24 Apr Why Hunting Monsters Isn’t Enough

I don’t write many blogs or opinion pieces.

For most of my career, I’ve believed the best thing I could do was stay the course and do the work—leading an organization, showing up day after day alongside colleagues and survivors rebuilding their lives.

But every time another exploitation scandal dominates the headlines, I feel the tension rise again.

The shock.
The outrage.
The endless fascination with the monster.

And every time, I think the same thing: we are missing the point.

Let me be clear about something up front: justice is essential. It’s just not sufficient.

Accountability matters. People who exploit others should be investigated, prosecuted, and punished.

And still, I wish I could wave a wand and we could stop being so shocked and disgusted by evil men. I wish that same wand could point us toward the systems that may quietly give power and permission for human beings to stop being treated like commodities.

Because the truth is, the evil is devastating. But the indifference of systems—and our willingness to accept them—is what breaks my heart.

What the headlines leave out

Those of us who have spent years in the anti-trafficking movement are not surprised by these headlines.

Not because exploitation is acceptable.

But because we see every day how the system quietly produces the conditions traffickers rely on.

We treat exploitation like a shocking story. One where the villain is caught and justice restores order. But exploitation doesn’t work like a story. It doesn’t disappear when a trafficker is arrested, because the vulnerability that made exploitation possible in the first place is often still there.

The false finish line: “stable”

The first survivor I worked with through Empowered Network was in 2017. She was an immigrant survivor who had reached what the system considered “stable.” She had secured her visa, moved into her first apartment, and found a part-time job.

By every measure society uses to say someone has “made it,” she had arrived.

Apartment.
Job.
Visa.
Stability.

The American dream, right?

The funding had ended. The case had closed. The system had done its job.

But one day she said something to me that I will never forget.

“I feel like I’m supposed to know how to figure this next part out by myself,” she said. “And I can’t.”

She was working constantly and still barely making ends meet. Rent, transportation, groceries—every expense felt like it might tip the balance.

The relief of escaping exploitation had been replaced by another terrifying reality: surviving alone in a system she had never been given the tools to navigate.

From the outside, society saw a success story.

From where she was standing, she was one unexpected bill away from losing everything again.

That moment changed how I understood prevention.

Because exploitation isn’t sustained only by monsters. It is sustained by vulnerability.

What vulnerability actually looks like

Sometimes vulnerability looks like:

• unstable housing
• childcare that costs more than a paycheck.
• immigration status
• medical debt
• the simple reality that low-wage work does not cover the cost of living

When you spend time with survivors rebuilding their lives, the distance between stability and crisis can be heartbreakingly thin.

One rent payment.
One childcare bill.
One job loss.

That is often the margin between independence and exploitation.

As a society, we remain strangely removed from this reality. We talk about exploitation as if we are watching it unfold somewhere far away, forgetting that these are real human beings trying to rebuild their lives in the same systems we all move through.

My heart refuses to believe that we have become a culture more fascinated with talking about evil than with doing the hard work required to dismantle it.

And yet, sometimes that is exactly what it feels like.

A moment that stopped me cold

Recently, it hit even closer to home.

I was talking with my 17-year-old, and he said something that stopped me in my tracks:
“Nothing is ever going to change.”

And for a moment, I just sat with that.

Because that kind of thinking—that quiet resignation—is exactly what allows all of this to continue.

“No,” I told him. “That’s the problem. You can change that thinking.”

Real change doesn’t start with a headline.

It starts in moments like that.

It shows up in conversations, in locker rooms, in group chats, in everyday moments where something is said about women, about power, about what’s acceptable—and people go along with it because it’s easier than speaking up.

Dismantling this doesn’t begin with a headline.

It begins with one person—one 17-year-old—deciding in that moment to think differently. To say something. To not go along.

My mom used to say: do the right thing, even when it’s unpopular.

Right now, we don’t just need awareness.

We need a society willing to choose what’s right over what’s popular.

It is easier to post about how awful Epstein was. Easier to condemn the Alexander brothers. Easier to judge Cesar Chavez.

That kind of outrage costs us very little.

It allows us to stand comfortably with the crowd while the systems that allowed it all to happen remain largely untouched.

What actually costs something—time, patience, commitment—is standing with survivors long after the headlines fade.

The opposite of exploitation

Independence does not happen simply because someone is no longer being trafficked.

Independence happens when someone—and often an entire community—spends years rebuilding a life that exploitation and systemic barriers helped tear apart.

It happens when someone can pay their own rent.

When they can afford childcare.

When they have steady income, financial stability, and the space to believe in their own worth again.

The opposite of exploitation is not rescue or exit. The opposite of exploitation is agency.

Agency grows slowly through housing stability, education, employment, financial literacy, and community support. It grows when people are given the tools and the time necessary to build a life that no longer depends on survival choices.

That work is not dramatic. It rarely makes headlines.

But it is the work that makes exploitation harder to sustain over time.

At Empowered Network, we don’t wish—we work, with intention and commitment, alongside survivors as they rebuild their independence.

Yes, we should hold those who exploit others accountable.

But if our attention begins and ends with the villain, we will keep replaying the same headlines over and over again.

Because exploitation and trafficking do not survive on evil alone.

They survive on vulnerability.

And vulnerability is not inevitable.

A society that truly wants exploitation to end cannot reserve stability and opportunity only for the people lucky enough to be born with it.

It must build systems that extend those possibilities to everyone. Because vulnerability is something a society can choose to fix.

If this resonates, I hope you’ll share it—and stay engaged after the headlines move on because that’s when prevention becomes possible.