I have just been trained as a group facilitator for Ending The Game, a 10-week non-judgmental psycho-educational curriculum to help individuals leave the sex trafficking industry for good. On average, when someone leaves, or is rescued from, the industry, they return due to trauma bonds and indoctrination processes 15 times. It can be delivered in one- or two-hour group formats and individually. The authors, labor exploitation victims themselves, include all the various learning styles for an effective process in teaching skills to decrease the chances that survivors return to The Game. Further, the authors are positive role models of those with a past of labor exploitation and psychological manipulation, leaving the industry or high-demand relationship, and attaining higher education to become a lawyer, a counselor, and an educator. They are using their painful past to reach out and help others who are in similar predicaments.
Denver, Colorado, is a major hub in commercial human exploitation because of the international airport and I-25, the major north/south freeway. I-25 is a main corridor for illegal transportation to local areas, mountain areas in Colorado, and beyond. Pimps and drug lords use: false job opportunity and promises to entice their victims; effective psychological techniques to keep their victims entrapped both psychologically and emotionally through a trauma bond; and, fear tactics to keep them physically bound. Law enforcement is taking efforts to decrease this influx of exploitation, manipulation and psychological coercion. Ending The Game is “a 1st-of-its-kind, psycho-educational coercion resiliency curriculum that reduces feelings of attachment to the traffickers” and the lifestyle (www.endingthegame.com).