The Donald Trump administration last year gave out more than $1 million in federal grant money designed to aid human trafficking victims to two organizations with lower qualifications than other applicants, prompting a whistleblower complaint. One was a right-wing group founded by a former sex worker turned fundamentalist Christian, and the other group is led by the daughter of a 2016 Trump delegate to the Republican convention, according to a Reuters report.
The two groups, Nevada’s Hookers for Jesus and South Carolina’s Lincoln Tubman Foundation, both received lower ratings than other grant recipients in the $100 million grant program for groups that say they combat human trafficking, according to the whistleblower’s report obtained by Reuters. The whistleblower alleges that political considerations, rather than the qualifications of the two groups, appear to have led to the grant awards being directed their way.
Hookers for Jesus was founded by former sex worker Annie Lobert, who, according to a Christian Broadcasting Network profile, experienced a sudden conversion to fundamentalist Christianity while in a hospital following a suicide attempt.
The group provides a “safe house” for sex workers who have tried to escape traffickers. But according to documents examined by Reuters, the group prohibits safe house residents from reading “secular magazines with articles, pictures, etc. that portray worldly views/advice on living, sex, clothing, makeup tips,” and also requires them to attend religious services at Lobert’s church.
Lobert denied to Reuters that she forces residents to attend her church, but added, “there is an understanding before they come in here that we are Christian.” She has also been an opponent of sex work decriminalization.
Hookers for Jesus received $530,000 in federal grant money over three years, a Miami Herald report said.
The Lincoln Tubman Foundation was founded, according to Reuters, by “the daughter of a prominent local Republican who supported President Donald Trump as a delegate at the 2016 convention.”
Operating under the name Tri-County Human Trafficking Task Force, the foundation was awarded a $550,000 grant over a three-year period.
The group’s founder, Brooke Burris, told Reuters that she runs the foundation out of her parents’ mansion-sized home, but “is looking for new office space.”
The whistleblower complaint alleges that Catholic Charities of the Diocese of Palm Beach and Chicanos Por La Causa of Phoenix were both more qualified, but passed over in favor of the lower-rated Hookers for Jesus and Lincoln Tubman Foundation.
The Phoenix-based group has publicly opposed the Trump administration over immigration policies. The Palm Beach group is headed by a delegate to the Democratic National Committee.
Photo by the United States Department of Justice / Wikimedia Commons Public Domain
