COLUMBUS, Ohio — For the last 10 years, 10TV has documented the work of a local court program that is breaking the chains of human trafficking.
This week, scores of survivors were treated to a celebration of life and love.
Grammy-nominated blues and soul singer Janiva Magness traveled from Los Angeles to Columbus for a performance unlike any other in her 45-year career.
For Magness, music is much more than what meets the ear. She calls it her life raft through the choppy waters of a chaotic life.
"It spoke to a place in me where I had no words. And that place needed... it needed to be spoken to," she said.
But the story of this concert, this connection, actually began 10 years ago, in the Franklin County Courtroom of Judge Paul Herbert.
His specialty docket, nicknamed "CATCH Court" for Changing Actions to Change Habits, serves women often seen on the streets, many of them the products of trauma inflicted long before they were women.
"We've had a large number of cases where the parents — the moms — are actually the ones who have sold their own 11 or 12-year-old daughters to a drug dealer to have sex in order to get the drugs," said Herbert. "To have a story about where your mom held you down when you were 11 and let a man rape you while she looked at you, that's... that's horrific, you know?"
Stephanie Rollins knows such horrors.
She was first trafficked at age 12. What followed were decades of desperation and destruction.
"Drugs, running and numbing. I didn't know how not to use," Rollins said. "My soul ached. But we don't know what we don't know. We can't change what we couldn't identify."
At CATCH Court, she found a sisterhood of survivors, and a judge who, instead of asking "What did you do?" asked, "What happened to you?"
"When they learn how important they are and that they have a life and they can have their own mission, that's when I've seen amazing things happen," Herbert said. "These are powerful, powerful women."
Last year, while casually listening to music at home, Herbert was introduced to another powerful woman.
"It just started out — I was listening to Miss Magness' songs and I was — couldn't believe — the words of her songs matched exactly with the stories that I hear in court every week," he said. "She has one song called 'I Won't Cry.' And it's about strength. And she starts out with the lyrics, 'The stronger the love, the blacker the bruise. The closer the hand, the sharper the knife. I get cut, I might bleed, but I won't cry'."
They are lyrics from Janiva Magness' heart and her personal history.
Herbert went to Magness' website and on a whim, emailed her.
"Hey I'm a judge in Columbus, run a human trafficking court, here's my 5-minute video..." he said.
"He sent me an email... to my website," Magness said. "Just basically a piece of fan mail and said... I just have to know if you're ever going to be in Ohio or anywhere near Columbus."
Magness watched the video about the women of CATCH.
And in them, she says, she saw herself.
"The vulnerability," she said. "What Etta James would refer to as 'The rage to survive. Rage to survive. You can cut me, I might bleed, but you ain't getting it. You ain't getting it. You are not getting the last piece of me.'"
For Magness, it was a rage born from a childhood of trauma.
"My parents were both very high-functioning alcoholics, both clinically depressed. They both killed themselves by the time I was 16," she said. "That's what I was navigating as 'normal' as a young girl. So, by the time I was 16 years old, pregnant and orphaned completely, I had gone through 12 foster homes in two-and-a-half years. I had a lot of justifiable demons, so becoming a young woman and an adult trying to function in the world, you know, I had to do what I had to."
Today Magness is a Grammy-nominated performer recognized by the likes of BB King and Bonnie Raitt.
"So, this idea that I could find hope and that I could find a dream, really a dream that was there all along I just never recognized it, is really profound," she said. "If I could give a piece of that to some of those women, to one of those women, I'm good."
That's why on a rainy, humid night, Janiva Magness brought the blues to Columbus.
"Ladies, you're so encouraging, so powerful," she told the audience. "This comes from my heart. This is from me to you."
In a private concert for the women of CATCH, an audience filled with that knowing ache, Magness shared her own story through music.
"If love is an army, and sadness the enemy, just know that I will fight for you," she sang.
Women in the audience wept, cheered and put their hands their hearts as Magness spoke to their experience through song.
"I get cut. I might bleed, but I won't cry," she sang.
From trauma to triumph to joy — songs of survival — and the healing power of community.
"She's just like us!" Rollins exclaimed after. "Heartfelt, emotional, funky. She's so funky! And real. I mean, I felt her from the soul. Her pain, her happiness, her freedom."
Magness paused during her signature song, appearing emotional.
"If you're gonna hit me, you better hope I don't get up," she said to cheers, before closing out, "Because I won't cry."
Since its start in 2009, 334 survivors have enrolled in CATCH Court.
Of that number, 73 percent have not had any additional arrests or charges.
This is an intensive, two-year program: only 58 of those survivors have actually graduated. But of those graduates, 94 percent have not had any additional arrests or charges.
Stephanie Rollins is one of those graduates. She is now working with children who have been trafficked.
For more information on Janiva Magness, click here.
Previous CATCH Court coverage:
- CATCH Court Changing Way Law Looks At Sex Trade Business
- Columbus Police Target Men In Sex Trade
- Columbus police focus in on sex trade at area hotels
- National Justice Board: Local Prostitution Court Could be National Model
- Former Addicts, Prostitutes Graduate From CATCH Court
- Human Trafficking Survivor Honored as Woman of Achievement
- Human Trafficking Survivors Graduate From CATCH Program
- New help for human trafficking survivors, children targeted by traffickers in Ohio
- Human trafficking survivors celebrate graduation from CATCH Court program
- A new start: Court program for sex trafficking victims graduates new class