This article first appeared in the St. Louis Beacon, July 11, 2011 - The Millennium hoteloffers its guests superb views of the Arch and Old Cathedral, but the convention of 900 sisters of St. Joseph put that aside and explicitly chose to gather in St. Louis -- and at this hotel -- for their five-day meeting because the hotel management shared the nuns' determination to protect children from commercial exploitation, especially sexual exploitation.
On noon Tuesday, the U.S. Federation of Sisters of St. Joseph plan a press conference to witness the Millennium's hotel general manager Dominic Smart sign its anti-trafficking pledge. Smart hopes that other hotels in his chain and elsewhere will copy his hotel's pilot effort.
The order's leaders visited hotels in three cities before choosing the Millennium. They asked if the hotels were willing to get behind their convention's resolution to make the public more aware of human trafficking of underage prostitutes, sweatshop workers, domestics and other workers.
At the suggestion of the federation, Smart mandated that each staff member, including part-timers, take the class in mid-June. The staff learned how to recognize minors held as prostitutes and how to report them to authorities. In the class, hotel staff from housekeepers to night clerks learned how to look for "red flags" to help them detect child captives.
The hotel also has agreed to follow the guidelines of the international advocacy non-profit network called End Child Prostitution, Child Pornography and Trafficking of Children for Sexual Purposes (ECPAT).
"We want to help people to understand how they can use their influence, (including) how they spend their dollars on this important issue," said Sister Joanne Gallagher of Boston.
A zeal to heal
The theme of the sisters' convention, which started Saturday and runs through Wednesday, is "Zeal for healing the neighborhood of God's sacred universe." Much of the agenda is about spiritual development, prayer and social justice in their chosen missions. The meeting began with prayer Saturday evening, and the nuns talked in small groups about their personal zeal. Sunday, in the hotel lobby between sessions, several casually dressed sisters from across the country called the trafficking of minors for sex, sweatshops and domestic work "the slavery of the 21st century." All are committed to do something to bring awareness -- from helping to educate the rescued girls to writing letters and attending civic meetings to strengthening laws on the issue -- a cluster of nuns said.
Several St. Joseph sisters in St. Louis expect to help a non-profit group working on starting a regional shelter, called the Covering House, specifically for girls who have been held captive -- often drugged -- in prostitution rings.
Eventually, the Covering House hopes to open two homes for underage prostitutes. The shelters would provide girls with counseling and help them get an education.
On Tuesday, the nuns will hold a session on protecting minors from human trafficking and restoring the lives of those rescued. Gallagher hopes the session will have "a ripple effect" on the sisters, their associates and those that the sisters serve in their other community service.
"I've been working for four years in Boston to raise awareness among the sisters and all the people that we work with," she said. "For three years we have been planning this meeting and using what I learned to advocate action to eliminate human trafficking."
The federation's conventions, held every four to six years "always have a witness" issue, Gallagher said.
The child prostitution issue is not new to many religious groups. Early in this century, the Lutheran Church-Missouri Synod's national convention gathered here and included a session for pastors and lay youth leaders on underage sex trafficking. It featured a moving talk by a survivor forced into prostitution in crossroads motels in Minnesota and the Dakotas. The speaker, an Ingrid Bergman look alike who grew up in a farming community and was, by then, an observant Lutheran, broke the pastors' stereotypes. She encouraged them to open their eyes more widely to who might be held captive by criminal rings.
Under-age prostitution is also not a new topic to many St. Joseph sisters. The federation includes social workers in abused women shelters and houses for runaways, prison chaplains, doctors, nurses and teachers who prepare drop-outs and ex-cons for GED, or high-school equivalency, tests. Some sisters work with adult prostitutes.
Trafficking human beings, especially minors, is more lucrative than drug trafficking because "a person can be sold over and over," Gallagher said. Sex trafficking is easy cash for organized crime.
Working with the Hotel
"The Millennium staff has been really has been wonderful," Gallagher said. She first visited the hotel with the planning team months ago.
The hotel manager made the awareness class part of the hotel's mid-June continuing education session. It took some months to obtain permission from the chain's national leadership, Smart said, but the program was accepted as a "pilot project" for the hotel chain.
"I have every reason to think that every member of my staff here wants to have a safe working environment for our guests and for us," Smart said. "This is a family hotel. I don't want (criminal activity) here. It is best to be pro-active."
While the hotel has no record of such under-age activity, the manager said, it does have an ongoing commitment to prevent it. Hotel workers hired since the class have been given the hotel's new policy on human trafficking and taught the "red flags" (see below) in their first orientation session, Smart said.
