((PKG)) THISTLE FARMS
((Banner: A Safe Place))
((Reporter: Saleh Damiger))
((Camera: Yahya Barzinji))
((Adapted by: Zdenko Novacki))
((Map: Nashville, Tennessee))
((NATS))
((Becca Stevens, Founder, Thistle Farms))
The story of Thistle Farms, though, is a story of hope and recovery of women coming together and trying to make the world a more loving place.
((NATS))
Thistle Farms has been around for twenty one years. It started off really small. It was just a community of women, residential community of women who were survivors of trafficking and prostitution and addiction. It was a small group that said, ‘Let’s try to live together for two years. Let’s not have any authority in the house, no rent, and see what healing looks like when women come together.’
((Jennifer Clinger, Survivor, Thistle Farms))
I ran away from home. I was trafficked, introduced to child pornographers. More trauma on top of that other trauma. All my childhood training taught me that the only thing I had to offer the world is my body.
((Doris Walker, Former Resident, Thistle Farms))
When I first got here, they handed me a key and that was the first time in a couple of decades that anybody had trusted me enough to give me a key.
((Becca Stevens, Founder, Thistle Farms))
If you go into prison and you say the word “home”, women will weep, because they need it so bad.
((Doris Walker, Former Resident, Thistle Farms))
And then they asked a very profound question. They didn’t say, “What have you been out there doing, Doris?” They asked the question, “What happened to you?”
((Ty, Employee, Thistle Farms))
When the new women come, it’s like the best time for me. You know, I get to pass on what I’ve learned, get to train them how to make the products, get to train them how to run the machines, and I get to show them a whole lot of love.
((Becca Stevens, Founder, Thistle Farms))
There’s this deep trauma that the women have experienced that contribute to the dysfunction, the disease, the choices, the fears, and the incarcerations, and so, to me, what we have to do as a community is to say, “We are going to welcome women home.” We know they didn’t get to the streets by themselves. It takes a diseased community, a community that still allows, you know, young girls to be assaulted.
I thought it would be a great idea to name the program after that last flower that was left. And the women that I was serving were a lot like those thistles and a lot like me. You know, prickly out leaves that have a survival by poking people if they get too close, but they also have this beautiful deep purple center that reminds us how soft and beautiful people are too, even with those hard, outer edges.
The story of human trafficking, the story of sexual violence towards women, it’s a horrible story and it is global and it is huge.
((NATS))
