Stephanie (Myers) Catani grew up in Mansfield and graduated from Mansfield Christian High School in 2003. From all outside appearances she likely seemed a typical midwestern child, but experiences and events in Stephanie’s childhood that seemed unrelated at the time have combined to create the activist she has become.
Catani’s “Unchained Fashion Show” raises both funds and awareness of the fastest growing criminal enterprise worldwide, human trafficking.
An estimated 27 million people are trafficked throughout the world, but this number is likely a low estimate. The nature of human trafficking makes it difficult to gather accurate numbers.
The original and complete data set can be found at this link: https://bedbible.com/
The National Human Trafficking Resource Center describes human trafficking as slavery, and in practice the crime is just that. Human beings, especially women and children, are extracted from their normal lives either by force, coercion, or intimidation, and involuntarily placed in servitude. The harrowing difference with modern slavery is the nature of the “work” that is forced upon the victims.
While 18 percent of the victims are forced into labor, it is possible that more are in this group because it is the most difficult to track. They often work in restaurants, hotels, cleaning and janitorial services, salons, manual labor, peddling rings, and sales. The victims are “hiding in plain sight.”
The overwhelming majority however, are forced into sex work. Seventy-nine percent of victims are sexually exploited through forced prostitution, organized brothels, strip clubs and pornography. These victims occasionally get arrested, which is actually the way the problem has come to light and has proven a tool to help the victims.
“Most people don’t really understand what human trafficking is,” said Catani. “The victims are not who people think they are, they [the traffickers] go after the most vulnerable, children, people who seem lonely or isolated, young women.”
Catani recounted the story of one victim as an example. She described a teenage girl from a wealthy Columbus suburb. She was attacked on her way home from school one day and they told her that they knew where she lived and would kill her family if she didn’t do what they said.
While 85 percent of sex trafficking victims are women, 40 percent of labor trafficking victims are men. Worldwide, 20 percent of all victims are children, although in some parts of Africa that number is almost 100 percent. Forty-one percent of sex trafficking cases and 20 percent of labor trafficking cases referenced U.S. citizens as victims. The victims are disproportionately minorities. Minorities comprise 74.4 percent of sex trafficking victims, and for labor trafficking the number is 98.4 percent.
(See notes at left for attribution of statistics.)
It was her work with college students that inspired Catani and her co-founder to create “Unchained Fashion Show.”
She works with The Ohio State University (OSU) students through a campus ministry. The students attended a human trafficking conference and were motivated to action. Catani felt a deep emotional connection with the victims and her prior work with Amani Africa and “Project Runway” finalist Korto Momolu seemed a natural fit for the cause.
Catani began college studying fashion promotion, which is a public relations and journalism program, at the London School of Fashion. While going through a particularly difficult time personally she accompanied her father, Dr. Myers, on a medical mission trip to Mali.
The trip wasn’t unusual for Catani, who joined her father on her first mission trip when she was seven, but this trip she was acutely aware of the plight of the local women. This inspired Catani to change directions with her studies. Ultimately she finished her bachelors degree at OSU, where she studied global women’s health and activism.
While still a student she learned about Amani Africa and applied to work for the organization while still a student. Amani is a fair trade fashion organization that empowers women through entrepreneurship. Just months before graduation she was offered a job, which took her to Liberia upon graduation. Catani reached out to Momolu in hopes of collaborating since the famous designer is originally from Liberia.
Momolu ended up designing a line of clothing Amani could use for fashion shows in Liberia. Catani orchestrated two shows, one in the jungle and one in the capital city. After three months, she returned to Columbus and began working with college students at a campus church.
At this juncture disparate parts of Catani’s life started connecting like pieces of a puzzle. Catani was motivated to fight human trafficking in part because she could relate to the victims. As a sexual abuse survivor she had made life choices out of pain and had struggled with chronic depression. Although not a victim of trafficking she had empathy for their struggle to heal.
Her co-founder Felicia Kalan first posited the idea, and in time “Unchained Fashion Show” had it’s inaugural event at the OSU student union. That first show raised $15,000, and two subsequent shows have continued to raise both funds and awareness for the cause.
“Even though my story is very different from the survivors of human trafficking I am so passionate about seeing wholeness here, this side of heaven. I found this in an African prayer journal and it sums it up so well, ‘Our commitment to this struggle for human liberation is one of the ways we confess our faith in an incarnate God.’ That’s why I have to do this,” said Catani.
Human trafficking statistics came from the United Nations Office of Drugs and Crime Report on Human Trafficking, The Polaris Project and The National Center for Victims of Crime.
The National Human Trafficking Hotline is 1-888-373-7888
“Most people don’t really understand what human trafficking is,” said Stephanie Catani. “The victims are not who people think they are, they [the traffickers] go after the most vulnerable, children, people who seem lonely or isolated, young women.”