"In our lives in supermarkets, in other places, anywhere, we sometimes see people with bruises," Smart said. "Now we need to realize that they may be signs that we need to pay attention to. This affects all echelons of society."
The British-born hotel executive's Oxbridge accent wavered with emotion as he said, "We have families ourselves. I have three children under 6 of my own. If we even save one child from this, we would be saving one life. That is worth it. Trafficking destroys lives."
In addition to the hotel's public anti-trafficking policy and staff training, Smart also promise to print the ECPAT logo and the hotel's new policy in its brochures and its homepage and to report annually to the ECPAT steering committee that oversees the code of conduct.
ECPAT's pioneering code was devised with the cooperation of international travel industry groups and UNICEF. U.S. hotel chains that have signed systemwide include Radisson, Country Inns and Suites by Carlson, and many Hiltons. British Airways and some package travel companies, including Kuoni Holidays, have signed.
Dedee Lhamon, founder and president of the Covering House, taught hotel workers classes and will address the nuns on Tuesday.
Human trafficking generates an estimated $9.5 billion a year in the United States, according to the Federal Bureau of Investigation. Lhamon stressed that the prostitution rings are lucrative not just for the pimp and ring leaders, who often are tied into organized crime, but for the internet sites and newspapers with "adult" personal ads. The ads and sites don't say "under age" but use code phrases like "new in town," Lhamon said.
"The internet sites make it very clear that they are minors, children," said Lhamon.
Her illustrated PowerPoint talk for the hotel staff included photos of girls -- apparently under 18 -- in hotel rooms.
"There were a lot of gasps," she said. "They recognized that the photos were taken in hotels. They could tell from the furniture, the type of paisley bedspreads, the curtains."
Lhamon added, "People don't realize that one in three teen runaways will be lured toward prostitution within 48 hours of leaving home," citing the finding of the National Incident Studies of Missing, Abducted, Runaway and Throwaway Children.
Spreading the Word
On Sunday, several nuns said that they believe that teaching adults awareness techniques can help save children. Most American nuns, and virtually all who work with children in any Catholic diocese, have had training in recognizing the various signs of abuse -- psychological and physical -- in children as part of the 2002 mandated U.S. Catholic bishops program to protect children and youth from pedophiles and other abusers.
In a resolution, developed under the leadership of the federation's executive director Sister Kathy McCluskey, the St. Joseph sisters promise to educate the general public about this issue.
Three years ago McCluskey hired Nix Conference and Meeting Management of St. Louis to help finding a hotel and deal with other logistics.
"I'm impressed," said Kimberly Ritter-Videmschek, the Nix conference planner for this week's conference. She specializes in religious groups' meetings, especially Catholic groups. She says that other religious groups may be drawn to the issue. They, too, might want to spend their dollars at hotels that have joined against trafficking. She organizes about 40 conventions annually.
"But, I talk to over 700 hotels with proposals a year to plan those meetings," she said. "Not many people talk about this issue, but I think many of our clients would want to support it."
The St. Joseph sisters hope this ripple of advocacy grows into a wave.
Red Flags
Dedee Lhamon of the Covering House gave the Millennium staff this list of red flags to help them spot underage prostitutes:
- Provides scripted answers or has inconsistencies in story
- Rents a room with no luggage or an adult rents the room for the minor, pays, then leaves
- Shows signs of abuse, such as bruising, or branding or tattoos, especially that reflects ownership or money
- Comes on to several men
- Appears helpless, shamed, nervous or disoriented, or malnourished
- Fears or is unable to make eye contact
- Has no spending money, identification or personal possessions
- Wears clothes that say "Daddy's girl" or are inappropriate for weather
- Is kept under surveillance
- Has men coming in without luggage at odd hours and going to same room
Sisters of St. Joseph
The U.S. Federation of the Sisters of St. Joseph is a loosely organized network of about 7,000 sisters belonging to 16 congregations of nuns. The Sisters of St. Joseph of Carondelet in south St. Louis is one of the order's 16 congregations, and the Carondelet-based nuns serve in 20 states, Peru, Chile and Uganda. Each congregation is independent but united in a common mission and heritage: St. Joseph nuns who founded a convent in 1650 in LePuy, France and who supported themselves making lace. The U.S. federation also includes 2,800 lay associates. Most convention participants work in the U.S., but they include sisters from 20 countries.
Patricia Rice, a freelance writer in St. Louis, has long covered religion and religious organizations.