When Burnout Reveals the Truth: What the Anti-Trafficking Field Can No Longer Ignore

Alex Andrews
3 hours ago
3 min read

Every few years, the anti-trafficking field releases another report diagnosing its own dysfunction. The Safehouse Project’s recent white paper is the latest to outline the emotional toll of the work, the predictable cycles of vicarious trauma, low wages, inconsistent leadership, and the churn that destabilizes survivor support.

To many in the field, these findings feel revelatory.

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But to sex workers, survivors, and people who have lived inside the systems that claim to “save” us, none of this is new. We have been naming these problems for decades.

The core issue is simple: you cannot build trauma-informed services on top of carceral logic, exploitative labor conditions, and structures that burn through staff as quickly as they burn through donors’ goodwill.

Burnout Is Structural, Not Personal

The white paper describes a field where burnout is nearly universal among people exposed to chronic trauma, overwork, and low pay. But the underlying cause isn’t compassion fatigue - it is structural fatigue. When staff are underpaid, inadequately trained, and expected to sacrifice themselves for the mission, that is not trauma-informed care; it is exploitation dressed up as heroism.

Promoting people into leadership because they are “passionate” rather than prepared creates instability and fear-based management. Training that arrives only after staff have already been thrown into crisis guarantees turnover.

Passion cannot replace skills, martyrdom cannot replace management, and burnout cannot be addressed while organizations reproduce the same punitive power dynamics they claim to oppose.

The Emotional Burden Isn’t Shared Equally

One of the most honest findings in the report is the recognition that the anti-trafficking field is often staffed by people who can afford to work for low wages. In contrast, people with lived experience - the very people who bring irreplaceable expertise - are expected to take positions that keep them in the same economic vulnerability they fought to escape. This is not only unsustainable; it is unethical.

There is no meaningful anti-trafficking response without economic justice for the workforce.

If an organization cannot pay a living wage, it is not fighting exploitation; it is recreating it in a different uniform.

Fragile Models Fail Survivors First

The report highlights a truth we witness daily: when burned-out staff leave, survivors lose trust and continuity. Constant turnover among case managers results in inconsistent care, repeated retraumatization, broken communication, and the collapse of long-term support.

But the deeper issue is one the field rarely confronts - if a program falls apart every time a staff member quits, the problem is the model, not the staff. A trauma-informed system cannot depend on individual heroism.

Survivor-centered care cannot rest on the shoulders of one overwhelmed worker.

A sustainable model requires stable structures, peer support, and shared responsibility, not reliance on personal sacrifice.

Leadership Gaps Are Symptoms of a Crisis-Driven Culture

While the white paper correctly identifies leadership gaps and unprepared managers, it stops short of naming the cause: the anti-trafficking field has been built on crisis, not community. For decades, organizations have centered savior stories over sustainability, prioritized dramatic rescues over long-term healing, and rewarded urgency and fear rather than planning and stability. Many programs mirror carceral structures - rigid, punitive, hierarchical, and rooted in control - which makes burnout inevitable.

When survivors are treated as unpredictable liabilities rather than human beings, or when organizations demand transparency from clients while concealing their own internal harm, burnout becomes a feature rather than a flaw.

A field that relies on emotional extraction will always run out of people to extract from.

A Survivor-Led Path Toward Real Sustainability

The report names solutions - reflective supervision, clear organizational structure, trauma-informed training, competitive wages, leadership accountability, and wellness support - that sex worker–led groups have argued for for years. But these reforms will only work if the field addresses its deeper cultural problems: paternalism, anti–sex worker ideology, saviorism, and the refusal to shift power to those most impacted.

At SWOP Behind Bars, we know another model is possible. Peer-led programs reduce burnout by replacing rescue fantasies with collaboration. Survivors trust staff who have lived where they have lived, reducing crisis and strengthening relationships. Mutual aid redistributes labor and resources horizontally, replacing hierarchy with community. Burnout thrives in systems built on control; healing thrives in systems built on connection.

The future of this field will require more than trauma-informed policies - it will require a transformation of power. Survivor leadership, peer-driven models, community care instead of carceral intervention, and economic justice for workers must be the foundation. We invite every partner willing to move from “helping” to healing, from “rescue” to relationship, to help build a movement that sustains its people rather than consuming them.