Our speaker April 5 was Beth Bruno, introduced by David Everitt.  Bruno’s passion to end human trafficking was born as she sobbed through a movie - Born Into Brothels, a documentary about the children of prostitutes in Kolkata's (Calcutta, India’s) red light district.  She went on to found “A Face to Reframe”, a local non-profit committed to preventing human trafficking in Northern Colorado through arts, training, and community building.
 
Beth is manager of the Domestic Anti-Trafficking with the U COUNT Campaign, co-founder and facilitator of the Larimer County Anti-Trafficking Community Response Team, and is a partner in the First Offender Restoration Initiative, a diversion program for men soliciting sex.  Beth’s program included the following key points.
 
Human Trafficking is whenever a person is compelled to work or perform sex acts through force, fraud, or coercion or (in the case of sex trafficking) the person is not yet 18.
 
It thrives in any community where there is 1) a vulnerable population, 2) a viable demand, and 3) an uninformed community.
 
In Colorado, the Rocky Mountain Innocence Lost Task Force leads the charge in recovering domestic minor sex trafficking victims. In 2016, they helped recover 123 youth under age 18 (average age 15, every ethnicity, 15 boys). Youth are the most vulnerable in our community.
 
FCPD has a demand reduction strategy, targeting buyers of sex and helping to surface traffickers through an online method. In their first operation, they saw 600 unique requests for "dates" from men in our area. These men are offered a diversion sentence (if they qualify), an 8 hour course in which they learn the realities of the sex industry in an effort to deter them from future behavior.
 
 
A Face to Reframe’s website is (www.afacetoreframe.org) has more information.