June 1, 2026
By Julianne Will
You can call the police, her friend told her. They will come.
So she grabbed her trafficker’s phone, went to her bedroom and dialed 911. As she was giving her address to the dispatcher, her trafficker — her husband — burst in, snatched away the phone and hung up.
He and other members of the family led L from her room, bound her hands and covered her mouth with tape, and locked her in another room in the suburban New York house that had become her prison. Then they conspired on a plan to explain the situation: They would call 911 and claim that they had just arrived home to find that someone had broken in and locked her away.
But L’s first call had been recorded. The dispatcher heard L asking frantically for help, and they knew she had made the call from his phone. The police were on the way.
Yet that was not the end of L’s trafficking experience.
Trafficked at Home
It’s not uncommon for survivors to have been trafficked by someone they know, whether it’s a parent, a friend’s parent, a spouse or another family member.
In L’s case, she met her trafficker the day she was wed to him via an arranged marriage in Pakistan. The practice of arranging marriages is not uncommon there, and it’s viewed as a financial solution for parents of lesser means who have daughters. They know that when their sons grow up, they will earn a living and care for their parents. But when girls grow up, they will marry and move to their husbands’ homes. Girls are a cost without a financial return, and for this reason they’re often not educated.
When girls turn 15 or 16, their parents often begin looking for a husband for them. The first time a girl sees her new husband is typically on the day she marries him. And in many cases it doesn’t matter what he’s like — whether or not he provides her with enough food, or is abusive or forces her to labor. Her parents won’t let her come back. Leaving is not an option.
L was something of an exception — she was 21 and had even begun a master’s degree in art when she was married to her trafficker, an older man, meeting him on that fateful wedding day. Immediately thereafter, her husband moved from Pakistan to New York with his mother and his children from a previous marriage. She didn’t see him again until he sent for her.
She planned to continue her education in New York, but he had other plans for L. He had no interest in having more children with her; rather, he used her as a caretaker and domestic servant, and she spent her days cleaning the house and cooking for his kids and his mother. He took her documents and her phone, and she was not allowed to leave the house or even get near the windows. She never had enough to eat.
“Every day was like a month for me,” she says.
L tried to reach out to her family, to explain that her husband and his family were lying about her living conditions to them, but they wouldn’t allow her to contact them. After four long months, L saw an opportunity to use her trafficker’s phone and connected with a classmate in Pakistan, who knew someone living in Maryland. She asked if he could help her escape. He explained that if he tried to enter her husband’s home, he could be arrested for trespassing, but that it was safe to call 911.
She feared this idea — in Pakistan, filing a police report as a woman can be useless. They won’t take action; sometimes, a husband will even pay the police to return his wife to him without filing a report. There aren’t external resources, either — shelters, safe houses or other support.
“Women are surviving sex trafficking, labor trafficking, abuse, because they don’t have a platform, they don’t know women’s rights, and in our country, no one’s going to speak up,” L says.
Speaking up brings more than reproach; it can be deadly. Pakistani education activist Malala Yousafzai survived an assassination attempt by the Taliban for advocating that girls be educated. Women who do reach out might be blackmailed, they might have acid thrown in their faces, or it might be the last thing they ever do.
>>>Efforts to criminally investigate, prosecute and convict bonded labor and domestic servitude and proactively identify and assist such victims [in Pakistan] remained inadequate compared to the scale of these crimes, and inspection efforts remained insufficient to effectively enforce labor laws. Victim protection services, especially shelter, remained inadequate and there were reports of re-victimization. The 2018 Prevention of Trafficking in Persons Act (PTPA) continued to allow a fine in lieu of imprisonment for sex trafficking crimes. For a fifth year, the government did not take adequate action against credible reports of official complicity in trafficking crimes, which also continued to create a culture of impunity and inhibited anti-trafficking efforts. In Sindh, local officials continued to perpetrate bonded labor with impunity in brick kilns and on farms. 3
Shelter Isn’t Safety
After the police spoke to her, L spent two days at Elmhurst Hospital in Queens, recovering from her injuries. Then she was moved to a dorm-style women’s shelter, amid a population of women who were recovering from domestic violence or experiencing homelessness — and often suffering from addiction and/or mental illness.
L began working at Domino’s Pizza; when she came back to the shelter one evening, a woman was sitting on her bed, smoking. L asked her to leave, but the pattern repeated itself, until one night when she awoke to find the woman leaning over her, threatening to kill her. L called her case manager; the next day, she was given a bed at LifeWay Network.
