Sun Sentinel Palm Beach Edition
Walk to D.C. aims at human trafficking
Broward court bailiff Roger DeHart was already interested in doing something to fight against human trafficking earlier this year when he met a Plantation mother with a heartbreaking story.
The woman, Lisa Manns, told a meeting of the Broward Human Trafficking coalition about her struggles with her daughter, now 21, who fell into a life of prostitution nearly four years ago after a chance meeting at a high school football game with a smooth-talking teenager with an ulterior motive.
Her story compelled DeHart, 46, to do something more than attend meetings
and make donations. He started his own nonprofit, First S.T.O.P. (Saving Teens and Others from Predators) and is planning his first fundraiser — a 1,065-mile walk from the front of the Broward courthouse to the steps of the U.S. Capitol.
By the time he gets there, he’s hoping to have built enough momentum to stage a rally to bring awareness to the problem of human trafficking.
“I have kids,” said DeHart, who lives in Lauderhill. “They’re 12 and 13. And that’s normally the age when they’re targeted.”
The statistics back him up, according to Jumorrow Johnson, a vice president of the Broward Human Trafficking Coalition.
Florida is third in the nation for calls reported through the federal human trafficking hotline (888-373-7888), Johnson said. And children in their younger teens are often seen by predators as prime targets. The South Florida area leads the state in sex trafficking, and Miami leads the state in labor trafficking.
DeHart said he first became concerned about how easily teens can be manipulated during a trial in Broward nearly a decade ago. A drug dealer was juggling multiple girlfriends and had paid another man to sleep with one of them, grooming her for a life of prostitution.
“I was shocked at how respected he was, how he got this guy to do what he wanted and how the woman was just a prop for him,” DeHart said. “I felt helpless.”
Earlier this year, DeHart attended a meeting of the Broward Human Trafficking Coalition. It was there, he said, that he met Manns, whose 17-year-old daughter was raised in an intact home with married, churchgoing parents who were involved in her life. Even so, the daughter was vulnerable to an up-and-coming pimp.
“This guy was able to manipulate her, control her and beat her — he preyed on her weakness,” she said. “She was introduced to this guy at a high school football game, and he just started grooming her so that when she turned 18, she was out the door and working for him as a prostitute.”
The daughter is now 21 and continues to struggle, Manns said.
“Talking to her made me see how this issue could affect anyone, hurt anyone,” DeHart said.
DeHart’s plans for his march to Washington center on raising awareness and money for South Florida programs that help educate teens and their families about the signs of trafficking and strategies for avoiding its snare.
“The first thing I want to do is raise awareness about the issue,” he said. “And the other thing I want to do is get parents engaged in having conversations with their kids about it.”
First STOPs’ website will collect donations before and during DeHart’s walk. A recreational vehicle will rendezvous with him each night so that there are no hotel expenses, he said. And any money raised will go toward establishing education programs and events in South Florida.
DeHart said he has accrued about seven weeks of vacation time, which he will use up for the walk.
“It’s that important to me,” he said.
Public activism runs in DeHart’s family. His late father, Ronald DeHart, was a key founder of Men of Tomorrow, a program run by the Alpha Phi Alpha fraternity to provide scholarships to academically deserving students from Broward’s public schools.
“He was always thinking of ways to help people,” DeHart said of his father, who died in 1979. “I’d like to think I’m doing something that would make him proud.”