Petroplex News

When Lisa Bownds was 18-years-old, she was sexually trafficked in the Denton and Dallas areas of Texas. Despite this challenge, today Bownds is the founder and CEO of Reflection Ministries where she has dedicated her life to rescuing sex trafficking victims in Midland and Odessa.

“In West Texas, we have such a transient atmosphere because of oil,” Bownds told Petroplex News. “When oil is good, it is not uncommon for motels, hotels, and man camps to be everywhere and completely full for months, weeks, and years at a time. Oil companies employ people to work a couple of weeks and then swap them out. It's limited accountability, limited supervision so that people can come and go."

On average, 46% of victims are trafficked by their families, according to the International Organization for Migration.

“We never decrease on trafficking in our area,” Bownds said in an interview. “We have approximately 1,100 sex ads a day where you can buy someone online. Even at our field sites for water and sand where truckers line up and wait for 2 to 3 hours for refills, traffickers will roll up, drop the girls off and they'll have to provide services all the way down the line.”

Reflection Ministries works not only with law enforcement on the front lines with recovery efforts of trafficking victims, but also provides housing and treatment at The Village.

“What we found is that organizations are doing bits and pieces of what we do,” Bownds said. “They are either on the front lines with crisis intervention or providing restorative care. We do both.”

Reflection Ministries educates, intervenes during a trafficking crisis, provides second-stage homes and aftercare for up to four years that’s focused on wrap-around holistic treatment.

“We started in 2016 to educate law enforcement, school districts, medical providers, churches, and the local community about what is prostitution and what is trafficking,” said Bownds. “We are changing the mindset that currently exists about trafficking victims and working closely on changing the laws for people to understand that there's so much more to the back history of trafficking victims who are being incarcerated or prosecuted."

The advent of COVID-19 has brought to light a lack of resources, according to Bownds.

“Resources were challenging to begin with...Other organizations are shutting down and not receiving individuals because of COVID or they don’t have the staff to receive survivors anymore. We have not had to cut back on the services we provide because we've been creative on how we provide services in order to stay within our financial guidelines and not run ourselves too thin, but it's been a challenge," she said.

The Texas Department of State Health Services reports there are 1.2 million coronavirus cases statewide with 22,000 fatalities as of Dec. 4.

Bownds added that the average American can help combat human and sex trafficking by not being a consumer of even casual use of adult pornography.

“Only 2% to 4% of adult sex workers are independent contractors so when you turn it around, you begin to understand that someone else is pulling the strings for that 96% to 98%,” Bownds said. “Most adult sex workers have been sexually abused and violated before they even get to the life of trafficking. Somewhere, along the way, someone has implemented that protocol in their life.”