June 09, 2023

297 – Stop Blaming The Victim, with Dr. Amelia Franck Meyer

25 minutes

Dr. Sandie Morgan looks back at Episode 28 “Stop Blaming the Victim” with, Dave Stachowiak and Amelia Franck Meyer. The three discuss the prevalence of victim blaming against commercially sexually exploited children, how it affects the children, and how to help them.

Dr. Amelia Franck Meyer

When we first interviewed Dr. Amelia Franck Meyer, she was the CEO of Anu Family Services, a child welfare agency located in 90 different counties in Wisconsin and Minnesota. Now, Amelia Franck Meyer serves as Anu’s Senior Strategic Advisor and is the founder and CEO of Alia. Alia provides innovations for people and systems impacted by childhood trauma and is a strategic partner of Anu Family Services. Amelia is leading a movement to create a child welfare system where both caregivers and children can thrive. She has worked throughout the United States and internationally, promoting her ideas to change the way children welfare systems work. Amelia Franck Meyer also brought together professionals at the University of Minnesota, where she received her master’s degree in social work, to create Youth Connections Scale and Wellbeing Indicator Tool for Youth, two tools largely used in the child welfare sphere.

Key Points

Terms like “teen prostitute” and “child prostitute” are incorrect and dangerous as they suggest youth were voluntarily involved.

Blaming victims instead of seeing them as children who are in need of protection adds to the harm these youth have already experienced.

A lot of the youth being found in these circumstances are children who were already in the Foster care system. Because these children felt that they had no protection in the system, from the lack of adult connection, they took it upon themselves to find protection.

When commercially sexually exploited youth are found, they have already had their innocence taken from them, however, they also lost the time they should have had doing things with their families and friends.

Resources

Anu Family Services

Olive Crest

Dr. Darla Henry’s 3-5-7 Model

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Transcript

Sandra Morgan 0:00

You’re listening to the Ending Human Trafficking podcast. This is episode 297.

Welcome back! My name is Sandie Morgan. Producing this podcast, dedicated to studying the issues, being a voice, and making a difference takes a team. We’re saying another goodbye, this time to Idalis Moscoso, who has served as blog editor, organizer, wonderful website content provider. She’s going off to Italy for grad school and we wish her well. And, we’re welcoming on board Nadia Sosa. When I asked Nadia recently what her favorite episode has been during her onboarding, she quickly responded, “number 28!” I immediately knew what she was talking about and I want everyone to revisit it with us. You’ll be listening now to Dr. Amelia Franck, in Episode 28, “Stop Blaming the Victim.” The bonus is that you will also get to hear Dave again throughout this interview. Okay now, let’s get to the episode. Here’s me introducing our guest.

Let me introduce Amelia Franck Meyer, she has been the CEO of Anu Family Services since 2001. That’s a child welfare agency located in Wisconsin and Minnesota. For those of you who listened to the last podcast, we were talking about not calling these kids terms that put them into juvenile delinquency, but finding the opportunities and making opportunities by giving them designations that place them squarely in a child welfare context. That’s exactly what Amelia does. She is an advanced practice social worker, a licensed independent social worker, she has a master’s degree in social work from University of Minnesota and a master’s degree in sociology from Illinois and a graduate certificate from the University of Minnesota. We are very happy to have you here. Welcome.

Amelia Franck Meyer 2:42

Thank you. My pleasure to be here.

Sandra Morgan 2:44

Well, when you did your workshop for us at the Ensure Justice Conference, the title of your workshop was “Stop Blaming the Victim.” We talked about the kinds of baggage that come with terms like “teen prostitute” and “child prostitute” and what that does so that people say things that are really just unreasonable. A clinician that says, “Well, the first time she was forced, but after that it’s her choice.” Or, “Well, if she’s dressed like that, what does she expect?” So we have lots of evidence that people do blame the victim and we have people who are trying to be part of the solution that even blame the victim because she doesn’t follow through on what we advised her to do. What we want to hear from you today is why we shouldn’t blame the victim. What is her experience? What can we do to better understand the victim?

Amelia Franck Meyer 3:48

Well, I’m just struck with this group of girls, how much it reminds me of the Stockholm Syndrome and the work that’s been done around that where victims actually identify with their abusers as a protective mechanism. It’s a normal healthy brain response to captive trauma. When I hear words like “teen prostitute”, I get a little cringed hearing those because there is an implied meaning that it’s a trade, that it’s voluntary or chosen, that if she just wanted to leave she could. Clearly, this does not really emphasize the impact of trauma and fear. There’s so many things we can relate to this kind of experience for girls in terms of kidnap victims, prisoners of war, Elizabeth Smart, Patty Hurst, the e...

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