JANUARY 26 • 2023 | 15

meals together as well as a living room, 
sitting area and dining room. The homes 
also feature eight large double-occupancy 
bedroom suites, each with a bathroom. 
The basement features another sitting 
area with a television, exercise equipment 
and a room with donated clothing available 
to residents in the program. There are also 
private rooms where women meet with 
therapists several times a week. 
Since becoming a resident of Sanctum 
House in November 2020, Samantha’s life 
has transformed. She has learned to take 
care of herself, gotten help in receiving her 
Social Security card and a government-
issued identification card, received mental 
and substance abuse counseling, worked 
retail jobs and opened a checking account.
“Outside of rehab, I knew I needed a 
sustained, longer program to save my life,
” 
Samantha explained. “
And the minute I got 
here, I felt loved. The survivor women who 
work here are like sisters. They taught me 
how to survive and love myself. There are 
always women here to listen and help me.
” 
Above all, the most important thing 
Sanctum House has given her is a sense 
of her own self-worth and the knowledge 
that she is deserving of love. Working with 
relationship therapists, she restored ties 
with her mother, who she learned was also 
sexually abused, as was her grandmother. 
Sanctum House also has an apartment 
building on its property housing four 
heavily subsidized apartments where 
those who have finished the program 
live until they can transition to complete 
independence. Samantha expects to move 
into one of these apartments this spring.
As a survivor, Samantha has begun to 
share her story and speak out at schools, 
houses of worship as well as at medical and 
dental offices to help people recognize the 
warning signs of trafficking and abuse. 
“When I came here, I had not seen a 
dentist in so long I had to have many of 
my teeth pulled and replaced,
” Samantha 
said. “Now, when I go out telling my story 
to different groups, including those in the 
medical and dental fields, I tell them that 
one way you can tell if someone is being 
trafficked is by examining their dental 
health.
” 
Since it opened in 2018, Sanctum House 
has served more than 100 women like 
Samantha and is supported by government 

and private foundation grants as well 
as individual donations and pro-bono 
services. 

GETTING A FRESH START
Sanctum House Founder Edee Franklin is 
proud of the strides this organization has 
made and looks forward to 
widening its ever-expanding 
reach of partnerships 
throughout Metro Detroit. 
“Human trafficking has no 
boundaries as to age, gender, 
race or religion,
” she said. “It is 
vulnerability that is the culprit 
for its victims.
” 
Franklin said even after they recover, 
there are still challenges ahead for women 
like Samantha, who may have accrued 
a criminal record or a bad credit score 
because of the things they had to do to 
survive at the hands of their trafficker. 
For them to truly get a fresh start, they 
must have these records wiped clean and 
have more resources made available to 
them for job training. She pointed to the 
recent signing of the Countering Human 
Trafficking Act of 2022 by President Joe 
Biden as an encouraging sign. 
“Most of the women who come to 
us have been on the streets and have 
misdemeanors or felony convictions,
” 
Franklin said. “Think how tough it is then 
to fill out that section of a job application 
that asks if you’ve been convicted of a 
crime. So, in our next steps of advocacy, 
we have partnered with law firms and legal 
professionals and even organizations such 
as the Joseph Project to help expunge their 
records.
” 

Michigan Senate President Jeremy Moss 
(D-Southfield) said recent actions taken by 
Gov. Gretchen Whitmer that 
include pardoning the crimes 
of several trafficking survivors 
at the end of her first term 
could indicate that the state 
legislature is preparing to move 
in this direction. Moss said 
there is bipartisan support for 
introducing new laws that protect people 
while they are being trafficked — such 
as training those in the hotel and motel 
industry to detect red-flag activity going on 
in their establishments. 
Moss is hopeful that the new session will 
see several pieces of legislation introduced 
that will educate multiple industries 
— including the financial world — on 
detecting patterns that reveal whether a 
business is involved in trafficking as well as 
helping trafficking survivors expunge their 
criminal records. 
“With her series of pardons last 
December, the governor has taken a lead 
on this, ensuring that those who have been 
victims of human trafficking or domestic 
violence and, as a result, have been charged 
and convicted of affiliated crimes can truly 
see justice,
” Moss said. 
“People who are trafficked are put in 
incredibly difficult circumstances. We need 
to recognize them as victims and give them 
justice. This is the track we need to go 
down as we move into the new session in 
the Legislature.
” 

If you suspect that any child or adult is a victim, or is 

at risk of becoming a victim, call the National Human 

Trafficking Hotline at (888) 373-7888. If the individual is 

in imminent danger, immediately call 911.

Edee 
Franklin

Jeremy 
Moss