She calls sex workers to offer a path out

To clamp down on Internet-based prostitution in Charlotte, police and federal agents have posed as potential customers – a phone call as the first step in arresting violent pimps and stopping the trafficking of young girls and women.

Once a month, Karen Cianciola dials some of the same numbers. But she poses only as herself, using her own cellphone and offering a simple message to the women who answer the phone: There is help if you want it.

Since January, Cianciola and other volunteers have called escorts who advertise on Charlotte’s Backpage.com, a website made infamous by its “adult” section. Police have linked the site to human trafficking and underage prostitution.

Police investigations have busted pimps like Shahid Hassan Muslim, a sex trafficker convicted in August and accused of chaining teenage prostitutes to toilets and punched them in the stomach when they didn’t do what he said.

Cianciola tries to make contact with women in similar situations. She’s ready to connect women with people who can help, like the national human trafficking hotline and a suicide hotline. But mostly, Cianciola says she listens.

“The first question I ask is, ‘How are you today?’ ” Cianciola said. “I ask if they’re safe, and ‘if there’s anything that I can do to get you out.’ ”

Some women hang up immediately, uninterested in what Cianciola has to say. Others politely note that a trafficking hotline number won’t pay their bills. But a few have accepted the offer to talk – and talked for hours. One even went to dinner with Cianciola and a volunteer to talk about getting getting out of the business.

“I think it comes through that I don’t judge them,” she said. “I’m not doing it to just think of it as a charity. They are just someone that’s down on their luck for whatever reason.”

In eight months, volunteers like Cianciola have had some success, said Mike Sexton, spokesman for the Mecklenburg County Women’s Commission, who thought up the plan. The first phone session was on Jan. 11, coinciding with Human Trafficking Awareness Day. Since then, Sexton said, they’ve helped six women step away from prostitution. Cianciola and other volunteers make a new set of calls every month.

Cianciola said she’s motivated to reach out to sex workers because she was a victim of domestic violence. In Charlotte, she’s been an advocate for domestic violence awareness, serving on the Domestic Violence Speaker’s bureau.

“I don’t preach to them,” she said of her conversations with escorts. “I don’t tell them that they should be doing better. I tell them that there is life after this, and it can be fabulous.”

This story was originally published September 23, 2015 at 6:23 PM with the headline "She calls sex workers to offer a path out."