Hundreds of girls in SC are trafficking victims. A Columbia nonprofit offers help for survivors.

Lighthouse for Life , a Columbia non-profit formed to help victims of sex trafficking in the Midlands, is joined by South Carolina's First Lady Peggy McMaster, Thursday, June 13, 2024, to cut the ribbon on the group's new drop-in service center, located on St. Andrews Road in Columbia. (Jessica Holdman/SC Daily Gazette)

COLUMBIA — It started a decade ago, with the story of a young girl in Richland County. She was smart and well-behaved from a stable home, police believed.

But then she went to a party. Things went wrong.

Some people took embarrassing photos and used them to blackmail her, threatening to pass them around at her school. Unbeknownst to her family, she was exploited and became a victim of sexual trafficking.

Top SC counties for human trafficking

Last year, 357 investigations into human trafficking were opened across South Carolina: 88% involved sexual exploitation; 4% involved forced labor; and 8% involved both, according to data from the State Law Enforcement Division:

• Richland — 43 cases

• Greenville — 34

• Aiken — 24

• Berkeley — 23

• Charleston — 21

• Lexington — 21

• Spartanburg — 21

• Dorchester — 18

• York — 13

• Florence — 9

Source: S.C. Human Trafficking Task Force 2023 annual report

One day, she ran away from home, and her family didn’t know why until they found a strange number in their phone records. When police dialed it, it connected to an escort service.

Her story, told from the pulpit of a church in 2014 by a Richland County Sheriff’s Department school resource officer invited by the pastor to speak, is what inspired Andrea Wind, a school teacher and mother.

It opened her eyes to the fact that sex trafficking happens in South Carolina, in her own Midlands community, and she decided to fight back.

Wind founded the nonprofit Lighthouse for Life to help other victims of sex trafficking who, like that young girl, often remain hidden.

“Her parents had no idea,” said Lisa Kejr, the nonprofit’s director. “She would have to sneak out at night and go do what they asked her to do and then sneak back in, get a shower, and go to school the next day … Her whole world was shattered because of a poor decision at a party.”

Now, after 10 years of operations, Lighthouse for Life plans to bring something that the Columbia area has never had before — a safe house for girls who are sex trafficking victims seeking to escape.

South Carolina has four other emergency shelters in the state, but only one of those, located in Aiken, serves minors. At the end of June, Kejr said Lighthouse will seek certification from the state Department of Social Services to open a second, hopefully by the end of 2024.

Last year, 342 investigations involving sex trafficking were opened across South Carolina, according to an annual report from the state attorney general’s office. The vast majority of trafficking victims were minors and female.

The state lacks safe places where victims of these crimes can go, according to the report. This prompted Attorney General Alan Wilson to seek $10 million from the state Legislature for shelters.

The Senate approved $5 million while the House signed off on $1 million. Budget writers from both chambers continue to negotiate.

If approved to open, Lighthouse’s shelter will serve up to five women and girls at a time, ages 12 to 21, Kejr said.

While five may not seem like a large number, Kejr said smaller groups usually have better results.

“If you get too many in one space at a time, the success rate drops,” she said. “It starts to feel more like a facility than it does care. So, we try to keep the numbers smaller.

“It’s more of a family feel,” she continued. “There’s the undivided attention that they specifically need.”

In addition to giving the women and girls a place to live, the safe house will also be a licensed private high school tailored to the residents.

“When somebody is victimized, you don’t know what age that trauma started and how that may have impacted their education,” Kejr said. “You may have somebody who is (numerically) in 10th grade but they’re operating on a third grade, fourth grade level.”

A possible safe house is not Lighthouse’s only milestone. Last week, it celebrated the opening of what it’s calling a drop-in service center for women.

Located in a refurbished home in northwest Columbia, near where Interstates 20 and 26 intersect, the drop-in center offers women a place to cook a hot meal, take a shower, do their laundry or receive other aid.

While Lighthouse has been supporting survivors of sex trafficking in the Columbia area for a decade, it hasn’t had a space of its own, Kejr said.

Last year, the nonprofit helped 40 survivors by connecting them to services.

“We just didn’t have a location,” Kejr said. “Our meetings happened at coffee shops or public places or over the phone. We did sometimes use church facilities to do a support group, but it just wasn’t ideal. It didn’t make them feel like they really had a place that they could come to.”

Now, Lighthouse can offer finance instruction, cooking classes, parenting classes, as well as just a homey place to gather.

The woman who will run the drop-in center is a survivor of sex trafficking herself.

Heather Pagán was trafficked from age 14 until she was 32.

The Lexington native said she had trauma in her earlier childhood. Promised love and protection, she fell into a trap. Her abuser sent her to work in strip clubs. It took her getting arrested in 2008 and being sent to prison for two years to get away.

After getting out of prison, Pagán started trying to help other women. She went to work for a nonprofit in Germany, going in the brothels of the country’s red light districts and helping women get out. In 2017, she came back home to South Carolina and connected with Lighthouse for Life through a women’s conference.

If Lighthouse for Life had been operating when she was being trafficked, “it could have changed a lot for me,” Pagán said.

“In 2008, South Carolina didn’t have a (human trafficking) task force. It wasn’t something people talked about. There really was little knowledge about exploitation and trafficking,” she added.

Kejr called sex trafficking, in particular, one of the most complicated criminal industries in existence.

“(Victims) end up in a relationship that they thought was good and strong. But then all of a sudden the tables turn and they start taking advantage, saying, ‘But now you’ve got to do this. You owe me. If you really love me, you’re going to do this,'” Kejr said. “Eventually it gets more controlling. They’ll use any sort of force, fraud or coercion that they can to maintain what the individual thought was a healthy relationship.”

Kejr said victims helped by Lighthouse and their stories vary — there’s a woman whose father trafficked her. In another case, a man who went to work in the doctor’s office where his father was a patient was exploited by the physician. For others, they needed a place to live and were forced to perform sexual acts in exchange for housing.

“Lighthouse for Life is one of the few organizations that this is our sole focus,” Kejr said. “Our entire job is just to fight this.”

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