>>> In Polaris’s survivor survey, 64 percent reported being homeless or experiencing unstable housing at the time they were recruited into their trafficking situation. Traffickers are able to exploit potential victims’ fear of sleeping on the street by offering them safe shelter to recruit them into trafficking. 4
It took time for L to unfold from the terrified, closed off and depressed young woman she had become. She was afraid to go outside, fearful that her trafficker might be following her. For three months, L just breathed, through weekly community dinners and therapeutic yoga at LifeWay. She found the space and the time to begin to heal.
LifeWay Network’s safe house had provided the means to survive without returning to her trafficker, and without falling victim to another trafficking situation out of desperate necessity.
“Finding this house, I was so surprised and so blessed,” she says. “People sent clothes — brand-new clothes, which I’d never seen my whole life. Whenever I think I need something, a donation comes in with the exact thing. I’m blessed; it’s very touching for me.”
L thrived in LifeWay’s safe house environment, where she met other women who were recovering from trafficking experiences. She was able to reconnect with her artistic sensibilities through weekly workshops and found a new job.
“Keeping busy, you move forward for the future,” L says. “It was like a new beginning for my life.”
Eventually, she even remarried. This time, however, L had conditions: She told her parents that she wanted to meet her prospective husband first. She asked him whether he was comfortable if she wore Western clothing outside the home and traditional clothing in their home. She wanted to complete her degree.
“And I want to work for LifeWay,” she told him, “because they saved my life.”
He agreed to support her in all of these things, and they’ve been married for three years now, with a beautiful little daughter. L has her master of arts degree from Allama Iqbal Open University, Pakistan. And she is now a co-house manager in one of LifeWay Network’s safe houses, as well as a survivor advocate, speaking to groups about her trafficking experience
Specialized Support Is Essential
L gives a face to a situation that too often goes the other way. The period immediately after having exited a trafficking situation and en route to assistance is a highly vulnerable time for survivors. A 10-year study by the International Organization for Migration examined 79 known re-trafficking cases in the IOM Human Trafficking Database and found that many victims are re-trafficked within two years of their initial exit.
The same vulnerabilities that led to survivors’ initial trafficking — poverty and limited job opportunities or marginalization, for example — typically still exist after that initial trafficking experience and are further compounded by a lack of stable housing and trauma that requires unique care.
Shelters are sometimes the worst places for trafficking survivors, because traffickers exploit vulnerability, and they prey upon the women there, realizing that traumatized survivors are desperate for a home, love, support, a job.
Women who’ve been trafficked for sex or labor can feel shame or isolation in a domestic violence shelter. In homeless shelters, women who’ve been trafficked can find themselves coping with roommates suffering from addiction and mental illness.
By contrast, LifeWay Network’s dedicated safe housing for survivors of trafficking fosters community for women who can share experiences. They receive a bed in a home-like setting, clothing and toiletries. Staff offer support in everything from the basics of hygiene and cleaning — critical for women trafficked as girls — to banking and job interview skills. Volunteers give lessons in English as a second language, and a host community provides a stable presence.
Residents of LifeWay’s safe houses go on excursions, and they share a community dinner in the safe house each week, followed by a workshop. L has even led some of those workshops, putting her artistic talents to work.
With the proper support and opportunity, survivors of human trafficking go on to live successful lives of independence. To not just survive but to thrive. And many are instrumental in helping to prevent trafficking for potential victims by sharing their voices and shedding light on this horrific crime.
L is an example of that courage. She’s broken the cycle of trafficking for her daughter and continues to support women who’ve made their own difficult exit. L found a new beginning — a new way of life.
You can learn more about re-trafficking from LifeWay Network’s previous blog on the topic. And you can support survivors like L by getting involved:
- Learn more about trafficking. You can even schedule a presentation by LifeWay Network for your school, church, company or community organization.
- Volunteer for LifeWay Network. We’re always grateful for gifts of time and talent, whether in a role in the safe house, in our office, or as a professional providing pro bono services or guidance.
- Shop Fair Trade wherever possible, choosing consumer goods made without labor trafficking in other parts of the world.
- Advocate for prevention and change — write a letter to the editor or to your representatives, help raise awareness in your community or share our social media.
- Donate to LifeWay Network to support our safe housing and education programs.
1. https://datatopics.worldbank.org/dataviz/girls-education-pakistan/
2. https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC10031191/
3. https://www.state.gov/reports/2024-trafficking-in-persons-report/pakistan/
4. https://polarisproject.org/human-trafficking-and-housing-homelessness/