sexual violence in general. As she grew and learned more about this field, it became clear to her that sexual assault meant much more than just things like rape. This issue is much bigger than that, and includes women and children who are being forced into sex trafficking. One particular misunderstanding that Cierra wants to address is the idea that a lot of women have chosen the life of a sex work.

It’s a lot bigger than that and a lot more complicated,” she says. Many times, victim-survivors are forced and coerced into the commercial sex industry as a means of survival. If someone has the choice between surviving or engaging in the commercial sex industry, is that really a choice?

Her advice to new anti-trafficking advocates is two-fold. Firstly, recognize that self-care is vital to your success. You cannot pour from an empty cup, and must help yourself before you can really help anybody else. Secondly, she wants people to recognize that justice looks different for everyone. The legal system is far from straight-forward, and sometimes you have to manage your expectations going into it. However, being an empowerment tool for a victim, even if they don't get the outcome they want, is powerful. Simply helping someone to push through another day is powerful. Understanding the importance of these things can help each and every one of us to be the best human trafficking abolitionists we can be.

Thank you, Cierra, for all that you do!