Omaha based Project Harmony's anti-trafficking team collaborates to heal survivors' trauma

In a room full of friendly faces, Diamond Johnson smiled at one in particular.

“That's Angie,” Johnson nodded toward Angie Temple, a former anti-trafficking specialist at Project Harmony. “She puts up with me.”

Johnson, a sex trafficking survivor now 20 years old, explained how Temple gained her trust when Johnson was scared and trying to escape her situation.

Temple took Johnson out to eat a few times. When Johnson calls, Temple always answers and talks to her if she's having a bad day. And under the pressure of caring for a baby while working and going to school, Johnson felt defeated by her messy kitchen. Temple helped her clean it.

“It's the little things that make a difference,” Johnson said, smiling, as Temple wiped away tears. “It's the little things for me.”

Temple had been a part of Project Harmony's Anti-Trafficking Youth Services Program, an initiative that connects the nonprofit's child advocacy experts with local and national law enforcement, trafficking survivors and other outreach organizations. The group works to identify high-risk youths who could be victims of sex trafficking and provide services to them and their families while law enforcement investigates potential crimes by their handlers and attackers.

The program is in its second year, but the collaboration has already been lauded by its members as a way to cut through red tape and easily share ideas and resources in order to best help youths affected by trauma. The team includes people from the Omaha Police Department, Homeland Security, Boys Town and Douglas County, as well as others.

“It really is a pretty phenomenal opportunity for us to have all these resources coming together around a really critical issue,” said Gene Klein, the executive director of Project Harmony.

Retired Omaha Police Captain Tracy Scherer, who headed the special investigations section, and Colleen Roth, the senior director of response services at Project Harmony, had wanted to learn more about kids who run away from home and their risk factors for getting involved in crime and gangs or becoming victims themselves.

Officers then began diving into the more than 3,000 annual missing youth reports from Omaha police alone to look for warning signs of sex trafficking — running away several times, sexual assault, physical or substance abuse, involvement in the foster care system — and would follow up with those youths. The effort identified hundreds of youths who met those risk factors and could potentially fall victim to that danger or were, in fact, likely trafficked but hadn't yet disclosed that to anyone.

“Once we realized just how big the problem was, we realized we needed a lot of help,” said Sgt. Brett Schrage, who oversees the missing persons unit.

In 2022, the anti-trafficking program aided 31 juveniles in its first year while Project Harmony served a total of 140 missing youths. The initiative looks to serve even more in its second year, as this year to date 14 youths are already working with the anti-trafficking program.

Schrage said the “old thought” was that officers would track down missing youths, talk to them, take them back home and close the case. Now, much more time is required to try to build rapport with the youth, figure out what stressors the juvenile faces and connect the teen with services.

“That's the new process, and the new approach is it's going to take consistent follow up by law enforcement until they get to that point where they're ready to leave that world of trafficking,” Schrage said.

Since 2016, law enforcement has investigated reports of human trafficking in nearly 50 cities and towns across Nebraska, according to the Nebraska Human Trafficking Task Force, which started in 2015.

In the past decade, there have been nearly 100 cases of human trafficking — which includes both forced labor and forced sex acts — filed in county courts across the state, according to the Nebraska Crime Commission, which collects that data from law enforcement agencies.

And since 2020, five cases of sex trafficking of a minor in federal court have garnered prison sentences ranging from seven years to 20 years, plus one that resulted in a life sentence.

Isaac Haldeman and Chrissy Worster, with the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, work at Project Harmony with the team a few days a week and can give a larger investigative perspective.

“We really look into the criminal organization of kids who've been trafficked and their traffickers and we're able to bring to the table a lot of interstate and international scope of the investigation,” Haldeman said. “We're able to work within our agency, because we're nationwide, to send these leads out and get information about the trafficking network that these kids are being run by.”

In October, officials created a statewide human trafficking hotline available 24 hours per day, at 833-PLS-LOOK (833-757-5665). Callers can provide anonymous tips that will then be disseminated to local authorities.

Omaha Police Detectives Jeff Shelbourn and Lisa Horton are tasked with meeting high-risk youths where they are — at home, school or sometimes the Douglas County Youth Center — and work to build a relationship. Shelbourn and Horton wear plain clothes and drive unmarked vehicles so the juveniles don't get flak from peers.

The detectives expect the youths to push back, be defensive or refuse help, but showing up over and over again is key. Shelbourn said if he promises to see a teen, he keeps that promise.

“We're finding that there isn't a lot of consistency in that kiddo's life, so you have to be consistent,” he said. “We have to keep that line of consistency because the moment you mess up, you're back to square one because you've just turned into everybody else that's let them down.”

Roth said the sooner kids who run away can get help, the better. Data shows that by the third time youths run away, they likely have picked up a criminal charge. But until that occurs, the youths often don't have resources to turn to, which is why the team is attempting to contact the teens beforehand.

Candias Jones, who attends the team's monthly meetings, said every sex trafficking survivor's story is different and each person has various needs.

“When your trust is broken, it takes a while for you to develop trust for another person, especially someone who's in a position of authority,” Jones said. “Our goal collectively is to get the trust back so that these survivors can find their footing, their ground again.”

Douglas County helped fund the program's effort, and last year acquired two federal grants for roughly $1.5 million to support the team, said Kim Hawekotte, an deputy administrator for the county's juvenile services.

Currently, Project Harmony's program has one guaranteed bed at the Boys Town emergency shelter for juveniles, with the goal to expand to a second bed, said Ashley Hicks, the director of intervention and assessment program at Boys Town. The shelter is supervised 24/7 but isn't a locked facility, Hicks said.

But members of the team said more safe, emergency shelter space is needed. The Douglas County Youth Center is not the best place for sex trafficking survivors, Hawekotte said, because it's not ideal for those runaways to interact with detained youths who are accused of committing serious, violent offenses.

At the Boys Town shelter, the juveniles can start to heal and figure out their future plan. One teen stayed 24 days and another youth stayed for a couple of months. Hicks said the youths only leave when they have a plan and have connected with some services.

Jones is a survivor of sexual trauma and works to help survivors heal.

“We've all needed mentors at some point to grow in our professions. Survivors need it too, to grow in their healing,” she said. “So I look at myself as kind of a survivor healer, to help survivors be able to come in these spaces and provide the insight that we need to do our jobs well.”

Jones, Worster and other team members said they were moved by Johnson's story and her willingness to share and grow. Johnson said she still has a lot of personal work to do and that she isn't fully healed from her trauma.

“You can heal, but it will never be the same. Like if you break your arm, it heals, but you might still have that nerve pain,” Johnson said. “It's the same way with our minds … it will repair itself, but it might not be the same.”