The Sting Show - Anti-Trafficking: The Architecture of Carceral Care

Anti-trafficking organizations love to frame themselves as progress.

New language. New branding. New slogans about care, rescue, and restoration.

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But when you follow the money - and follow the people harmed - the pattern remains stubbornly familiar.

Selah Freedom, in the Tampa Bay area, One More Child in the infamous territory of Sheriff Grady Judd in Lake County, and the shambles of Arizona’s Project ROSE are often discussed as different models. One is a large nonprofit with publicly filed 990s. One is a faith-based organization operating under a church exemption. And one was a local diversion program - emphasis on was - because once the harm was undeniable, the branding couldn’t save it.

Structurally, however, they are variations on the same architecture: arrest first, services later, accountability never.

Selah Freedom: The Receipts Exist - and They’re Loud

Selah Freedom at least leaves a paper trail. Its publicly filed 990s show a well-capitalized organization with millions in revenue and assets - and they also show that a substantial share of its budget is aligned with law-enforcement-centered work. Awareness programs train police. Outreach and prevention programs partner with prosecutors and courts. Diversion and post-arrest services are embedded into the model.

Roughly half of Selah Freedom’s spending reaches survivors directly. The rest sustains a professional nonprofit infrastructure and the enforcement ecosystem it collaborates with. This isn’t hidden. The numbers tell the story plainly.

What the 990s don’t show - but what circulates persistently in sex worker and survivor networks - are the on-the-ground experiences that never make it into annual reports. For years, sex workers have described unsolicited outreach tied to Selah Freedom through adult platforms and advertising spaces: calls, messages, or interventions framed as “help” that feel less like support and more like surveillance.

These accounts describe a collapse of the line between care and enforcement, where “resources” arrive alongside pressure, monitoring, or eventual system involvement. Other underground stories echo the same themes - assistance conditioned on compliance, rigid program requirements, loss of autonomy, and the assumption that contact itself signals victimhood. Whether every story is provable is beside the point. Their consistency matters.

When the same warnings surface across cities, platforms, and years, it raises a question spreadsheets can’t answer: what does help feel like to the people receiving it - and why do so many describe it as something to avoid?

One More Child: Transparent Enough to Fundraise, Opaque Enough to Avoid Scrutiny

One More Child presents itself as a national anti-trafficking leader and, technically, it checks the boxes donors are trained to look for. It holds an active IRS 501(c)(3) designation and maintains a profile on GuideStar (Candid). Donations are tax-deductible. The organization is legally recognized as charitable.

But this is where the transparency story collapses.

Despite its scale, One More Child provides almost no meaningful financial detail through GuideStar. The profile contains minimal information - high-level placeholders that amount to “???” for much of the past decade.

There are no program breakdowns, no executive compensation details, and no clear accounting of how funds are allocated across survivor services, administration, faith-based programming, or law-enforcement partnerships.

God-Mode Accounting Through Religious Exemption

One More Child operates under the legal entity Florida Baptist Children’s Homes, Inc., which is classified as a church-affiliated or religious auxiliary organization. That classification exempts it from filing Form 990s with the IRS. Instead, the organization points to consolidated audits and reports to the Florida Auditor General, which roll all affiliated operations into a single financial picture.

Translation: everything is blended, and nothing is traceable.

Because One More Child is folded into a much larger religious institution, there is no way to isolate what it specifically spends on anti-trafficking work, how much reaches survivors directly, how much supports awareness campaigns or institutional growth, or how much flows into partnerships with law enforcement, prosecutors, or child welfare agencies.

The absence of data isn’t accidental. It’s structural.

Is it legal? Yes. Completely. Is it ethical? That depends - and since it’s a church, accountability gets blurry. But is it transparent? Absolutely not.

Project ROSE: The Prototype That Made the Pattern Visible

Arizona’s Project ROSE made the logic explicit long before Selah Freedom or One More Child scaled nationally. Under Project ROSE, people - primarily poor women, disproportionately Black and trans - were arrested in prostitution stings and then offered a choice: jail or services.

On paper, it was diversion. In practice, it was coercion. Services weren’t accessed because people wanted support. They were accessed because handcuffs came first.

Monica Jones and the Cost of “Rescue”

The arrest of Monica Jones, a Black trans woman, professor, and sex worker rights organizer, exposed Project ROSE for what it truly was: a program that used the language of care to justify racialized, gendered policing. Monica was not trafficked. She was not rescued. She was targeted.

Her resistance forced public reckoning and ultimately helped end Project ROSE. But the model didn’t disappear. It evolved, rebranded, and professionalized.

What Changed - and What Didn’t

What changed is mostly cosmetic. The language softened. Nonprofits grew. Grants got bigger. Branding got cleaner, warmer, more donor-friendly. The work looks more compassionate on the surface, more trauma-informed in its vocabulary, more polished in its presentations.

What didn’t change is the machinery underneath.

Arrest is still the entry point.

• Law enforcement still defines the problem and sets the terms.

• Services remain conditional - available only after compliance, cooperation, or coercion.

• Transparency remains optional, especially when shielded by nonprofit bureaucracy or religious exemption.

• And survivors and sex workers are still collateral damage in systems that prioritize optics, metrics, and institutional comfort over actual safety.

Selah Freedom professionalized the model. One More Child shielded it behind faith. Project ROSE exposed it early.

Different aesthetics. Same system.

The Shared Through-Line: Carceral Care Without Accountability

All three rely on the same underlying logic: police identify the “problem,” arrest or the threat of arrest creates leverage, services are offered downstream, and institutions congratulate themselves. This is not prevention. It is carceral care - support delivered only after punishment, surveillance, or coercion.

As long as organizations can claim moral authority while avoiding transparency - whether through nonprofit bureaucracy or religious exemption - the harm will continue to be rebranded as help.

The Question That Still Hasn’t Changed

If anti-trafficking work were truly about safety, arrest wouldn’t be the starting point.If it were truly about survivors, financial transparency wouldn’t be optional.If it were truly about prevention, policing wouldn’t be the spine.

• Selah Freedom shows us where the money goes.

• One More Child shows us how money disappears while remaining tax-deductible and fundable.

• Project ROSE - and Monica Jones - show us the human cost.

What hasn’t changed is the refusal to let go of control. And until that does, the receipts will keep telling the same story - even when the numbers are replaced with question marks.