Fayetteville pastor leads international discussion on sex trafficking
FAYETTEVILLE (WTVD) -- A Fayetteville pastor has been tapped to lead an international discussion on sex trafficking.
Michael Fletcher, senior pastor of Manna Church, will return to Oxford University in England next week, presenting to scholars on the topic of "Redemption and Sex Trafficking."
"My proposition is that the local church is the perfect grassroots tool for anti-human trafficking efforts," said Fletcher.
The three-day Oxford Round Table is a second opportunity for Fletcher to speak to the distinguished group. He presented a couple of years ago, after being nominated as an expert in the field.
Fletcher leads a 9,300-member congregation that literally leads the fight in local sex-trafficking rescues and victim rehabilitation. It's located in Fayetteville, where law enforcement officials have attributed its role in sex trafficking to the city's location- smack dab between New York and Miami, off Interstate 95, and in a transient military community.
In March 2014, the church open the doors to the Dream Center-its epicenter for saving victims.
"Last year alone we rescued 25," said Fletcher. "I don't say 25 like plus or minus. I mean exactly 25 girls from human trafficking. In Cumberland County. Some of them enrolled in high school."
Fletcher, who argues the church is equipped to lead such an effort with its financial resources and manpower, said Manna has teams of people who seek out young victims to assist.
"I'm going to use a terrible term. We hunt for them. We troll back page," said Fletcher, referring to the prostitution website. "We have people who troll back page and call, and when they answer the phone we begin to dialogue."
Sometimes you can hear victims' desperate cry for help. Those victims are becoming younger and younger, Fletcher said. One of those rescues last year involved a local high school sophomore.
"So we rescued her, got her out of state," he said. "Sadly, she fell in with a different trafficker and the next time we saw her, she was in an emergency room having been beaten by him. So we rescued her again from that."
Although partnered with federal, state and local law enforcement, this is the part of the job that can't be cured by criminology. The rehabilitation requires striking down a mob-like culture in the minds of victims who are literally products.
"One guy gets a girl, she's a renewable commodity and research shows she's worth up to in her lifetime $200,000," explained Fletcher. "So if I'm selling crack cocaine, once I've sold you the crack cocaine, I've got to replenish that with something else, but if I possess a girl or a boy, then I can use her until she's 'sexed out.'"
Fletcher said the victims the church comes in contact with are from diverse backgrounds. Some are in Nepal, where the church partners with agencies for similar international rescue efforts. Some locally come from troubled homes where parents reap financial benefits from the trafficking. Others come from seemingly healthy home environments, yet they're still "looking for love in the wrong places."
The common denominator is youth, said Fletcher, who noted the 25 young ladies rescued last year ranged from teenagers to women in their early 20s, some of whom were single mothers.
"We can't just look the other way, hold services and go to Sunday school, (and) eat buffets on Sunday," said Fletcher. "We need to make a difference, or we need to go home."
"The real question is 'if a local church closed its doors, would the community miss them?'" he continued. "And if it wouldn't, then we ought to go ahead and just close."
