CenHTRO Seed Grant: Trauma-Informed Work with Native Trafficking Survivors

Monday, December 12, 2022

Native youth sex trafficking is a significant problem, but its full scope and scale is unknown. Data around it is often missing or incomplete, giving us only a partial picture of the challenge.

Through a $20,000 CenHTRO seed grant, Kate Morrissey Stahl, a clinical associate professor in the University of Georgia School of Social Work, is leading a research team examining the impacts of sex trafficking on Native youth populations in South Dakota. The goal of Morrissey Stahl’s project is to bring clarity to that picture, focusing on understanding and improving the process of interviewing Native youth sex trafficking survivors.

“Interviewing survivors of youth sex trafficking is a delicate, difficult process, but one that is necessary for a multitude of reasons,” wrote Morrissey Stahl in a recent article in the School of Social Work’s Social Justice Wanted.  “Those difficulties are magnified when it comes to interviewing Native youth. There could be disconnects, particularly for non-Native researchers or clinicians, and it is important to know what culturally humble practices are.”

Read more about Morrissey Stahl’s project in Social Justice Wanted.  

“I hope this work can help us become more aware and show more concern about sex trafficking, especially in populations that have been historically marginalized,” Morrissey Stahl wrote. “Sex trafficking is happening in many communities, and I hope we continue to learn about it and find out on a research, practice, and community level how to best respond to the problem.”